
New phones aboard Air Force One - staunch
http://electrospaces.blogspot.com/2014/07/new-phones-aboard-air-force-one.html
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joosters
The US is doomed if the country elects a colorblind president. All that red-
green color-coding for secure and non-secure calls is going to ruin them...

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mootothemax
_All that red-green color-coding for secure and non-secure calls is going to
ruin them..._

I was surprised by the colour coding as well, albeit more from a usability
angle than colour-blindness:

What are "danger" red and "success" green meant to represent?

My natural inclination would be to have no background colour for insecure, and
then [colour of choice] for secure.

It makes me wonder how ignorant on the matter I am, and whether red and green
are some form of standard for secure/insecure notifications.

~~~
gergles
> red and green are some form of standard for secure/insecure notifications.

They are. If you look at photos that the military/government publishes of
facilities, the secure stuff is always red, and the public stuff is always
green (well, always is a strong word. It is occasionally black). (I was going
to include such an image now but I can't seem to find a search term for it
that will find what I want.)

I agree, it seems a little backwards, but I guess it's a piece of domain-
specific knowledge you don't forget once you've acquired it.

~~~
s_q_b
Historical German KWF secure analog telephone, with example red "secure" and
green "clear" buttons.
[http://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/ant/kwf/](http://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/ant/kwf/)

The convention evolved early, when secure communications were rare. The
US/NATO clearly marked the secure lines with bright red phones, since the
major danger is sending something in plaintext rather than secure, while the
reverse error is more harmless.

The green phones followed (since green is the complementary color of red),
more out of cargo cult thinking than any usability purpose, which is why
you'll still see a lot of black equipment (because the colour of the unsecured
line is relatively unimportant.)

And now, we have a hand-me-down convention that contravenes one of our hard-
wired conventions about colors: Green: Go, Proceed, Correct, Benign Red: Stop,
Not permitted, Incorrect, Harmful.

It is odd, but much like the wrong sign on the electron, you get used to it.

~~~
mootothemax
_Historical German KWF secure analog telephone, with example red "secure" and
green "clear" buttons_

I'm confused; the article you linked to consistently says it's the other way
around:

    
    
      - The green and red buttons at the front are for switching to SECURE and CLEAR mode respectively
    
      - When the user presses the green button... The exchange then switches to encrypted mode
    
      - ... Press the green button on the phone to cause the exchange to switch to encrypted mode
    
      - In normal use... the call is not encrypted and the red LED, marked Klar (clear), lights up
    
      - In secure mode, the red ET button can be used to switch back to clear mode again
    
    

There are a number of comments here stating that the convention is red
secure/green insecure, so I presume the article's author is incorrect.

Or is this a classic illustration of UI confusion?

~~~
s_q_b
Huh, good catch. Either the author mixed up the description, or the designer
confused the standard. I just grabbed the first example at hand, but a quick
googling should turn up some more devices.

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michaelt

      L-3 Communications advertises (pdf) the GSIMS system as 
      the most advanced secure communication system for VIP and 
      Head of States aircraft
    

In the light of Snowden's revelations that we spy on our allies and try to get
broken encryption products released, I wonder if any head of state except an
American one bothers with an American encrypted phone.

If not, I wonder who it's being marketed to?

~~~
XorNot
"in light of" ?

This has been an obvious problem since the dawn of communications of any sort.
No government on Earth would blindly install foreign systems. They wouldn't
blindly install _domestically_ built units (what better way to get the inside
track then to accidentally be able to listen in on your government's private
conversations).

People need to realize that nothing Snowden disclosed was news to _any_
government, especially its security people.

~~~
27182818284
>No government on Earth would blindly install foreign systems. They wouldn't
blindly install domestically built units (what better way to get the inside
track then to accidentally be able to listen in on your government's private
conversations).

History is full of stories that makes this not true dating back to even Xerox
machines that the US tampered with before selling them overseas.

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curiousDog
Why not always use a secure line? Latency?

~~~
BrentOzar
Because the person on the other end may not be calling from a secure location.

~~~
kabouseng
Or put another way, the other person might be calling from a normal phone.

~~~
Electrospaces
Yes, for a secure, encrypted phone call, both ends must have equipment that
uses the same encryption system, else it's impossible to decrypt what the
other end has encrypted and vice versa.

~~~
rohit89
So how do calls between leaders of different countries work? Have all of them
agreed upon using the encryption system? Or perhaps they have equipment that
can choose which encryption system to use depending on who they are talking
to?

~~~
tormeh
If the leaders are important enough, you'll just get a new phone that can talk
to theirs. Or a translation server. No need to bother the head-of-state with
the technicalities. The point is, there's no reason for there to be a clever,
all-in-one solution here, since these are allmost one-off solutions.

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rdtsc
The thing is that phone underneath could be a SIP/VOIP phone running over a
VPN tunnel(or tunnels to provide the MLS -- multi-level security) with a CAC
card reader. It probably costs upwards of 10s of thousands if not more per
unit.

A lot of that is the red tape and overhead related to having it certified and
having as much of it produced in US as possible.

Also wonder if secret service or FBI will pay extra attention to the author
for being a little too interested in that topic. Nothing too serious of
course, just some visits to his workplace, maybe interrogating his friends,
spouse or kids. (Has happened to a friend of mine, after making an
inappropriate joke in a forum, and that was before 2001)

~~~
ghshephard
I would be shocked if the cost-per-phone system was less than $250k/phone,
with all costs amortized over the project (Design, Delivery, Installation,
Support)

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savoytruffle
It doesn't seem that surprising to me that Air Force One has encrypted VOIP
phones.

But it is always useful to see new info.

It is surprising that they are relatively new.

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throwaway3363
Wow. Just wow.

I would have thought that that the NSA would be more sly about their
unattributed propaganda sites. That whole site is full of bullshit
whitewashing.

