WASHINGTON-A German company announced last week that it has begun selling GSM phones manufactured by Siemens modified with military-grade encryption software.
The TopSec cell phone, which is not currently being sold in the United States, was introduced just as ramifications of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on privacy were becoming known.
Rohde & Schwarz, the Munich-based company marketing the phones, believes the phones are perfect for companies concerned about corporate espionage. The company said it has already sold a few hundred of the phones, which are priced in the $3,000 range.
U.S. law enforcement officials were concerned about the impact the availability of the telephones would have on crime prevention.
“Encryption, whether data or voice, impedes investigations. It’s debatable what public good it presents,” said Glenn Nick, assistant director of the U.S. Customs CyberSmuggling Center.
The TopSec phone uses a combination of 1,024-bit encryption for authentication and 128-bit encryption for data transfer.
The availability of TopSec phone came to light just as lawyers for Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) were gearing up to continue his lawsuit against Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.).
As expected, the Supreme Court sent the Boehner vs. McDermott suit back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to be decided based on the Supreme Court’s ruling in another privacy suit.
In May, the high court in a 6-3 ruling said that restricting the broadcasting or publication of an illegally intercepted cellular-phone conversation violated the First Amendment because the contents of the call were of public significance.
The D.C. Circuit had seemingly reached a different conclusion when it ruled in the Boehner case that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 prohibited the interception of mobile-phone conversations and the dissemination of that information was unlawful.
Boehner, chairman of the House Republican Conference in 1997, was using a cellular phone in Florida during a conference call with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and other Republican leaders. Even though the others on the conference call were using wireline phones, John and Alice Martin could hear everyone on the call on their radio scanner because of Boehner’s cellular link.
The Martins, who have ties to the Democratic party, turned the tape over to Rep. Karen Thurman (D-Fla.) who gave it to Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), then ranking Democrat on the House Ethics Committee investigating Gingrich. The Martins later paid $1,000 in fines for intercepting the call. The conference call involved strategy planning to deal with ethics violations against Gingrich.
McDermott subsequently gave copies of the tape to the New York Times, which broke the story on its Jan. 13, 1997, front page. Boehner sued McDermott for breach of privacy.
Boehner’s attorney Michael Carvin said Boehner’s case is different than the one decided by the Supreme Court because-although the court said the information could be broadcast or published-the person giving it to the news media was a private person, while McDermott is a public figure.
Not surprisingly, McDermott’s attorney disagreed, saying to punish McDermott would definitely violate his First Amendment rights. This is “an issue of free speech as can be imagined: one political leader is seeking to punish another political leader for allegedly disclosing a conversation among the nation’s top political leaders on a political topic.”
Some information for this story was taken from wire reports.
