End-to-end encrypting US GSM phones?

[Lucky Green]

On Fri, 28 Dec 2001, Trei, Peter wrote:

> Are there any existing, available US type
> GSM cell phones which provide good
> end-to-end  voice encryption (ie, something
> better than the broken GSM crypto).

Not to my knowledge. As for European-manufactured phones, the
best-known such phone is probably the German Rhode & Schwarz TopSec
handset. Rhode & Schwarz is of course the same company that sells a DEM
300,000 IMSI catcher targetted at the domestic German market and
an outbound-call-only GSM interception station for "export-only"
applications. The customer may wish to take the conflicting interests of
the manufacturer into account when making a purchasing decision.

The other well-known end-to-end encrypting phone is the Swedish Tiger
product initially designed for the Swedish military market. Having
participated in architectural discussions with the designers of the
device, I would recommend against its purchase.

In summary, at present trustworthy end-to-end encrypting GSM handsets are
not available in the market place.


-- Lucky Green <shamrock at cypherpunks.to> PGP encrypted email preferred.