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HarryLaymanPaperTheFirst 4 - 01 Dec 2009 - Main.HarryLayman
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Current mass-market communications technology is very insecure. User adoption rates for encryption of emails, instant messages, and phone calls are for all intents nil. Even the use of cookie-free, untraceable internet browsing is extremely low, despite its extreme ease. Legal protection for the privacy of such communications is scarcely any better. Witness, for example, the 2007 scandal wherein the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence committee was entrapped and blackmailed by a national intelligence agency seeking expanded surveillance powers. Authority for roaming, warrantless wiretaps has been claimed by presidents from both political parties. The dominant usage of technology in America has done much to destroy the expectations of privacy and secrecy that people enjoyed just a few decades ago. Might it be possible to convince people to take matters into their own hands? | | | Such consumer technology does not exist. There are a variety of phones that employ RSA or similarly strong encryption, but they are not interoperable and cost $1500 or more. This is puzzling. Crytographic algorithms, qua algorithms, are not patentable subject matter and cannot be monopolized. To whatever extent such monopolization was possible (i.e. by patenting cryptographic math done "on a computer" or "a microchip that performs cryptographic math"), those patents should have long since been expired. See 1, 2. This academic paper suggests a means for implementing RSA into programmable logic chips that cost less than $10, and provides sufficient computing power to encrypt voice data in real time. In fact, that paper is five years old: the technology should be trivial at this point. | |
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> | As a regulatory matter, the approval of such a device ought to be straightforward. The FCC's Rule Part 15 requires that devices not cause "harmful interference" that would jam other authorized signals (radio, television, etc). There does not appear to be any sort of clause that allows the FCC to disapprove devices that it simply does not like.
The cellular phone market is highly concentrated. | | | *Outline
-Form of a solution: the device. |
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