Roger Clarke ( and Glen Turner ) wrote many cogent items. Including this one
from Roger that I can add to:
> The military have multiple networks available to them. (I can't
> believe that its operational communications would be dependent on the
> Optus service?).
Communications in the north of Australia are actually extremely difficult.
There have been situations during exercises where Army staff, for the sake
of convenience, will switch from secure military links that are being
problematic, to the civilian network.
I doubt anyone would be silly enough to do this for obviously sensitive
information but, as Glen and Roger point out, even seemingly innocuous
messages about truck repairs and movement can provide vital intelligence. I
don't know whether this situation has been addressed by the communications
systems and procedures in place now. I hope it has.
Secondly, reconnaissance in sparsely settled areas is a vital part of
Australian defence planning, and there are times when that sort of
reconnaissance may have to rely on phones in isolated station homesteads or
Aboriginal reservations. Again, the simple fact that a phone call was made
from a certain isolated location at 2 am would tell listeners a great deal.
Regards, Tony Healy
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.1 : Fri Aug 31 2001 - 03:10:05 EST