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In the previous post we presented a range of highly secure mobile phones. Because of their nature we almost never see officials using them, but here we have a rare picture of US president Obama using a Sectéra Wireless GSM Phone , made by General Dynamics and approved by the NSA for conversations up to the level of Top Secret: President Obama using a Sectéra Wireless GSM Phone, March 19, 2011. (White House photo by Pete Souza - click for a bigger version) The picture shows president Obama giving the final authorization for the United States Armed Forces to begin a limited military action in Libya, in support of an international effort to protect Libyan civilians. This call was made during a short visit to Brazil. Sitting next to Obama is his National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, using one of the two secure STE desk top telephone sets, which are always standing by in case the president has to make a phone call. As can be seen in the bigger picture , the other STE phone seems to be u...

(Updated: April 9, 2016) In the previous post we saw that ordinary mobile phones offer only limited protection against eavesdropping. Therefore, special devices are designed to keep conversations safe. Here we will list a range of mobile phones, which offer a high level of security and are therefore suited for top level telecommunications. The following information is gathered from the internet, only to provide a general overview. For more information, provided by the manufacturer, please click the yellow section title or the fact sheet. - for government and military use - General Dynamics: Sectéra Wireless GSM Phone - Produced from 2002-2012 by the American company General Dynamics Corp. - For GSM and GPRS networks. - Ordinary Motorola Timeport GSM phone, with a special Security Module attached at the back side of the phone, replacing the battery cover. - Approved by the NSA for conversations up to the level of TOP SECRET * and by NATO for up to COSMIC TOP SECRET. This phone is als...

This is an informative video from the Swiss television program Einstein , about the potential threats and risks of mobile cell phones: The phone shown in this report is the Secure Mobile Phone Omnisec 230 (fact sheet in PDF) , made by the Swiss firm Omnisec AG . This is a modified HTC smart phone, with a hardened Android operating system, and with all risk providing applications (like bluetooth and GPS) removed. The microSD Security Module provides encryption with 256-bits key length to secure communication for classification levels up to Top Secret. But, the cost for two of such phones is said to be around 50.000,- Swiss Franks. UMTS For most people, a far more affordable way to get better security for cell phone communication is just to use the UMTS or 3G mobile network, instead of GSM. Where GSM only has authentication of the user to the network, UMTS uses mutual authentication, which means the mobile user and the network authenticate each other. This prevents a so called "man...

In the previous post we saw the cool phones the American president uses in his Oval Office. This time we take a look at the telephone equipment he uses when he is on vacation, because "Presidents don't get vacations, they just get a change of scenery." as a former president once said. For this purpose we have two nice pictures from the vacation of president Obama from August 18 to August 29, 2011 on the Blue Heron Farm in Chilmark on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. In the first picture we see president Barack Obama, reflected in a mirror, conducting a conference call on the situation in Libya with his national security staff. Also participating is John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, who sits on the right: President Barack Obama and his assistant John Brennan in a conference call. August 22, 2011 Note how the telephone and power cables are taped onto the table (White House photo by Pete Souza - click f...

(Updated: December 21, 2014) In April last year, US president Obama told some fundraisers that he was disappointed by the communications equipment he found in the White House: "I always thought I was gonna have like really cool phones and stuff," he said during a Q&A session with contributors at a fund-raising meeting in Chicago on April 14, 2011. "We can't get our phones to work." Acting out his exasperation, he said: "Come on, guys. I'm the president of the United States! Where's the fancy buttons and stuff and the big screen comes up? It doesn't happen." Obama made these remarks after the press pool had left and may not have realized some reporters back at the White House could still hear his comments. The president was probably responding to a question about bottlenecks in technological innovation and he used his White House experience as an example. A lot of people would probably like to believe these remarks of the presiden...

As the first post of this weblog about top level telecommunications we start with a nice video about the White House Situation Room, released by the White house on December 18, 2009:   As we can see from this video, the 2006-2007 renovation transformed the Situation Room from one simple conference room with a small office space into a multi room facility with high tech communications equipment, much like we see in fictional movies and tv-series. At the same time, we also see that the Situation Room isn't the exclusive space for the president anymore. Many other government officials use the new conference rooms too for their (video conference) meetings. The Situation Room is maintained by the White House Situation Support Staff (WHSSS), which was created ca. 1985 to oversee the Situation Room and the Crisis Management Center (CMC), which was set up in 1982 in the Old Executive Office Building and acted as a "second situation room". The WHSSS is nowadays part of the Defens...