At 07:04 PM 04/12/2001 -0400, Sunder and somebody wrote:
The power supply was a considerable source of speculation. If the bug had been attached to the battery, then it would have been much more detectable. Stories had it that Bell had checked under the hood; it would not take more than a VOM to detect a discharge. I think you could wire up a bug to whatever recharges the battery and have the bug recharge it's batteries that way.. that would of course increase the size. I'm just theorizing on bug design of course... :)
"Whatever recharges the battery" in a car is the alternator. You'd wire it up to a battery feed instead - the lighting system is distributed widely enough around the car that that's probably convenient if you want to put it somewhere harder to see.
There was no discussion of military bits vs. civilian bits, rather military grade vs. civilian grade.
Doesn't matter - they're not trying to locate Bell within 100 feet to target him with nuclear weapons, just keep general track of where he's going and be able to demonstrate where his car was at least to the across-the-state-line level of accuracy.