On Tue, Jun 03, 2003 at 10:42:01AM -0400, John Kelsey wrote:
At 10:09 AM 6/2/03 -0400, Ian Grigg wrote: ...
(One doesn't hear much about crypto phones these days. Was this really a need?)
Yes, I believe there is a need. In my view, there are two factors in the way of wide spread adoption: cost and ease of use. Having spent many years messing with these things, I've come to the conclusion that what I personally want is a cell phone that implements good end-to-end crypto. This way, I've always got my secure communication device with me, there's no "bag on the side", and it can be made almost completely transparent.
And for cellphones, I keep thinking we need a way to sell a secure cellphone service that doesn't involve trying to make huge changes to the infrastructure, ...
Agreed. Given a suitably powerful enough Java or whatever equipped cell phone / pda and an API that provides access to a data pipe and the speaker and mic, you can do this without any cooperation from the folks in the middle. I think that this platform will be common within a couple of years. The Xscale / StrongARM platform certainly has enough mips to handle both the vocoding and the crypto. Also on the horizon are advances in software radio that will enable the creation of ad hoc self organizing networks with no centralized control. There is a diverse collection of people supporting this revolution in wireless communications. They range from technologists, to economists, lawyers, and policy wonks. For background on spectrum policy issues see http://www.reed.com/openspectrum, http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/spectrum or http://www.law.nyu.edu/benklery Free software for building software radios can be found at the GNU Radio web site http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio Eric ----- End forwarded message -----