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The Real Risks of Obama's BlackBerry
An anonymous reader writes "When the mainstream media first announced Barack Obama's 'victory' in keeping his BlackBerry, the focus was on the security of the device, and keeping the US president's e-mail communications private from spies and hackers. The news coverage and analysis by armchair security experts thus far has failed to focus on the real threat: attacks against President Obama's location privacy, and the potential physical security risks that come with someone knowing the president's real-time physical location. In this article, a CNET blogger digs into the real risks associated with the President carrying around a tracking device at all times."
Back when I worked at Rockwell-Collins, I was developing software for a piece of SIGINT hardware. Every so often, a group of spooks from the client would come on over to play with the tools (I never learned which branch of the government they were from; management liked being vague). On one of these occasions they were scanning through the spectrum and tuning in to various signals that popped up with various demodulations. Then they encountered a signal they didn't recognize and couldn't understand, and got all excited like kids in a candy store. Someone suggested that it was probably something being worked on at Rockwell itself, and so they pulled out a directional antenna, left our office, and started running through the halls trying to track it down.
And I'd like to be the king of all Londinium and wear a shiny hat.
... the driver simply turned on his cell phone and threw it in the luggage bin of a Greyhound bus. The cops were hundereds of miles off course by the time they found out.
I think that may be unrealistic. Last time I looked (a LONG time ago) the luggage bin of a greyhound bus appeared to be a pretty good Faraday cage.
Basic concept is good though. (Yes they can and do hunt down federal fugitives, serial killers, and the like by tracking the cellphone location when it's just turned on.) Just don't turn it on and throw it in a sealed metal box: They'll zero in on where you turned it on and go from there.
The trick was also used in The Da Vinci Code, where the lead finds the tracking device and drops it onto a passing garbage truck. This is followed by a Keystone Cops / O. J. Simpson style car chase of the truck.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
usajobs.gov
Search for covert agent, SIGINT, whatever strikes you. ...and no, I'm not kidding.
The Chinese seem to be active in EWS, largely because we've developed the bad habit of admitting them to the U.S. for so long to our best PhD programs.
Stat. anal. return processing would require multiple antennas to develop what amounts to a 'map' of the space being irradiated. This sounds a little like the prmise behind backscatter systems, where adapting to the changing propogation effects was a big hurdle. Various random and pseudorandom baseband noise techniques might make the returns less usable. This sounds like EWS and surveillance systems, since tracking and targeting need more precision and quicker response, and generally work in shorter ranges where even raw power can overcome some countermeasures.
Of course, you generally don't need to entirely defeat a system, merely degrade the performance, delay the response, or just confuse the system long enough to get past it. Maybe a few seconds sometimes.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.