Speed of light establishes certain latency minima. Experimental data can falsify (or not) at geographical locations far enough from VA.

▲

dboreham 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

"Going through" doesn't necessarily imply store and forward. It could be tapped elsewhere and shipped to WVA. fwiw the idea of running a network in order to tap it is hardly new. The British operated largest telegraph network in the world in the 1800's for that reason.

▲

Aurornis 8 hours ago | parent [-]

You think there's an entire shadow infrastructure across the United States or world that carries 80% of all internet traffic all the way to VA?

It would have to be several times larger than the internet infrastructure itself due to the distances involved.

All built and maintained in secret?

▲

coliveira 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You just don't have imagination. Google, just by itself, controls 89% of the traffic in the Internet. And we know that the government can get any information they want from them, without even asking too much. If you combine this with other major companies operating very close to the US government, it is probable that more than 95% of the web traffic outside China that is easily within reach of these sinister 3 letter organizations.

▲

Henchman21 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

No. That isn't required at all. Fundamentally you lack understanding of how this happens. Yes, there is some port duplication. Yes it costs money. But it is not anywhere near as onerous as you assume.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

▲

Aurornis 8 hours ago | parent [-]

> Fundamentally you lack understanding of how this happens. Yes, there is some port duplication. Yes it costs money. But it is not anywhere near as onerous as you assume

No, I understand networking hardware quite well actually. I'm also familiar with Room 641A. Room 641A did not capture 80% of internet traffic. If you think 80% of internet traffic could be routed through Room 641A you're not thinking about the infrastructure required to get it all there. It was a targeted operation on backbone lines that were right there.

▲

PenguinCoder 8 hours ago | parent [-]

While the most well known, there are other points of presence doing the same thing. Easy and trivial to duplicate traffic at line speed. It doesn't affect the traffic flow itself.

▲

reactordev 7 hours ago | parent [-]

They will never believe you until you show them and that requires a clearance.

	▲	ta20240528 25 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		No need for a clearance, merely explain that 1. fibre-optic traffic is a beam of light 2. this beam can be passed through a glass prism… 3. the prism splits off say 20% of the light by intensity 4. this 20% is identical to the 80% 5. both the 20% and 80% component are 'bright' enough to be used 6. the 80% continues on its merry way, the 20% is redirected for 'other' uses.
	▲	dmoy 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		A decent number of people reading this probably do have secret clearance. But that's not really the relevant point. Simply having secret clearance doesn't mean you can just go digging around arbitrary secret classified info that you have no business reading. And it certainly doesn't mean that discussion can be had on hackernews.
	▲	7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

▲

reactordev 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Correct but local governments using Palantir will need to provide it to them somehow.

	▲	reactordev 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		https://amp.dw.com/en/german-police-expands-use-of-palantir-... https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/12/15/us-tech-... https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/05/calls-to-ha... https://theweek.com/tech/palantir-influence-in-the-british-s... https://digitalrightswatch.org.au/2026/02/01/palantir-in-aus... Mmmmkay…