Bush Causes Cell Phone Ban

An anonymous reader writes "When President George Bush visits Sydney, Australia for the APEC Summit in September, all cell phone calls within the radius of a football field will be suppressed. The president's motorcade will be shadowed by a helicopter equipped with signal-jamming equipment. Terrorists have used mobile phones to detonate remote-controlled bombs in Iraq and elsewhere in the world." There are other ways to detonate explosives remotely. Doesn't seem like the smartest thing to let potential enemies know of such plans in advance.

Comments

Speaking of more than one way...

[rjamestaylor]

There are other ways to detonate explosives remotely. Doesn't seem like the smartest thing to let potential enemies know of such plans in advance.

What makes you think this is the only countermeasures they are employing? Perhaps they just want to get the word out about why a helicopter is tailing the President and why people's cell phones seem to be losing signal in his powerful presence. That is, maybe they want to explain the obvious stuff in advance.

"Movie plot" security

[Joce640k]

This is a perfect example of what Bruce Schneier calls "movie plot security" - looks good to have black helicopters flying around but doesn't really achieve much.

http://www.google.com/search?q=movie+plot+security

PS: Yes, the Madrid bombers used cell phones to detonate the bombs, but they didn't do it by calling the 'phone. They used the alarm clock function.

PPS: How till this prevent suicide bombers, etc.?

Re:I've wondered about this...

[Dan East]

They typically wire the detonator in place of the vibrator motor in the phone. The motor is (relatively) large, the leads are fairly easy to access, the power source is continuous DC (unlike speakers, which is an analog signal), and it almost certainly is provided the most amperage of any other component in the phone. They then set the phone on vibrate, attach the explosives, and call the phone when they want it to detonate.

Obviously the digital communication required to uniquely address the ESN of the phone, do the proper handshaking, and inform the phone that there is an incoming call is quite complex. The odds of a jamming signal being mistaken for the exact trunk-side communication required to indicate a call is infinitesimally small.

Dan East