die@cpoint.UUCP (David I. Emery) (10/25/89)
In the mid 1970's it was widely reported that the Soviets uplinked tapes
of intercepted American telephone calls picked up from AT&T microwave by their
embassies and consulates in Washington DC, NYC, and SF on frequencies in the
900 mhz range (which was(?) an uplink frequency for one of their then-in-use
communication satellite families). I have heard stories that the NSA taped
the Russian uplinks and played the tapes for selected high officials of some
of the big companies the Russians were targeting in order to convince them
to take telephone (un)security more seriously.
I beleive that it was reported that the Russian tapes of US calls
were sent at 20-100 times normal speed multiplexed on some sort of very
wideband signal. It appears that no very secure form of encryption or
signal security was used, however, since NSA was willing to allow people
outide of the COMINT intelligence world to listen to their intercepts
(which they would have been very unlikely to do if they had any reason
to beleive the Russians thought they were using a secure mode of transmission).
Out of idle (and poisonous) curiousity I am tempted to speculate as
whether this practice continues to this very day, and if so what frequencies
and technologies are currently being used ? With so many vital communications
circuits carried by fiber, (especially those near foreign embassies) and
with the much greater consciousness of signal security in the last few years
it would seem that the fruits of such an effort might be much less useful
than they once were, but perhaps once started such an effort acquires a
certain momentum and cannot be so quickly stopped.
Has anybody living near the Soviet compounds seen these signals ?
Do they use their Moliyna birds which swing high up over our northern sky?
Or is this done by low orbit store-and-foreword ferrets ?
At the very least these uplinks ought to supply somewhat more tractable
material for a certain lunatic fringe than KGB/CIA/etc one time pad
encrypted "numbers stations". (Although the technical proficiency required
to make anything of the signals (even if not encrypted) probably grossly exceeds
that conceivably possessed by anyone who wastes time trying to break one time
pad spy ciphers from numbers stations).
--
David I. Emery Clearpoint Research Corp.
35 Parkwood Dr, Hopkinton Ma. 01748 1-508-435-7462
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