Interesting thought experiment - protecting confidentiality

[Aglifter]

from the NSA, and their willingness to "share" - including passing along info to use in contract negotiations with vendors.

Thus far, only a handful of lawyers seem to be getting hinky - it should make them all terrified.

Odds are, it will only be a short length of time until foreign governments also start tracking everything - and the PRC has a de facto policy of using their intelligence service to make money for important people. (Or, at least, that's what I've been told.)

(Mostly corp. counsel - I think the criminal law types are still comfortable w. relying on exclusion.)

Now, if "Megacorp" calls "Megafirm", there's no way to track whether the call is to talk to structuring, bankruptcy, or litigation.

However, if they call a more specialized firm, or the direct/cell number of a specialist attorney, then the purpose of their call would be exposed.

The attorneys could use only disposable phones, and rotate numbers, but that's still easy enough to track back.

There are some HIPPA compliant messaging services, which seem like they might work - but I'm not sure. The server was controlled by the vendor, and, I believe, all that could be observed was an encrypted communication went from handset A to the server - so there would be quite a bit of noise - I suppose, if you had a definite time stamp, and enough attempts, you could find out what handset A is on that network, unless you had some type of rotating algorithm to change out handset A is identified to the network...

The kicker was, as I recall, only members of the network could be communicated with - but it seems like it might work well...

For phone calls, could a lawyer advertise call 1888SHYSTER, and ask for extension 103, and somehow avoid the tracking? I suppose if its being recorded, they could record the beeps on the phone to tell what buttons were being pushed...

[Aesop]

"Three can keep a secret if two are dead."

Once you communicate anything with another party, there is no possibility of confidentiality. Pretty much like posting something on the Internet.
I suspect anybody telling you that System X can give you confidentiality is probably selling it, or stands to profit from the transaction.

[Greg]

There are solutions for this... all different sorts in fact, based on specific priorities and details, both commercial off the shelf and custom/semi-custom developments.

Again, this is what I do for a living.

Yeah this isn't my field, but I can think of any number of ways of messing with metadata collection.

[kapikui]

There are solutions for this... all different sorts in fact, based on specific priorities and details, both commercial off the shelf and custom/semi-custom developments.

Again, this is what I do for a living.

Though I don't do this for a living, I have studied some. It seems to me that no matter the system, as soon as one of the parties either does something stupid, or decides (or for that matter someone with access to that information(Snowden)) it is profitable somehow to have that information in the wild, no matter what technological security you have, it's going to get out.

A "unhackable" system is only as secure as the least trustworthy person to access it.