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Consumer phone privacy info sheet
Greetings cypherpunks,
I'm preparing this consumer phone privacy info sheet to post to
libernet, misc.consumers, etc. Any corrections or further information
greatly appreciated.
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Instead of developing phones allowing truly private conversations, which
are now feasible, AT&T recently put a phone on the market that contains
the NSA-designed "Clipper" wiretap chip. All users' encryption keys are
registered with the U.S. government, giving it exclusive access to
wiretapping this system's phones. The use of an unpublished algorithm
and other features also make the system insecure; see the newsgroups
sci.crypt and the mailing list "cypherpunks", [email protected]
for details.
AT&T by this action has demonstrated its contempt for its customers'
privacy. Here are some other long-distance providers that may have
more respect. All U.S. long-distance companies are required to surrender
to telephone taps under government "authorization", but some require more
"authorization" than others, or otherwise make a greater fuss about it.
Companies which use primarily multichannel fiber optic lines are
physically more difficult to tap.
Allnet Long Distance Services 1-800-783-2020
MCI, commercial 1-800-888-0800
MCI, residential 1-800-950-5555
Metromedia Communications Corp. 1-800-275-2273
One-2-One Communications 1-800-293-4121
Sprint, residential 1-800-877-7746
Sprint, business 1-800-733-5566
True privacy can be obtained with a veil of encryption, by using
pairs of phones containing privacy chips, which scramble the
signals *and* keep the keys private. Contact your local business
telephone dealers for privacy phones from Ericson and other companies.
Please e-mail me detailed info on these phones, and also further
info on long distance services, and I will post a summary along with my
own research findings.
Nick Szabo [email protected]
Protect your electronic privacy with PGP -- public key available