dial a London number, which would be picked up by an answering machine that Jenkin had modified to record for up to five minutes. The agent would play the cassette into the mouthpiece of the phone. The tones, recorded on the cassette’s othe…Operation Vula needed to be able to send encrypted messages to and from computers in South Africa, in Lukasa, and in London without arousing suspicion. During the 1980s, while the network we have described was taking shape, the larger milie…
Jenkin
engineer · 2 mentions across 1 reading
In this course
Jenkin appears primarily as a technical innovator working within Operation Vula, a covert anti-apartheid network that developed early encrypted communication systems using modified answering machines and acoustic coupling in the 1980s. The readings use Jenkin's work to illustrate how grassroots technological ingenuity—analog techniques adapted for digital purposes—preceded and enabled contemporary cybernetic infrastructure, blurring lines between surveillance evasion and network design. This case study matters to the seminar's broader interest in how political urgency drives technical experimentation outside formal institutional channels.
Mentioned in 1 reading