Bush Causes Cell Phone Ban 588
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.
Cellphone bomb FUD news (Score:2, Informative)
I regularly read articles about terrorists using cell phones to trigger bombs. The Thai government seems to be particularly worried about this; two years ago I blogged about a particularly bizarre movie-plot threat along these lines. And last year I blogged about the cell phone network being restricted after the Mumbai terrorist bombings.
Source [schneier.com]
Speaking of more than one way... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I've wondered about this... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:But seriously (Score:3, Informative)
Don't take the propaganda bait by lumping in legitmate activists with those who destroy property and incite riots.
Does it matter..... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Sure its not exclusive (Score:3, Informative)
"Movie plot" security (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.google.com/search?q=movie+plot+securit
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:Should read... (Score:3, Informative)
Australian Security Bans Cell Phones For Bush Visit
I also have to question why this is even worthy of space on this site, especially since the linked story reminds us that this has been done before:
The technology was first used by the US president when Bush attended the APEC summit in Pusan, South Korea, in 2005.
Someone search the
By the way, this is probably a lot more routine than people realize. In October 2004, the President was making campaign stops around Florida in the days leading up to the election. He made an appearance at Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville on a Saturday afternoon. At one point, Air Force One overflew the stadium on the way to Jacksonville International Airport. A few moments later, Secret Service and other security people began to appear on the field and near the tunnels. At one point, I took out my phone and tried to make a call, but had no signal.
This was in an open-air NFL stadium, surrounded by cell towers, on the edge of the downtown of a fairly large city. I also know that my service is always available, since I have Jaguars season tickets and have been in that building over 110 times since 1995. And my cell phone always worked, especially when the folks at my job called in the middle of a game to complain about server or internet outages.
Time to let this go, lefties.
Re:Sure its not exclusive (Score:2, Informative)
Re:911 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I've wondered about this... (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re:I've wondered about this... (Score:3, Informative)
Typically? Where did you get the stats? :)
My phone provider sends me an SMS every now and then, and I get about one call a month by somebody who mistyped someone else's phone number. I wouldn't want to risk that while assembling or placing a bomb. The couple of cheap phones that I've owned don't have an option to switch the vibrator off for everything except calls from certain known phone numbers.
Re:I've wondered about this... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Should read... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Should read... (Score:1, Informative)
Was he a true conservative when he stood by as Saddam gassed the Kurds in March of '88?
Stop the hero worship. He was an actor and a prop.
Re:Should read... (Score:4, Informative)
For FM receivers, quieting and not RF signal strength is normally measured which is roughly analogous to demodulated signal to noise level or bit error rate. Using a non coherent jamming signal will lower any measured signal strength. You might notice that tuning an FM receiver to an empty channel returns large amounts of demodulated noise and an indication of zero signal strength.
For AM and SSB receivers, signal strength is taken from either the automatic gain control or directly from the signal level. A jamming signal will directly show up in the signal strength indicator just like it would with a spectrum analyser.
Cell phones of course using complex modulation encompassing both FM and AM could read signal strength in any number of ways. If I were designing a jamming system, I would rely on using a denial of service through the base stations with or without cooperation first, jamming the control frequencies second, and jamming the data channels third.
Re:Helicopter (Score:3, Informative)
The most quiet helo in the US Army inventory would probably be the A/MH-6, but that's only in the SOAR TO&E.