Secure Cell Phones for State

U.S. State Dept Press Briefing today:

Briefer: James Rubin

Now, I have a piece of show-and-tell for you, which I do rarely around
here.  But I thought this was interesting enough, even for you cynical
and jaded journalists.  This is a secure cell phone.  Lieutenant General
Kenneth Minihan, Director of the National Security Agency, presented
Secretary Albright with a bank of Motorola Cipher-Tac 2000 security
modules to provide secure cellular communications.

This state of the art secure voice cellular technology will offer the
highest level of security wherever and whenever the Secretary and her
top advisors need to protect their communications.  So when you see us
carrying this beast around, rather than the slim-line phones we usually
like to use, you'll know that's because we're trying to have a secure
call.  That is not only for the obvious good reason that we want to make
sure nobody is interfering, but we also want to make sure that nobody is
making transcripts and passing them around for a variety of perfidious
reasons.

So this here is the original, first secure cell phone to be delivered to
Secretary Albright, and we thought you guys might get a kick out of
that.

-----

Would anyone know the security technology of this unit and its support
system? And how it compares to those of competitors in the US and 
outside?

John Young wrote:
| U.S. State Dept Press Briefing today:
| 
| Briefer: James Rubin
| 
| Now, I have a piece of show-and-tell for you, which I do rarely around
| here.  But I thought this was interesting enough, even for you cynical
| and jaded journalists.  This is a secure cell phone.  Lieutenant General
| Kenneth Minihan, Director of the National Security Agency, presented
| Secretary Albright with a bank of Motorola Cipher-Tac 2000 security
| modules to provide secure cellular communications.

http://www.mot.com/GSS/SSTG/ISD/Secure_Telecom/CipherTAC_2000.html

Its a STU-III, operating at 4.8kbps.  Which means that you lose the
shit sound of a normal cell phone, only to be replaced by the shit
sound of a 4800bit codec.

It is *not* recoverable encryption, because as the NSA and State both
know, there are security risks there.  And we all know that our
country's most valuable secrets are transmitted by people like
Madeline Albright, and thus deserve better protection than can be
offered by recoverable systems.

Adam



-- 
Just be thankful that Microsoft does not manufacture pharmaceuticals.