The NSA Wants Its Own Smartphone

Art Vanderlay writes "Troy Lange might work for one of the more secretive spy agencies in the United States, but he is happy to talk about his work. He is the NSA's mobility mission manager and he has been tasked with creating a smartphone that is secure enough to allow government personnel who deal with highly sensitive information to take their work on the road. At present, the U.S. Government has secure cellphones; they use the government's Secret Internet Protocol Router Network. The problem is that they can only communicate with other devices that are plugged into the network and their use is restricted to top-secret level communications. Lange wants a smartphone that is inter-operable and presumably trusted to deal with even more sensitive information. Lange said that he wanted to see his secure smartphone reach beyond the NSA – ultimately to reach every 'every employee in the Defense Department, intelligence community, and across government.'"

There already is one, the sectera

[Anonymous Coward]

It's from General Dynamics:

http://www.gdc4s.com/content/detail.cfm?item=32640fd9-0213-4330-a742-55106fbaff32 [gdc4s.com]

Blackberry is very good, it currently holds many certifications (but not top secret):

http://us.blackberry.com/ataglance/security/certifications.jsp [blackberry.com]

Fundamentally, there is a problem with mobile access for top secret communications - you don't know who is looking over the shoulder of the authorized user. Or if someone is pointing a gun at the head of an authorized user. These problems are reduced when you make the user come in to the office.

Small article error that changes the context a lot

[Anonymous Coward]

"Secret Internet Protocol Router Network"

  "use is restricted to top-secret level communications"
This article contradicts it self, SIPR is only up to secret.

Re:contradiction per se

[kevinNCSU]

I don't think there's anything inherently contradictory about wanting to keep the enemy's knowledge of you to a minimum while maximizing your knowledge of the enemy. Both stem from the idea that knowledge/information is power, and in the information battle, just like the physical battle, you're not interested in a level playing field.

Re:Good enough for them, but not for us huh?

[Ouchie]

The NSA/DOD listening is not as simple as you think. It isn't a bunch of analysts sitting around listening to everyone's phone calls to Pakistan. Computers listen passively to international phone calls looking for keywords and codewords. They score hits based on these usages and push it up for further analysis such as voice identification and stress pattern analysis.

The analysis is multi-level relying on computers for the first few levels until the computer ranks you high enough to warrant an analyst attention.

The likelihood of you being snooped on is slim, unless you do make regular phone calls to a phone number previously flagged. Like a payphone down the street from a known safe house.

Oddly enough they get around the search warrant thing by primarily listening to phone calls that leave and enter the United States. Your long distance calls fall under their charter as Foreign Intelligence because your phone calls are most likely bounced off a satellite owned by a Canadian, or other foreign subsidiary.