Dear Gordon,

No that is not the case. The tempest system that I am aware of
can take the signal and reproduce the entire active computer
onto a slave computer.

There are actually quite a few signals and different radio frequencies depending on the device. The biggest signal used to be from the CRT. But, many computers do not use CRT monitors any longer. Thus, the size of the antenna, the antenna gain, and the distance to the target have all changed for, e.g., laptops. Instead of having a target up to two kilometers away as was possible with a CRT's emission, current-era van Eck devices have to be much closer to get an adequate signal.

Once in, the remote operator is basically sitting in front
of your computer just like you are and is able to watch on
the screen what you are doing.

Yes, but he would only have to detect the R/F from your monitor to get that ability. He does not need to detect the status of every chip in your computer. It is possible from close at hand to get a lot of data on those chips from their emissions, but that's all so much noise if you are just interested in looking at the screen.

What would he do with your keyboard cache or your CPU's
various storage arrays?  He gets whatever you get from
looking at the screen.  Don't multiply entities without
need, please.  Shave with Occam's razor.

Suppose he did go to the trouble of reading in the status
of every device on your computer - what could he do? He
doesn't have the ability to remotely copy your hard drive,
because most of your hard drive isn't being accessed and
therefore there is no signal to detect.

Could he generate a signal to type on your screen remotely?
Probably not.  The amount of radiation needed to over-ride
your keyboard from any distance would likely either kill
you or fry your computer.

It is not much unlike pointing an antennae and listening
to the radio.

Much more like pointing a directional antenna and watching television.

The same can be done via your brain and a tempest like system
can be used to turn your eyes into cameras and reproduce
what you see onto a monitor.

I've followed some of this research, and I just don't think that's at all true. The brain is a very bizarre signal processing device. Even a healthy brain is not easy to understand from its electrical output.

Yes, there have been experiments on subjects using brain
wave patterns to establish what they are thinking and using
that to, for example, move a cursor on a computer screen.
With feedback it is possible to generate fairly impressive
control.  These are systems which involve direct contact
with the head for signal detection, and it turns out that
the active thoughts are not "move the cursor there" but
really weird stuff like "my dog died when I was three."

Thoughts which are not very significant don't seem to
produce enough brain electrical activity to generate what
is needed to be detected.   So, you end up with subjects
thinking a series of fairly bizarre thoughts to get the
mind-reader software to do its stuff.  The military is
interested in this stuff for rapid-reaction input devices,
but it has had slow going.

As for turning your eyes into cameras, the eye is a very
poor optical device.  It is some jelly surrounding a
crude lens with a variety of muscles in different places
to pull that lens into focus.  The light impinging on
the retina is turned into electrical signals on the
optic nerve which travels back to the vision center
near the back of your head.  There is not a lot of
signal strength involved, and there is not a long
distance for that signal to travel so your optic nerve
makes a lousy antenna.  Even if it made a great antenna,
the direct information from your eye is very crappy stuff.

What makes the majority of vision is brain power.  The
brain interprets the signals it gets from the eye and
does amazing stuff to turn that data into clear crisp
vision.  It does so with a lot of energy from the body,
so you have a very energetic signal processing system
masking that very weak signal on that very short
antenna.  I just don't see how you are going to get
much in the way of spy-stuff by reading those signals
over a long distance.

Keep in mind that patents are all well and good in those
countries where working models are required.  They are
next to science fiction in the USA, since working models
have become a thing of the past.  Anyone can express an
idea about an invention, and then get patent protection
for 20 years, for a fee, and maybe have time to develop
the idea into a working product in time to exploit the
patent protection.  That's why there are so many millions
of patents every year and yet not so many products around.

Van Eck phreaking works.  It is a fairly simple thing
to tune a television set to display the signal from a
computer monitor.  It was a lot easier in the 1970s
when there were nothing but CRT monitors, and it is a
lot more challenging now that monitors emit far less
R/F.

I don't think brain wave detection or analysis has gotten
to the point where even with direct contact it is easy
to use the data collected.  I also don't believe that
there is any such thing as a van Eck type device which
allows for remote viewing of what another person is
seeing with their eyeballs; if it were available I think
it would be a very lousy image - probably not worth getting.

If you could tap into the brainwave patterns so as to
pull out the part that is involved in processing the
data from the eye into images in the mind, you'd have
something awesome.  But, with that kind of power, one would
probably focus on other mental functions - like cracking
passwords.  Or getting George Bush to think intelligent
thoughts.

Regards,

Jim


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