[Milsurplus] overheard telephone conversations

[ersmar]

The sync key for the SIGSALY en/decryption process was a pair of identical records that contained noise. Signal Corps techs got on hf radio ckt in the clear to sync  up a turntable at each end. Then Franklin and Winnie (or MacArthur) got on the phones to talk. A second turntable at each end let a second set of records get set up to continue the conversation beyond one record. At the end the records were broken apart. 

73 de
Gene Smar AD3F

-------- Original message --------
From: Ray Fantini <RAFANTINI at salisbury.edu> 
Date: 05/31/2016  10:01 AM  (GMT-05:00) 
To: Rob Flory <farmer.rob.flory at gmail.com>,"AKLDGUY ." <neilb0627 at gmail.com> 
Cc: milsurplus <milsurplus at mailman.qth.net> 
Subject: Re: [Milsurplus] overheard telephone conversations 
 
SIGSALY  according to the NSA website “ weighed 55 tons and consisted of forty racks of equipment. SIGSALY was the first secure voice encryption system for telephones. It was invented and built by Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1943. It had several technological "firsts" including pulse code modulation for speech transmission, multilevel frequency shift keying, and bandwidth compression. It took thirteen people to operate and required fifteen minutes to set up a phone call.” Thought I would throw this in as far as state of the art and timeline stuff for phone systems.
They have part of the system at the NSA Museum for people to see in person.
 
Ray F/KA3EKH
 
 
 
 
From: Milsurplus [mailto:milsurplus-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Rob Flory
Sent: Monday, May 30, 2016 7:03 PM
To: AKLDGUY .
Cc: milsurplus
Subject: Re: [Milsurplus] overheard telephone conversations
 
"I don't know whether SSB was
used for those 1937 radio telephone links, but if it was,
an enthusiast may have figured out that a BFO would
allow reception."

You can be sure an enthusiast would have intercepted the signals if they were simple SSB without encoding, and no one would have counted on the thousands of enthusiasts, never mind the commercial and political interests, from figuring that out. 

If I recall correctly, the baseband audio was broken up into several slices that were shuffled, as in 0-600Hz was re-inserted at 1200-1800 etc. and that shuffle was changed frequently according to a pseudorandom sequence based on "one time pads" known only at TX and RX locations.

The transmitting station was just a few miles from here. 

RF
 
 

 
On Mon, May 30, 2016 at 9:21 AM, AKLDGUY . <neilb0627 at gmail.com> wrote:
How were they encoded?

Be careful how you answer. You're addressing a former
telecommunications technician, 1968-1984.

When I was transferred into the long distance transmission
division in 1975, there was a very old Western Electric
system that had been in use back in the 1930s and was still
being kept running as a standby in case of emergency.
It was junked not long after, because by that stage we had
enough diversity with multiple routes such as coaxial cable
and microwave links out of Auckland.

It was an industry-standard 60-108 KHz carrier system of
12 channels at 4 KHz spacing designed for open wire 600
ohm line.

Essentially it was an upper sideband broadband system,
with crystal filters for each direction of speech, 24 filters
in all. Each filter was in a sealed (soldered) copper case
about a foot long, 4" wide, 5" high. I can't remember what
tubes it used, but they were big glass ones like in radios
of the early 30s.

That was probably the state of telecommunications
technology in the 1930s. I don't know whether SSB was
used for those 1937 radio telephone links, but if it was,
an enthusiast may have figured out that a BFO would
allow reception.

So I'm interested to hear what kind of encoding you
think was used.

73 de Neil ZL1ANM

On 5/30/16, Rob Flory <farmer.rob.flory at gmail.com> wrote:
>  "Radio telephone communications opened in 1927 on a 24 hour
>  basis, US-UK. By 1949, there were 70 radio telephone circuits for
>  all 5 continents."
>
> They were encoded, so an enthusiast would not have been able to overhear
> them.
>
> RF
>
 
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