I noticed the obvious parallels to the Bank vs. Gmail vs. Doe story as well. I wasn’t going to repeat myself, but Mike’s last line about confidential information going over fax lines got me riled up again. The problem isn’t just that the fax went to the wrong place. The bigger problem is that every phone line and exchange involved in those faxes had access to the same confidential information. Anyone with the right phone tap or phone equipment access at the right time has full access to that same confidential information, without anyone else necessarily knowing about it, even when it does go to the correct receiver.

To all you technophobe bureaucrat idiots who want the convenience of modern communications without any of the responsibility: no communications medium can EVER be considered truly confidential unless it is encrypted, and only then when the receiver has exclusive access to the primary key. If you don’t understand simple terms like PGP and SSL, you should assume all your communications can be tapped and recorded, by anyone at all who has a reason to care. If you are responsible for any confidentiality in any exchange, and you don’t use end-to-end encryption in that exchange, you have failed and deserve to be sued. Criminal negligence should be the least of the charges brought against you, especially if you operate in a bank or hospital.

Phones can be tapped and recorded by anyone with determination and half a brain. Email is like a postcard — everyone with any equipment involved in the message hand-offs can read it clear as day. Anyone with access to the lines in between can tap and record the email, just as easily as a phone conversation. In real space, envelopes can be seen through, opened and closed, without anyone on either end knowing about it. Fingerprint dust can even pick up traces of the ink writing that touched the sides of the envelope, well after the letter has been taken out. Anyone with any physical or visual access to writing can copy it with impunity, until the medium containing the writing is thoroughly destroyed. Trash belongs to no one, and can be read by anyone. Faxes are no more secure than phone conversations — they can be tapped, recorded, and replayed with impunity. Very little sophistication is required in the process. Your cell phone is even easier to tap — it can be tapped by anyone in radio receiver range of the same cell tower as you, with the right equipment (which just requires money, not intelligence).

The most sophisticated aspect of comms taps, like the ones the NSA has on the entire world, is automated message post-processing. The only thing that separates the NSA from anyone with any electronics knowledge is the ability to filter through billions of communications, based on keywords (via email, OCR, or automated transcription/translation), and voice print recognition, all without any human involvement. That is the feature that allows them to tap a single trunk at a single AT&T office, and still get nearly every trans-national communication ever made, without needing to tap or control every individual ISP. They can break weak encryption, and good encryption just slows them down. In essence, their only real advantage is the sheer magnitude of their processing resources. Otherwise spying is easy, and anyone can do it.