Swiss report reveals new details on CIA spying operation – Shows you can trust not even your own allies when it comes to encryption

The news about the operation is not new, but knowledge about who knew about it within Switzerland is new. It obviously casts a shadow over the neutrality of Swiss services themselves (we’ve always known you can’t trust the US CIA, China, etc around encryption).

The lesson really is that unless you can host it yourself and encrypt it with your own key, you cannot be 100% sure no-one else has access to your data. It’s a reason why self-hosted open source is popular as you can have the code examined, can compile it yourself, and host it yourself. The other lesson is that today’s enemies are not the only ones you have to watch or concern yourself about as even the Germans found out when the US was discovered spying on their own Chancellor’s phone communications some time back. China and Russia (not innocent themselves) are often used as red herrings to keep attention away from spying closer to home.

See https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/swiss-report-reveals-new-details-on-cia-spying-operation/2020/11/10/c93ca7fc-2386-11eb-8672-c281c7a2c96e_story.html

#technology #encryption #security #privacy