mpackard@uok.UUCP (08/26/84)
#N:uok:2800017:000:423 uok!mpackard Aug 26 13:10:00 1984 [] I'm just guessing but the radios probably use the same technology as the military which send a sync tone and then convert the audio to digital, scramble it, and convert it back to audio. When you listen you should hear a tone followed by static. This is called wide band secure. This method was attempted by motorola several years back but the users were not impressed with it, due to the sync problem. uok!mpackard
mpackard@uok.UUCP (09/19/84)
[eat a peach] The most distressing thing to hear is the secretary of state discussing problems or passing information over a clear radio, but it happens all the time. Just listen to HF in the 11.200 to 11.300 band and you will here just about everyone of importance talking around the subject. The fact that the military spends billions on communications gear, doesn't mean they use it. Usually the operator is lazy and just gets a frequency the fastest way he can. "get me a freq as soon as possible I must speak to the president" and the operator says gee not again, Oh piss I'll just give him the HF. The easiest way to determine an aircrafts communications capability is to look at it's antenna's. (you can't tell which ones are the bogus ones) Don't forget to examine the skin for bumps which house some of the antenna's. The reason for bumps is because the maintenance types have to fix them sooner or later. uok!mpackard
Geoff@SRI-CSL.ARPA (10/07/84)
From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow <Geoff@SRI-CSL.ARPA> I think they are aware of the problem and help may be on the way: n062 1458 06 Oct 84 BC-PHONES 2takes NSA Seeking 500,000 'Secure' Telephones Exclusive 6 p.m. EDT embargo By DAVID BURNHAM c.1984 N.Y. Times News Service WASHINGTON - The National Security Agency is proposing that the government and industry be equipped with as many as 500,000 telephones that can be secured against interception. The agency is convinced that the Soviet Union and the other nations are obtaining important intelligence from United States telephones. Although cloaked in secrecy, a program like the one the agency proposes could cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The project could also lead to a new role for the intelligence agency in private industry. Under the proposal, production of the secure phones would begin in two years. The decision by the largest and most secretive American intelligence organization to propose a major effort to combat telephone eavesdropping was disclosed by Walter G. Deeley, the senior official in charge of protecting government communications. He said in an interview that electronic eavesdropping by the Soviet Union, other countries he did not name and corporations posed a genuine threat to the security of the United States. ''I want the country to be aware that if we don't protect our communications, it can do a great deal of damage to us,'' Deeley said. ''This is a problem that goes to the very fabric of our society. It is not just a worry of the national security agencies.'' He said he believed the United States was in ''deep trouble,'' adding: ''They are having us for breakfast. We're hemorrhaging. Your progeny may not enjoy the rights we do today if we don't do something.'' A Reagan administration official familiar with intelligence matters agreed there was a surveillance problem, but he also said no final decision had been made to go beyond research or to request money to produce the phones. In August, the National Security Agency sent a letter to more than 2,000 major corporations saying, ''The U.S. has initiated an effort to develop low-cost, user-friendly secure telephone instruments.'' The number of secure telephones currently used by government agencies is classified information. But the Carter administration said there were 100 such phones in the government, and it planned to buy 150 more. The cost of each phone then was $35,000. The Reagan administration has bought an unknown number of additional secure phones. The phones proposed by the NSA would be used by the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense and State departments, military contractors and other private corporations such as banks that handle information of possible use to a foreign power. The NSA was set up by President Truman in a secret executive order in 1952 to conduct electronic intelligence all over the world and protect the sensitive messages of the United States. It has used its secret budget, now estimated at $4 billion a year, to make itself a major sponsor of advanced computer research, and it has played an important covert role in shaping national communication policy. Its top officials almost never grant on-the-record interviews. ''Anyone making a phone call to the West Coast or Boston from the Washington area has no idea how the conversation will be transmitted,'' Deeley said. ''It might go via fiber optics, conventional cable, microwave towers or one of the 19 domestic satellites. If is going via satellite you can presume the other guy is listening to it.'' Asked for specific examples of electronic espionage, he said he could not disclose them because they were classified. Citing individual cases, he said, would give the Russians important clues about the ability of the United States to detect their efforts. Deeley said his agency was developing a similar program to improve the security of computerized data. ''This area has blown up extraordinarily fast,'' he said. ''In many ways computerized data is more harmful than telephones because it's all record information. ''The financial institutions have become aware of this problem. The insurance companies are becoming aware. The rest of the private sector companies are just now beginning to see that if they are going to survive, they have to protect their communications.'' He said increasing American use of communication satellites and microwave transmission towers made it economically possible for almost any nation and many large corporations to intercept messages, then use high-speed computers to sort them out. A spokesman for the American Telephone and Telegraph Co. said he could not estimate the amount of telephone traffic that was subject to relatively easy interception because it was transmitted by microwave towers or satellites. But he added that one rough indicator was that 70 percent of AT&T's domestic equipment and 60 percent of its overseas equipment transmitted telephone messages through the atmosphere rather than by cable, which is harder to intercept. Few members of Congress other than members of the Senate and House intelligence committees are aware of the NSA's plan. One exception is Rep. Glenn English, D-Okla., chairman of the House Government Operations Subcommittee on Information. In a letter Sept. 24 to the General Accounting Office, a congressional investigative arm, he said, ''There can, of course, be no objection to maintaining adequate security for classified information.'' He said, however, that he knew ''from past experience that the national security bureaucracy has a tendency to require a degree of protection for classified information that may be excessive.'' He added, ''Technological security measures are very expensive, and my concern is that the unnecessary use of these measures is a waste of scarce federal funds.'' English asked the GAO to prepare an unclassified report on whether the proposed protective measures were necessary and worth the cost. Henry Geller, director of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration in the Carter administration and now the head of the Washington Center for Public Policy Research of Duke University, raised questions about the project. He said that when the Carter administration studied Soviet eavesdropping, it decided that its biggest security agency should be responsible for assuring the communications security of the American military and American intelligence services but that the Commerce Department should be responsible for working with private companies. ''There was a strong belief in the Carter administration that the United States has a long and important tradition that the telephone systems and broadcasting groups are independent, privately owned entities,'' he said. ''Adopting a plan that gives the NSA, a branch of the Pentagon, an important role in the communication network of private corporations and civilian agencies of government is a significant policy change that should be carefully examined by Congress before it is adopted.'' Deeley said his agency's concern prompted it earlier this year to award five of the major American communication companies small contracts to conduct individual studies; the object would be to determine whether they could mass-produce a low-cost, easy-to-use telephone that would be difficult to intercept. The companies are AT&T, the GTE Corp., the ITT Corp., the Motorola Corp. and the RCA Corp. Deeley did not describe the telephones, but experts in the field said each would presumably have a small computer that would transform the voice signals into a stream of coded digits. They said this would require time and expensive equipment for an outsider to decode the message. However, after the coded message was transmitted by conventional means to another special telephone, the receiving unit's computer could quickly turn the digits back into an understandable voice. As a result of the preliminary studies supported by his agency, Deeley said that he hoped to get bids on the project in November and sign an agreement with two of the five companies before the end of this year, and that production of the devices could begin before the end of 1986. ''We're talking about a half a million phones,'' Deeley said. While the Carter administration paid $35,000 for each such phone, Deeley said the NSA hoped that mass production could cut the cost. ''Communications security is like insurance,'' he said. ''It has no intrinsic value until it is needed. Some people buy insurance, some don't. If you are a responsible person with a family, you take out a little term insurance. If you aren't, you buy a case of beer.'' Deeley said a major investment in secure telephones by the private sector would result in a substantial reduction of the cost of such equipment for the federal government. ''If Exxon or Hanover Trust want to protect themselves,'' he said, ''they ought to be able to get the right equipment to achieve that goal. If they don't care about other people reading their mail, that's their business.'' nyt-10-06-84 1808edt ***************