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As a result of the alleged U.S. spying on the German government, Newsweek is reporting that a German commission looking into the U.S. spying scandal may be considering the use of the old-fashioned manual typewriters as an anti-spy measure.
When asked whether the committee investigating the “spying scandal” was in fact entertaining such an idea, Patrick Sensburg, chair of the committee and a member of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat Party said, “As a matter of fact, we have – and not electronic models either,” according to Newsweek.
Newsweek:
The chairman has already announced his priority of making his commission as spy-proof as possible. Crypto phones have already been purchased for him and his colleagues in a bid to foil any bugging attempts. Typewriters may be the next arrival on the desks of German parliamentarians.
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“The idea that Germany may revert to typewriters is an interesting one. They would not be alone in doing so,” Professor Rory Cormac of Nottingham University, author of Spying on the World told Newsweek. “Russia reportedly reverted to using typewriters last year in the aftermath of the NSA revelations. Interestingly, German model typewriters are apparently popular with the Russians.”
Not all are enamored with the idea of going back to the old, manual QWERTY keyboards.
Again, Newsweek:
Der Spiegel has already questioned if these new measures are not signs of “paranoia,” while several German MPs have voiced their disapproval of Sensburg’s plans.
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“Before I start using typewriters and burning notes after reading, I’d rather abolish the secret services,” tweeted opposition party MP Martina Renner.
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“The idea that we can protect people from surveillance by dragging them back to the typewriter is absurd,” Christian Flisek of the Social Democrat party told Der Spiegel.
This brings me to the title I chose for this piece, “New Worries, Old Typewriters and Old Worries.”
Back in the early 70s while the Cold War was still somewhat warm, I happened to be serving in the U.S. military in Germany. In those days, close to Soviet controlled and occupied East Germany we thought there was a spy behind every tree (and perhaps there was, or were) so we were quite security conscious — paranoid some might say.
In those days we were still using the old manual typewriters, although the IBM “Selectric” typewriters were making their way into more prosperous and advanced military installations.
Also in those days, the “military suggestion system” was a popular way to submit ideas to improve the effectiveness of an organization, to reduce costs or, as I thought I was doing, to improve security. There was also the possibility of receiving some kind of recognition for real good suggestions.
Listening to the clickety-clack of the typewriters as the type bars hit the platen, the idea and the concern arose in my suspicious and overly-imaginative mind that each type bar might make a unique sound as it hit the platen, thus producing a unique, distinct acoustic signature or fingerprint* for each character on each type bar which could be recorded, analyzed and “decoded” with sophisticated equipment, thereby giving the “spies” the capability to reproduce the document that had been typed.
Of course, that would first require capturing the acoustics of a specific typewriter when used for typing an unclassified document, obtaining the document from some trash can and making a decoding template for those key bars and typewriter.
Well, I did submit my suggestion — properly classified at the time — received a polite “Thank You” a few weeks later, but the typewriters stayed and the clickety-clack of the old typewriters merrily continued, leading me to believe, “not to worry.”
But with the powerful, digital acoustic signal processing capabilities available today, does the German government really want to go back to the clickety-clack-making manual typewriters?
Any acoustic engineers in the crowd?
* The Newsweek article points out: “Typewriters have individual, signature writing patterns which make tracing documents back to their original sources much, much easier.”
Images courtesy www.shutterstock.com
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.