Newt's phone calls

I just caught the news reports of Newt Gingrich's cell phone calls being
taped by "a little old retired couple" with a scanner.  These were then
given to a congressman, who gave them to a newspaper.

The take on this that we won't hear is: "This is outrageous!  Why don't
cell-phones offer encryption to ensure our privacy?"

Unfortunately, I think crypto is still so far beneath the public
consciousness that the obvious solution to these sorts of problems is
ignored in favor of the "there oughta be a law" non-solution.  (Of course,
in this case there is a law!) What I really hope this incident spawns is a
market ...

        Clay

*******************************************************
Clay Olbon			    olbon@ix.netcom.com
sys-admin, engineer, programmer, statistitian, etc.
**********************************************tanstaafl

In article <Pine.GSO.3.95.970113203329.21655A-100000@cp.pathfinder.com>,
Declan McCullagh  <declan@pathfinder.com> wrote:
> The only other journalist who was there made an interesting point, that
> encrypting cell phone traffic only up to the point it hits the phone
> system wouldn't hinder L.E. access but would protect privacy. (Or,
> perhaps, would be worse in the long term since we wouldn't have such
> luscious examples.) 

This is well-known.  GSM does this, for example.  I've seen the point
made in several textbooks.

I don't know of any cellular systems that do end-to-end encryption
(which would stop wiretapping at the landline switch) as opposed to
airlink encryption.  Does anyone else?

Clay Olbon II writes:
> 
> 
> I just caught the news reports of Newt Gingrich's cell phone calls being
> taped by "a little old retired couple" with a scanner.  These were then
> given to a congressman, who gave them to a newspaper.
> 
> The take on this that we won't hear is: "This is outrageous!  Why don't
> cell-phones offer encryption to ensure our privacy?"
> 
> Unfortunately, I think crypto is still so far beneath the public
> consciousness that the obvious solution to these sorts of problems is
> ignored in favor of the "there oughta be a law" non-solution.  (Of course,
> in this case there is a law!) What I really hope this incident spawns is a
> market ...

It won't.  It'll spawn more laws.

Encryption is voodoo to the masses and the politicians.  Even
in Silicon Valley newspapers there's the obligitory "encryption is the
science of scrambling words so that hackers can't read them" in
each article that mentions encryption.  However the masses and
politicans understand laws and jails pretty well.

Use a scanner, excuse me "cellular phone hacking equipment", go to jail.

-- 
Eric Murray  ericm@lne.com  ericm@motorcycle.com  http://www.lne.com/ericm
PGP keyid:E03F65E5 fingerprint:50 B0 A2 4C 7D 86 FC 03  92 E8 AC E6 7E 27 29 AF

Don't be too sure that crypto is that far beneath the radar. I spent
Thursday through Saturday at an annual privacy conference for activists
from around the country, and they understood the principles. Their
voicemails were filling up with calls from reporters last Friday about the
Gingrich incident, and I know they were talking crypto.

The only other journalist who was there made an interesting point, that
encrypting cell phone traffic only up to the point it hits the phone
system wouldn't hinder L.E. access but would protect privacy. (Or,
perhaps, would be worse in the long term since we wouldn't have such
luscious examples.) 

-Declan


On Mon, 13 Jan 1997, Clay Olbon II wrote:

> 
> I just caught the news reports of Newt Gingrich's cell phone calls being
> taped by "a little old retired couple" with a scanner.  These were then
> given to a congressman, who gave them to a newspaper.
> 
> The take on this that we won't hear is: "This is outrageous!  Why don't
> cell-phones offer encryption to ensure our privacy?"
> 
> Unfortunately, I think crypto is still so far beneath the public
> consciousness that the obvious solution to these sorts of problems is
> ignored in favor of the "there oughta be a law" non-solution.  (Of course,
> in this case there is a law!) What I really hope this incident spawns is a
> market ...
> 
>         Clay
> 
> *******************************************************
> Clay Olbon			    olbon@ix.netcom.com
> sys-admin, engineer, programmer, statistitian, etc.
> **********************************************tanstaafl
> 
>

Declan McCullagh wrote:
> 
> encrypting cell phone traffic only up to the point it hits the phone
> system wouldn't hinder L.E. access but would protect privacy. (Or,
> perhaps, would be worse in the long term since we wouldn't have such
> luscious examples.)

Actually, I wouldn't think the cops would be too hot on that idea.
Taps would require physical access to the phone network, meaning a
warrant or other specific authorization and a time delay. Worse from
the cops' perspective, the phone company will know who is being 
monitored. That means accountability, and that means leaks.

The goal will always be end-to-end "key recovery." A fixed key in the 
phone that can be cracked is much preferable to a random DH exchange, 
which would be the right way to do a last-hop-only encryption (all
from the cops' perspective, of course).

With "key recovery" currently out of favor, the cops' strategy is FUD 
and the criminalization of illegal wiretaps (by private citizens
anyway), to create a false sense of security.

In any case, evangelizing and deploying real end-to-end encryption now 
is the way to go.

-rich

On Mon, 13 Jan 1997, Declan McCullagh wrote:

> Don't be too sure that crypto is that far beneath the radar. I spent
> Thursday through Saturday at an annual privacy conference for activists
> from around the country, and they understood the principles. Their
> voicemails were filling up with calls from reporters last Friday about the
> Gingrich incident, and I know they were talking crypto.

I happened by the Sprint display in a local office supply super-store, 
and Sprint is touting the benefits of their digital wireless phone system 
("Spectrum"). It is only available in a handful of cities outside the DC 
metro area (they list NYC as being added "early 1997", and L.A., CHI, and 
others aren't even mentioned), but there's definately a market in the making.
The cost is competetive to non-digital rates, but the geographic 
limitations are currently quite restrictive, and range appears to be limited.

"Call Privacy and Security" are listed in bold, with "Say goodbye to 
eavesdropping" right below. Don't sell the public short; even me mum 
knows her cordless phone is insecure. ;)

-r.w.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----


In <1.5.4.16.19970113191647.098f90d2@popd.ix.netcom.com>, on 01/13/97 at 08:12 PM,
   Clay Olbon II <olbon@ix.netcom.com> said:


>I just caught the news reports of Newt Gingrich's cell phone calls being
>taped by "a little old retired couple" with a scanner.  These were then
>given to a congressman, who gave them to a newspaper.

>The take on this that we won't hear is: "This is outrageous!  Why don't
>cell-phones offer encryption to ensure our privacy?"

>Unfortunately, I think crypto is still so far beneath the public
>consciousness that the obvious solution to these sorts of problems is
>ignored in favor of the "there oughta be a law" non-solution.  (Of course,
>in this case there is a law!) What I really hope this incident spawns is a
>market ...

There is a very basic reason that cell phones are not encrypted; the government does not
want them encrypted. Many an arrest has been made from infromation gathered from
cell/wireless phone conversations. AFAIK the police do not even need a search warent to do
this.

With the cell phone industry regulated by the FCC I doubt that you will ever
see cell phone's with built in encryption.

As far as the general public is concerned the majority are sheep. They are
quite content to know that it is illegal for their neighbor to listen in and
ofcource Big Brother would only listen to those nasty drug dealers & mobsters.

- --
- -----------------------------------------------------------
William H. Geiger III  http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii
Geiger Consulting    WebExplorer & Java Enhanced!!!
Cooking With Warp 4.0

Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice

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- -----------------------------------------------------------
 
Tag-O-Matic: OS/2: Logic, not magic.

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On Mon, 13 Jan 1997, William H. Geiger III wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> 
> 
> In <1.5.4.16.19970113191647.098f90d2@popd.ix.netcom.com>, on 01/13/97 at 08:12 PM,
>    Clay Olbon II <olbon@ix.netcom.com> said:
> 
> 
> >I just caught the news reports of Newt Gingrich's cell phone calls being
> >taped by "a little old retired couple" with a scanner.  These were then
> >given to a congressman, who gave them to a newspaper.
> 
> >The take on this that we won't hear is: "This is outrageous!  Why don't
> >cell-phones offer encryption to ensure our privacy?"
> 
> >Unfortunately, I think crypto is still so far beneath the public
> >consciousness that the obvious solution to these sorts of problems is
> >ignored in favor of the "there oughta be a law" non-solution.  (Of course,
> >in this case there is a law!) What I really hope this incident spawns is a
> >market ...
> 
> There is a very basic reason that cell phones are not encrypted; the government does not
> want them encrypted. Many an arrest has been made from infromation gathered from
> cell/wireless phone conversations. AFAIK the police do not even need a search warent to do
> this.

I remember hearing somewhere that a cell phone manufactuer had created an
"encryption" algorithm for their phones. It inverted the waveform or
something like that. Now, I ask of you, how hard is that to get break? Not
very. It will keep Beavis and Butthead from listening to cell phone calls,
but that's about all.

Like you said, a lot of arrests have been made by evesdropping on cell
phone calls. I wouldn't put it past the NSA to be running SIGINT on such
calls. If these were encrypted using a method similar to how ssh does
shell connections, the NSA would be screwed.

And, incidentally, I really wish ssh was more standard than it is. I'd
like to be able to hit my ISP and such with it. ;) (Most ISPs don't like
you running nohup'ed processes).

> With the cell phone industry regulated by the FCC I doubt that you will ever
> see cell phone's with built in encryption.

Agreed.

> As far as the general public is concerned the majority are sheep. They are
> quite content to know that it is illegal for their neighbor to listen in and
> ofcource Big Brother would only listen to those nasty drug dealers & mobsters.
> 

Of course. And that stops their neighbor. Yeah.

My father bought himself a scanner for his birthday last year. The first
night he had it I went over, and we sat on the front porch. We heard a
load of cordless phone calls, including one to which a "friend" of mine
was a party, which was quite interesting indeed. We also heard a great
number of cell phone calls.

The majority of the latter were sexual in nature. Christian Coalition,
you're failing miserably. ;)

I wish I had better voice recognition technology, like the NSA surely has.
I'd have the system scan for the voices of people I know and record them;
again, like the NSA does.

On Mon, 13 Jan 1997, William H. Geiger III wrote:

> There is a very basic reason that cell phones are not encrypted; the government does not
> want them encrypted. Many an arrest has been made from infromation gathered from
> cell/wireless phone conversations. AFAIK the police do not even need a search warent to do
> this.
> 
> With the cell phone industry regulated by the FCC I doubt that you will ever
> see cell phone's with built in encryption.
> 
> As far as the general public is concerned the majority are sheep. They are
> quite content to know that it is illegal for their neighbor to listen in and
> ofcource Big Brother would only listen to those nasty drug dealers & mobsters.

    A decent article about the subject (one that also gives us some historical 
proof of the govt's desires) can be found at:

http://www.feist.com/~tqdb/h/062694-1.txt

    By the way, I'm finding all these articles on the page:

http://www.feist.com/~tqdb/evis-idx.html

for those who care.

             ____________________________________________________
            [ Bruce M. - bkmarsh@feist.com - Feist Systems, Inc. ]
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
      "We don't want to get our butts kicked by a bunch of long-haired 
        26-year-olds with earrings." -- General John Sheehan on their 
                       reasons for InfoWar involvement

Clay Olbon II wrote:
> I just caught the news reports of Newt Gingrich's cell phone calls being
> taped by "a little old retired couple" with a scanner.  These were then
> given to a congressman, who gave them to a newspaper.
> The take on this that we won't hear is: "This is outrageous!  Why don't
> cell-phones offer encryption to ensure our privacy?"
> Unfortunately, I think crypto is still so far beneath the public
> consciousness that the obvious solution to these sorts of problems is
> ignored in favor of the "there oughta be a law" non-solution.  (Of course,
> in this case there is a law!) What I really hope this incident spawns is a
> market ...

I'm not sure what crypto will do to voice transmission, but from my
own personal example:  I just bought two Motorola portable phones
(46 mhz) with Secure Clear(r) voice scrambling.  On my AOR 8000
scanner, it sounds to my ears like very muffled Chinese.

The bad news is that when just one of these is talking to a "normal"
telephone, it cuts down a little on the clarity, and when two are
talking to each other, you have to speak very distinctly and not
quietly, to make out the softly-spoken passages.

On Mon, 13 Jan 1997, Dale Thorn wrote:
> Clay Olbon II wrote:
> > I just caught the news reports of Newt Gingrich's cell phone calls being
> > taped by "a little old retired couple" with a scanner.  These were then
> > given to a congressman, who gave them to a newspaper.
> > The take on this that we won't hear is: "This is outrageous!  Why don't
> > cell-phones offer encryption to ensure our privacy?"
> > Unfortunately, I think crypto is still so far beneath the public
> > consciousness that the obvious solution to these sorts of problems is
> > ignored in favor of the "there oughta be a law" non-solution.  (Of course,
> > in this case there is a law!) What I really hope this incident spawns is a
> > market ...
> 
> I'm not sure what crypto will do to voice transmission, but from my
> own personal example:  I just bought two Motorola portable phones
> (46 mhz) with Secure Clear(r) voice scrambling.  On my AOR 8000
> scanner, it sounds to my ears like very muffled Chinese.

	How much did the two cost?

[...]

Nurdane Oksas writes:
> 
> 
> On Mon, 13 Jan 1997, Dale Thorn wrote:
> > 
> > I'm not sure what crypto will do to voice transmission, but from my
> > own personal example:  I just bought two Motorola portable phones
> > (46 mhz) with Secure Clear(r) voice scrambling.  On my AOR 8000
> > scanner, it sounds to my ears like very muffled Chinese.

I have a Panasonic 46mhz portable phone that does the same.
It's a "Sound Charger Plus" with "10ch Secure Guard".  I think it
does a very simple analog operation to 'secure' voice transmissions.
Like someone else posted, it keeps Beavis and Butthead from
listening to your conversations, but that's about it.  I think
a dedicated ham, hardware-knowledgable hacker or Fed could do
a simple frequency-inversion or whatever and listen in.

> 	How much did the two cost?

This Panasonic cost about $80 from Frys.

You might get better security from one of the newer 900mhz digital phones.
Those would still be crackable but would require some digital
equipment, which is probably not yet as common.


-- 
Eric Murray  ericm@lne.com  ericm@motorcycle.com  http://www.lne.com/ericm
PGP keyid:E03F65E5 fingerprint:50 B0 A2 4C 7D 86 FC 03  92 E8 AC E6 7E 27 29 AF

Clay Olbon II wrote:
> 
> I just caught the news reports of Newt Gingrich's cell phone calls being
> taped by "a little old retired couple" with a scanner.  These were then
> given to a congressman, who gave them to a newspaper.
> 
> The take on this that we won't hear is: "This is outrageous!  Why don't
> cell-phones offer encryption to ensure our privacy?"

  Cell-phone encryption is 'essential' for 'important' people.
  However, it is 'dangerous' in the hands of the 'citizens' (translate
that
to mean 'schmucks').
  The government doesn't object to crack-dealers having cryptography
capabilities, they just want to make sure that those crack-dealers
work for the CIA (freelancers need not apply).

Toto