[ih] MAP & BBN

[mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman)]

Leo Vegoda wrote:
> On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 1:08 AM, Joly MacFie<joly at punkcast.com>  wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> Weren't electric text communications popularly known as "cables" in the
>> early 20th C?
> As I understand it, governments still refer to "cables" for certain
> classes of inter-governmental communications. I doubt they still use
> telex networks, though.
>
You know, that raises an interesting question:  What has taken the place 
of "international record carriers" for inter-governmental electronic 
messages?

I mean, inside the US Government, a lot of official traffic travels as 
formatted email messages, over classified networks, with various 
encryption mechanisms applied.

But what about government-to-government?  At the tactical level, 
interconnecting networks is a nightmare ? and that's when there's formal 
attention to setting up, say, an allied operations center.  But what 
about when the State Department sends an electronic message to another 
country?  Now that we don't have "international record carriers," what's 
the current medium for "diplomatic cables?"  Encrypted fax?

Miles Fidelman


-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra