Com Sec

Or, Communications Security, for starters. My post earlier about the NSA eavesdropping program brought out some good points in comments. Let me respond to them.

First of all, I am a great lover of privacy and a great believer that every American should have unbridled privacy. However, that ain't necessarily so. Your privacy is what you make it.

Way back in the dim dark ages of my military career, I was taught the standard phone greeting on a Army Telephone. A standard Bell System phone. The greeting went something like this: "Good morning, Delta Company orderly room. This is Corporal Dezendorf. This line is not secure. May I help you, sir?

That greeting let everybody know that we were talking on an unsecure line and that certain information should not be passed over it. If you had a secret, you didn't talk about it on the telephone. You still don't. The standard American telephone line is not secure and anyone who believes it is, is simply naive. This is not new, it has been this way since the Confederates listened in on Union telegaph wires.

Any nitwit with a scanner can listen to your cell phone conversations. If you believe your cell phone conversations are private, you are living in a dream world.

Again. If you have a secret, don't use the telephone to talk about your secret. Your phone comms are not secure. They may be private, but they ain't secure.