[Saulii]

Looks like the CIA had built a instant encrypted messaging system way back in the late 70's early 80's called the "Discus". Even had "Received" notification. Say what now??


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[Bla1ze]

From the book The Billion Dollar Spy. - http://www.amazon.com/The-Billion-Do...UvbUpU11820377

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-c...ecursor-2015-7

In the 1960s, the CIA was attempting to develop a hand-held two-way communications system that would allow case officers to swap messages with sources without having to physically meet. There were a few possible advantages to these early Short-Range Agent Communications devices (SRAC). SRAC systems could eliminate detection risks associated with face-to-face meetings. Messages could be sent directly to sources, rather than left in vulnerable "dead drops" or conveyed through risky "brush passes" in public. Agents could transmit instructions in text-form over short distances, using radio frequencies that were far more difficult to intercept than those used for long-range or telephonic communications.
Buster, an early version of SRAC, had "two portable base stations — each about the size of a shoe box — and one agent unit that could be concealed in a coat pocket," Hoffman writes. "With a tiny keyboard one and a half inches square, the agent would first convert a text message into a cipher code, then peck the code into the keypad. Once the data were loaded — Buster could hold 1500 characters — the agent would go somewhere within a thousand feet of the base station and press a 'send' button."
This "primitive text-messaging system" underwent a major upgrade in the late 1970s. The Discus, a greatly improved version of Buster, "eliminated the need for the bulky base station and could transmit to a case officer holding a second small unit hundreds of feet away." The Discus consisted of just two devices that could send and receive messages, along with a keyboard larger and more user-friendly than Buster's. The terminals were small enough to fit in an agent or source's coat pocket.
In addition, the Discus automatically encrypted its messages, eliminating the cumbersome process of converting communications into cipher code. It could also transmit a larger data load than its predecessor.
As Hoffman puts it, the device was "way ahead of its time," a hand-held personal messaging system in an era when there was "nothing remotely like the Blackberry or the iPhone" in existence — except for the Discus.

[Saulii]

Awesome book!! Enjoying every page of it!!espionage to the full extension of the word!

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