🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <40mm5n$4h7@harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au>,
   jcam2@mdw031.cc.monash.edu.au (Mr J Cameron) wrote:
>GuyD@world.net wrote:
>
>[stuff about cyptography ban deleted]
>
>:       ******* And now for the juicy bit ********
>
>: It is a fact that Telstra had a software development project in
>: progress in early 1995, who's aim is to monitor and log phone connections
>: through their exchanges, to determine:-
>:   a) Which calls are voice, and which are modem.
>:   b) If modem, what baud rate and protocol.
>:   c) Given (b), to determine whether the link is using encryption.
>:   d) Lastly, given a positive (c), to attempt to analyse what _sort_
>:      of encryption it is.
>
>Come on! Certainly a ban on cryptography is a stupid and unenforcable
>law, but claiming that THEY are monitoring all our phone calls to check
>if people are using encryption is absurb. I would guess that in the order
>of 10,000,000 phone calls are made each day in Australia (note that this
>is just a guess, and could be an order of magnitude different from the
>real value). All these calls would have to be monitored from start to
>finish to make sure that nobody started transmitting encrypted data 
>part way though the connection, or switched from a voice to modem
>connection. Surely this would be incredibly computationally expensive.

It was/is very much in Telecom's commercial intrest to know what lines are 
carrying - if y'hadna noticed almost every "chain store" has it's tills 
attached to phone lines all day long - even if they are only active once an 
hour as this fixes the cost at one local phone call.  This ties up the lines 
(and part of the exchange) all day long.

Now Telecom is not permitted to time-charge local voice calls but it thought 
it _could_ time charge for "data connections".  Of course no-one in their 
right mind would willingly tell Telecom that they should be charging them 
more.  So Telecom wanted to detect such connections.

What Asis/Asio or our beloved constablry were/are upto is another kettle of 
haddock altogether.

Of course, as we all know, increased police phone tap powers will reduce 
the increase in violent and property crime rates.  As will banning pepper 
sprays.  And the chocolate ration is due to be increase in WA, too.

Grrrrr.
Conrad D

--
 "For every problem there is a solution that is neat, simple and wrong."
Email: conrad@jtec.com.au
Snail: Jtec Perth R&D Centre, Locked Bag No.6, West Perth 6872, Australia.
Numb's:(ph)+61 9 262 2100 (fx)+61 9 321 5216 (dod) 0604 (sohc)