Secure Cell Phones for State

[Adam Shostack]

John Young wrote:
| U.S. State Dept Press Briefing today:
| 
| Briefer: James Rubin
| 
| Now, I have a piece of show-and-tell for you, which I do rarely around
| here.  But I thought this was interesting enough, even for you cynical
| and jaded journalists.  This is a secure cell phone.  Lieutenant General
| Kenneth Minihan, Director of the National Security Agency, presented
| Secretary Albright with a bank of Motorola Cipher-Tac 2000 security
| modules to provide secure cellular communications.

http://www.mot.com/GSS/SSTG/ISD/Secure_Telecom/CipherTAC_2000.html

Its a STU-III, operating at 4.8kbps.  Which means that you lose the
shit sound of a normal cell phone, only to be replaced by the shit
sound of a 4800bit codec.

It is *not* recoverable encryption, because as the NSA and State both
know, there are security risks there.  And we all know that our
country's most valuable secrets are transmitted by people like
Madeline Albright, and thus deserve better protection than can be
offered by recoverable systems.

Adam



-- 
Just be thankful that Microsoft does not manufacture pharmaceuticals.