philosecurity

My old friend Kanz once remarked that a good first step to getting what you want is to vocalize it. So here goes:

In lieu of the FISA Amendments Act which passed in Congress this week and legitimizes warrantless wiretapping, I’d like an open-source (hardware or software) voice encryption product which I can use to encrypt my own phone conversations end-to-end. Features would include:

• Based on public key encryption.
• Fully open source. I want to be able to review the design, and install it myself.
• Small enough to be attached to my cell phone without being a pain. (Bergey suggested using Bluetooth, which is an interesting idea.) Bonus points if it actually fits inside my cell phone.
• Cheap, so that it is widely accessible.

If scientists can conduct heart surgery through someone’s leg, surely we can collectively create a convenient, cheap, open-source, public-key-based voice encryption product.

For some relevant prior work, check out the Secure Telephone Unit III (STU-III), introduced by the NSA in 1987 NSA for US government communications:

From Wikipedia:
STU-III – These telephone sets operated over ordinary telephone lines and featured the use of security tokens and public key cryptography, making them much more user friendly. They were very popular as a result.

That was later replaced by the Secure Terminal Equipment. Again, from Wikipedia:

Secure Terminal Equipment (STE) – This system is intended to replace STU-III. It uses wide-bandwidth voice transmitted over ISDN lines. It can communicate with STU-III phones and can be upgraded for FNBDT compatibility.

It can be done!