In my series about the phones of government leaders I will now look at Canada, where former prime minister Justin Trudeau had a rarely seen telephone on his desk: the vIPer Universal Secure Phone, which is manufactured by the American defense contractor General Dynamics.
Former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau with a vIPer secure phone, December 2020
(photo: Ottawa Catholic School Board - click to enlarge)
(photo: Ottawa Catholic School Board - click to enlarge)
Prime minister Trudeau's office
Justin Trudeau became prime minister of Canada on November 4, 2015 and, after leading the country for almost 10 years, resigned on March 14, 2025, when he was succeeded by Mark Carney.
As prime minister, Trudeau used two office rooms, one in the building of the Office of the Prime Minister and Privy Council (formerly known as the Langevin Block) and one in the Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings. When in 2018 a renovation of the Centre Block started, Trudeau moved to a room in the Mackenzie Tower of the West Block.
In photos of prime minister Trudeau's office we see often no phones at all on his desk. Several times there's only one telephone set, which is recognizable as the vIPer Universal Secure Phone (see below). The vIPer is a sophisticated voice (and data) encryptor that can be used for both secure and non-secure phone calls.
While just one device is practical, it's still a bit unusual because government leaders usually have at least two telephone sets on their desk: a common executive phone for unclassified calls via their internal office network, and another one that is connected to a secure government or military network for conducting classified conversations.
Justin Trudeau meets Mark Carney in his office, December 9, 2019
In between them is the vIPer Universal Secure Phone
(photo via X/Twitter - click to enlarge)
In between them is the vIPer Universal Secure Phone
(photo via X/Twitter - click to enlarge)
Another advantage of the vIPer phone is that it doesn't produce unintentional audio transmissions. This includes disconnecting the microphones when the handset is on hook, in order to prevent that they can be turned on remotely and used for eavesdropping. Ultimately since US president Trump wants to annex Canada, such precautions are not a luxury anymore (given that the device doesn't contain more sophisticated backdoors).
The vIPer Universal Secure Phone
The Sectéra vIPer Universal Secure Phone was developed and subsequently manufactured by the Mission Systems division of the American aerospace and defense company General Dynamics, which is the fifth largest defense contractor in the world. The vIPer phone was launched in 2006 and by 2019, over 60,000 units had been deployed.*
The vIPer can be used for secure and non-secure calls via analogue telephone networks (PSTN) as well as via Voice over IP (VoIP) networks. The latter distinguises it from earlier secure phones, like the STU-III and STE. This also explains the name vIPer, which can be read as "voice over Internet Protocol encryptor".
For secure calls, the vIPer is certificed by the NSA for conversations up to the classification level Top Secret/SCI. Accordingly, the phone was ranked as a Type 1 encryption product and uses the Secure Communications Interoperability Protocol (SCIP). Additionally, the vIPer supports multiple key-sets for interoperability with NATO and other coalition partners.
While its predecessors required a hardware token (a Crypto Ignition Key for the STU-III and a Fortezza crypto card for the STE) to enable secure transmissions, the vIPer phone does not. Instead, it may use digital certificates for unlocking the encryption keys, with PIN-based access controls.
Promo video for the Sectéra vIPer Universal Secure Phone (2013)
Earlier secure phones
The vIPer phone is the successor of the Secure Terminal Equipment (STE), a device that provides encrypted voice and data communications via ISDN and PSTN telephone lines. The STE was introduced by the NSA in 1994 and while it was meant to be replaced by the vIPer phone around 2014, many STE's are still in use today.
The STE was also used by earlier Canadian prime ministers. In the photo below we see an STE on the right side of the computer screen in prime minister Stephen Harper's office in the Langevin Block in Ottawa:
Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper during a phone call, November 17, 2008.
(photo: Sean Kilpatrick - click to enlarge)
(photo: Sean Kilpatrick - click to enlarge)
In its turn, the STE was the successor of the famous third generation Secure Telephone Unit, better known as STU-III. This family of voice encryption devices was introduced by the NSA in 1987 as the first secure telephone that consisted of a single desktop device. In total, more than 200,000 STU-III units have been sold.
Long before, in November 1962, the Canadian prime minister had been connected to the American Gold Phone network, which connected the US President, the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Service Secretaries with the headquarters of the US Strategic Air Command (SAC).
Future secure phones
In June 2023 it was announced that General Dynamics won a contract from the NSA to design and deliver a next-generation secure desktop phone. The VoIP device is intended to "improve voice quality, offer cybersecurity modernization, and support new features like video conferencing while using a flexible, modular architecture to cut total life cycle costs."
This blog post is dedicated to John Young, who died on March 28 at the age of 89. Young was the co-founder of the legendary website Cryptome, which not only published numerous classified, leaked and declassified files, but also close looks at the communications equipment of the US president, which inspired me to many similar postings on this weblog.
Links and sources
- General Dynamics Mission Systems: Sectéra vIPer Phone data sheet (pdf)
- The Globe and Mail: New site sought for government command centre during emergency (2010)
