[liberationtech] Building a encrypted mobile network

[Anthony Papillion]

Hi Liberation Tech!

With the NSA spying scandal in full swing, I've been thinking about what
it would take to truly build a secure mobile network. I'm curious to get
feedback from those who've given more thought to this than me as I see
the problem as primarily twofold:

1. Location issues - they know WHERE you are.
2. Content issues - they know what you say and who you say it to.

If the two issues above are the main (only?) issues hindering the
creation of a secure network, how could we work around them?

Some thoughts:

1. Location is a particularly thorny issue. Presentations at either HOPE
or BlackHat demonstrated how easy it is to locate a mobile even if
you're not the government with a massive budget and mad technology.

Perhaps routing the network connection through Tor may suffice? But I
don't think so as something doesn't 'feel' right about that. Thoughts?

2. Content is much easier to protect. My initial thought is to take a
stock Android phone, replace the dialer with a SIP client capable of
doing ZRTP, and customize the phone to tower communication so that all
communication between the two is fully encrypted (and I don't mean the
BS GSM encryption). Once the data gets on the network, it would be
decrypted and calls would be connected. Content would be protected
automatically when the user called ANY SIP device that supported ZRTP.
Calls to PTSN would still be wide open.

Is this workable in any form or fashion? Am I a complete babbling idiot?
Is anyone working on this currently?

Your thoughts are most welcomed.

Regards,
Anthony
-- 
Anthony Papillion
Phone:   1.918.533.9699
SIP:     sip:cajuntechie at iptel.org
iNum:    +883510008360912
XMPP:    cypherpunk38 at jit.si

www.cajuntechie.org