Changes

As discussed in the previous section, we cannot affect the manner in which our content is routed around the Internet and are simply left a choice between the various applications to use for sending and receiving data. On its way to the recipient, our messages passess through multiple servers, routers and any other hardware corporations and governments choose to put into the network. At each of these points on the network, our data is processed as it passes from one server to the next and becomes accessible to whoever controls that particular piece of hardware. In fact, the possibility for surveillance is built into the network and Internet communications can be seen as the 21st century's postal system – where your letter is dropped into a post box, picked up by the mailman, processed at the post facility, shipped to its destination, processed by the post facility over there, given to the mailman and delivered to the recipient. At any one of those steps your message can be read. Our 'postal guarantee' against this intrusion is the sealed envelope. Other methods exist on the Internet and are described in Lesson 2.