Astro Saber

[racerman1cars]

Hi All, I was reading the newbie guide to Astro Sabers and it said fasinator stuff was top secret and will get you a date with buba, well tonight I saw a Saber with fasinator. is it still top secret?

[kb0nly]

Did it have the actual module inside though? I doubt it.

I had a few Saber's that i bought off ebay, they had a label on the back and a orange label inside about it, but the modules were pulled of course.

[Osprey]

Doesn't the classification of they key inside the module also effect things? Ie, if it has a top secret key, the module becomes top secret?

[kb0nly]

Most likely. I haven't seen a Fascinator module, only radios with labels on them about not shipping or releasing the module, etc.

Was it Motorola that made the module, or was it another government contractor that made them for the government agencies to install into the Saber's they bought from Motorola?

My bet is the modules will be securely destroyed as they move on to other radios so as to protect the future use of this style of encryption.

[Microwave Mike]

I got a Systems Saber a while back with a Fascinator module in it,
NTN 5715B. After posting about the module here on the labs
And reading what others wrote, I reduced the module to Gold scrape.
It is not the risk and there is no way to use the module.
If I find another, I will do the same thing.

mm

[Pj]

I'll see if I can find it, but a memeber here bought a surplus radio that still had a module.

He did the right thing and called the FBI, only to be anally examinded 10 different ways.

[Pj]

Here are excerpts from the post:

Yes, I was unfortunate enough to have a visit from the FBI back in 1998.
Here's the deal, a Wayne county N.C. deputy sold me a VHF Saber R that had the Fascinator encryption module in it. I was curious about how much the module would be worth so I made a post on a radio chat sight somewhere and within 3 days I receieved a call from an individual who said he read my post and was interested in as many of the radios he could get with Fascinator. I informed him I only had one and he kept asking if I was sure, I got a strange feeling about the guy and then he said he was local and wanted to meet with me in person, he offered 900.00 for the radio as it was! So I said o.k., if he wants it that bad I'll sell it to him, so we meet at a local Bojangles around lunch time and I walk up to his car that he said he would be in and hand him the radio, he looks at it, looks at the back tag and says "Yes , this is a Saber R coded Fascinator radio", Whammo, about 15 Federal agents surround us, one sticks a small cassette recorder in my face and the others are flashing ID's and they ask me to walk with them to their car. Onc inside the car , they pull out a very thick file which included my military service record, as well as a letter from someone at the NSA to the FBI in Raleigh with the heading "Theft of government incryption device" and my full name below it. Well, I about crapped my pants, they asked me who I was working with, was I working with Israel!??!? No kidding, then the guy in back starts speaking some other language to me and I was getting really freaked out!
I gave them the name of the Deputy I got the damn thing from and told them where to find him. After about 4 hours of this they let me leave but tell me "Silence is golden " and they will be in touch. I was followed for about a week buy a pair of guys in a Saturn , then about 2 weeks later I receive a call saying my story checked out and apparently the radio came from the DEA and that the Deputy should not have had it. That's about all there is to say on this, it's all true, believe it or not believe it, but it did happen.