Sunday, February 05, 2006

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.

2 comments:

Kelly(Mom of 6) said...

Yep. Loose lips sink ships.

Anonymous said...

I always got a kick out of my extension of the "standard greeting"... I'd even get folks to hang up than listen to the whole thing... :)

"Naval Air Station Lemoore's Aircraft Intermediate Maintenance Department, Avionics Division, Work Center Sixty-Nine Alpha, Petty Officer *censored* speaking, this is a non-secure line subject to monitoring, may I help you sir or ma'am?"

Adjusted for other duty stations as required... At my last duty station there was a Chief Petty Officer that tried ordering me to not say the whole thing, but my argument was that all the little bits were required, and everyone else was doing it wrong. :)