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Secure Digital Voice Communications In World War II
mercury7 writes: "Saw this one on Memepool. A very interesting paper from the U.S. National Security Agency site on the first digital encyrpted voice communication system. It is incredible how hard it was to manipulate data before the existence of computers."
"All of the elements of this system were developed by the Bell Telephone Laboratories in the interests of advancing the art of telephony. . . . When it had reached the point where its principles could be demonstrated, the Signal Corps took prompt steps for its procurement."
It appears to me that the NSA has, to a limited degree, tried to make their mammoth budgets and spare-no-expense approach more palatable to the American taxpayer by claiming to develop technology way ahead of its time. "Hey, our job is American security but even if you think that's not a big problem these days, look at the tech spinoffs and innovation we create." To me this seems a little disingenuous.
As this article, among others indicates, the NSA et al may be a nice mechanism *funding* innovation (although VCs are arguably better, with a more attractive upside economically) they don't actually *do* much innovation (outside of say, crypto research).
--LP
You can listen to examples of vocoder audio on this web page.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
That's because of the GCHQ challenge - try it here!
That's very cool; I'm amazed they understood enough about the importance of using something truly random to generate the 'noise' for the key records. Digitally, I wonder how much data can be stored on an LP (were they 78's, 33's, 45's - see the NSA still won't tell you everything). I wonder how they transported the key records... it's a whole Bond movie - the Mata Hari type seduction attempt to get the record from the young Signal core engineer on the PanAm flight. Menancing German agents sneaking into his hotel room to record the record.. Oh well, good post.
While this is certainly funny, and I wish I could mod it up further, the original first use of a vocoder in music was done by the Alan Parsons Project around 1976 or so (does anyone remember the album/track - I can't remember if it was Stereotomy, or Tales/Raven)...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
"Two turntables and a microphooooone..."
Burris
"It is incredible how hard it was to manipulate data before the existence of computers."
Yes, back then they couldn't just run it through a computer and have it scramble it. To do this they would have to run it through some sort of mechanical device.
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I'm a karma whore, mod me up damn you!
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58.0% slashdot corrupt
where the reciever broadcast 'noise' at the same frequency as the incoming message. As the reciver knew exactly what noise he was broadcasting he could then subtract that quite easily. So you don't NEED digital encryption.
Obviously this would only be effective on point-point (cable) connections, as the noise would become insignificant when broadcast by an arial.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
Sounds like one further step from MPEG layer 3 and MP4. M$, Thomas, (and everal other corps), take that!
At least, it'll work for voice. (If I understood this post..)
What's this Submit thingy do?
It was Wendy Carlos who first had the idea of using a vocoder for music, in 1964. See http://www.wendycarlos.com/vocoders.html
If you're going to have to produce and distribute "noise key" records in the first place, why not simply combine the two signals (the voice and the noise) in an analog fashion before transmission, and then do the same process in reverse at the other end? This would have been MUCH simpler (meaning they could have deployed it sooner).
Granted, they get an extra degree of security by digitizing the signal, simply because the enenmy must then reverse engineer all the digitzation hardware. So rather than simply needing to steal a copy of the noise key, the Axis would have had to steal 55 tons of equipment to use it. Still, I don't see how the system is made fundementally more secure by digitizing the signal. And I'm sure they were in a big hurry to get this system in place, so I can't see them making it more complicated than they absolutely had to.
Can anybody explain this to me?
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
Note that many politicians and spin doctor seem to have this done to a fine art.
The reverse is slightly more difficult, which is the fine art of taking something indistinguishable from noise, and try to extract intelligible speech from it.
How similar this is to public forums such as slashdot, etc is left as a exercise for the reader.
;-)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I thought that part of cryptonomicon was speculation on Stephens' part. It's cool to find out that this was not only real but still documented.
What a clever idea.
-Peter
== Just my opinion(s)
Hello,
being a native german, I have read lots of books about WW-II, as I would really like to know how this all could happen, I was lucky to get some info from my father, who was a soldier during that war and at the end POW of the U.S. army, a bit irritating, but from the things he told me, that seemed to be the best time he had during the war and afterwards during his life, he was always a friend of every decision made by american politicans. Sad, that I can't ask him anymore any questions...:-(
Once I read something about the US, using native americans in special tasks, they could just speak their natural language without any encryption, because, anyway no one in the world could understand what they said!
If someone has more info about that, or even an URL, I would be very thankfull...
Michael
I hope it was not a mistake to click on this NSA link, but I still can't hear/see any black helicopters above me...
I knew it. We need to criminalise the production and possession of vinyl as a munition. :-)
The technical hurdles they had to overcome for this first "digital" voice system were pretty impressive. And each station weighed in at a mere 55 tons. I'd love to hear a recording of what the recovered speech sounded like.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Another thing that was tough in this age was aiming artillery. If you know the distance, the characteristic of the gun, the characteristics of the shell, and the windspeed, physics equations tell you how to aim the gun to hit your target. Realistically, the equations cannot be solved in battlefield conditions where time is a factor and competent mathematicians are in short supply.
The solution to this problem was to issue huge books of pre-computed tables to artillery gunners. Each new gun and new shell needed a new book generated. That involved many hours of computation to be done by a small army of geeks. Because the guy-geeks were busy cracking codes, inventing atomic weapons, running logistics and stopping lead, a cadre of girl geeks was assembled in Annapolis and tasked with generating these artillery tables. The women were brought up to speed on Calculus and Physics (if they needed to be) and they were know as (you guessed it) "Computers."
While the lady Computers toiled, some other geeks were trying to automate their task using analog and digital electronic systems. Because the first automated calculation machines were targetted to the labor-intensive task of generating artillery tables, these devices were called "electronic computers."
Every time I see a flame session about the lack of women in computer engineering, I find it ironic that the word "computer" itself is an artifact of a group of geek girls.
Turing came up with Delilah after he returned to the UK. It was a much smaller and simpler device, but it was never put to any practical use.
More info can be found in Andrew Hodges' book "Alan Turing: the Enigma". (Hodges maintains The Alan Turing Home Page, referred to in the parent comment.)
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I guess it's okay that there's now more speakers of Klingon than of Navajo. We can still have secure communications without our warm, whirring little friends.
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Does narcissism count as a hobby? --Shawn Latimer
Or ~55 years for those of us who aren't stuck in the 80's...
Pax Digitalia
Was this system discussed in Cryptonomicon or one of the other dozen /. reads I've been through this year?
damn Germans! anyway makes you wonder what kind of current crypto techniques are in use...blows my mind...we probably can't imagine....
Through the perception of illusion, we experience reality.
If you want to look at cool modern-day intel. stuff, the GCHQ website is actually pretty detailed.
The largest LAN in Europe, one of the highest data storage capacities in the world, and free healthcare =)
Also, they seem to think they can pass secret instructions to spies the world over by inserting 'random' bold tags on one of their pages
Ben^3The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
Here is a link for you: Navajo Code Talkers in World War II
Keep looking in old articles and you will find that patents in telephone encryption often have to cite the work of the recently deceased movie star Hedy Lamar as prior art. She worked with engineers in her husband's company to develop telephone encryption. Her ideas were innovative and sound, but barely workable in WWII technology. The same could be said of the system described in this /. article.
Burris