On Friday October 23, the ACLU saw its two-year-old metadata suit against the NSA summarily rejected. Judge T.S. Ellis III, Chief Magistrate of the Eastern District Court of Virginia, ruled that the ACLU's lawsuit was based on "the subjective fear of surveillance" and thereby inadmissible. Maybe he should have ruled the privacy advocates need to stay current on the news, … [Read more...]
Fiberblaze: VoLTE Interception at Blazing Speed
C5IS reviews Silicom subsidiary Fiberblaze, a provider of “hardware acceleration” solutions that help law enforcement and government agencies overcome the challenges of intercepting VoLTE traffic. Last December, Danish hardware accelerator whiz Fiberblaze made headlines when it was plucked from the market by Silicom Ltd. of Israel. It was a good match. Silicom is an … [Read more...]
Procera Networks: On a Roll With Lawful Intercept DPI
C5IS reviews Procera Networks, a top-flight provider of DPI and Deep Content Inspection solutions for lawful enforcement, intelligence agencies -- and enterprise customers. Any analysis of the market for Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) products begins with two words: profusion and confusion. The sheer array of vendors -- four key ones and at least 30 smaller contenders -- is … [Read more...]
Cisco: Encryption Backdoors and the Art of Public Posturing
In a joint letter to the White House, Cisco Systems and other tech companies including Facebook and Google earlier this year joined privacy advocates in defending the right to use strong encryption, and opposing mandatory “backdoors” that would permit government access to customers’ encrypted data. But hold on. Cisco and other network equipment vendors by law already provide … [Read more...]
Surface Dive by Gamma Group, The Hacking Team and VUPEN
2015 has been a year of surprises for the market leaders of lawful malware and Zero Days -- Gamma Group, The Hacking Team and VUPEN -- and smaller players like Netragard. Not all surprises were of the pleasant variety. Start with the February rebuke of Gamma Group by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) for selling FinFisher to “repressive … [Read more...]