Heady Stuff

Wed Mar 12 15:53:07 CST 1997

 Privacy Implications of Hedy Lamarr's Idea         
 by Ashley Craddock 

  Recognizing an unconventional source of a revolutionary technology, 
the Electronic Frontier Foundation is honoring one-time movie goddess 
Hedy Lamarr for her achievements, even as the online activist who set 
the award in motion warns that the EFF is missing the implications of 
the actress' invention. 

The EFF's Pioneer Award honors Lamarr, 84, for her creation of the
concept of frequency hopping - now known as spread-spectrum
broadcasting. Lamarr developed the idea during World War II in an
attempt to help the US military foil signal jamming that made the use
of radio-controlled torpedoes against the Germans impossible. The idea
was that while transmissions over a single frequency were easy to
block, transmissions jumping from frequency to frequency would be
difficult to detect, much less intercept and jam. 

"Done right, this stuff is completely secure, so secure you don't need
cryptography," said David Hughes, a former Pioneer Award winner and
National Science Foundation researcher and wireless communications
expert who started the campaign to recognize Lamarr. "The irony is
that while EFF is giving Hedy this award, they're completely
overlooking the privacy implications of her invention. The Computers,
Privacy, and Freedom Conference doesn't even have a single forum on
the subject." 

But organizers of the conference taking place in Burlingame,
California, this week say the issue is moot and that while
frequency-hopping technology is currently secure, its inevitable broad
proliferation will eventually make information transmitted via
spread-spectrum channels as accessible as anything transmitted over
analog cellular phones. 

"The transmitters and receivers necessary for these communications are
still relatively rare," said Bruce Koball, one of the privacy
conference organizers and a judge for the Pioneer Award. "Once they've
become standard issue, the need for strong encryption will come back
in play. And they will become standard issue. Forty companies are
already manufacturing them." 

Lamarr, who kicked off her film career by appearing nude in the 1933
Czech film Ecstasy, first conceived of her frequency-hopping "Secret
Communication System" while she and musician George Antheil were
noodling on the piano. 

Lamarr's role in developing a technology that has enjoyed widespread
military and civilian uses grew out of her personal experiences in
Austria before the outbreak of World War II. Married from 1933 to 1937
to an Austrian arms maker, Lamarr got what amounted to a
four-year-long education in munitions manufacturing. With Nazi
Germany's influence growing in both her husband's business and in her
native country, she decided to flee and wound up in Hollywood. 

When the United States went to war in 1941, Lamarr wanted to join the
anti-Nazi effort by putting her weapons knowledge to work for the
National Inventors Council in Washington, DC. She was told to sell war
bonds instead. Undaunted, she developed her idea with Antheil and
registered it for patent only eight months after Pearl Harbor. 

The technology remained unused until the early 1960s and remained
classified until 1985, when the Federal Communications Commission made
it publicly available. The FCC limited its transmission power to 1
watt, which in turn restricted the scope of usage to local rather than
national networks. 

Spread-spectrum broadcasting, which sends data at high speeds over
unregulated radio frequencies, circumvents traditional phone systems
and creates the possibility of cheap, quick Net access. "It's a very
democratizing mechanism," said Koball. "It's relatively cheap and will
become more so, and the low wattage and hopping frequencies mean it
doesn't interfere with fixed-frequency signals." 

"I call this the last technology of freedom," Hughes said. "Not only
is the access free, but the power needed is so low I don't even have
to hook into the power grid to get it." 

Johan Helsingius, managing director for EUnet Finland Oy, the major
commercial ISP in Finland, and Marc Rotenberg, founder and director of
the Electronic Privacy Information Center, are also receiving Pioneer
Awards. Lamarr will not attend the ceremony; her son Anthony Loder
will accept the award. 