I am about 300 messages behind on the list because I'm dialing in long- distance right now, but I just happened to think of something because it is related directly to my work... I install and debug voice mail systems all the time that run on 286's, 386's or 486's and can run up to 24 telephone lines on a single computer *at full speed*. The analog signal gets digitized by the voice board, compressed, and stored on disk whenever a person leaves a message. What if an extra step were added where the information were encrypted before being written to disk and it took the receiver entering his PGP key on the PC before it would play the messages to him? Then, if this works, the user on each end could use a computer with a voice board in it and dial into one port while an encrypted/scrambled session is being transmitted on another port. Who knows how real-time it would be and I don't have the technical expertise to pull it off, but I see these things go out of our office every day with little security other than that of obscurity on them. One note, though, the voice boards that we use (high quality) cost anywhere from $800 for a repaired one to $1000 for the one I like the best to $1200 for a different brand that we also sell. Neither voice mail software vendor is willing to give us the super-secret security code that unlocks full system access, so I seriously doubt if I could scare any source out of them. Anyway, it is a thought and now that I have my own voice board to play with I might just try to piece together some interesting software. Chael -- Chael Hall nowhere@bsu-cs.bsu.edu, 00CCHALL@BSUVC.BSU.EDU, chall@bsu.edu (317) 776-4000 from 8 am - 5 pm CST
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nowhere@bsu-cs.bsu.edu