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Zimmermann, Encrypted VoIP, and Uncle Sam

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the something-to-think-about dept.

An anonymous reader noted that Phillip Zimmermann and his VoIP encryption software are the subject of a NY Times article today. The article touches on the FCC, privacy, and related issues. Given all the suspicious behavior of the Bush Administration relating to wiretaps and phone records, this sort of thing is all the more important to be very aware of.

5 of 325 comments (clear)

  1. same reason we keep the curtains drawn @ home? by Penguinisto · · Score: 5, Insightful
    "why would people with nothing to hide want to encrypt their conversations."

    For the same reason I keep the curtains drawn in my bedroom windows at night, esp. when the s/o gets frisky.

    Just because me and my s/o's bedroom activities are perfectly legal doesn't mean I want everyone else (let alone the government) monitoring it.

    /P

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
  2. Re:Brave New World by Tackhead · · Score: 5, Insightful
    > No, the reason the government doesn't like Zfone is because they want perform blanket surveillance on all American citizens; to listen to all our calls, all the time. By utilizing speech-recognition software and an ever growing list of suspect words and phrases, they will be able to keep tabs on the unruly U.S. population, weeding out terrorists, political dissidents, environmentalists, Democrats, and other 'undesirables'.

    From an old .sig quote:

    NSA is now funding research not only in cryptography, but in all areas of advanced mathematics. If you'd like a circular describing these new research opportunities, just pick up your phone, call your mother, and ask for one.

    ...and to cut down on the costs of their recruitment budgets!

    Considering that most of the parents of new postdoctorate-level mathematicians probably live overseas nowadays (and whose conversations are therefore legal to record), maybe the old .sig quote was always more true than funny.

  3. Terrorists! by homebrewmike · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Terrorists are already using encryption to protect their privacy. Don't you think you should as well?

  4. Re:Didn't read the tech specs ... by gclef · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If he's still using the system he presented last summer at BlackHat, he's actually doing something rather clever:

    The system does a standard Diffie-Hellman key exchange between the two softphones, and hashes that exchange to words that each caller is supposed to read to the other (you see what they're supposed to say, and they see what you're supposed to say). So, unless the man-in-the-middle can also impersonate your voice, MITM'ing the connection is very difficult.

    Also, the hashes used to generate that vocal exchange are stored for each destination you call for every call, and fed into the new hash generation. So, even if you skip a round of comparing the hashes, if you do it for a later call & it works, you can be assured that the *previous* call was also clean.

  5. Evil Republicans!! by g_adams27 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > By utilizing speech-recognition software and an ever growing list of suspect words and phrases,
    > they will be able to keep tabs on the unruly U.S. population, weeding out terrorists,
    > political dissidents, environmentalists, Democrats, and other 'undesirables'.

    Those evil Republicans! Except, wait... wasn't it the Clinton Administration that launched a 3-year criminal investigation of Phil Zimmerman in 1993?

    And wasn't that the same President who championed the Clipper chip, so the government would have the keys it needed to decrypt your phone calls?