SIGINT planes vs. radioisotope mapping

[Tyler Durden]

Tim May wrote...

"Landline signals are vastly harder to pick up, and I doubt strongly that 
every minorly-radiating landline signal is being picked up."

Of course, optical signals could never be remotely detected by air or even 
without an optical tap. I doubt even aerial optical cable readiates enough 
or in such a way as to be remotely detectable.

However, the vast majority of "last mile" installations are still copper, 
and copper does radiate. But I can't see how that could be detected by air 
either. Even if there's enough radiation, it's going to get scattered and 
diffracted to hell and gone as it passes through the sheath, concrete, and 
then air.

ANd of course, there's the bandwidth issue. In even a medium sized metro 
area the sheer number of landlines will be huge, and any businesses will be 
shipping out their traffic via T1 or fractional T1. Hence, one of those 
airplanes would practically need a small CO to demultiplex all that traffic 
(although even off-the-shelf silicon has come a LONG way from the 5ESS days, 
so the size factor will not be something to sneeze at).

Nah. Any such AWAC-type recon 'surveys' must be seeking out targeted 
information somehow. Perhaps there's some kind of electronic 'red dye' that 
allow a specific set of users' calls to stand out? Is it possible that 
'interesting' landlines are dropped-and-continued on to some narrowcasting 
point for air? This might be their way of getting around the TIRKS and 
provisioning issues related to moving those lines a long distance, and 
possibly through multiple carriers (but then again, that just might be what 
DISAs' recently announced GIG-BE network is supposed to solve!)

-TD




>From: Tim May <timcmay at got.net>
>To: daw at mozart.cs.berkeley.edu (David Wagner)
>CC: cypherpunks at lne.com
>Subject: SIGINT planes vs. radioisotope mapping
>Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 17:28:09 -0700
>
>On Tuesday, June 3, 2003, at 09:10  PM, David Wagner wrote:
>
>>Sampo Syreeni  wrote:
>>>Rather it's the fact that the Big
>>>Brother doesn't have the necessary total funds, and so doesn't listen 
>>>into
>>>a considerable proportion of calls as a whole.
>>
>>Yet.
>>
>>As far as we know.
>>
>>:-)
>>
>>I agree it's an economic issue, and law enforcement doesn't seem to
>>listen in on a considerable proportion of calls as a whole at the moment.
>>But what happens to costs in the future?  Remember, it takes 10 years
>>to get any change to the cellphone/telecommunications infrastructure
>>deployed, so it pays to think ahead.
>>
>>By the way, what's the story with those SIGINT planes supposedly
>>advertised as being able to fly over a city and capture communications
>>from the whole metropolitan area?  John Young had a pointer on his web
>>site at one point.  Do you suppose they might snarf up all the cellphone
>>traffic they can find, en masse?  What proportion of calls would that be,
>>as a fraction of the whole?  One wonders whether your confidence in the
>>security of cellphone traffic is well-founded.
>
>AWACS-type planes have long had the ability to act as "cell towers," so 
>cell traffic is easily picked-up, if in fact they are doing this. Landline 
>signals are vastly harder to pick up, and I doubt strongly that every 
>minorly-radiating landline signal is being picked up.
>
>Perhaps for very, very targetted signals, but not cruising over general 
>cities, it seems likely to me.
>
>I'm not sure of the context here, but in the past year there were some 
>reports of planes circling over university campuses, and many were 
>hypothesizing that SIGINT was being done on telephone and computer 
>messages. This seemed unlikely to me.
>
>I concluded--and posted on Usenet about my thinking--that some campuses may 
>have been targeted for low-level gamma ray surveys. Kind of a gamma ray 
>version of Shipley's "war driving" maps. Possibly for construction of 
>baseline maps of existing radioisotopes in university labs, hospitals, and 
>private facilities. Then deviations from baseline maps could be identified 
>and inspected in more detail with ground-based vans and black bag ops.
>
>>
>--Tim May
>"That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress 
>to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or 
>to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from 
>keeping their own arms." --Samuel Adams

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