And then there are pagers:
WIRED: Who Needs Crypto? Paging Bill Clinton ... (09:12 AM Sep. 22, 1997 PT)The Clinton administration, in the midst of a fight to limit the availability of strong encryption, has come face-to-face with an embarrassing example of what can happen when its own communications go unprotected.
Pam Finkel, a New York City computer consultant, earlier this month posted a transcript of what purports to be pager traffic among the presidential party when Clinton traveled to Philadelphia last 27 April
Finkel said the messages, transmitted in clear text using the dated Golay paging protocol and captured using a simple combination of scanner, PC, and Net freeware, were presented to her on 28 April when she attended a ham-radio festival in New York.
Finkel, who also works for the hackers' journal 2600, said "a white male, age 20 to 40" handed her a floppy disk he described as a submission to the print magazine. She said she checked out the contents that evening.
"My first reaction was to call the White House Communications Agency switchboard to see if it was really them. To me, it seemed like a real transcript. And then, on the news, I saw that this stuff (referred to in the transcript) was really happening."
Plenty of the transcript seems innocuous - lots of messages that calls are waiting for various members of the entourage, for instance, along with personal endearments, pleas for food, notes that staffers' hotel rooms had not been reserved, a query about whether an aide would be able to return to the capital aboard Air Force 1, the score of that day's NBA playoff game between the Washington Bullets and the Chicago Bulls, and a mention of the Republic of Texas hostage standoff.
In mid-evening, the transcript shows, an alert went out that Chelsea Clinton was on the phone for her parents. First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton took the call.
But other notes captured by Finkel's source ranged from annoying - many private phone numbers were exchanged - to potentially serious security breaches - announcements of Clinton's arrival at various venues and about planned movements.
Secret Service spokesman Jim Mackin said the protective agency had not yet determined whether the transcript was genuine, but added he doubted any critical information had been compromised.
"Nothing's been reported so far that indicates there's anything of a security nature in there," he said. Some of the minute details of the president's activities "may sound cute, but it's something the press knows every day."
As to whether the pager mode of communication is insecure, Mackin responded: "Our understanding is that it's illegal to intercept these messages. But we know when we use cell phones and pagers that they're insecure, so we're cautious when we use them."
The disclosure that its unscrambled internal messages were captured by an eavesdropper could come as a jolt to a White House that has taken an aggressive stand against strong encryption. The US software industry and electronic commercial interests have fought for advanced data-scrambling technology, both to maintain the American advantage in the field and to help build the foundation for secure buying and selling on the Internet. Privacy and civil-liberties advocates favor crypto as the principal tool in keeping personal data out of the hands of both deputized and undeputized snoops.
Encrypting pager messages, for instance, would almost certainly defeat eavesdroppers.
In the past two weeks, an effort led by FBI director Louis Freeh and the National Security Agency has resulted in the weakening of the Safety and Freedom Through Encryption Act, a bill that aimed to make strong encryption freely available in the United States and abroad by removing federal export controls and by banning imposition of a nationwide key-recovery system - a software feature that would allow law enforcement and spy agencies access to coded data.
The bill, co-sponsored by 252 members of the House, hit a brick wall in the House National Security and Intelligence committees. Both panels tacked on amendments that would reverse what the bill set out to do. Among new provisions of the bill: A key recovery system would be mandatory, and the president and the secretary of Defense would get the final say on what encryption-enabled software could be sold overseas. The House Commerce Committee, contemplating an amendment that would outlaw any crypto software that does not allow immediate deciphering of coded data, will consider the bill this week.
Finkel said she hopes that publishing the transcript will affect the outcome of the crypto debate.
"If this just makes congressmen sit up and listen, and think about what's at stake, then it's worth it," she said.