House Paint Foils Wardrivers

Ant writes "Security-minded U.S. decorators' supply outfit, Force Field Wireless, claims to have developed a do-it-yourself solution to the international menace of marauding geek wardrivers: DefendAir paint 'laced with copper and aluminum fibers that form an electromagnetic shield, blocking most radio waves and protecting wireless networks.' According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel's report, one coat of the water-based paint 'shields Wi-Fi, WiMax and Bluetooth networks operating at frequencies from 100 megahertz to 2.4 gigahertz", while two or three applications are 'good for networks operating at up to five gigahertz.' However, there are downsides to this." Since it's a water-based paint, exterior use is only recommended for people who want more copper and aluminum in the soil surrounding their house.

Comments

Reminds me of a store my father once told me

[aardwolf204]

My dad was a war photographer in Korea. He had some level of clearance and once was working at a base on the coast of Florida photographing experimental weapons. He was walking around the facility and started talking to a major. The major was complaining about the fishing boats close off the coast, saying that they were known communist spies doing surveillance of the bases secret operations. The nature of the operations made them need to be outside and there was not much they could do about keeping the spies from photographing their operations from the fishing boats.

My dad suggested that they build a pipeline around the base and pump extremely hot water through it. The steam would keep the spies from getting clear photographs of the bases operations.

Ever been to the airport and notice that distortion coming off the top of the jets in the summer? The waviness is caused by the steam and heat coming from the plane. This is the basis for the pipeline.

The major had the pipeline constructed and shortly after the fishing boats stopped snooping around the base. Think of it as a photographic firewall...

Its not that OT when you think about it.

Radiation in a reflective cavity.

[goombah99]

This could also create problems too. past studies have noted that cell phone intenisty inside subway carriages can be 100 fold higher due to resonant trapping of the energy. Edge effects could be even higher. Like wise there will be reflections creating nodes in your house. Since the wavelengths are quite long these nodes will be macroscopically large.

Notably, the corners of your house will act like corner cubes maximally reflecting the energy back to the emitter itself. If the emitter happens to be your laptop then you are going to get the majority of the radiation passing through you on each round trip bounce.

as it happens, the wavelength is near the wavelength of your microwave. The microwave is tuned to optimally excite the rotational frequency of aqueaous water. The 2.4 Ghz is slightly off the optimum but You are inhogenous enough that you probably absorb quite well in this region. The rest of the dry materials in the room wont be doing much absorbing. Thus you will become the primary fate of all the radiated energy.

so you lose on two accounts: 1) high field strengths 2) all the energy resonates around till if finds your testicles.

Brains! Brains! Brains!

[dbIII]

Or are we all disoriented and stricken with alzheimers due to the aluminum

Here's an interesting bit of trivia about the early alzheimers research: it compared fresh brains from a control group with brains of sufferers that had been preserved in an aluminium sulphate solution. For years people were trying to work out how we could possibly metabolise aluminum (it take serious chemicals, heat and electricity to extract it from alumina) until someone took a look at the orginal study and tracked down the contaminant.

The more stupid the mistake the less people want to admit it - it took many years before aluminium was ruled out as a contaminant, but since the aluminium link had been in the newspapers for years we are stuck with another urban myth (just like the wartime carrot nightsight myth - you can't magically boost you night vision with carrots (Mawson didn't get better vision fron a near lethal dose of vitamin A), but it was the excuse to avoid admitting that radar existed in WWII).