[Cryptography] 'The intelligence coup of the century'

[Julian Macassey]

On 2020-02-15 at 08:51, Henry Baker (hbaker1 at pipeline.com) wrote:

> 
> I believe that the U.S. & West German govts had ready access
> to most all of the main telephone cables in East Berlin due
> to their having been run through the subway/underground system.
> Of course, the same was also true of the West Berlin cables,
> but I think that the West German cables were relatively soon
> patched around to avoid this attack by the Easties.

	This would be Operation Gold, which used UK telco
equipment. We know it was UK gear because it was marked GPO
(General Post Office) the UK phone company of the era.

	The Sunday Times ran a story on this in the 1960s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gold

> 
> An aside re W. German telephone lines:
> Thanks to the U.S. taxpayers, the U.S. replaced virtually
> the *entire* W. German telephone system post-WWII.  As a
> result, W. Germany has the *best copper* in the world!
> So W. Germany was in a better position to utilize "DSL"
> technolgy better than anywhere else.  Too bad they didn't
> wire up with coax or fiber...  :-(

	Seeing as the allies had demolished much of Germany's
utilities putting it back was a good idea.

-- 
We’re either going to become a socialist, Marxist country like western
Europe, or we’re going to be free. - Former Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn