‘Philips gave NSA access to Encrypted pocket Telex in the 1980s’. Philips assisted the American intelligence service (NSA) in the 1980s to gain more convenient access to the pocket telexes of an Amsterdam company.
This based on a reconstruction of the Argos research program.
At the time, Philips bought the pocket telexes from Amsterdam-based communications company Text Life, Argos.
The devices enabled people to send encrypted messages via a telephone line.
Police and intelligence services had a hard time cracking the security of the P-1000 telex, so the NSA went to Philips.
After purchasing the small telexes, Philips developed a new version of the P-1000, as the device was called.
With the latest version, the NSA could crack the devices more efficiently, to read along with messages from users.
According to Argos, this story would fit “into a series of signs that the US and the UK have been systematically monitoring their Western allies for decades – and even now -“.