

During Mandela's imprisonment, a strong worldwide anti-apartheids movement was led from the UK and The Netherlands. In the Netherlands, the movement was headed by Connie Braam who had recruted an army of volunteers for the underground covert operations in South Africa. As part of these operations, she had been actively looking for suitable communications equipment.



In her book Operatie Vula, Conny Braam explains how one of her people met a guy, by the name of Floris, in a pub in Amsterdam, who allegedly had developed the PX-1000 [5]. From him they learned that the device had been taken off the market as its encryption was too strong. It had been replaced by a calculator but he suggested to find the older version with built-in crypto.



In 1986, the calculator version of the PX-1000 had meanwhile been replaced by the new NSA-weakened PX-1000Cr. Later in her book (p. 86) Braam confirms that Floris had been able to get hold of a couple of the older crypto-capable PX-1000 versions, which indicates that they were aware of the difference between the two versions. We may therefore assume that the anti-apartheid movement used the more secure version of the PX-1000 and had outsmarted the NSA.



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