Encrypted Telephones

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

> Subject: Any cypherpunks building encrypted phone?
> 
> 	Hello everyone!  I'd like to know if anyone on the list has made
> any attempt to construct a true encrypted phone, something at the
> level of the AT&T DES phone.  I think that it ought not to be too
> difficult to build a couple, using existing modems and basic hardware
> design.  If all the commercial phones are going to be Clipper-based,
> we'll have to build the real ones ourselves.
> 
> 	Lady Ada, Queen of Engines

Yes, several such projects are underway. Eric Blossom even showed a
PCB of one at a Cypherpunks meeting, using an inexpensive DSP chip.

Software-only versions, with some compromises in speech quality
probably, are also underway. Phil Zimmermann described his progress at
the last Cypherpunks meeting.

("Software-only" can mean using off-the-shelf, widely-available DSP
boards like SoundBlasters.)

And I know of at least two more such projects. Whether any will
materialize is anyone's guess.

And various hacks have already been done. NeXT users have had
voicemail for years, and certain Macs now offer something similar.
Adding encryption is not a huge obstacle.

A year ago, several Cypherpunks meeting sites around the U.S. were
linked over the Internet using DES encryption. The sound quality was
poor, for various reasons, and we turned off the DES in a matter of
minutes. Still, an encrypted audio conference call.

So such things are possible today.

--Tim May


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