Kim Dotcom Apparently Spied On For Longer Than Admitted 107
another random user writes "Kim Dotcom's internet connection was being diverted inside New Zealand weeks before the Government Communications Security Bureau says it started spying on him. The New Zealand Herald has obtained details showing Telecom engineers and staff at its technology services company Gen-I were investigating irregularities with his internet connection in November. The revelation has raised suspicion that Mr Dotcom was victim to earlier spying than the GCSB has admitted. It has brought fresh calls for an inquiry amid claims of the spy agency's role in the international 'Five Eyes' Echelon Network."
NZ Prime Minister is in Hollywood right now. (Score:2, Interesting)
Prime Minister John Key is schmoozing with studio bosses, hoping they'll keep the promises they made to him in this NZ election year.
And yet already they're letting him down, eve after he agreed to use the NZ GCSB and police against Dotcom on their behalf.
Those US studio bosses promised big rewards to John Key and "for New Zealand" in return, such as movie and TV production deals.
Only, once Dotcom was nuked, and everyone started glowing in the dark from the fallout, the studios then told the PM that they wanted NZ's existing foreign production subsidy upped to 30% from 16%, and postponed 'Avatar 2' which was to have begun shooting in NZ in 2013.
You see, PM John Key? See what happens when you get into bed with the Big Players in the hope you'll get yourself reelected?
On the other hand, I have no doubt they'll reward you with some juicy little seat on a board or three when you retire from politics, so it's not all bad... Unless you're just a NZ citizen-taxpayer, in which case, yes, it's all bad..
Re:Latency seems too high (Score:5, Interesting)
If the latency figures in the article are accurate then the traffic wasn't staying in the country at all. You can get from one end of the country to the other in 35ms round trip, so even the original 30ms seems rubbish unless the circuit was DSL. The way they were making out it was a high end connection that doesn't seem likely. 180ms will easily get you too Australia and all going well will get you to San Jose from New Zealand.
Geographical separation only has a loose relation to wire length. You say 180ms will get from San Jose to New Zealand, but in the evenings, my cablemodem regularly hits 300ms times just to reach google. Oversubscription and massive buffering on a shared line are to blame; Not geographical or line distance.
We need to know more about the lines before we can say what the latency values mean, if they mean anything at all. I'm also not at all convinced that a wiretap would result in any latency: Hanging a packet sniffer off of a switch doesn't make the switch run slower in almost any scenario I can think of. Wiretapping is supposed to be something that doesn't broadcast to the target "Smile, you're on hidden camera!" If an elementary network tool can reveal a wiretap, somebody's doing something wrong. Very wrong.
Re:Latency seems too high (Score:5, Interesting)