German NSA Committee May Turn To Typewriters To Stop Leaks 244
mpicpp (3454017) writes with news that Germany may be joining Russia in a paranoid switch from computers to typewriters for sensitive documents. From the article: Patrick Sensburg, chairman of the German parliament's National Security Agency investigative committee, now says he's considering expanding the use of manual typewriters to carry out his group's work. ... Sensburg said that the committee is taking its operational security very seriously. "In fact, we already have [a typewriter], and it's even a non-electronic typewriter," he said. If Sensburg's suggestion takes flight, the country would be taking a page out of the Russian playbook. Last year, the agency in charge of securing communications from the Kremlin announced that it wanted to spend 486,000 rubles (about $14,800) to buy 20 electric typewriters as a way to avoid digital leaks.
Re:So what? they can be tapped to. (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is that its a lot harder for the NSA to get a microphone into the office of a German agency (and a lot worse for international relations if the NSA did it and the Germans found out) than it is for the NSA to hack into the computers at a German agency from a computer room at Ft Meade.
Secure until it gets fax'd or scan'd and email'd (Score:2, Insightful)
And of course there are type writer ribbons to destroy and so forth.
But on the whole, it forces spying back to having physical access to the document and that's not a bad security mechanism.
Re:So what? they can be tapped to. (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference is that its a lot harder for the NSA to get a microphone into the office of a German agency
Only if they make sure everyone leaves their cell phones out the door.
Re:So what? they can be tapped to. (Score:5, Insightful)
Smart phones can record and upload later.
I enthusiastically approve (Score:4, Insightful)
I salute the German government in adopting this measure, quite seriously. I am migrating to virtualised NetBSD/amd64 myself, and aside from using pkgsrc in order to install Xorg, am probably going to rely on manual installation of packages in named directories in either /usr/local or /opt.
I fully believe that maximising simplicity, to the point of adopting seemingly primitive solutions, is the most effective means of maintaining reliability and security. There truly is no school like the old school. Others can call me a Luddite if they wish, but that is a title that I will wear with pride.
Re:So what? they can be tapped to. (Score:5, Insightful)
Certainly, it's not as cost effective as other methods and requires elaborate planning. But no matter the technological level of advancement this has been, and most likely will continue to be, a very serious security threat. Simply because it targets a vulnerability that will be very hard to fix - our social, human nature.
Re:I enthusiastically approve (Score:2, Insightful)
You did personally review all of the source code right?