The Real Risks of Obama's BlackBerry 273
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."
Re:Femto-cells (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Cellphones? (Score:0, Interesting)
No, but I'm sure one of his flunkies, er, staffers do, but I'm also sure it's on a cell phone net you've never heard of.
Re:Femto-cells (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Femto-cells (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder what it takes to get a job like that (government agent or "spook" as you called it). It sounds like in some cases it could be a rather interesting career.
Unrealistic because ... (Score:5, Interesting)
... 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.
Re:Femto-cells (Score:3, Interesting)
It was kind of fun developing it. For example, to make sure that it worked, we made sure we could tune into cell phone calls with it, and there's only one way to figure that out... Cell phone signals are so freaking obvious on a scanner like that -- big, sharp blips, easy as heck to spot. We also used the device as a normal radio when 9/11 struck and everyone wanted to listen to news all day.
Oh, hey, to any "spooks" out there using "Bullfrog" (if it's still in use): on the frontend display (the one that doesn't keep a history, but has bouncing ball which shows you what frequency you're currently at and that has a little snapshot bar on the bottom that you can turn on and off): try turning that bar on and off precisely 42 times.
Have fun! ;)
Re:Femto-cells (Score:3, Interesting)
usajobs.gov
Search for covert agent, SIGINT, whatever strikes you. ...and no, I'm not kidding.
Re:Femto-cells (Score:3, Interesting)
There's some crazy stuff going on in the field of radio communications and radar. While I was there -- and again, I left in the early '00s -- we saw a presentation from a researcher in the field. In particular, he pointed out some of the stuff the Chinese are working on. For example, picture a radar that instead of broadcasting a single frequency, broadcasts pure white noise across the entire spectrum, and then looks for statistical changes in the return and translates that to the radar echo. It'll require a completely different approach to jam, to home in ARMs, and so on. The Chinese are really pushing for technological supremacy in this field; the US has played the rest of the world for decades by being able to listen into everyone else's communications, jam their communications, and prevent the same from happening to us all pretty much at will, and China is looking to reverse the situation.
Re:Femto-cells (Score:3, Interesting)
A friend of mine's dad back in college was in "intelligence gathering" for the government. You know the sort of thing were they kept a "bug out bag" packed and ready to go. Essentially his family was part of his cover story. For this sort of work you apparently needed to join the military, be intelligent & pass the various tests in the appropriate way, maintain a high degree of physical fitness, be willing to do things most people wouldn't and probably most importantly be able to keep you mouth shut.
Re:Femto-cells (Score:4, Interesting)
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.