A little chip (inside the motherboard/CPU/hard disk/graphic card) with a radio module that can receive radio signals and write the received data directly into hard disk and/or RAM or read bytes from the hard disk and/or RAM and/or graphic card and transmit it back.
This is why I have always been cautious about those who advocate personal cryptography as a privacy solution. We need clear laws, first and foremost, to reign them in. Otherwise, we are effectively saying that if they can get it (i.e. decrypt it), it is fair game. Cat-and-mouse is not a game we want to play with the NSA.
Either we are a nation of laws or we are not. Laws are what constrain our government and what confer and protect all of our rights. Why should this be any different? Why should we suddenly abandon law here in favor of some (inevitably inadequate) technical scheme? It is naive to believe otherwise and it is more naive (catastrophic) to advocate a model wherein we do not rely on laws, but instead our personal capabilities to protect our rights from our own government. Advocating encryption over laws is just one example of that.
Protecting ourselves from the government with tech is a tempting, freedom-figthting technologist's fantasy. We cannot even duly protect ourselves from zero-day exploits. Why on earth would we abandon the law and position ourselves to play cat-and-mouse with the U.S. government?
"We cannot even duly protect ourselves from zero-day exploits" - well that's definitional, isn't it? It's hardly a reason to give up on trying to protect communications from "big brother".
Of course it has, unless you believe that all of our rights in the U.S. are a sham, and are routinely violated in private by our government. No, it's not perfect and it never will be as long as humans are involved. But, there have to be definitions of right and wrong with associated penalties--in other words, laws.
>well that's definitional, isn't it?
That's my point. These things still exist. The fact that we continue to battle one-off hackers, groups, etc. and frequently lose should give us pause to consider whether this is really the cat-and-mouse posture we want to assume with the U.S. government.
>It's hardly a reason to give up on trying to protect communications from "big brother".
I don't have anything against taking prudent measures to protect our privacy in general. But, this idea that technical solutions will ultimately protect us from "big brother" is pure folly. Without the law on our side, we will lose.
I wonder if technology now can tweak and coordinate the multiple existing radios (Wifi, bluetooth, GSM/CDMA/3G/4G etc) on phones and computers to deliver the same result.
Is that possible? Would that require changes in silicon or could it be done with baseband software changes or even above that? I have no idea frankly.
I seem to recall a strong opposition by the government to the development of consumer ultra-wideband radios. I wonder if this was part of the reason. Either way, it looks like some applications of UWB are available now, though, such as wireless HDMI.
(TOP SECRET etc.) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/NSA_COTTO... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_ANT_catalog