Is It Safe to Use the Phone?

By William R. Doerner

The Administration seeks to cut off an intelligence drain

The tapping of telephone conversations has long been recognized as a security threat, and the rise in microwave and satellite transmission of conversations has made electronic eavesdropping easier than ever. Yet even though all Presidents since Franklin Roosevelt have conducted much of their business over secure, or scrambled, phone lines, the U.S. has been bewilderingly slow in dealing with another potentially enormous security problem: most Government and business officials daily discuss sensitive matters over ordinary, unsecured equipment.

As new technology has increasingly enabled global adversaries to sort through vast amounts of airborne telebabble in search of key words and phrases, ordinary telecommunications have become a priceless source of intelligence for the Soviet Union and, possibly, other nations. Says New York Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Vice Chairman of the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence: "The targets of Soviet interception of telephone communications now include our businesses, our banks, our brokerage houses, as frequently as our Government agencies . . . Private communications of all sorts have been violated, and on a scale that dwarfs any previous surveillance effort by friend or foe."

Now the Reagan Administration is belatedly moving to stanch this immense intelligence drain. The President has quietly signed a document known as National Security Decision Directive No. 145. It gives overall responsibility for ensuring the security of communications in the Government and the defense industry to the National Security Agency (NSA), the secrecy-shrouded behemoth whose primary function since its founding in 1952 has been the collection and analysis of other nations' communication traffic. Under Reagan's directive, the NSA will search for ways of protecting the integrity of sensitive telecommunications and federal computer information, which increasingly are two interrelated parts of a common technology. Estimated cost over the next ten years: $6 billion to $8 billion.

The most visible part of the stepped-up security will be a massive increase in the use of secure telephones, which have so far been parceled out to federal officials with unusual frugality. Less than four years ago, intelligence sources say, the combined networks of secure telephones operated by the Federal Government probably numbered just upwards of 1,000 units. That total has risen steadily under the Reagan Administration; the exact number is secret, but unofficial estimates put the new total at between 2,000 and 3,000 units. One reason the Government has been slow to install scrambled lines has been the cost: each secure unit runs about $31,000. Another has been complaints from users that voice quality is poor. Even so, concedes Walter Deeley, the NSA'S deputy director for communications security, a study he conducted last year on communications security showed telephones to be the biggest leakage problem.

Working with five of the nation's largest manufacturers of telephone equipment, (AT&T, ITT, Motorola, RCA and GTE), NSA officials believe technology has been developed that will lead to what Deeley, in computer jargon, calls "a user-friendly secure phone" at a cost of less than $2,000 a unit. Scrambling units in current use weigh about 70 lbs. and take up the space of two filing-cabinet drawers. Electronics experts expect the new units to employ small, inexpensive microcircuits built directly into the telephone receiver. The scrambler converts signals produced by conversation into electronic "white noise" that is meaningless until disencrypted, or unscrambled, on the other end of the line.

Deeley predicts that production of the new generation of secure phones will begin within two years. By the end of the decade, NSA officials plan to install half a million of them: 200,000 in Government offices and an additional 300,000 in private companies that have access to classified or sensitive Government information. Within ten years they expect the total number of secure telephones in the U.S. to reach 2 million, or about one out of every 120 of the nation's horns. "Communication security is not like guns, ships or bullets," says Deeley. "It's sort of like insurance; it has no intrinsic value at a particular moment. But we must become serious about it."

Many experts are also concerned that there is leakage of valuable technical information through foreign eavesdropping on the telecommunications of private firms. The Commerce Department had considered a program to encourage private businesses to take more security measures, but the Government now tends to rely on competitive pressures to force companies to guard their secrets.

The U.S. began losing physical control of its telecommunications in the 1960s, when more and more began to be transmitted through the air waves rather than through cables. AT&T currently estimates that it uses satellites or microwave towers for 70% of its domestic traffic and 60% of its traffic abroad. Both forms of atmospheric transmission are easily interceptible on Soviet listening equipment that is doubtless installed in the U.S.S.R.'s diplomatic properties in the U.S. and elsewhere. The Kremlin's listening post in Cuba, for example, can pick up virtually all traffic from U.S. domestic communication satellites. Says an NSA official: "They just sit down there with their huge vacuum cleaner and suck everything up." In recent years the Soviets have developed computers that can cull such intelligence with much more sophistication than earlier models, and not just in search of defense secrets. "A computer can put together those bits and pieces," says an NSA official. "And even if the vast majority of what was said is unclassified, the other side can put it together and save billions in research." Indeed, U.S. officials are convinced that the Soviets are targeting telecommunications involving U.S. space shuttle personnel in an effort to do just that.

Though cutting back on the Soviet Union's ability to eavesdrop is the primary purpose of the new telesecurity program, U.S. officials point out that it could also foil surveillance attempts by other rivals, including unscrupulous economic competitors. Moreover, as Reagan has pointed out, the same technology used in foreign intelligence operations is increasingly available to "terrorist groups and criminal elements." --By WilliamR. Doerner.

Reported by Ross H. Munro/Washington

With reporting by Ross H. Munro/Washington