The story I wrote about a backdoor in a TETRA radio standard used by police/military/critical infrastructure for radio communications, got lots of interest yesterday, with many people calling out ETSI for keeping the encryption algorithms secret. I decided to publish my entire interview with Brian Murgatroyd of ETSI so readers can see his justifications for doing this, as well as his responses to other things we discussed. I think you'll find some of his responses surprising
https://zetter.substack.com/p/interview-with-the-etsi-standards
Interview with the ETSI Standards Organization That Created TETRA "Backdoor"

Brian Murgatroyd spoke with me about why his standards group weakened an encryption algorithm used to secure critical radio communications of police, military, critical infrastructure and others.

Zero Day
@kimzetter "Well [obscurity is] also a way of maintaining security." 🤦‍♂️
@kimzetter #tetra should have been one of the most secure platforms around. If even that had a backdoor which could be exploited for so long then I dread to think what will be tolerated in consumer products such as #Whatsapp etc once certain Governments demand it. The potential to do more than the STASI ever dret of is clear.
@kimzetter amazing. if only more interviews were like that. must have been a bit awkward though as you kept making him look very foolish. think he was expecting such a well informed interviewer?
@johnl I think the spokeswoman who was on the call with us probably felt like they should have prepared more for the interview. But I was very grateful to them for making the time to speak with me so openly. They could have just sent me a prepared statement, but instead they were on the call with me for 90 minutes.
@kimzetter you're being very diplomatic. I'm sure they wish they had just sent a prepared statement instead. I'm quite confused as to why they didn't. My guess is they're almost as incompetent at PR as they are at developing encryption standards!
@kimzetter this was a very interesting read/story. Thanks for sharing and posting it.
@kimzetter Executive summary: the front fell off.