# Gavin Andresen
# 2010-05-29 19:16:36
# https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=129.msg1294#msg1294

@s{quotedtext}
@s{quotedtext}
I don't see the security risk of being able to intercept or eavesdrop on a Bitcoin transfer. @p{par}

All transactions are broadcast to all Bitcoin generating nodes, anyway, and the transactions are impossible to alter or forge (because they're digitally signed). @p{par}

A man-in-the-middle could drop the transaction, but SSL doesn't fix that@p{--} if they're relaying SSL traffic they could drop your SSL-encrypted transaction, too. @p{par}

There are good non-security-related reasons for encrypting Bitcoin transaction traffic, though (makes it harder for governments/ISPs to do deep packet inspection to selectively drop Bitcoin traffic, for example). @p{brk}