kadie@herodotus.cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie) (10/19/89)
>In article <OTTO.89Oct17163149@tukki.jyu.fi> otto@tukki.jyu.fi (Otto J. Makela) >writes: >>Preventation: does anyone know of cheap but reasonably reliable scramblers ? In article <790@ariel.unm.edu> ee5391aa@hydra.unm.edu.UUCP (Duke McMullan n5gax) writes: ... >Cheap and hard to defeat -- I don't think it exists, but it could, and the >technology is HERE TODAY! It actually wouldn't be hard to integrate the whole >schmeer, including D/A, A/D, key management, (en/de)cryption, and an automatic >slicer-dicer for carrots all on the same chip. The thing that would make it >cheap is volume production, which probably won't happen, at least not soon. Everyone needs this technology. On National Public Radio last week there was a story about baby monitors. These are wireless devices that parents use to listen in on their baby's room. The devices work like a sensitive one-way walkie-talkie. The problem: Anyone with a radio scanner can hear just about every conversation in your house. There is a similar problem with cordless phone. Cellular phone can be heard on older scanners. Any solution that tries to outlaw such monitoring (although it is illegal to monitor cellular phone calls) is doomed to failure. [You just can't stop people from listening to radio signals that enter their house.] The technological solution to this technological problem is much better -- scramble the signals. There is precedence: HBO solved (most of) its problem with home satellite dish owners by scrambling. - Carl Kadie Carl Kadie University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ARPA: kadie@m.cs.uiuc.edu
jans@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Jan Steinman) (10/20/89)
<On National Public Radio last week there was a story about baby monitors... The problem: Anyone with a radio scanner can hear just about every conversation in your house.> Monitoring these is real interesting late at night, especially since so many babies sleep in their parent's rooms! (Of course, this is what I've been told. Being a mature adult, I have no need for such titilation. :-) Seriously, it's going to be tough to get manufacturers to add any cost at all in this price sensitive market. I suspect encryption would double the price of a baby monitor. The only hope I see is if a company *concentrates* on secure baby monitors, since in order to sell them at the higher price, they will have to explain why they are better than cheaper ones, which is an issue I imagine the baby-monitor industry would just as soon ignore. The one that really upsets me is that the CMT lobby got EPCA pushed through congress to save a lousy $10 - $20 on a kilobuck device! Jan Steinman - N7JDB Electronic Systems Laboratory Box 500, MS 50-370, Beaverton, OR 97077 (w)503/627-5881 (h)503/657-7703