LITTLE BROTHER INSIDE

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                         SANDY SANDFORT
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C'punks,

I was just thinking about computer seizures and thefts.  I think
I've come up with a couple of interesting solutions.

REMOTE CONTROL--In addition to denying access to your files by
encrypting, you might want to *change* them in some way *after*
your computer has been seized/stolen.  Pagers are cheap.  They
can be pinged no matter where they are located in their service
area.  They can be accessed from any phone (even a jailhouse
payphone).  And they are small enough to be wired into your
computer.  It souldn't be too difficult to fix it so your
computer can read transmitted numbers from the pager's memory.
Code numbers could be used to tell your computer to take various
actions.  Depending upon your circumstances, you could tell your
computer to decrypt this or that set of files, to reformat the
hard drive, to fry the CPU, etc.

LITTLE BROTHER INSIDE--Even better than a pager, would be a cell
phone.  It would be more expensive, but also more versatile.  In
addition to giving instructions to your computer, a cell phone
could be used to *eavesdrop* on the location where your computer
is being held.  By disabling the ringer and remounting the
mouthpiece, you could surreptitiously call your computer, any
time, from any phone and monitor conversations in the area.  (To
paraphrase an old military curse, "bug the bugging buggers.")  As
long as the computer is plugged in, the cell phones batteries
will continue to be topped off.  (For the truly thorough privacy
advocate, a GPS unit could be hooked into the cell phone to give
you its location.)


 S a n d y

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> 
> REMOTE CONTROL--In addition to denying access to your files by
> encrypting, you might want to *change* them in some way *after*
> your computer has been seized/stolen.  Pagers are cheap.  They
> can be pinged no matter where they are located in their service
> area.  They can be accessed from any phone (even a jailhouse
> payphone).  And they are small enough to be wired into your
> computer.  It souldn't be too difficult to fix it so your
> computer can read transmitted numbers from the pager's memory.
> Code numbers could be used to tell your computer to take various
> actions.  Depending upon your circumstances, you could tell your
> computer to decrypt this or that set of files, to reformat the
> hard drive, to fry the CPU, etc.
>
This would of course assume that the police were silly enough to
use the disk and such from your machine in your machine. From my 
experience w/ Mentor and Erik Blookaxe during Operation Sun Devil this
is not very realistic. As I understand it they took the floppies and the
hard drives out of the original machines and used them on their own. This
was in case their was any 'time-bombs' installed. Another aspect would
be that the machine would have to be turned on. Also it would only work
once. Thereafter they would either examine the equipment in a Farady Cage
or else start doing pager rental scans prior to seizure.

> LITTLE BROTHER INSIDE--Even better than a pager, would be a cell
> phone.  It would be more expensive, but also more versatile.  In
> addition to giving instructions to your computer, a cell phone
> could be used to *eavesdrop* on the location where your computer
> is being held.  By disabling the ringer and remounting the
> mouthpiece, you could surreptitiously call your computer, any
> time, from any phone and monitor conversations in the area.  (To
> paraphrase an old military curse, "bug the bugging buggers.")  As
> long as the computer is plugged in, the cell phones batteries
> will continue to be topped off.  (For the truly thorough privacy
> advocate, a GPS unit could be hooked into the cell phone to give
> you its location.)
>
There is a move here in Austin, TX to put GPS rcvrs. in our police cars
and then transmit the data back to base over their laptop channels.

C'punks,

On Tue, 26 Jul 1994, Jim choate wrote:

> . . .
> This would of course assume that the police were silly enough to
> use the disk and such from your machine in your machine. From my 
> experience w/ Mentor and Erik Blookaxe during Operation Sun Devil this
> is not very realistic....Also it would only work
> once. Thereafter they would either examine the equipment in a Farady Cage
> or else start doing pager rental scans prior to seizure.

I'm not so sure.  Operation Sun Devil was a more sophisticated operation 
than the average cops run.  Cops, for the most part, are incredibly lazy 
and stupid.  I think you could count on lots of them not doing it right.


 S a n d y

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Jim Choate writes:

> There is a move here in Austin, TX to put GPS rcvrs. in our police cars
> and then transmit the data back to base over their laptop channels.

I don't know whether to cheer or cringe.  On one hand, it's belling the
cat.  On the other, it's a budgeted installation of the infrastructure
to track everyone.
- -- 
       Roy M. Silvernail         [ ]  roy@sendai.cybrspc.mn.org
                    PGP public key available by mail
     echo /get /pub/pubkey.asc | mail file-request@cybrspc.mn.org
         These are, of course, my opinions (and my machines)

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