Defense Department says Chinese balloon may have been capable of "capturing communications" -- providing this important information to the U.S. population most of whom are carrying Chinese-made mobile phones with them at all times!
@lauren My understanding is that China Telecom has enough BGP points of presence that they can re-route US Internet traffic into China for surveillance at will.
I hope hardened BGP has a better acceptance rate than hardened DNS. It often takes a long time for things to be put in place and there are often unintended consequences (i.e. DNS amplification for DDoS).
You are right about it being obvious, but that has not stopped Russia from re-routing IP traffic through Russia multiple times.
Content encryption does not stop side-channels to establish traffic patterns.
Just saying, probably at least as realistic an attack as the balloon.
@rrb BGP is in the process of being hardened, you can't reroute without it being obvious, and most Internet traffic is encrypted. Not a viable surveillance technique. Rule one of surreptitious communications capturing: Don't make it obvious.