From: "George A. Gleason" <gg@well.sf.ca.us>
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 93 02:51:40 PDT
To: rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Subject: Re:  Hacking ClipperPhones
Message-ID: <93Sep29.024627pdt.14278-2@well.sf.ca.us>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Re your suggestion of a cypherpunk daughterboard to substitute for Clipper
in "secure" phones etc.:

I have a sneaky suspicion that AT&T won't be quite so cooperative.  They
constantly do things in such a way as to make it darn hard to do anything
with their products except exactly what they intended to do.  It might be
worth a try though... OTOH anything that creates more demand for AT&T phones
is a not-good thing in my view... we need an entirely competing product, and
preferably cheaper than an AT&T clipperphone + daughterboard, for obvious
competitive reasons.  

There are plenty of telephone manufacturers in the world.  Some are
relatively small shops in Asia which make European knock-offs for the Asian
operating companies.  I know of another one in Portugal which at least ten
years ago was favorable to doing mildly custom stuff.  If nyone here is
seriously interested in competing cryptophones, I'd be willing to find an
appropriate telephone set manufacturer who makes quality phones and is
willing to put in a daughterboard socket or other useful mods.

-gg@well.sf.ca.us