Messing around TSCM.com, musing over detection of bugs. Getting an
immediate idea I'd like to get peer-reviewed.
There is a problem with bug sweeps in some countries. The legal TCSM
providers can be legally required to not inform the client about a
police-authorized bug, and/or legally forbidden to tamper with it. So a
customer-operated solution should exist.
GNU-Radio project seems to me to be flexible enough to be suitable as a
bug detector. With proper tuner (or a selectable set of tuners to be
wideband enough), the device could act as a 24/7-running frequency
analyzer, checking the electromagnetic spectrum, alerting the operators
about suspicious changes - suddenly appearing signals, suspicious pulses,
something that looks like a spread-spectrum transmission.
(Because of the equipment limitations, we can't see all the spectrum at
once; this approach is more similar to a guardian walking around the
facility, listening and looking wherever he is at the moment, eventually
returning a bit and looking closer if he hears a suspicious sound. Will
have some probability of missing pulse-nature signals, if they will be off
during the scan in their part of the spectrum, but will have chance
proportional to their duty cycle to see them too, and with proper software
it could be instructed to check the frequencies where a signal once is and
once isn't for pulsed signals (listening on the suspected frequencies for
longer time).)
With proper software, the system could write alert reports including
characteristics of the suspicious signals, or even recorded samples of
the signals for further evaluation.
Could serve as a 24/7 TCSM spectrum sweep, limited by the positions of the
antennas. (Though there could be several antennas, switched periodically,
in order to detect even more directional signals.) The advantage of 24/7
approach is easy time correlation of a suspicious signal with eventual
suspicious "physical" events (a visitor, a facility without anyone
present...). Usage of several antennas could allow triangulation of the
signal source within (or outside of) the supervised facility.
Correlation of signals that should be the same from several antennas could
reveal even transmitters trying to hide in stronger nearby transmitters
(so called "snuggling").
The interesting part will of course be the software, either automatically
correlating present signals with past ones and sending reports of
suspicions, or some advanced visualisation system showing the 3D (4D) data
(time, frequency, intensity(, source antenna)).
Could cover the cases of bugs implanted into protected objects during
black-bag jobs or by the insiders, wireless microphones carried by hostile
visitors, and even increased rate of communication on the related
frequencies when a raid or a blackbag job is being prepared, if the
adversary doesn't keep radio silence. Could deny the adversaries
undetected usage of RF transmitters, at least in sane frequency ranges,
significantly limiting their technological options.
Could it work? Why not? If I would fill this idea with water, where it
would leak? Do I watch way too many spy movies?
Feel free to comment, feel free to forward anywhere where it could spur
some interest or further comments.
Shaddack, the Mad Scientist
