| >Between encrypted VOIP over WIFI and eventually over
broadband cell -
| >keeping people from running voice over their broadband
connections is
| >a battle the telco's can't win in the long run - and
just plain
| >encrypted cell phone calls, I think in a couple of
years anyone who
| >wants secure phone connections will have them.
|
| I think you're looking at this a bit wrong. I rememeber
the same
| opinion as the above being expressed on the brew-a-stu
list about
| fifteen years ago, and no doubt some other list will carry
it in
| another fifteen years time, with nothing else having
changed. Anyone
| who wants secure voice connections (governments/military
and a
| vanishingly small number of hardcore geeks) already have
them, and
| have had them for years. Everyone else just doesn't care,
and
| probably never will. This is why every single
encrypted-phones-for-
| the-masses project has failed in the market. People don't
see phone
| eavesdropping as a threat, and therefore any product that
has a
| nonzero price difference or nonzero usability difference
over an
| unencrypted one will fail. This is why the only
successful encrypted
| phone to date has been Skype, because the crypto comes for
free.
|
| I once had a chat with someone who was responsible for
indoctrinating
| the newbies that turn up in government after each election
into things
| like phone security practices. He told me that after a
full day of
| drilling it into them (well, alongside a lot of other
stuff from other
| departments) it sometimes took them as long as a week
before they were
| back to loudly discussing sensitive information on a
cellphone in the
| middle of a crowded restaurant.
|
| So in terms of secure voice communications, the military
and geeks are
| already well served, and everyone else doesn't care.
Next, please.
I won't disagree with you here. Most people don't perceive
voice
monitoring as a threat to them - and if you're talking about
monitoring
by many governments and by business intelligence snoopers,
they are
perfectly correct. (I say "many governments"
because those governments
that actively monitor and control large portions of their
citizenry
hardly make a secret of that fact, and citizens of those
countries
just assume they might be overheard and act accordingly.
The citizens
of, for lack of a better general phrase, the Western
democracies, are
quite right in their assessment that their governments
really don't care
about what they are saying on the phone, unless they are
part of a very
small subpopulation involved, whether legitimately or
otherwise, in
politics or intelligence or a couple of other pretty well
understood
areas.)
Selling protection against voice snooping to most people
under current
circumstances is like selling flood insurance to people
living in the
desert. If you're an insurance hacker - like a security
hacker - you
can point out that flash floods *can* happen, but if they
are so rare
that no one is likely to be affected in their lifetime, your
sales
pitch *should* fail.
What will change things is not the technology but the
perception of a
threat. Forty years ago, the perceived threat from airplane
hijacking
was that it was non-existent, and no one would consider
paying the cost.
Today, we play a very significant cost. The threat is
certainly
greater, but the *perceived* threat is orders of magnitude
beyond even
that.
The moment the perceived threat from phone eavesdropping
exceeds some
critical level, the market for solutions (good and, of
course,
worthless) will materialize. As you note, in the military
and
intelligence community, the real and perceived threats have
been there
for years. And the crypto hackers will perceive a threat
whether it
exists or not.
I'd guess that the next step will be in the business
community. All it
will take is one case where a deal is visibly lost because
of "proven"
eavesdropping ("proven" in quotes because it's
unlikely that there will
really be any proof - just a *perception* of a smoking gun -
and in fact
it could well be that the trigger case will really be
someone covering
his ass over a loss for entirely different reasons) and all
of a sudden
there will be a demand for strong crypto on every Blackberry
phone link.
Things have a way of spreading from there: If the CEO's
need this, then
maybe I need it, too. If "it" is expensive or
inconvenient, I may feel
the need, but I won't act on it. But the CEO's will ensure
that it
isn't inconvenient - they won't put up with anything that
isn't
invisible to them - and technology will quickly drive down
the cost.
-- Jerry
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