Greetings cypherpunks, I'm preparing this consumer phone privacy info sheet to post to libernet, misc.consumers, etc. Any corrections or further information greatly appreciated. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Instead of developing phones allowing truly private conversations, which are now feasible, AT&T recently put a phone on the market that contains the NSA-designed "Clipper" wiretap chip. All users' encryption keys are registered with the U.S. government, giving it exclusive access to wiretapping this system's phones. The use of an unpublished algorithm and other features also make the system insecure; see the newsgroups sci.crypt and the mailing list "cypherpunks", cypherpunks-request@toad.com for details. AT&T by this action has demonstrated its contempt for its customers' privacy. Here are some other long-distance providers that may have more respect. All U.S. long-distance companies are required to surrender to telephone taps under government "authorization", but some require more "authorization" than others, or otherwise make a greater fuss about it. Companies which use primarily multichannel fiber optic lines are physically more difficult to tap. Allnet Long Distance Services 1-800-783-2020 MCI, commercial 1-800-888-0800 MCI, residential 1-800-950-5555 Metromedia Communications Corp. 1-800-275-2273 One-2-One Communications 1-800-293-4121 Sprint, residential 1-800-877-7746 Sprint, business 1-800-733-5566 True privacy can be obtained with a veil of encryption, by using pairs of phones containing privacy chips, which scramble the signals *and* keep the keys private. Contact your local business telephone dealers for privacy phones from Ericson and other companies. Please e-mail me detailed info on these phones, and also further info on long distance services, and I will post a summary along with my own research findings. Nick Szabo szabo@techbook.com Protect your electronic privacy with PGP -- public key available