typewriter : Java Glossary

My university typewriter, a Smith Corona with changeable type

My university typewriter, a Smith Corona with changeable type

Many people (including the Indian and German governments) are considering reverting to manual or electric typewriters to avoid spying by the US government and other bad guys. This is far from foolproof:

• A recording of the sound of typewriter can be analysed and used to reconstruct the keystrokes.
• The ribbon contains a record of everything typed. It must be guarded as carefully as the typed documents.
• Paper documents can be intercepted in the mail.
• If you don’t have a phone or don’t use the Internet, this will attract attention to yourself since it is so unusual in this age. This is how bin Laden was tracked down.

Instead, consider using a computer not attached to the Internet. Nobody can hack it without getting physical access to it. You can exchange documents on a USB (Universal Serial Bus) Flash drives using one-time-pad uncrackable encoding. Computers broadcast radiation. Spies can read your screen and note your keystrokes from a distance. To protect against that you would have to put the computer in a Faraday cage to contain the radiation.