Thermal Imaging Decision Applicable to TEMPEST?

Declan McCullagh declan at well.com
Tue Jun 12 06:21:16 PDT 2001


I noodled over this in my article:
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,44444,00.html


On Tue, Jun 12, 2001 at 08:58:36AM -0700, John Young wrote:
> The Supreme Court's decision against thermal imaging appears 
> to be applicable to TEMPEST emissions from electronic devices.
> And is it not a first against this most threatening vulnerability
> in the digital age? And long overdue.
> 
> Remote acquisition of electronic emissions, say from outside a 
> home, are not currently prohibited by law as far as I know. And
> the language of the thermal imaging decision makes it applicable
> to any technology not commonly in use.
> 
> Conventional wisdom of security wizards are that the emissions
> are very difficult to acquire from more than a hundred yards or
> so, but James Bamford claims in his recent "Body of Secrets" that
> NSA was able to acquire leaky emissions from Russian crypto 
> equipment 6 miles offshore Cuba in the 1960s. Advances in 
> technology would presumbably increase that capability.





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