NYC events and cell phones

[Damien Miller]

On Mon, 17 Sep 2001, Greg Rose wrote:

> There is one very simple reason why they might have wanted the encryption 
> switched off. Wiretapping at the base station requires a wiretap order, 
> whereas sniffing the airwaves in a matter of national security is something 
> the NSA is allowed to do (but they can't get a wiretap order in a hurry).
> 
> I don't know any facts in this matter at all, but I wouldn't be surprised 
> if someone, somewhere, requested air interface encryption to be turned off.

Would switching off crypto improve the performance of the base stations 
at all? If so, the motivation may have been less sinister.

-d

[Moderator's note: I was under the impression most base stations did
the crypto in hardware, so the answer would be "no, no performance
gain" for such equipment. Besides, the main concern would be open
channels, not CPU load. Anyone know better? --Perry]

-- 
| Damien Miller <djm at mindrot.org> \ ``E-mail attachments are the poor man's 
| http://www.mindrot.org          /   distributed filesystem'' - Dan Geer

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