[liberationtech] Details needed about monitoring and data retention in Syria

[Andrew Lewis]

Also to add to what my colleague mentioned, reports from people that worked inside Syria's surveillance state portray a very muddled intelligence apparatus with 13 computing agencies that have varying levels of technical competency that don't share data. There have been some reports of fresh efforts for centralization of efforts, but nothing along the lines that there is a central repository besides the Area SPA planned installation, and the use of similar hardware(Bluecoat) by the ISPs, with varying levels of coordination. 

-Andrew

On Jan 10, 2012, at 5:27 PM, KheOps wrote:

> Hi everyone,
> 
> I'm working on the Syrian case with folks of Telecomix, and I'm reading
> on the IRC now that authorities would be monitoring "every bit" of
> Internet traffic getting out of the country, as well as storing all of it.
> 
> We indeed assume that all traffic is monitored and continuously
> encourage the use of encrypted connections, anonymizing software and
> trusted VPNs.
> 
> However, and apart from the BlueCoat equipment that catches Web traffic,
> we haven't seen any evidence of massive data retention related to other
> kinds of traffic (such as SMTP, for instance). Nor do we have heard
> about the presence of analysis equipment to provide Syrian intelligence
> with valuable information out of the mass of captured raw data.
> 
> So, I'm wondering if any people on this list has any additional
> information on this matter. Especially Jacob Appelbaum who mentioned
> data retention in Syria at the 28C3.
> 
> Thank you!
> KheOps
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