4 ms·

Indian High Commission to use typewriters for sensitive information

38 points by nreece 13y ago

Daniel_Newby 13y ago
Wow. Apu Fuck-knuckles is so incompetent that he deserves to be taken for a ride by every intel agency in the world. (Typewriter sounds are more easily surveilled and decoded into letters than a well-shielded computer. A given typewriter is trivially traceable to a particular office and even individual. Typing paper is somewhat easy to trace. Typewriters requires use of photocopiers, which are a centralized easily-surveilled point of weakness. And going outdoors is what you do when you are so horrifically out of touch and worthless that you have never seen a parabolic microphone on a football pitch. Somewhere an NSA field agent just had a spygasm.)
- Apocryphon 13y ago
  The Russians are doing this, too. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/russia-reverts-paper-nsa-leaks http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/russia-reverts-...
- kamakazizuru 13y ago
  Wow - you're a racist bigot!
  - Daniel_Newby 13y ago
    I am neither racist nor bigoted. What I am is opposed to spacefaring nuclear powers who are utterly incompetent at their jobs. They put all our lives in danger. If the Brits pulled this crap I would insult them with "Johnny Fuck-knuckles". (For example, "I am staggered that Johnny Fuck-knuckles would send agents to fling around office equipment at the Guardian's offices.")
    - r0h1n 13y ago
      I'm sorry sir, but you clearly are both racist and bigoted without apparently seeming to realize it. "The Apu travesty" - http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/jul/16/theaputragedy http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/jul/16/theaput...
      - Daniel_Newby 13y ago
        I'm racist for making fun of the embassy security chief because you do not like a Simpsons character. I do not know whether to laugh or cry.
    - kamakazizuru 13y ago
      well - being racist also towards brits - doesnt make you any less racist.
- noonespecial 13y ago
  Your comment is good. "Apu Fuck-knuckles" is not. You should change it while you can still edit. It completely occludes your otherwise decent comment.
- curiousDog 13y ago
  How do you know they won't do a thorough sweep for bugs? How do you know their mode of transportation? If the Russians are doing it, there must be some merit to the solution. Granted it doesn't sound logical. Your worthless assumptions aside, you seem to have a lot of hate pent up there. No need for name calling, Cletus. And it's sad to see this in someone with 12 yrs of professional experience as a "software and electrical" engineer.
  - Daniel_Newby 13y ago
    Hate? They've got missiles, nukes, a dirty little war with Pakistan, and many regional political challenges. It is not some lolcat site that takes PayPal, it is armies and central bank policies. They were caught with their intel pants down and their response was to make a show of unbuttoning their shirt. It's like a Tom Clancy story ghostwritten by Robin Williams. A little hate is warranted.
    - r0h1n 13y ago
      > They've got missiles, nukes, a dirty little war with Pakistan, and many regional political challenges. It is not some lolcat site that takes PayPal, it is armies and central bank policies. In short, like the USA, which does all of these at far greater scale? > A little hate is warranted. And apparently, a little racism and bigotry.
      - Daniel_Newby 13y ago
        I agree! It is exactly like the USA! Like the USA, the Indian foreign service needs to use modern security techniques. Not cargo culting with typewriters and walks in the park like a bad movie script. Indian is not a race or even an ethnicity. It is a geopolitical affiliation, like Londoner. Nor am I a bigot. If I could read Hindi, I could point you to the Indian IT discussion forums where the thousands of competent security specialists are ripping into their government in ways that make my comment look like high praise. My fury is nothing compared to the people being sold out by the imbeciles at the Indian embassy.
iamshs 13y ago
Ah. How are they gonna transmit data? What a temporary solution to a permanent problem, using a technology that must have been cracked a century ago. Btw why would you go outside to discuss private matters? Wow. Now instead of playing into one agency's hand, play into all world's. Especially, now that everybody knows India discusses private matters in gardens. Horrific. India should totally adopt lavabit. Incompetent and embarrassing bit: They use yahoo address for one of the consulates in Iran: http://www.indianembassy-tehran.ir/consulates_iran.php http://www.indianembassy-tehran.ir/consulates_iran.php
- ginko 13y ago
  > Ah. How are they gonna transmit data? If there only were some sort of non-electronic version of email.
  - iamshs 13y ago
    Which means interception and time limits.
    - jonknee 13y ago
      Send it with a person in a diplomatic bag. If it gets intercepted it will be an international incident and you'll know 100% of the time that you are compromised.
      - iamshs 13y ago
        Fair enough. But it also imposes time limits for critical communication.
        mayanksinghal 13y ago
        Yes and they may use other avenues when required. As much as I sing songs about incompetence and ineptitude of most government offices (of my country), they do have a knack to survive (or competing forces are just as inadequate, take your pick).
asah 13y ago
head explodes: this announced the same day as a paper showing how to use an iphone accelerometer to reverse engineer keystrokes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6456360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6456360
redact207 13y ago
In a country that's stricken with extreme poverty, a caste system that births you into such a fate until death, where women can't walk the street at night without the fear of getting brutally raped or molested, a country that starves while massive stockpiles of food reserves perish due to kafkaesque bureaucracy and corruption; I hardly think that privacy breaches are India's top concern. The political system is already ineffective and the use of typewriters to "secure" communications only proves that the priorities of the leaders are so misaligned to what the country needs to make any progress with it's problems. India has great potential to develop into something more than it is, but until there's significant political reform then it's progress will always be slow and its people will continue to suffer.
- r0h1n 13y ago
  Oh for crying out loud, not the "India is so poor that they shouldn't bother with expensive luxuries like space programs and Internet privacy" argument again! Pray tell me, what is the connection between "extreme poverty, a caste system, the safety of women walking the streets at night and massive stockpiles of food" with better Internet privacy measures? Are the two a zero-sum game? Will implementing more secure email and Internet communications across all government departments somehow make Indian women more likely to get raped or molested? Or entrench the caste system even further? > India has great potential to develop into something more than it is Thank you for your vote of support. Do let us know when we'd become eligible for Internet privacy though.
  - redact207 13y ago
    Did I say they should do without expensive luxuries and internet privacy? No. I did say that prioritising using typerwriters for internal communications of a handful of their government offices above the fundamental issues that affect hundreds of millions of their countrymen is ridiculous. The article isn't about internet privacy for their residents. if it were, are you saying that the rights of women and the starving population is fine as long as no sneaky NSA is reading your emails?
    - 13y ago
nwh 13y ago
Hope they remember to keep the ink ribbon. Old school attacks.
menealo 13y ago
A couple of you have mentioned the traceability of typewriters as a downside. In fact that is a primary reason for using them. Like a gun, every typewriter has unique quirks that can be used to uniquely identify content typed on that machine. In the event of a leak, the Russians (for example) hope to use this forensic info to identify the leaker. The general knowledge of this acts as a deterrent. Moreover, it's a common strategy to step back a few levels of tech innovation to defeat an opponent. Bayonets. Cops on bike patrols. Hipster bike messengers. Insurgents originally used cell phones to detonate IEDs (Iraq or Afghanistan), but then they had their phones jammed by the USM--so they switched to string. Al-Qaeda uses hand written notes, hand-delivered. FOIA laws and e-discovery also cause people to go low tech. To get around FOIA requests government officials have simply stopped using email (others used webmail under a false name). And in my last start up, serious issues raised on email elicited a response by phone in part to avoid potential e-discovery in a lawsuit. That kind of shady behavior caused me to leave.
- auctiontheory 13y ago
  Not discussing serious/legal issues over email is SOP at large companies, at least in my experience. Not because we thought we were doing anything wrong - it's just what the lawyers advise you.
lettergram 13y ago
Cool those tapes will be really easy to read.
LindaWell 13y ago
http://redir.ec/buzz55 http://redir.ec/buzz55
LindaWell 13y ago
my Aunty Paige just got an awesome yellow Nissan Rogue SUV by working part time from a home computer... find more information ...................http://redir.ec/buzz55 http://redir.ec/buzz55
dingaling 13y ago
As an aside, during the Cold War, Soviet embassies abroad used manual typewriters for all sensitive information due to the various ways in which electronic typewriters could be bugged. For an example of the sophistication of such attacks, see the Project GUNMAN document on the NSA's history subsite: http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/center_crypt_history/publications/index.shtml http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/center_crypt_h... For seven years the Soviets had bugged IBM Selectric typewriters in the US embassy in Moscow. The bugging device was remarkable, keying-off the magnetic flux of the machine's operation and transmitting this data by burst radio transmission.
Zigurd 13y ago
Nobody is going to get it right on the first try, after decades of neglecting data security.

38 points by nreece 13y ago

Wow. Apu Fuck-knuckles is so incompetent that he deserves to be taken for a ride by every intel agency in the world. (Typewriter sounds are more easily surveilled and decoded into letters than a well-shielded computer. A given typewriter is trivially traceable to a particular office and even individual. Typing paper is somewhat easy to trace. Typewriters requires use of photocopiers, which are a centralized easily-surveilled point of weakness. And going outdoors is what you do when you are so horrifically out of touch and worthless that you have never seen a parabolic microphone on a football pitch. Somewhere an NSA field agent just had a spygasm.)

Apocryphon 13y ago
The Russians are doing this, too. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/russia-reverts-paper-nsa-leaks http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/russia-reverts-...
kamakazizuru 13y ago
Wow - you're a racist bigot!
- Daniel_Newby 13y ago
  I am neither racist nor bigoted. What I am is opposed to spacefaring nuclear powers who are utterly incompetent at their jobs. They put all our lives in danger. If the Brits pulled this crap I would insult them with "Johnny Fuck-knuckles". (For example, "I am staggered that Johnny Fuck-knuckles would send agents to fling around office equipment at the Guardian's offices.")
  - r0h1n 13y ago
    I'm sorry sir, but you clearly are both racist and bigoted without apparently seeming to realize it. "The Apu travesty" - http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/jul/16/theaputragedy http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/jul/16/theaput...
    - Daniel_Newby 13y ago
      I'm racist for making fun of the embassy security chief because you do not like a Simpsons character. I do not know whether to laugh or cry.
  - kamakazizuru 13y ago
    well - being racist also towards brits - doesnt make you any less racist.
noonespecial 13y ago
Your comment is good. "Apu Fuck-knuckles" is not. You should change it while you can still edit. It completely occludes your otherwise decent comment.
curiousDog 13y ago
How do you know they won't do a thorough sweep for bugs? How do you know their mode of transportation? If the Russians are doing it, there must be some merit to the solution. Granted it doesn't sound logical. Your worthless assumptions aside, you seem to have a lot of hate pent up there. No need for name calling, Cletus. And it's sad to see this in someone with 12 yrs of professional experience as a "software and electrical" engineer.
- Daniel_Newby 13y ago
  Hate? They've got missiles, nukes, a dirty little war with Pakistan, and many regional political challenges. It is not some lolcat site that takes PayPal, it is armies and central bank policies. They were caught with their intel pants down and their response was to make a show of unbuttoning their shirt. It's like a Tom Clancy story ghostwritten by Robin Williams. A little hate is warranted.
  - r0h1n 13y ago
    > They've got missiles, nukes, a dirty little war with Pakistan, and many regional political challenges. It is not some lolcat site that takes PayPal, it is armies and central bank policies. In short, like the USA, which does all of these at far greater scale? > A little hate is warranted. And apparently, a little racism and bigotry.
    - Daniel_Newby 13y ago
      I agree! It is exactly like the USA! Like the USA, the Indian foreign service needs to use modern security techniques. Not cargo culting with typewriters and walks in the park like a bad movie script. Indian is not a race or even an ethnicity. It is a geopolitical affiliation, like Londoner. Nor am I a bigot. If I could read Hindi, I could point you to the Indian IT discussion forums where the thousands of competent security specialists are ripping into their government in ways that make my comment look like high praise. My fury is nothing compared to the people being sold out by the imbeciles at the Indian embassy.

iamshs 13y ago

Ah. How are they gonna transmit data? What a temporary solution to a permanent problem, using a technology that must have been cracked a century ago. Btw why would you go outside to discuss private matters? Wow. Now instead of playing into one agency's hand, play into all world's. Especially, now that everybody knows India discusses private matters in gardens. Horrific. India should totally adopt lavabit. Incompetent and embarrassing bit: They use yahoo address for one of the consulates in Iran: http://www.indianembassy-tehran.ir/consulates_iran.php http://www.indianembassy-tehran.ir/consulates_iran.php

ginko 13y ago
> Ah. How are they gonna transmit data? If there only were some sort of non-electronic version of email.
- iamshs 13y ago
  Which means interception and time limits.
  - jonknee 13y ago
    Send it with a person in a diplomatic bag. If it gets intercepted it will be an international incident and you'll know 100% of the time that you are compromised.
    - iamshs 13y ago
      Fair enough. But it also imposes time limits for critical communication.
      - mayanksinghal 13y ago
        Yes and they may use other avenues when required. As much as I sing songs about incompetence and ineptitude of most government offices (of my country), they do have a knack to survive (or competing forces are just as inadequate, take your pick).

asah 13y ago

head explodes: this announced the same day as a paper showing how to use an iphone accelerometer to reverse engineer keystrokes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6456360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6456360

redact207 13y ago

In a country that's stricken with extreme poverty, a caste system that births you into such a fate until death, where women can't walk the street at night without the fear of getting brutally raped or molested, a country that starves while massive stockpiles of food reserves perish due to kafkaesque bureaucracy and corruption; I hardly think that privacy breaches are India's top concern. The political system is already ineffective and the use of typewriters to "secure" communications only proves that the priorities of the leaders are so misaligned to what the country needs to make any progress with it's problems. India has great potential to develop into something more than it is, but until there's significant political reform then it's progress will always be slow and its people will continue to suffer.

r0h1n 13y ago
Oh for crying out loud, not the "India is so poor that they shouldn't bother with expensive luxuries like space programs and Internet privacy" argument again! Pray tell me, what is the connection between "extreme poverty, a caste system, the safety of women walking the streets at night and massive stockpiles of food" with better Internet privacy measures? Are the two a zero-sum game? Will implementing more secure email and Internet communications across all government departments somehow make Indian women more likely to get raped or molested? Or entrench the caste system even further? > India has great potential to develop into something more than it is Thank you for your vote of support. Do let us know when we'd become eligible for Internet privacy though.
- redact207 13y ago
  Did I say they should do without expensive luxuries and internet privacy? No. I did say that prioritising using typerwriters for internal communications of a handful of their government offices above the fundamental issues that affect hundreds of millions of their countrymen is ridiculous. The article isn't about internet privacy for their residents. if it were, are you saying that the rights of women and the starving population is fine as long as no sneaky NSA is reading your emails?
  - 13y ago

nwh 13y ago

Hope they remember to keep the ink ribbon. Old school attacks.

menealo 13y ago

A couple of you have mentioned the traceability of typewriters as a downside. In fact that is a primary reason for using them. Like a gun, every typewriter has unique quirks that can be used to uniquely identify content typed on that machine. In the event of a leak, the Russians (for example) hope to use this forensic info to identify the leaker. The general knowledge of this acts as a deterrent. Moreover, it's a common strategy to step back a few levels of tech innovation to defeat an opponent. Bayonets. Cops on bike patrols. Hipster bike messengers. Insurgents originally used cell phones to detonate IEDs (Iraq or Afghanistan), but then they had their phones jammed by the USM--so they switched to string. Al-Qaeda uses hand written notes, hand-delivered. FOIA laws and e-discovery also cause people to go low tech. To get around FOIA requests government officials have simply stopped using email (others used webmail under a false name). And in my last start up, serious issues raised on email elicited a response by phone in part to avoid potential e-discovery in a lawsuit. That kind of shady behavior caused me to leave.

auctiontheory 13y ago
Not discussing serious/legal issues over email is SOP at large companies, at least in my experience. Not because we thought we were doing anything wrong - it's just what the lawyers advise you.

lettergram 13y ago

Cool those tapes will be really easy to read.

LindaWell 13y ago

http://redir.ec/buzz55 http://redir.ec/buzz55

LindaWell 13y ago

my Aunty Paige just got an awesome yellow Nissan Rogue SUV by working part time from a home computer... find more information ...................http://redir.ec/buzz55 http://redir.ec/buzz55

dingaling 13y ago

As an aside, during the Cold War, Soviet embassies abroad used manual typewriters for all sensitive information due to the various ways in which electronic typewriters could be bugged. For an example of the sophistication of such attacks, see the Project GUNMAN document on the NSA's history subsite: http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/center_crypt_history/publications/index.shtml http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/center_crypt_h... For seven years the Soviets had bugged IBM Selectric typewriters in the US embassy in Moscow. The bugging device was remarkable, keying-off the magnetic flux of the machine's operation and transmitting this data by burst radio transmission.

Zigurd 13y ago

Nobody is going to get it right on the first try, after decades of neglecting data security.