Posted on 07/16/2014 9:07:24 AM PDT by Thistooshallpass9
German officials are considering switching from computers back to manual typewriters for sensitive documents to prevent United States’ spying, according to a July 14 statement.
“Are you considering typewriters?” an interviewer asked Patrick Sensburg, head of the Bundestag’s parliamentary inquiry into the U.S. National Security Agency activity in Germany. “As a matter of fact, we have, and not electronic models either,” he replied.
(Excerpt) Read more at thetrumpet.com ...
Seriously? Aren’t we getting a little overwrought here?
Burning would result in more climate change so shred away.
Cones of silence for each station. Seal in the operator and typewriter.
The older I and my appliances get (receiver 38, washer 19, fridge 19, circular saw 18, screw shooter 17...), the more I realize they just can't be replaced anymore without crappy chinese parts waiting to disable their replacements.
I would state this....if you removed all computers from every single US gov’t office, went to simple old-fashioned IBM-limited memory typewriters, gave each person his own “memory-stick”, and limited email/browsing to one module unit for each twenty-five people, you’d get more real production and less time with people facebooking and googling throughout the day.
The Germans may discover that no one in Europe makes typewriters anymore. I believe there’s two or three companies in China, and maybe one in Mexico still making them. I know you can buy a brand-new typewriter for roughly $120 off the GSA site (I had to buy one five years ago for my unit).
I’m sure if they came back into vogue they’d be cranking them out again in no time.
Hire some Navajo Code Talkers! Ooot!
I’d love to see a comeback of the IBM Selectrics,”
Did you ever use the IBM Executive? No way today’s generation could ever figure out how to type on one of them, especially if you found yourself replacing one word with another because they would actually have to be able to add and subtract. Going from an Executive to Selectric drove most of the gals in the typing pool I supervised crazy. Hard to adjust to nothing moving but that crazy little ball!
Reminds me of going from a stick shift to an automatic transmission. Continued to put that non-existent clutch in for a long time.
Any group with half a brain has already taken measures to counter US Spying - including typewriters and other measures. By the time a topic like this hits the newspapers it’s not really news.
All electric typewriters, and especially Selectrics, emit a discrete radio signal for each character typed, so you can see the problem. I am afraid manual typewriters are the only solution, and you'd have to control access to the ribbons too.
Don’t forget to burn the ribbons.
As a trained electronics and missile guidance technician, I’m not sure I buy into that theory. Maybe some of the later “self correcting” models, but the ones I used contained no electronics at all...purely mechanical.
But for arguments sake, it would be a chore to “hack” and office with 20 or 30 Selectrics going at the same time.
Either way, it would be a hellava lot more secure than wifi’s, the internet, etc, and the NSA would have set up shop outside thousands of offices to even detect such a minute signal.
I used up all the German I knew to translate this, and it made me laugh out loud!
Building a secure typewriter, even an electric, wouldn’t be that big a challenge.
1. Build a ribbon shredder into the unit.
2. If you want an electric, you could scramble the signals for the keys on a pseudo-random basis. You could use a number of things as a seed. One day, a certain signal will get you an ‘a’, the next day, hitting the ‘a’ key still gets you an ‘a’, but its just a different signal.
3. Go completely manual.
You can get efficient about things - you can record dictation and have a typewriter type it up for you. Do the dictation in a soundproof booth, an encryption key converts it to keystrokes, a screen allows you to proofread it in the Tempest hardened booth, and you walk the stick over to the typewriter.
Typewriter composes your memo, wipes the stick, shreds the ribbon.
Shove the stick in anything other than the destination typewriter and its circuits dissolve.
I cannot give you the specifics of the method used, but it was disclosed by James Bamford in the “The Puzzle Palace” that this was one of the NSA’s many successes.
Don’t know about that but I’ve been able to keep a 40yr + electric washer and dryer going by making my own repairs.
Wig-wags replaced twice on washer as well as water pump. Hardest part was turning that 200 something pound beast on its side and back again.
Heating coil and drive belt on dryer.
The parts were surprisingly in expensive
There is a web site that has trouble shooting checklists and how to do a fine diagnosis and repair, in some cases down to the part. Number.
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