It’s come to light that officials from Germany are giving genuine thought to once again using typewriters for the production of genuinely spy-proof documents – an idea that hasn’t gone down too well with everyone.
Politicians from Germany have come up with a unique way of safeguarding documents that even the NSA would have trouble in breaching. Far from a cutting-edge online security measure, the idea has been floated of once again breaking out the typewriters for the scripting of the most sensitive documents of all.
The recent surveillance scandal that saw US officials being booted out of the country has prompted German authorities to think more carefully about exactly how secure its intelligence networks really are.
In an interview with the popular morning TV show Morgenmagazin, politician Patrick Sensburg was asked directly whether or not a return to manual document production using typewriters had been considered by the government.
“As a matter of fact, we have – and not electronic models either,” he answered.
“Yes, no joke,”
“Unlike other inquiry committees, we are investigating an ongoing situation. Intelligence activities are still going on, they are happening.”
Of course, the idea hasn’t exactly been met with universal praise and there are those that insist that any such notion makes the German government look a little on the silly side.
“This call for mechanical typewriters is making our work sound ridiculous,” said SPD representative Christian Flisek in an interview with Spiegel Online.
“We live in the 21st century, where many people communicate predominantly by digital means. Effective counter-espionage works digitally too,”
“The idea that we can protect people from surveillance by dragging them back to the typewriter is absurd.”