
Indian High Commission to use typewriters for sensitive information - nreece
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/indian-high-commission-to-use-typewriters-for-sensitive-information-20130928-2ukkr.html
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iamshs
Ah. How are they gonna transmit data? What a temporary solution to a permanent
problem, using a technology that must have been cracked a century ago. Btw why
would you go outside to discuss private matters? Wow. Now instead of playing
into one agency's hand, play into all world's. Especially, now that everybody
knows India discusses private matters in gardens. Horrific.

India should totally adopt lavabit.

Incompetent and embarrassing bit: They use yahoo address for one of the
consulates in Iran: [http://www.indianembassy-
tehran.ir/consulates_iran.php](http://www.indianembassy-
tehran.ir/consulates_iran.php)

~~~
ginko
> Ah. How are they gonna transmit data?

If there only were some sort of non-electronic version of email.

~~~
iamshs
Which means interception and time limits.

~~~
jonknee
Send it with a person in a diplomatic bag. If it gets intercepted it will be
an international incident and you'll know 100% of the time that you are
compromised.

~~~
iamshs
Fair enough. But it also imposes time limits for critical communication.

~~~
mayanksinghal
Yes and they may use other avenues when required. As much as I sing songs
about incompetence and ineptitude of most government offices (of my country),
they do have a knack to survive (or competing forces are just as inadequate,
take your pick).

------
menealo
A couple of you have mentioned the traceability of typewriters as a downside.
In fact that is a primary reason for using them. Like a gun, every typewriter
has unique quirks that can be used to uniquely identify content typed on that
machine. In the event of a leak, the Russians (for example) hope to use this
forensic info to identify the leaker. The general knowledge of this acts as a
deterrent.

Moreover, it's a common strategy to step back a few levels of tech innovation
to defeat an opponent. Bayonets. Cops on bike patrols. Hipster bike
messengers. Insurgents originally used cell phones to detonate IEDs (Iraq or
Afghanistan), but then they had their phones jammed by the USM--so they
switched to string. Al-Qaeda uses hand written notes, hand-delivered.

FOIA laws and e-discovery also cause people to go low tech. To get around FOIA
requests government officials have simply stopped using email (others used
webmail under a false name). And in my last start up, serious issues raised on
email elicited a response by phone in part to avoid potential e-discovery in a
lawsuit. That kind of shady behavior caused me to leave.

~~~
auctiontheory
Not discussing serious/legal issues over email is SOP at large companies, at
least in my experience. Not because we thought we were doing anything wrong -
it's just what the lawyers advise you.

------
dingaling
As an aside, during the Cold War, Soviet embassies abroad used manual
typewriters for all sensitive information due to the various ways in which
electronic typewriters could be bugged.

For an example of the sophistication of such attacks, see the Project GUNMAN
document on the NSA's history subsite:

[http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/center_crypt_h...](http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/center_crypt_history/publications/index.shtml)

For seven years the Soviets had bugged IBM Selectric typewriters in the US
embassy in Moscow. The bugging device was remarkable, keying-off the magnetic
flux of the machine's operation and transmitting this data by burst radio
transmission.

------
asah
head explodes: this announced the same day as a paper showing how to use an
iphone accelerometer to reverse engineer keystrokes.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6456360](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6456360)

------
nwh
Hope they remember to keep the ink ribbon. Old school attacks.

------
Zigurd
Nobody is going to get it right on the first try, after decades of neglecting
data security.

------
lettergram
Cool those tapes will be really easy to read.

------
LindaWell
my Aunty Paige just got an awesome yellow Nissan Rogue SUV by working part
time from a home computer... find more information
...................[http://redir.ec/buzz55](http://redir.ec/buzz55)

------
Daniel_Newby
Wow. Apu Fuck-knuckles is so incompetent that he deserves to be taken for a
ride by every intel agency in the world. (Typewriter sounds are more easily
surveilled and decoded into letters than a well-shielded computer. A given
typewriter is trivially traceable to a particular office and even individual.
Typing paper is somewhat easy to trace. Typewriters requires use of
photocopiers, which are a centralized easily-surveilled point of weakness. And
going outdoors is what you do when you are so horrifically out of touch and
worthless that you have never seen a parabolic microphone on a football pitch.
Somewhere an NSA field agent just had a spygasm.)

~~~
curiousDog
How do you know they won't do a thorough sweep for bugs? How do you know their
mode of transportation? If the Russians are doing it, there must be some merit
to the solution. Granted it doesn't sound logical. Your worthless assumptions
aside, you seem to have a lot of hate pent up there.

No need for name calling, Cletus. And it's sad to see this in someone with 12
yrs of professional experience as a "software and electrical" engineer.

~~~
Daniel_Newby
Hate? They've got missiles, nukes, a dirty little war with Pakistan, and many
regional political challenges. It is not some lolcat site that takes PayPal,
it is armies and central bank policies. They were caught with their intel
pants down and their response was to make a show of unbuttoning their shirt.
It's like a Tom Clancy story ghostwritten by Robin Williams. A little hate is
warranted.

~~~
r0h1n
> They've got missiles, nukes, a dirty little war with Pakistan, and many
> regional political challenges. It is not some lolcat site that takes PayPal,
> it is armies and central bank policies.

In short, like the USA, which does all of these at far greater scale?

> A little hate is warranted.

And apparently, a little racism and bigotry.

~~~
Daniel_Newby
I agree! It is exactly like the USA! Like the USA, the Indian foreign service
needs to use modern security techniques. Not cargo culting with typewriters
and walks in the park like a bad movie script.

Indian is not a race or even an ethnicity. It is a geopolitical affiliation,
like Londoner. Nor am I a bigot. If I could read Hindi, I could point you to
the Indian IT discussion forums where the thousands of competent security
specialists are ripping into their government in ways that make my comment
look like high praise. My fury is nothing compared to the people being sold
out by the imbeciles at the Indian embassy.

~~~
r0h1n
> Like the USA, the Indian foreign service needs to use modern security
> techniques.

Absolutely, but as another HN user already replied to you:

> Your comment is good. "Apu Fuck-knuckles" is not. You should change it while
> you can still edit. It completely occludes your otherwise decent comment.

And please stop with the pointless arguments that "India isn't a race or even
an ethnicity" (it isn't, but that's irrelevant) to somehow prove your original
comment _wasn 't_ racist. By that logic, no one can ever be racist to Indians,
because, hey, Indians don't have a race!

------
redact207
In a country that's stricken with extreme poverty, a caste system that births
you into such a fate until death, where women can't walk the street at night
without the fear of getting brutally raped or molested, a country that starves
while massive stockpiles of food reserves perish due to kafkaesque bureaucracy
and corruption; I hardly think that privacy breaches are India's top concern.

The political system is already ineffective and the use of typewriters to
"secure" communications only proves that the priorities of the leaders are so
misaligned to what the country needs to make any progress with it's problems.

India has great potential to develop into something more than it is, but until
there's significant political reform then it's progress will always be slow
and its people will continue to suffer.

~~~
r0h1n
Oh for crying out loud, not the "India is so poor that they shouldn't bother
with expensive luxuries like space programs and Internet privacy" argument
again!

Pray tell me, what is the connection between "extreme poverty, a caste system,
the safety of women walking the streets at night and massive stockpiles of
food" with better Internet privacy measures?

Are the two a zero-sum game? Will implementing more secure email and Internet
communications across all government departments somehow make Indian women
more likely to get raped or molested? Or entrench the caste system even
further?

> India has great potential to develop into something more than it is

Thank you for your vote of support. Do let us know when we'd become eligible
for Internet privacy though.

~~~
redact207
Did I say they should do without expensive luxuries and internet privacy? No.
I did say that prioritising using typerwriters for internal communications of
a handful of their government offices above the fundamental issues that affect
hundreds of millions of their countrymen is ridiculous.

The article isn't about internet privacy for their residents. if it were, are
you saying that the rights of women and the starving population is fine as
long as no sneaky NSA is reading your emails?

~~~
r0h1n
Allow me to quote you:

> In a country that's stricken with extreme poverty, a caste system that
> births you into such a fate until death, where women can't walk the street
> at night without the fear of getting brutally raped or molested, a country
> that starves while massive stockpiles of food reserves perish due to
> kafkaesque bureaucracy and corruption; I hardly think that privacy breaches
> are India's top concern.

Your infering that privacy should hardly be India's top concern is a non-
sequitur.

Privacy doesn't need to be India's "top concern" for its government to fix it.
And neither is there a link between fixing it and all the other (valid) ills
you described prior to it.

~~~
redact207
Exactly, privacy shouldn't be India's top concern - but evidently it's the
only item on the checklist that they've ticked. I'll add it's also one that
doesn't help address any of the fundamental issues, and as I mentioned only
slows things down in an already burdened government.

~~~
codelust
Privacy, or security, or both?

Nations can rarely afford to have mutually exclusive streams of work. You
don't see the U.S waiting till they solve their economic crisis to figure out
what to do in Syria.

One of the major problems with the rank generalizations in both domestic and
international media about India is that it reduces the problem to a simple
combination of inept leadership, useless bureaucracy and abject poverty.

The fact, though, is that there also a lot of good people doing good work at
levels (government, leadership etc.), but there is also a large number of
people who are doing crappy jobs.

And as far as something like poverty goes, the causes, extent and solution for
it differ from region to region. The concept of India is one of the greatest
abstractions the world has ever seen. Take away the tricolour, cricket and the
movie industry and you'll find people who rarely have much to identify with
each other at a national level.

Consequently, any solution will take time and it will be chaotic; at least
until a better genuinely progressive leader emerges, which looks unlikely for
a long time to come. Waiting for all that to fall in place till measures are
taken to ensure data security and privacy may well mean those won't happen in
my lifetime.

p.s: The state of IT in the government is terrible in India. Any smart citizen
have to live under the assumption that everything is compromised, by the state
itself and by other states.

