this is why everyone is so eager to roll over for them.

they can't touch Feingold or Dodd because (unlike most of our elected representatives) the NSA hasn't got any electronic dirt on them.

scoff if you like. imagine for a minute that Bushco IS using secretly gathered wiretaps and email taps to intimidate the competition, as well as members of the media establishment.

think how chilling it would be to receive a phone call at 2am replaying a conversation you had with your mistress, or an email with all of the links you surfed for the last two months.

1984 is alive and well. AT&T - your world, delivered, indeed...

I have no trouble believing this at all, in fact it explains a great deal.

Many people will balk at your idea of course. I mean it is kind of hard to believe that the same people who lied us into war and killed over a million Iraqi's inter alia, would stoop to blackmail!

Glenn is being way too hard on Paul Kane, the reporter. All Kane did was report on what the congresspeople were up to, yet Glenn says that Kane is a dupe.

This kind of hysteria and exaggeration diminshes Glenn's usually right-on arguments.

He needs to be challenged in his re-election bid in Nevada where apparently he's in trouble according to the polls there.

While folks here celebrate the potential crippling of what may be our only remaining intelligence asset, here's something I find more interesting.... Congress spends our money without voting on it. That's right, it's apparently outside the normal constitutional process.

Would that be that mysterious insertion of new language into a bill after passage by both houses? That was a Republican who did that....

Earmarks are dispensed with no oversight other than one man's say so. With any luck at all, Bush will hijack those thousands of earmarks and direct the money elsewhere.

So your "fix" for the 'problem' is to leave it to Dubya to hand out as he pleases, without accountability and without debate?!?!? Gee, I can see that you're really concerned with the process....

Heh.

Try grunting instead. Works a bit better to get the sh*t loose.

Cheers,

Anyone know how digital cellular is encrypted?

Fairly weak encryptation (small key size, and with shared secret keys). Someone broke the IS-41 encryptation a while back using a PC. And this is for the signalling (i.e., authentication and calling info), not the voice. The voice is in most instances (AFAIK) not encrypted.

In IS-95/AMPS/NAMPS (analog cellular), the voice could be picked up by pretty standard RF receivers. Bit tougher with digital cellular (you'd need the special circitry that does the TDMA or CDMA [more difficult] decode, but not impossible).

Cheers,

I said: "The voice is in most instances (AFAIK) not encrypted."

Paul Ash is right. 2G is "encrypted" with CMEA, but that's not very secure.

Cheers,

I said:

I said: "The voice is in most instances (AFAIK) not encrypted."

Paul Ash is right. 2G is "encrypted" with CMEA, but that's not very secure.

May have been my first memory was right. See here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_Message_Encryption_Algorithm

In cryptography, the Cellular Message Encryption Algorithm (CMEA) is a block cipher which was used for securing mobile phones in the United States. CMEA is one of four cryptographic primitives specified in a Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) standard, and is designed to encrypt the control channel, rather than the voice data.

I thought I'd heard that the code for the cntrol channel had been broken.

Can't say for sure about data channel encrytation; it may not exist. At the time, I think they were more worried that people would hack into the control channel and steal authentication, and thus be able to get free calls and/or clone phones, rather than busybodies putting together lots of circuitry just to listen to random neighbours talking in some cell zone....

Cheers,