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NSA Publishes Blueprint For Top Secret Android Phone

Posted by samzenpus on from the you-keep-using-that-word-I-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means dept.

mask.of.sanity writes "The National Security Agency has designed a super-secure Android phone from commercial parts, and released the blueprints(Pdf) to the public. The doubly-encrypted phone, dubbed Fishbowl, was designed to be secure enough to handle top secret phone calls yet be as easy to use and cheap to build as commercial handsets. One hundred US government staff are using the phones under a pilot which is part of a wider project to redesign communication platforms used in classified conversations."

7 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. I want one. by roc97007 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That'd be the coolest geeky thing to have. Although I suspect it doesn't do you a lot of good unless both sides of the conversation is using them.

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    1. Re:I want one. by roc97007 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If you're implying a back door, the overriding problem as far as I can see is that if you have a secret double encrypted phone with an option, no matter how secret, for someone else to listen in, as a secret organization you wouldn't dare use the phone. Because somehow, by hook or by crook, by bribery, blackmail or corruption from the richest countries and individuals of the world, that back door *will* be made available to foreign powers. It's inevitable.

      And so, the NSA will have created a phone that the NSA itself could not use.

      If it had been intended as a honey pot, then bravo. Otherwise, no.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
  2. transparent case and dip switches... by jdogalt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    All I've really wanted for christmas for the last 10 years is a phone easily disassemblable, with a transparent case, and user facing dip switches for the mic, the antennas, the battery, and these days, the power line going to the camera. Or alternately for the camera, a physical piece of plastic that slides to expose/cover the camera. Also the dip switches should be placed in such a way that it is reasonably convincing to technical users that they are in fact breaking the relevant physical traces/wires.

    Maybe in 10 more years...

  3. fishbowl !=blowfish by optimism · · Score: 5, Interesting

    re: "The doubly-encrypted phone, dubbed Fishbowl"

    A strange combination of clever and ironic.
    Fishbowl is an anagram of Blowfish, though I dunno if they use that cipher.
    However to most folks, a fishbowl is something in clear view, under close observation.
    Quirky.

  4. Re:Double Encryption??? by icebike · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually, I remember reading somewhere that consecutive encryption of a file (or a data stream) provides no additional protection against brute force attacks. The brute force needed to decrypt the end result is virtually the same, whether you encrypt once or twice. Something about a "meet in the middle" attack.

    Not sure if this is true in all cases because TripleDES is a common encryption technique.
    I (obviously) don't understand all that I read about this stuff.

    --
    Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
  5. They are smarter than that by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    MS knows that the government controls patents and that national security is a grounds that the government can take a patent away and make it public domain.

    Interestingly enough the NSA has special status when it comes to patents. They can file secret patents that remain classified until someone tries to patent the same thing. At such time their patent is revealed and is valid from that date of revelation.

  6. NSA can seize patents for their own and gag the in by bd580slashdot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    One day I was reading James Bamford's book "The Puzzle Palace" which was all about the NSA and crypto stuff. I was sitting on the back porch of The Last Exit on Brooklyn street coffeehouse reading when I got to a chapter about a guy who had made an encrypting phone out of cheap off the shelf components. He called it the phasorphone. When he applied for a patent the NSA seized it and gagged him (that means he was threatened and coerced to not talk about it). I pointed at the name in the book and held it up to the guy across the table from me and said "Carl, is this you?". He told me a bit about it and said the NSA kept track of him all the time after that. Department of Defense DIRECTIVE NUMBER 5535.02 March 24, 2010 USD(P) SUBJECT: DoD Patent Security Review Process You know, national security and all that. Because the light of democracy is so weak that it can only succeed if veiled by the cloak of secrecy, right?