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Rishab Bailey (RB): Hello and welcome to Newsclick, in part two of our series of videos on NSA surveillance. In this video we discuss various technical issues related to what we know is the Global Surveillance Program of the NSA.
Nagarjun Kandukuru (NK): Contrary to popular misconception, the Internet is not an ethereal concept. In fact it relies on a backbone of infrastructure providers comprising physical things such as fiber-optics, wires, routers and servers which, of course, are located in different country. When you make a phone call from Delhi to Sao Paulo, it might surprise you to know that it goes through the US. In effect, the US is the switchboard of the world. Most Internet and telephone traffic flows through optic fibers, undersea cables and satellites. For historical reasons much of it flows through America. This makes it easy for American intelligence agencies, like the NSA, to intercept data which flows right through their living rooms. Separately, US corporations such as Cisco and HP dominate the world’s hardware market, the PCs and routers we all use. As the latest Der Spiegel revelations show, the products manufactured by these corporations are, to say the least, suspect. So devices that are necessary for Internet infrastructural work, ranging from routers to service tax, are all probably compromised. It has become clear over the last year or so that the entire physical infrastructure that compromises the Internet is largely controlled by America.
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