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The NSA Wants Its Own Smartphone
Art Vanderlay writes "Troy Lange might work for one of the more secretive spy agencies in the United States, but he is happy to talk about his work. He is the NSA's mobility mission manager and he has been tasked with creating a smartphone that is secure enough to allow government personnel who deal with highly sensitive information to take their work on the road. At present, the U.S. Government has secure cellphones; they use the government's Secret Internet Protocol Router Network. The problem is that they can only communicate with other devices that are plugged into the network and their use is restricted to top-secret level communications. Lange wants a smartphone that is inter-operable and presumably trusted to deal with even more sensitive information. Lange said that he wanted to see his secure smartphone reach beyond the NSA – ultimately to reach every 'every employee in the Defense Department, intelligence community, and across government.'"
Oh, so your boys get the privacy protections that you've spent the last 10 years undermining for all the rest of us plebs, huh? I tell you what, I'll be cool with your special phones if, in exchange, the President and NSA Director will issue a public directive to all NSA employees reaffirming the pre-911 NSA policy of not to spying on the phone calls or emails of any American citizen without a court order. You know that policy, right? It's the one we put into law in 1978--the law that you ignored just because the President said so.
I'll hold my breath.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It's from General Dynamics:
http://www.gdc4s.com/content/detail.cfm?item=32640fd9-0213-4330-a742-55106fbaff32
Blackberry is very good, it currently holds many certifications (but not top secret):
http://us.blackberry.com/ataglance/security/certifications.jsp
Fundamentally, there is a problem with mobile access for top secret communications - you don't know who is looking over the shoulder of the authorized user. Or if someone is pointing a gun at the head of an authorized user. These problems are reduced when you make the user come in to the office.
And the information will remain highly secure - right up until someone takes a non-secure camera and points it at the secure smartphone so they can get their job done.
wouldn't the value of security be gone if it is allowed to communicate with other phones? Don't these people learn anything?
did you forget to take your meds?
hey look! someone left their phone.
This should be perfect
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
The Android equivalent of SELinux and properly locked down phones?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
AT&T and the mass media propaganda machine spys on everyone's cellphones as it is now, (kind of makes that cell blocked 800MHz scanner thing a red herring)
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
There has to be a way for the Patriot Act spying to go mobile...you can't just have people spying on Americans from a cubicle somewhere when they can do it from the privacy of their own government-owned car...
what a load of crap. There are no TS data of any kind on or connected to SIPR. The current slate of smart phones that can carry classified comms do NOT connect to SIPR (they are point to point only and use PKI or Shared Secret keys to stand up a P2P secure channel). This article is regarding the Fort's effort to come up with a TS SMEPED as they're known.
*facepalms*
How can they ask for something like this after doing everything in their power to ensure something like this can't be created?
Well, sure Mr. NSA, we can cobble together a secure phone for you...we'll just throw in an encryption / decryption chip and a process that prompts for a password every 5 minutes. And your agents will hate it, it will become compromised (journalists are so irresponsible), and it will become a waste of tax-payer money.
Did I mention it won't be secure? But don't worry; someone will tell you it can be done, and you'll pay them a lot of money, only to realize they lied.
I am John Hurt.
"Secret Internet Protocol Router Network"
"use is restricted to top-secret level communications"
This article contradicts it self, SIPR is only up to secret.
http://www.gdc4s.com/content/detail.cfm?item=32640fd9-0213-4330-a742-55106fbaff32
Looks like a Blackberry, but it's about an inch and a half thick and weighs about a pound.
Never before have I seen such hatred heaped upon an inanimate object by its user base.
Wireless, secure, cheap, reliable -- pick two.
SIPRNet only allows SECRET information and below. You need to be on JWICS to access Top Secret information.
First of all, in order to take classified data out of a secure area, you have to seal it in an approved manner -- triple wrap it, stow it in a lockable opaque container, sign for it, and basically chain it to your body until it reaches its next secure location. That's been the rule in the DoD for over 50 years. Obviously a cell phone, even one with a password, doesn't meet any of these criteria.
Second, how are you going to access this device while maintaining secure surroundings? Based on the way people must use STU III phones (encrypted mil-spec) you must be in a locked room which is acceptably 'sound proof'. To read or write classified documents, you must be in a locked room with no windows (or that are shuttered).
Who is going to use a classified smartphone ONLY within a locked shielded room? And if the room is secure, who is going to get a 3G/4G signal inside a shielded SCIF?
This idea is not only completely unworkable, it's dumbass to the bone.
"Troy Lange might work for one of the more secretive spy agencies in the United States, but he is happy to talk about his work. He is the NSA's mobility mission manager and he has been tasked with creating a smartphone that is secure enough to allow government personnel who deal with highly sensitive information to take their work on the road. At present, the U.S. Government has secure cellphones, they use the government's Secret Internet Protocol Router Network. The problem is that they can only communicate with other devices that are plugged into the network and their use is restricted to top-secret level communications. Lange wants a smartphone that is inter-operable and presumably trusted to deal with even more sensitive information. Lange said that he wanted to see his secure smartphone reach beyond the NSA – ultimately to reach every 'every employee in the Defense Department, intelligence community and across government.'"
More sensitive than TS? Maybe the article is poorly referring to handling of less sensitive data at the secret level, or beyond that, configuration of the device to handle (or refuse to handle) information transfer at a particular security clearance according to context (keys, location, clearance at each end point, whatever) as opposed to just TS-level information.
Or maybe the article is trying (again poorly) to refer to compartmentalization. That is, the device not only has a notion of TS, but also of compartments (and can handle/refuse to handle information according to applicable compartments at the TS level.)
Unless I'm missing something here, as presented in the article, that sentence makes no sense.
And they should name the device the telescreen!!
please excuse my apathy
governments should not have secrets
I've always suspected that my supposedly secure Blackberry has some kind of NSA or FBI back door, and this only serves to confirm my suspicion.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
Hmm, are you trying to put weapons in the hand of everyone, and especially terrorists? I don't think so. Have you forgotten that encryption technologies are considered as weapons by your own government?
And made in china components...
I don't think there's anything inherently contradictory about wanting to keep the enemy's knowledge of you to a minimum while maximizing your knowledge of the enemy. Both stem from the idea that knowledge/information is power, and in the information battle, just like the physical battle, you're not interested in a level playing field.
*facepalms*
How can they ask for something like this after doing everything in their power to ensure something like this can't be created?.
Uh, there is nothing preventing a US citizen or legal resident from creating a device that can handle information at different security levels, even TS. You are prevented (and rightly so) from having one already created *for them*, or to create a device that circumvent *their* information handling. But there is nothing that prevents you from creating one from scratch, even a more powerful (though it would be unlikely that you can market one of such from-scratch devices to them after building it outside of their specs.)
Long story short: any technical preventions by NSA are for those not in the NSA.
Well, sure Mr. NSA, we can cobble together a secure phone for you...we'll just throw in an encryption / decryption chip and a process that prompts for a password every 5 minutes. And your agents will hate it, it will become compromised (journalists are so irresponsible), and it will become a waste of tax-payer money.
That's a bit of a non-sequitur as building such a device takes a little bit more than just cobbling an encryption/decryption chip. I'm not necessarily sure where you are going with this (beyond mere rhetoric.)
Did I mention it won't be secure? But don't worry; someone will tell you it can be done, and you'll pay them a lot of money, only to realize they lied.
Uh, again, overt simplification of how these things are commissioned and built. No one can just go and say "it can be done" as such high-risk projects will be first assessed for viability by someone like MITRE for example. I mean, the NSA has an army of Ph.Ds in Mathematics, Computer Science and Computer/Electrical engineering with work experience in cryptanalysis, algorithms, VLSI, SoC and network hardware and communication protocols (both practical and theoretical) as well as defense contractors that build things like f* missiles, radar systems, jammers, and other incredibly complex shit like that.
I could be wrong, but I could bet just surely that you are over estimating your understanding on this issue (and under estimating theirs.) Don't let that stop your rhetoric, though ;)
1. Create a nation wide LTE network using IPv6.
2. Use end to end encryption on all devices and only use VOIP for voice.
3. Allow the rest of the nation to use the network in the same way.
4. Place highly accurate time bases in all LTE towers so where you have tower overlap you can get extremely precise locations even indoors.
5. When overlap is not available use the LTE tower in the aGPS mode to provide the ephemeris data almanac as well as improved location based on differential GPS with the LTE tower as a base reference.
Then charge all the carriers to use this network and allow the consumer real choice in carriers. The carriers would in effect become nothing but dumb pipe suppliers and VOIP suppliers.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
So lets say that you have this super secret network smartphone and you had a super secret topic that you wanted to talk about with another super secret person. Where could you have this discussion and should you even be talking out loud? Wouldn't you need to be in a building somewhere that has sound insulation, or some other mechanism to keep your voice from being picked up from some other microphone than the one on your super secret smart phone? Or is it a fancy camera phone and not meant for voice? I hope that the camera is better than the one on my smartphone.....
schizophrenic ? No.
Hypocrite? YES
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Several china manufacturers will gladly make you these phones.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This sounds like an absolutely terrible idea.
Has history not proved that if it exists it can be broken, eventually?
What is at stake if his "secure" smartphone is broken? If I were the NSA I would be looking for a new communications expert... one with a stronger background in history, and info sec.
I don't think there's anything inherently contradictory about wanting to keep the enemy's knowledge of you to a minimum while maximizing your knowledge of the enemy.
So, ordinary Americans are 'the enemy,' at least in the eyes of our own government? What a perfectly terrifying prospect...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
They certainly don't have the capacity to mass produce a smartphone, but they make plenty of silicon in-house
Are you saying ordinary Americans are trying to break encryption on NSA smart phones in order to intercept their communiques? Neither my post nor GP's mention ordinary Americans btw.
How can they claim to be worried about situations presented in the Bradley Manning case if they want to simultaneously bring SIPRNet to your hip? Just the concept of trying to have mobility and security seems a bit naive.
Indeed. This has "multi-billion-dollar boondoggle" written all over it.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
"Secret Internet Protocol Router Network"
"use is restricted to top-secret level communications"
This article contradicts it self, SIPR is only up to secret.
Ah, that explains the statement "Lange wants a smartphone that is inter-operable and presumably trusted to deal with even more sensitive information." I already wondered what information would be more sensitive than top secret.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I don't think there's anything inherently contradictory about wanting to keep the enemy's knowledge of you to a minimum while maximizing your knowledge of the enemy.
So, ordinary Americans are 'the enemy,' at least in the eyes of our own government?
Nah, that's overstating it. Instead, think of your least appreciated manager, the idiot who was always sticking his nose into your business when least wanted, the guy who never should have had the job (due to absence of skills) and never would understand what you were being paid to do for the employer. That's the "ordinary American" you're talking about. "Gahddamned Constitution, rasafrackin', jiggafriggen, ... kroshnit!"
I agree with the poster above: Nokia N900. Lange is re-inventing the wheel.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
For one, the NSA probably doesn't plan on exporting it.
For another, there are plenty of standard encryption libraries that are already approved for export from the US and implement Top-Secret-level encryption. That's probably because we don't significantly restrict export of cryptography any more.
Lange said that he wanted to see his secure smartphone reach beyond the NSA â" ultimately to reach every 'every employee in the Defense Department, intelligence community and across government.
Yeah, so the NSA has a backdoor into every government worker's phone.
I have no problem with that. That's already the situation in the private sector. You want privacy, buy your own phone/computer/...
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
So, ordinary Americans are 'the enemy,' at least in the eyes of our own government?
I figure there are probably some folk in agencies like the NSA that have a skewed enough world view that they figure most people are criminals and, therefore, most Americans are, indeed, the enemy. That may not be the common mindest, but, yet, some folks in the NSA probably do see Americans as the enemy.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Encrypted partitions + well-secured lock screen with anti-bruteforce + case intrusion detection systems (to prevent cold boot attack) + self-destruct systems (remote wipe + dead man's switch) = really fucking good security.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
President Obama... if he wants to do secret government business he'll need one of two Windows CE smartphones
Because Windows CE is the most secure Windows CE on the planet! No so much when compared to other platforms, but hey, it's the Government so it has to come from Microsoft!
on the one hand they want to spy on each and everything
on the other hand they want to keep their turf secret
Does one have to be schizophrenic to work there?
I believe a more apt term would be megalomaniacal; believing oneself to have absolute moral superiority -- in this case, over a craven race of incipient terrorists, pedophiles, and copyright infringers.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Hopefully the NSA won't $RECENTAPPLEHEADLINE.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Most likely they will spend millions on a new data standard and building a proprietary network to protect the data in transit but completely forget about the physical safeguards mentioned above. This will facilitate multiple intelligence leaks caused by Congressmen leaving their phones at strip clubs and brothels.
"Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most." ~Ozzy Osborne
Encrypted partitions + well-secured lock screen with anti-bruteforce + case intrusion detection systems (to prevent cold boot attack) + self-destruct systems (remote wipe + dead man's switch) = really fucking good security.
Not at all. When you type in your password it creates sound frequencies, perhaps indicating what keys were pressed and what the password is. This makes you encrypted partition useless since you wont be able to log into it without leaking sound frequencies which could help hackers reconstruct the password. Since there as so many emissions, some which we might not know anything about or not know they even exist, it's not safe to enter in a password or handle a device like that in an uncontrolled environment.
To think that these employees aren't going to be tracked by foreign intelligence is impetuous in itself when the mission of many of these foreign intelligence agencies is to extract secrets from the US government.
Employees who carry this phone are going to be targeted. And it's not the US spies they'll have to worry about.
Then use an on-screen keyboard with a randomized layout for password entry. Assuming a layer of rubber padding behind the keyboard circuit isn't good enough.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Scenario: Your operative is in an unsecured location preparing for a mission. There is no SCIF in his vicinity. You learn new information which is relevant and must be communicated to him immediately.
It seems obvious that having a communications device which is as secure as practicable under those conditions is preferable to e.g. sending a completely unencrypted text message to his COTS cell phone.
Good luck with that. Let me design and build your CPU, I appreciate you wasting battery/cpu by encrypting all your data... it stops my customers from getting your data from anyone but me.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
You realize that many off-the-shelf phones you can buy right now support and commonly use full-"disk" encryption? WP7 forces it on microSD storage.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Scenario: Your operative is in an unsecured location preparing for a mission. There is no SCIF in his vicinity. You learn new information which is relevant and must be communicated to him immediately.
It seems obvious that having a communications device which is as secure as practicable under those conditions is preferable to e.g. sending a completely unencrypted text message to his COTS cell phone.
I disagree. If there is no SCIF in his vicinity he should not communicate classified information. Classified information should never be communicated over an unclassified channel. If there is even a slim chance that the enemy can detect and
intercept a signal or emission which can lead to the reconstruction of classified information then it's not worth the risk.
Honestly, the operative would be more secure using a radio cold war style than to use a smart phone. If you look at the history of radio transmissions you'll see that typically foreign intelligence immediately detects the transmissions, and through triangulation they can locate the individual making the transmission. Foreign intelligence also intercepts cellphone calls, because cellphone signals are easy to intercept and listen in on. There is no way to secure the emissions of a smartphone, it's not technically possible. There will always be a leak where the classified information can be reconstructed. Because of this it's important to never allow classified information to be emitted anywhere where there isn't absolute complete control over the environment.
No amount of encryption will change this. No amount of apps will change this. An text message isn't secure because it has to be typed. So the emission is the keystrokes themselves and that will be intercepted. And in the case of the display, the light, radiation and flow of electricity will be detected and the information reconstructed based on that.
Then use an on-screen keyboard with a randomized layout for password entry. Assuming a layer of rubber padding behind the keyboard circuit isn't good enough.
The smartphone emits radiation, because of the electricity flowing through the screen. It emits light from the screen which can be detected by a human or a non human. It emits sound as the human presses on the on screen keyboard, but also the electrical signal is going to change depending on where their fingers are and this will emit signals which can be reconstructed.
What I'm saying is information is going to leak through any emission from that device. The enemy simply has to know what to look for, and build devices to detect the emissions. Not every emission is stuff the general public believes can be detected, but when there's enough research and enough money, any leak can be reconstructed even if its stuff people never thought about or don't know about.
For this reason it's not ever going to be safe enough for classified information. It's smarter to build top secret phone booths with a phone in there than to use a smart phone in an open field.
i think above TS you get into "special access" things where there is an actual list of who has a copy of the data (with sometimes even the NAME of the project can get you SHOT).
I Do Not Currently Hold Top Secret Clearance (but do have dogtags).
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Phones get lost and stolen All The Time. Then the bad guy has unfettered physical access to the device. Normally that means Game Over. Suppose they try to make it tamperproof, ignoring the lessons of history. A targeted pickpocket will deliver it into the hands of a national intelligence agency.
You'd have to have a design that makes local storage impossible, which would make for a very strange smartphone.
all is in the title, indeed... capable of working both the normal GSM way and with various levels of encryption...
Various evolutions and models since then, like for instance
http://www.thalesgroup.com/Press_Releases/Markets/Security/2011/Thales_launches_Every_Talk,_the_first_ruggedized_high-speed_smartphone_for_security_forces/?pid=15928
Herve S.
No amount of encryption will change this. No amount of apps will change this. An text message isn't secure because it has to be typed. So the emission is the keystrokes themselves and that will be intercepted. And in the case of the display, the light, radiation and flow of electricity will be detected and the information reconstructed based on that.
Someone has been watching too many spy movies.
Look, this isn't about deep cover missions inside Iran or China.
(Where merely having a cell phone of unusual manufacture puts you under suspicious).
Its about use in casual every day situations in urban areas where cell phones are common, and you can speak and listen to a conversation without attracting a great deal of suspicion. A street in New York, A bar in Paris, a market in Algeria. 200 people in the same cell triangle on the phone at the same time.
Almost all they need is voice/data encryption and device wipe. Data encryption is already available on consumer devices, as is remote wipe. But voice has to be encrypted end to end, because it almost always ends up going across commercial circuits somewhere in its travel.
In short, the NSA is looking for protection from people like, well, the NSA. They are not worried about someone out of a movie script sitting in a white van parked 6 blocks away listening to their keystrokes, because in real life, that does not work, and it certainly doesn't work in a crowd.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
The SME-PED does SIPR data communications. Voice runs over the normal telephone network and can go up to the TS level.
whatever you say about security theater and such, the government does seem serious about securing its own stuff.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Ignoring the fact that the N900 is out of production and assuming the NSA would make their own software to allow for full-disk encryption etc, the N900 has no case intrusion detection and would be susceptible to a cold boot attack, which is a real possibility considering the resources that will be available to those who would like to break into this phone.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You are talking about the Tempest standards which have been around since before 1980 (not sure how long before - it's existence was classified then).
on one side developing secure technology
and on the other hand you want to eavesdrop
you ain't need to explain that the NSA wants to eat the cake and keep it too!
and I'll bet that the ideas, if not the whole technology will land in the hands of those the NSA wants to spy on.
These are not intended for voice communications involving the discussion of classified material. These are only for EMAIL and for getting access to classified web sites. Additionally, they are probably talking about a JWICS-compatible phone. We already have phones that talk to SIPR, they're called SME-PEDs and they're big ugly PoS's. Personally, I think they're a terrible idea. Not because there's any realistic threat of shoulder surfing, but because it brings us down to the level of all the other corporate plebs who have to answer their email wherever they are. And these phones aren't cheap. No sir.
The current STE (Secure Terminal Equipment, the rename of the STU (Secure Telephone Unit) series) costs around $3500 for the basic model. The technology in it is rather inferior my contemporary geek standards. One of the big reasons it costs so much is all the critical technology is sourced within the US from trusted sources. (Well, that's the theory, anyway.)
The NSA goes to considerable lengths and expense to protect their supply chain. (It's easy to spare no expense when you're spending others' money.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
But don't worry; someone will tell you it can be done, and you'll pay them a lot of money, only to realize they lied.
The NSA employs more mathematicians than any other organization in the world. I don't know you from Adam, but it's still a near-certainty that they have people much smarter than either of us working for them. They often fab their own silicon, build their own hardware, write their own software -- all from the ground up.
Whether or not this particular project will be a success is an open question -- the NSA is hardly immune to the Dilbert-style failings of any large bureaucracy, and "National Stupidity Agency" is a common-enough expansion -- but don't assume they'll fail just because you disagree with their mission and/or policies.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I believe a more apt term would be megalomaniacal; believing oneself to have absolute moral superiority -- in this case, over a craven race of incipient terrorists, pedophiles, and copyright infringers.
Hey now! Do you have any evidence at all that any copyright infringement is going on?
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
It's a simple rule of intelligence, the more people know something and the less well vetted those people are the greater the chance that one of those people is working for either a current enemy or at least a potential future enemy.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Ignoring the fact that the N900 is out of production ...
Easily fixed.
... and assuming the NSA would make their own software to allow for full-disk encryption ...
Linux distros routinely offer full disk encryption installs. You want better crypto than Linux offers? There's the source.
... the N900 has no case intrusion detection and would be susceptible to a cold boot attack ...
Oh, come on. Physical access has always meant vulnerable. Nothing new there. So don't store info locally if it's that important. It's a networked cell-phone, FFS!
Pedestrians.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
So what about us normal and decent folks? What options exist for us to end-to-end encrypt calls and messages (at minimum)? Anything open-source out there, that let's you do that?
Someone has been watching too many spy movies
Or someone knows something about information security that you don't. Try and keep up because this isn't the movies it's real life.
Look, this isn't about deep cover missions inside Iran or China.
Iran and China have cyberwarfare spending. They have trained hackers specifically to attack government employees, and government infrasturcture. Cuba has been tapping phones in the USA for years.
(Where merely having a cell phone of unusual manufacture puts you under suspicious).Its about use in casual every day situations in urban areas where cell phones are common, and you can speak and listen to a conversation without attracting a great deal of suspicion.
If you work for the federal government you are going to be one of the main targets. If you work for the federal government and you have one of these cellphones you and that cellphone are going to be an even bigger target. An urban area where there are lots of people provides the opportune cover for exactly the sort of threats we have to be concerned about. That has to be the worst environment possible to handle classified information.
A street in New York, A bar in Paris, a market in Algeria. 200 people in the same cell triangle on the phone at the same time.
Security through obscurity? Are you saying classified information would be protected by this?
Almost all they need is voice/data encryption and device wipe. Data encryption is already available on consumer devices, as is remote wipe.
So you and your buddy walk into a bar with one of these phones. Little do you know, there are sensors in this bar designed to pick up the signals and emissions of cellphones. What I'm saying is you don't know the security level of the bar, you assume that obscurity means security. You assume that the people using these phones are perfectly secure. I don't assume any of that. I assume they will be targets and that carrying these phones will put the information in greater risk and that the risk in this instance does not outweigh the benefits.
But voice has to be encrypted end to end, because it almost always ends up going across commercial circuits somewhere in its travel.
In short, the NSA is looking for protection from people like, well, the NSA. They are not worried about someone out of a movie script sitting in a white van parked 6 blocks away listening to their keystrokes, because in real life, that does not work, and it certainly doesn't work in a crowd.
The NSA should be worried about all threats. Not just obvious threats but not so obvious threats and of course potential future threats. Just because the enemy isn't utilizing white vans to monitor keystrokes at this time, if you leave a security hole open, by giving out cellphones like these, it's only a matter of time before a scenario like this happens. Will the government be checking every van the parks next to the bars? I honestly don't think it's going to be so easy.
And real life isn't scripted like a movie, it's completely unpredictable. What these mobile devices do is add a new layer of uncertainty for a negligible benefit. That uncertainty is opportunity for the adversary.
Technology itself is uncertainty. You cannot predict what technology the adversary will come up with to counter this technology. We know only the research that has been done, and the research already shows that cellphones can easily be tapped, that emissions can easily be captured, and whether it takes a van or briefcase or something smaller depends entirely on the sophistication of the technology, and that is unpredictable. So you're assuming it's always going to be this way, that the adversary will never develop a counter technology, or counter measures, that something like this could only happen in a movie. But guess what? These smartphones are also som