Did the CIA purposely delay Internet and cell phones development?

[brawnypandora0]

I heard a friend say the reason why the Internet and cell phones never became public until the early 1990s was because the CIA was too afraid that doing so earlier would endanger American security during the Cold War. Is this true? It seems a bit strange that by 1970 man was able to walk on the moon and build the H-bomb yet not develop a cell phone.

[jerenept]

I heard a friend say the reason why the Internet and cell phones never became public until the early 1990s was because the CIA was too afraid that doing so earlier would endanger American security during the Cold War. Is this true? It seems a bit strange that by 1970 man was able to walk on the moon and build the H-bomb yet not develop a cell phone.

sounds possible.

[Johnsie]

No, the CIA are just one government body in a world full of government bodies. I think people give them too much credit sometimes. They are not anywhere near as powerful as some people think they are.

[kostkon]

Nah. The technology is indeed old but it needed some time to really mature; the first mobile phones were like bricks (or even bigger) and analog-based.

And the fact is that the first explosion of mobile phone usage happened in Europe and the first most successful mobile phone manufacturer was (and still is) in europe and not is the US.

[sydbat]

Nah. The technology is indeed old but it needed some time to really mature; the first mobile phones were like bricks (or even bigger) and analog-based.

And the fact is that the first explosion of mobile phone usage happened in Europe and the first most successful mobile phone manufacturer was (and still is) in europe and not is the US.And those first "cell phones" came out in the mid 80's. Before that, the same technology was used for "car phones" and was uber expensive, therefore only rich people in limos had one.*

*Source: I'm old.

[IWantFroyo]

I severely doubt it. The USSR wasn't very far behind us. If we delayed making the internet and cellphones, the USSR would have soon made them, and we'd have heard about it.

[earthpigg]

there is some merit to the commentary, but it isn't "The CIA".

for the internet and cellular phones to really take off, secure international commerce and confidential international communication needs to be possible on the medium.

what was it? anything over 40-bit encryption was classified by the US Gov't as a "Munition"?

beyond the brute-force range of any 80's home computer, sure, but not beyond the range of computing power available to orginized crime or corporate espianoge and certainly not beyond the range of computing power available to any given nation-state.

with 40-bit the effective cap on encryption that could be exported, no major corporation was going to take the risk of making themselves such a relatively easy target. "We will stick with our corriers, sealed envelopes, and fed-ex/postal-based commerce, thank you very much."

[TheLions]

I heard a friend say the reason why the Internet and cell phones never became public until the early 1990s was because the CIA was too afraid that doing so earlier would endanger American security during the Cold War. Is this true? It seems a bit strange that by 1970 man was able to walk on the moon and build the H-bomb yet not develop a cell phone.

The first commercially automated cellular network (the 1G generation) was launched in Japan by NTT in 1979, initially in the metropolitan area of Tokyo. Within five years, the NTT network had been expanded to cover the whole population of Japan and became the first nationwide 1G network. In 1981, this was followed by the simultaneous launch of the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) system in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.[8] NMT was the first mobile phone network featuring international roaming. The first 1G network launched in the USA was Chicago-based Ameritech in 1983 using the Motorola DynaTAC mobile phone. Several countries then followed in the early-to-mid 1980s including the UK, Mexico and Canada.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone#History

google first, open threads later :P

[brawnypandora0]

The first commercially automated cellular network (the 1G generation) was launched in Japan by NTT in 1979, initially in the metropolitan area of Tokyo. Within five years, the NTT network had been expanded to cover the whole population of Japan and became the first nationwide 1G network. In 1981, this was followed by the simultaneous launch of the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) system in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.[8] NMT was the first mobile phone network featuring international roaming. The first 1G network launched in the USA was Chicago-based Ameritech in 1983 using the Motorola DynaTAC mobile phone. Several countries then followed in the early-to-mid 1980s including the UK, Mexico and Canada.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone#History

google first, open threads later :P

Only very wealthy businessmen used them at that time.

[uRock]

Only very wealthy businessmen used them at that time.

As with any other technology known to man.

[Philsoki]

Did you forget the part that NASA had less computing power than the microchip in a birthday card that sings "happy birthday." In the 1960's they would have killed for that chip, what do we do now? We throw it away.

Yeah, sure. They prevented it for security reasons.

Honestly, that's got to be one of the stupidest conspiracy theories I've heard yet. (IMO)

[Lightstar]

If you ever go into the technological fields of the army / national defense, or know someone who does, you will see that what the average citizen owns and sees in his everyday life is near 10 years behind what has been developed in laboratories.

[uRock]

If you ever go into the technological fields of the army / national defense, or know someone who does, you will see that what the average citizen owns and sees in his everyday life is near 10 years behind what has been developed in laboratories.

Yup.

[brawnypandora0]

Well then what about cell phones? Why so late?

[SeijiSensei]

Cellular technologies were invented by the old AT&T and its Bell Labs subsidiary in the late 1960's. While you might imagine that agencies like the Naional Security Agency (http://www.nsa.gov/) (the one that really does monitor (http://pubrecord.org/nation/2290/revisiting-echelon-nsas/) our communications with a lot more resources at its disposal than the CIA) delayed the arrival of cell phones, the reality is, as always, much more prosaic. It took about fifteen years and many proceedings before the Federal Communications Commission before cellular service was approved and implemented in the US. A lot of powerful interests were involved in this process, most of which were located in the private sector. Broadcasters worried about radio interference; entrepreneurs wanted to ensure that any rules the FCC implemented gave them a chance to compete against the monopoly provider in this new industry; the monopolist, AT&T, having invented the technology, wanted to ensure that the FCC would give it a large share of the future cellular marketplace; local communities wanted to control how antenna siting decisions would be made. The list goes on and on. Take a look at http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/OGC/Reports/cellr.txt for some history.

As for the Internet, it was designed, lest we forget, so that American decision-makers could communicate with missile silos and bomber squadrons during a thermonuclear war. Internet pioneers like Vint Cerf (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vint_Cerf) invented methods to route data packets automatically around telecom circuits destroyed or disabled by nuclear weapons and send those packets on to their intended destinations. (Those same technologies underpin John Gilmore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gilmore_%28activist%29)'s famous comment,"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.") The Internet remained a military technology until the 1980's when it was placed under the auspices of the National Science Foundation and later, after commercialization was allowed in the 1990's, the US Department of Commerce. Just this week the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a creature of the Department of Commerce, asked to become a private corporation (http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2037784/icann-break-free-government). How the management of the global Domain Name Service evolves, and which entities will get to control it, has enormous implications for global politics.

And, while I'm sure the NSA paid close attention to all these developments, I don't think they controlled those developments surreptitiously behind the scenes. The development of the Internet was one of the most open engineering projects (http://www.ietf.org/) in human history despite its military rationale. We should celebrate the fact that the people empowered to build this extraordinary technology had a deep understanding of the issues it would create. I recommend a visit to the Internet Society (http://www.isoc.org/).

That said, I'm sure there's very little that can be hidden from the NSA. They're said to have the best crypto people in the world, and I believe it. The Russians are pretty good at crypto, too.

[uRock]

Well then what about cell phones? Why so late?

The most delaying part was most likely creating the demand to fund the supply. Banks had to know they were going to get their money back before they would fund the technology. They still go through this battle for funding to upgrade their systems to handle the load of smart phones as people use more and more bandwidth.

In the Army we had a completely wireless computer networks where every vehicle had a terminal. All traffic run over encrypted frequencies. That was pre 9/11 and probably obsolete. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_XXI_Battle_Command_Brigade_and_Below

[Cracklepop]

No, the CIA are just one government body in a world full of government bodies. I think people give them too much credit sometimes. They are not anywhere near as powerful as some people think they are.

I agree. There seem to be many people who think the CIA makes the world go round the sun.

[Paqman]

the CIA was too afraid that doing so earlier would endanger American security during the Cold War. Is this true?

Nope. The Cold War actually helped spur development of the internet, as the military and national command and control were interested in networks that were highly resilient to disruption. They wanted networks that would stay up and running if a node got nuked. Look up ARPANET.



It seems a bit strange that by 1970 man was able to walk on the moon and build the H-bomb yet not develop a cell phone.

Not really, space flight and the h-bomb were both based on technologies that got rolling in the very early 20th century and were given a boost by WW2. Cellphones weren't practical until we had semiconductor electronics, which grew out of mechanical computing, which didn't start in earnest until the mid-20th century. The CIA wasn't formed until the mid-20th century itself, so wouldn't have had a chance to control the technology, even if such a thing was possible.

[Paqman]

If you ever go into the technological fields of the army / national defense, or know someone who does, you will see that what the average citizen owns and sees in his everyday life is near 10 years behind what has been developed in laboratories.

Depends. In my experience the only stuff the military has that is unusually advanced is stuff that only has a military application. When it comes to IT a lot of capability is bought off the shelf these days, as the civilian IT market has proved that it's able to develop faster and cheaper than military R&D.

[mips]

Nah. The technology is indeed old but it needed some time to really mature; the first mobile phones were like bricks (or even bigger) and analog-based.


And very easy to eavesdrop on conversations so there was no security risk.

[ukripper]

Sounds like a movie plot after smokin pot.