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(Updated: April 22, 2018) The current 2018 Winter Olympics , held in PyeongChang, South Korea, led to a charm offensive by neighbouring North Korea, which included the reopening of a border hotline with the South, that had been closed for almost two years. The reopening came with new photos of the fancy-looking communications equipment, which will be described here, as well as the fact that there's not just one phone line, but over 40. Unlike other hotlines, the ones between North and South Korea are mostly used for low-level practical issues. > See also: Bilateral hotlines worldwide A South Korean liaison officer speaks with his North Korean counterpart over the inter-Korean communications channel at Panmunjom, January 3, 2018 (photo: Unification Ministry - click to enlarge) The Red Cross hotline The first hotline between North and South Korea became operational on September 22, 1971. The link was the result of the first inter-Korean Red Cross meeting held on September 20, whi...

(UPDATED: January 20, 2018) Two important NSA programs, PRISM and Upstream, are based upon section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA), a law that was originally scheduled to expire today. Now the US Congress has to decide whether to continue or to reform this crucial legal authority . Although PRISM became almost synonymous for NSA's alleged mass surveillance, it's actually, just like the Upstream program, targeted collection aimed at specific foreign targets. Still, many people think that these programs pull in way too many data ( incidental collection ) to be subsequently queried in an illegal way ( backdoor searches ). Here we'll show some of the complexities of these two collection programs and that there are various internal procedures and methods in order to keep collection and analysis as focussed as possible. Slide from the PRISM presentation that for the first time revealed PRISM and Upstream as part of section 702 FAA collection. Until recently, US lawmakers w...

(Updated: December 9, 2017) On the fourth Thursday of November, Americans celebrate Thanksgiving Day and one of the traditions is that the US president addresses members of the military services that are deployed abroad. President Trump did so for the first time last Thursday, speaking to the five branches of the US military by video teleconference from his residence Mar-a-Lago in Florida. The press photos released for this occasion offer a clear view of the communications equipment that is used by the president when being outside the White House or travelling. President Trump addresses the military from Mar-a-Lago, November 23, 2017 (click to enlarge) Video teleconferencing The big screen for video teleconferencing (VTC) is the Cisco TelePresence System EX90 with high-definition video screen and camera. The device has been modified for TEMPEST protection by CIS Secure Computing: we can see that the screen has an additional metal encasing with silver labels to prevent and de...

(Updated: December 1, 2018) Today, it's the German Unity Day or Tag der Deutschen Einheit , which commemorates the anniversary of the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990. In recent years, Germany's relationship with the United States had some tough times after it was revealed that chancellor Angela Merkel had been on an NSA targeting list, and a 3-year parliamentary inquiry showed a close cooperation between the NSA and the German foreign intelligence agency BND. One part of the relationship between Germany and the US that was never reported before, is the existance of a hotline between the White House and the office of the German chancellor. Described for the first time is also the telephone equipment that was used for this kind of top level communications links. - Origins - STU-I telephone - IST telephone - Berlin -   Origins The hotline (German: heißer Draht ) between Washington and Bonn was established on Marz 16, 1962, after German chancellor Konrad Adenau...