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."

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Re:Femto-cells

[Rei]

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.