Starium?

[Dr. Evil]

> There seem to be good market reasons for dedicated set up, especially 
> one that ordinary phones attach to easily. The "bump in the cord" 
> model.

That is the best model, probably, but there are some intermediate
models between "bump in the cord" and "compile SpeakFreely and figure
out how to get it to work".  Starium is obviously the easiest to use.
Plug it in, press one button, you're done.  However, with a small
dedicated PC or a PDA, it should be possible to get closer to what
Starium promises.

Obviously it would be ideal to have Starium-type chips embedded in
every voice communications device in existence, but we're not there
yet.

> For one, security. Which is more likely to have been compromised: a 
> small sealed box implementing D-H forward secrecy or a PC which may 
> have been tampered with by intruders, maids hired by the Feds, 
> whatever/

Both probably could be tampered, but I guess a generic PC would be
easier.

> Third, integration of the Starium-type chipset in cellphones remains 
> the Big Win, right? What Pablo Escobar wants is a secure cellphone he 
> can use on the run, in his villas, not some SpeakFreely program 
> possibly bugged by the CIA or DEA.

Well, if I have enemies as powerful as the CIA or the DEA, I'm
probably in a lot of trouble no matter what I do, but... yes, chips
everywhere would be best.

> It's been out there for years. Nautilus, SpeakFreely, etc. Just not 
> much interest, hence not much development.

But the lack of interest is mostly related to how difficult it has
been to use this stuff.  Example: RSA encryption was used by millions
of people for Lotus Notes, or ordinary web browsers, because it was
completely, invisibly integrated, but not many people (comparatively)
use PGP, because it's not invisibly integrated, even though the
technology is the same.  If we could get crypto easier to use for
voice, I'm sure most people would want to use it.

I hope to have time to take a crack at doing Starium-on-a-PDA.

> A Cypherpunks physical meeting was done with DES-encrypted audio 
> links between Mountain View, Cambridge (MA), and Northern Virgina. 
> This was in 1993. Impressive as hell.

That's cool.