I heard nothing in the interview that I know to be untrue and, in fact, NSA has had the ability to create an Orwellian "big brother" like situation in this nation since the 70's. The capability has long been there. Legal restrictions have, until recently, ensured that NSA never fully exercised that capability. Several things have occurred in the past twenty years which has made it more difficult for even NSA, when they were trying, to sort out the communications of US Citizens and non-US citizens. Digital communications, for example. The user becomes relatively faceless and his location is no longer immediately apparent. The billing information is stripped from the data packets, and this information is the only way to tell friend from foe. Of course, when that billing information is provided to NSA by the carrier, you can connect a name and a face to those data packets. Wide-scale use of the internet for communication further complicated the situation. The system routes these communications via the fastest, not necessarily the shortest, or most direct, route. Distance is relatively unimportant for a digital network. The easiest place to collect information is at a choke point, where multiple streams of information are available for the taking, such as a microwave tower transferring phone calls between cities. (This used to make me laugh back in the day when people widely used landline telephone communications, believing that their comms were secure because they were on a landline, not realizing that a few miles down the road their landline tied into a microwave network, and their phonecall was bundled with thousands of others and blasted through space.) An internet nodal hub or international gateway is another of those choke points, where it is possible to siphon off an enormous amount of information, but in so doing, you will inevitably get communications from US citizens, and sorting out who is who becomes a herculean task. The "War on Terror" took the past complications regarding safeguarding the privacy of US citizens and stood them on their head. Now, it isn't just "terribly complicated" to sort out good guy from bad guy, it is impossible. The NSA is not dealing with a state player any longer. They are dealing with people who may in fact be legal residents, or even US citizens. All NSA can do now, is sort through ALL collected communications, looking for hints of wrongdoing, and once they have found it, THEN try to determine the citizenship status of the user. With the possibility of domestic terrorism, and the declaration in the National Defense Authorization Act that US citizens may be considered enemy combatants, even when within the territorial boundaries of the United States, the last vestiges of the protection formerly assigned to the communications of US citizens disappeared. The Genie is out of the bottle. The capability exists. You can't go backwards in time and assume that someone won't use the capabilities at their disposal. I'd suggest reviving the handwritten letter if you want to retain any semblance of privacy in your communications. Lots of people crow about their technical work arounds to avoid detection and interception. All I can say is, your defenses are sufficient until you attract the wrong kind of attention. Once NSA decides they want to see your communications, they will see your communications. I spent a lot of years listening to the recorded communications of individuals who were absolutely confident that they were speaking securely. I've heard them upbraid a subordinate for using the wrong circuit to pass a highly classified message, insisting that they use the totally secure circuit. It didn't matter really, since we were monitoring ALL of their circuits, even their "totally secure" one.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...le-to-police/2012/07/25/gJQAobI39W_story.html I use this for business purposes to simply forward an office line to my mobile. Don't use for anything else, but I find this troubling overall.
This is EXACTLY why I have not, and will not, UPGRADE my version of Skype, from the last version released BEFORE MicroSquash bought Skype.... and If I feel that my Comms on skype need more security, I have implemented an In-Family version of MonkeyNet, for all my family members, that might need more SECURE Comms.... I can pass Encrypted GPG, Stego, and OnePad files easily thru Skype, to family using GPG KeySets, PADs, and Stego Passwords already distributed to them. ..... You can do this Too.....
Have you tried Ekiga ? http://ekiga.org/ It appears to be the best of the open source alternatives to Skype.
I would have to run it from a VM... as they don't make an OSX version.... Might just try it in a XP VM though...
According to this it would appear that Skype has been compromised for nearly 5 years; http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/node/2479 How old is the version that you use ?
Pure speculation, with NO Convincing Facts, proffered.... especially since the originators of Skype, were known to be security, and external Bugging Aware Coders. Also it wouldn't make any difference, in that if one was using skype just as a Transport Protocol, for MonkeyNet Encrypted Comms, the Letters Guys still have to defeat the Encryption. That is yet to be seen, done, in real time.... and the current Best WildAssed Guess is it, is still at least one generation of Processessing Power away. I use Version 2.8.0.866.... still works very well in Peer-2-Peer mode..... .... YMMV