Motorola's site is informative (thanks for the pointers and comments), and perhaps cannot reveal the detail needed to compare security level to other systems in the US and other countries. Dave Emery probes the tech questions a bit and I'll go further, with Adam Shostack and others, to ask as a citizen why we cannot purchase the level of cell phone privacy that our gov and mil folks can with our money (a return to the NSA-crippled algo of CMEA and CAVE). There has been some discussion of this on UK Crypto about the various telco security systems in Europe and the same critique of a double standard has been made. Cell phone manufacturers would have a big stake in who gets the best security to the global public first. Moreover, as Scientific American points out in its special section this month, applications of wireless technology are rapidly growing for a host of new information distribution, collection and interactive purposes. The need for security of this data floating through the spectrum could hardly be greater, not only for privacy but for prtoection against tampering, insertion of disinformation, and a variety of new ways to warp data to fit schemes the owners and originators never dreamed of. Is end to end encryption of the STU-III sort going to be needed for all wireless or are there other plans in the works at TLAs and TIAs? It would be greatly appreciated if those who may be tongue-tied by NDA and worse, if we were pointed in the right direction by, say, semaphore, to the likely places where we can dig out, say, by FOIA, what we need to know about Albright-privileged wireless security. Finally, are the TAC-2000 units useful for the Secretary's global travels? If so, are they supported by military networks overseas? Or do American officials use a different system when traveling? Note: We're commencing a log of this discussion of this topic from several lists at: http://jya.com/tac-2000.htm