frantz@netcom.com (Bill Frantz) writes:

At 10:25 AM 11/21/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote:

...

I believe that at this time the differential market value to customers of having strong crypto in telephones is near-zero, and in cell-phones is only slightly greater. [reasoning deleted].

I generally agree with Tim about consumers. However, I remember working on a theater production where we were using Radio Shack 2-way headphones for communication. One day while we were setting up, we were able to overhear a woman discussing (presumably with a girlfriend) her boyfriend and their sex life over a portable telephone. You can bet that every available headset was in use and all other work stopped.

So - get a scanner (which may be illegal), put a horny kid to transcribe whatever you hear, and post it to usenet via the anonymous remailers. That'll catch the media's attention.

Where I think there is a market and an awareness of a need is in the corporate world. I recently saw a corporate security policy which specifically restricted discussing classified information on portable or cell phones. If I were in France (to pick on just one guilty country), I would not want to discuss secrets involving competitive position vs. a French company on a landline connection. The big driving force for companies is how much the facility costs. (I recently heard a price of $700 for non-crypto phones.) If the cost is low enough, company employees will have these boxes in their homes.

The other big obstacle is standards. As far as I can tell, every crypto phone has its own protocol. If there were a standard set of protocols, it would greatly help the market, as it has for so many other products. As a first step, I suggest that Eric Blossom and PGP Inc. work together to develop a mode where their products can communicate with each other.

I've been on the Internet for close to 15 years. I used to tell people how wonderful it is and how they should use it at least for e-mail. And they'd say to me, most of the people they want to talk to either don't use e-mail or are on systems not connected to the Internet back then, like Compuserve. And they were right at that time. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps