
Typewriters are back, and we have Edward Snowden to thank - doctorshady
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/11/12/typewriters-are-back-and-we-have-edward-snowden-to-thank/
======
johnchristopher
I've always liked that paragraph from W. Gibson's `Virtual Light`

> _The offices the girl rode between were electronically conterminous—in
> effect, a single desktop, the map of distances obliterated by the seamless
> and instantaneous nature of communication. Yet this very seamlessness, which
> had rendered physical mail an expensive novelty, might as easily be viewed
> as porosity, and as such created the need for the service the girl provided.
> Physically transporting bits of information about a grid that consisted of
> little else, she provided a degree of absolute security in the fluid
> universe of data. With your memo in the girl’s bag, you knew precisely where
> it was; otherwise, your memo was nowhere, perhaps everywhere, in that
> instant of transit._

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joezydeco
_" Earlier this year, German politician Patrick Sensburg announced that
Germany’s government officials might start using typewriters, as they are seen
as being an “unhackable” technology."_

Yeah, about that...

[http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/07/using-old-school-
typewr...](http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/07/using-old-school-typewriters-
will-not-protect-you-from-snooping/)

[http://www.magicmargin.net/2012/12/silencing-chatty-
selectri...](http://www.magicmargin.net/2012/12/silencing-chatty-selectrics-
operation.html)

Unless they're going back to mechanical ones.

~~~
jonnathanson
Typewriters are subject to attack, but it's a much more laborious and non-
scalable process. It requires social engineering, infiltration, or else
planting bugs, intercepting shipments, etc. It can be done, and certainly was
done, back in the age of typewriters. But it requires some old-fashioned,
boots-on-the-ground fieldwork. It's a lot tougher to place bugs in embassies
today than it was in the 1970s. And in some respects, it's logistically
tougher than hacking into computers, which can be done from any location on
Earth. (Which is not to say that computer hacking doesn't benefit from social
engineering strategies, of course).

"Unhackable" is a poor choice of words -- more like "practically speaking,
tougher to hack." This is a speed bump, not a roadblock.

Of course, if the US were to adopt this sort of strategy, we'd have to make
sure we're manufacturing the typewriters domestically. Which probably means
setting up a puppet company somewhere in the States, purely for the sake of
making typewriters for government contracts. And then you'd have to make sure
_that_ company isn't socially engineered, infiltrated, or hacked. And so on,
and so forth.

~~~
dllthomas
You might just need a sufficiently sensitive microphone on a computer in the
next room.

~~~
jonnathanson
Very good point. Though I am writing from the assumption that any organization
sufficiently paranoid/sensitive enough to revert to the inconvenience of
typewriters is also sensible enough to keep them in secure, externally-
controlled locations, with sufficient air gaps, both electronically and
accoustically. Basically, a "stone age saferoom." :)

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eksith
The laughter was nearly deafening when this product was introduced
[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/05/password-minder-
the-b...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/05/password-minder-the-blank-
notebook-that-got-laughed-out-of-production/)

I wonder whether its time has finally come.

Edit: It's worth noting that each typewriter is unique and will leave a
telltale signature subject to identification
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter#Forensic_examinatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter#Forensic_examination)

Of course, modern printers aren't immune to this and many models incorporate
identifiers by the manufacturers to aid forensic investigation
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_steganography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_steganography)

~~~
adamnemecek
> Plus, the password minder features a discrete leatherette bound cover to
> ensure your passwords stay secret.﻿

First time I'm hearing about "security through leatherette".

~~~
eksith
It will look like every other book... intended to hold private information so
they'll never suspect anything! ;)

I once had the bright idea to put passwords written on a small piece of paper
and place it inside a 3.5" floppy. If it's in a pack of other unlabeled disks,
that's going to be a nice fishing trip.

------
tincholio
> Vinyl is one of the most notable technologies to have achieved a noticeable
> revival, not only for its retro value but also for its superior sound
> quality.

After this, I have trouble taking the rest of the article seriously...

~~~
firat
I was under the impression that vinyl records sound better. Are you saying
that they are not or that they haven't achieved a noticeable revival?

~~~
DanBC
When you double-blind test you have people preferring better quality[1], which
normally means carefully created MP3 is preferred to vinyl.

When you just ask them what they prefer they say whatever they want to say,
which often means things like "vinyl is warmer".

There are some confounding factors. "Dynamic compression" (As ganzuul
mentions, "loudness wars") does make a difference and MP3s (as created today)
tend to have less variation between quiet and loud.

[1] the benefits of "better quality" stop at quite a low point. Most people
can't hear any difference between 256k or 350k MP3 file. Very few people can
hear a difference between 350k CBR and FLAC.

------
jMyles
These seems completely unfounded. Even without the research to which other
commenters have linked, it just seems plainly obvious that typewriters are
vulnerable to all sorts of attack.

Is open source software and reasonably security practice really _that_ bad? I
mean I know it's bad, but is it abandon-common-sense-and-just-grasp-at-straws
bad?

~~~
DrStalker
If you're willing to use a typewriter you're willing to use a computer with no
network connection, so all you need to do is block radio transmissions. A
faraday cage can't cost that much compared to the other costs involved in
espionage.

~~~
MarkPNeyer
People can hop airgapped networks using speakers and microphones.

~~~
eksith
I had a discussion with a friend about The Thing[1], an invention by Léon
Theremin and how ingenious it was that it required no external power source
and can be turned on/off at will by transmitting at a certain frequency. The
trouble with this is that it's still possible to identify the retransmission.
In fact, this was how it was discovered.

What if the room had a length of surgical or other type of long tubing
embedded into the wall so that the detector was a fair distance away?
Essentially, a very crude stethoscope originating in a wall outlet or other
place in the room that already has an orifice(s) and terminating at another
location with a passive resonator.

By decoupling the transmitter from the audio source by using a non-electronic
medium, it's possible to still eavesdrop on keystrokes even in an em-shielded
room.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing_(listening_device)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing_\(listening_device\))

------
tuke
Reminds me of how Neal Stephenson in The Diamond Age taught us that a culture
might control the copying of information by utilizing mechanical type to print
newspapers, where each printing shows the grain of the type and is hard to
simulate.

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bane
Good, because the spy agencies of the world have an even deeper library of
techniques to handle espionage off of typewriters than off of computers.

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tracker1
Okay, you can get the "sound" of typewriters, for a larger part by switching
to physical switch keyboards... I actually really like my unicomp.

As for the security aspect, a network or even workstations not connected to
the internet goes a long way... you don't have to revert all the way back for
security.

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WalterBright
Looks like my old mechanical typewriter still has a use.

I've also discovered when scanning old typewritten letters they seem to be
remarkably resistant to my scanner's OCR software.

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freshflowers
It's disheartening how few people in this thread have actually read the
article instead of reacting to the linkbait headline.

God forbid we shouldn't worship new technology as always better.

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noyesno
I'm just waiting for the Kickstarter project for an Open Hardware typewriter,
so we can all inspect the design and/or build our own without backdoors.

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partomniscient
But analog typewriters can't even handle UTF-8, let alone all the other
unicode nonsense.

Their carriage return implementation is pretty cool though.

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davidgerard
If you want the sound of a typewriter, just buy Model M for everyone. THE
OFFICE SHOULD SOUND LIKE MACHINE-GUN FIRE.

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NietTim
Snowden is to thank? What the actual fuck? No, fucked up governments are to
thank /no filter

