latest Snowden docs show NSA intercepts all Google and Yahoo DC-to-DC traffic

[mikal at stillhq.com (Michael Still)]

On Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 1:48 PM, explanoit <explanoit.nanog at explanoit.com> wrote:
> As a top-posting IT generalist pleb, can someone explain why Google/Yahoo
> did not already encrypt their data between DCs?
> Why is my data encrypted over the internet from my computer to theirs, but
> they don't encrypt the data when it goes outside their building and all the
> fancy access controls they like to talk about?

Its about the CPU cost of the crypto. I was once told the number of
CPUs required to do SSL on web search (which I have now forgotten) and
it was a bigger number than you'd expect -- certainly hundreds.

So, crypto costs money at scale basically.

Cheers,
Michael