Re: Secure Cell Phones for State

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

Motorola's site is informative (thanks for the pointers and comments), 
and perhaps cannot reveal the detail needed to compare security 
level to other systems in the US and other countries. 

Dave Emery probes the tech questions a bit and I'll go further, with 
Adam Shostack and others, to ask as a citizen why we cannot 
purchase the level of cell phone privacy that our gov and mil folks 
can with our money (a return to the NSA-crippled algo of CMEA 
and CAVE).

There has been some discussion of this on UK Crypto about
the various telco security systems in Europe and the same
critique of a double standard has been made. Cell phone
manufacturers would have a big stake in who gets the best
security to the global public first.

Moreover, as Scientific American points out in its special
section this month, applications of wireless technology are 
rapidly growing for a host of new information distribution,
collection and interactive purposes. The need for security
of this data floating through the spectrum could hardly
be greater, not only for privacy but for prtoection against 
tampering, insertion of disinformation, and a variety of new 
ways to warp data to fit schemes the owners and originators 
never dreamed of. 

Is end to end encryption of the STU-III sort going to be 
needed for all wireless or are there other plans in the works
at TLAs and TIAs?

It would be greatly appreciated if those who may be
tongue-tied by NDA and worse, if we were pointed in the
right direction by, say, semaphore, to the likely places
where we can dig out, say, by FOIA, what we need to 
know about Albright-privileged wireless security.

Finally, are the TAC-2000 units useful for the Secretary's
global travels? If so, are they supported by military networks 
overseas? Or do American officials use a different system
when traveling?

Note: We're commencing a log of this discussion of this 
topic from several lists at:

   http://jya.com/tac-2000.htm