2600 Flash
NSA Wants Better Phones
The National Security Agency is proposing that the Government and industry be equipped with as many as 500,000 telephones that can be secured against interception.
The agency is convinced that the Soviet Union and the other nations are obtaining important intelligence from United States telephones.
Although cloaked in secrecy, a program like the one the agency proposes could cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Under the proposal, production of the secure phones would begin in two years.
The number of secure telephones currently used by Government agencies is classified information. But the Carter Administration said there were 100 such phones in the Government and it planned to buy 150 more. The cost of each phone then was $35,000. The Reagan Administration has bought an unknown number of additional secure phones.
"Anyone making a phone call to the West Coast or Boston from the Washington area has no idea how the conversation will be transmitted," an NSA spokesperson said. "It might go via fiber optics, conventional cable, microwave towers or one of the 19 domestic satellites. If it is going via satellite you can presume the other guy is listening to it."
Oh No, Not Again!
The House passed a bill on September 17 by voice vote that would make it a Federal crime to gain unauthorized access to or tamper with computerized medical records.
Victimized by Crime Computers
Police officers went to an apartment in New Orleans looking for a woman named Vera Davis, who was wanted for theft and forgery. Although the woman who answered the door identified herself as Shirley Jones, they arrested her anyway. A police computer listed Shirley Jones as an alias used by the forgery suspect. That was two and a half years ago.
According to her attorney, Mrs. Jones, who was once advised by a sheriffs deputy to change her name to avoid future arrests, is one of a growing number of people in New Orleans who have gotten in trouble with the law because of inaccurate, outdated, or misused information in police computers.
The New Orleans computers are part of a national network. From a local terminal, a computer check can be run through the National Crime Information Center in Washington, operated by the FBI, in less than a minute.
The New Orleans case, said Robert Ellis Smith, publisher of Privacy Journal, a newsletter that reports on privacy cases from Washington, D.C., is "symbolic of a larger national problem, an incredibly high rate of inaccuracy" in criminal records and "an inordinate amount of mistaken identity cases in the criminal justice information systems."
Sears Satellite Network
The American Satellite Company has signed a contract with Sears, Roebuck and Company to construct and operate a private communications system linking corporate offices of Sears and its subsidiaries in 26 United States cities. This would be the largest private system ever developed capable of offering full-motion video teleconferencing.
Loopholes Around Wiretap Laws
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, has said that he will seek legislation to improve protection of privacy by closing gaps in Federal wiretapping laws.
He and several experts said at a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing that it was unclear, for example, whether existing laws permitted Government officials or others to intercept electronic mail, or even ordinary telephone calls sent by computer or microwave technology, without a warrant.
"There are tremendous holes in communications privacy today," testified Ronald L. Plesser, a Washington, D.C. lawyer: who has long specialized in information privacy issues.
The experts at this hearing testified that private interception of electronic mail and other messages carried through telephone networks may not violate Federal law.
IBM is Buying ROLM!
IBM has said that it will buy the ROLM Corporation, in a move that will heighten the competition between the world's largest computer company and AT&T. The price? $1.25 billion.
"IBM wants it all, it needs it all," said Esther Dyson, editor of Release 1.0, an industry newsletter. "They have a biological urge to grow."
Most analysts, however, said that IBM had realized - perhaps belatedly - that it greatly needs to strengthen its offerings in telecommunications switching equipment.
ROLM, founded in 1969 as a maker of military computers is now a leading maker of private branch exchanges, systems that control both voice and data communications over the telephone.
911 Suspect Hung Up
A notorious hoax caller who has plagued 911 switchboards for three years has been nabbed reporting another bogus crime, police say.
Cops say the suspect - who they have been unable to identify - made more than 500 false reports ranging from strangulations in progress to rapes and shootings of police officers.
He was arrested at a Penn Station pay phone while telling a 911 operator he had just raped and strangled his girlfriend with her pantyhose. That was the fabricated crime he reported most frequently, according to police.
"He called every day of the week at all hours," said Sgt. Stephen McDonald.
"He was causing a lot of problems and the 911 people were really looking for him," said Officer James Lapiedra who collared the hoaxer.
According to McDonald, news of the hoaxer's capture was jubilantly received by 911 operators: "There was a lot of cheering."
In the words of Lapiedra, "He was surprised he was caught."