There have been questions for years about US, Chinese, Russian and other country’s manufacture of electronics. What’s really in those chips?
*Are they gathering Intel?
*Tracking us?
*Can they be shut off to disrupt society and cause panic?
*Can they be weaponized?
The fourth question has been answered, Yes!
I didn’t realize Beepers were still made. I haven’t carried one since 2002. My employer supplied me with a Beeper for after-hours call coverage. I had to call the Data Center within 20 minutes and go into work when required.
It does make me wonder what would happen if large scale war breaks out? How much Software has hidden Trojans? What’s coded into the Bios and other chips?
It’s been proven possible.
Btw, this thread is speculative. Let’s talk about the reliability of Consumer and Military electronics?
Will cars still work? What stealth tracking is in the electronics?
Laptops, Cell Phones, Smart TV’s, Smart Phones, Pagers. The age of the Technology doesn’t make it less vulnerable.
This is only an example that proves it is possible to hide Trojans and Worms in the manufacture of electronics.
I not only believe they can, I believe they have. And I do worry. But my personal decision is that, as of now, I can live with the Chinese or the NSA knowing where I drive and what I buy on Amazon. That may change.
Lithium batteries can be unstable. Fires during charging do occur. Especially using cheaply made 3rd party chargers. A fire or overheated device is different from a bomb.
I can easily see how that vulnerability could be exploited to weaponize a pager.
If by “electronics” you mean a cell phone, the answer is yes. Tracking the phone is necessary for it to work. And both Apple and Google, and others, collect info about the users of their phones or apps.
Yep, though it’s usually greed-motivated, not enemy motivated. Mainly they are gathering anything that they can so that the greedy bastards at Google and the like can target advertising towards you. But enemy militaries do gather what they can. Cell phones, laptops, and other electronic devices are prohibited in classified areas for a reason.
*Tracking us?
Yep. Again, it’s more greedy Google folks than enemies, but enemies do try to track our military folks. And, as many Russians and Ukranians have learned the hard way, the enemy can sometimes figure out exactly where you are from your cell phone or other electronic device and send a missile or bomb directly to your location.
*Can they be shut off to disrupt society and cause panic?
Usually causes annoyance, not panic.
*Can they be weaponized?
As you noted, we’ve already had that one answered.
Our military doesn’t rely on cell phones for communication and coordination. The folks in charge of our militaries are aware of the threats.
I don’t know how much useful data you can get from our enemies tracking cars. The manufacturers and insurance folks have a big interest in it though. Again, it comes down to greed in most cases. If you are in an accident, their motivation is to find anything they can to point the blame at you to reduce their payout.
Yeah, a misbehaving lithium-ion battery isn’t going to kill anyone. It might cause some serious burns though.
I wonder how Israel specifically targeted Hezbollah pagers?
It would be a PR disaster and International incident if the weaponized pagers were sold to regular customers in various countries.
Hezbollah should purchase from the open consumer market. A special batch order of any electronics creates an opportunity that can be exploited for Intel.
I haven’t thought about Pagers in a long time. If I recall correctly they have a special communications network? I never had a personal pager. Only the one supplied at work.
I remember seeing Stores that sold pagers and personal service contracts. It was very similar to Todays Phone Stores.
Doing my part for the war effort: I buy so little stuff and drive almost nowhere anymore, so anyone monitoring my electronics is probably fast asleep at his station.
For the vast majority of people, carrying a smartphone has far more benefits than drawbacks. As long as one is not in the Middle East or affiliated with some military/terrorist/similar organization, one has about as little reason to worry about the smartphone as an airliner crash.
This. Also as noted above, if some foreign adversary wants to know where I drove last weekend or what groceries I purchased at Kroger’s yesterday or what I watched on Netflix last night, have at it.
Foreign adversaries don’t care but stores like Kroger do track how people wander around the store. Which end caps do they stop at? Do they linger in front of the cookie aisle? They’re collecting all sorts of data, not necessarily about specific customers but about how customers overall behave.
This reminds me of season 3 of The Wire, when the Baltimore PD contrives to have a cutout sell Barkley’s crew a discounted bunch of burner phones, which they can (having already logged the numbers) track and tap easily.
There was a plot line in The Americans where someone in the KGB thought it would be a great idea to bug the mail robot that roams the FBI office building. And in the end they didn’t even get anything particularly interesting or useful out of it; just a bunch of banal hallway conversations about how the candy machine in the break room is broken again and that sort of thing, because the mail robot didn’t actually go anywhere where sensitive information was discussed.
IMO, tracking the cell phones of a bunch of random Americans would go pretty much the same; it wouldn’t really produce anything particularly useful from a foreign intelligence perspective (From the perspective of a business trying to sell you something it might be useful as discussed above, but that’s different). And people who actually work with classified information are already restricted as to where the can bring their cell phone; you cannot bring your phone into a SCIF.
I do care, but there’s not a lot I can do about it.
Our individual obscurity is our protection, but if someone decides to target you; say, you insulted a certain powerful but petty politician, and he sent his minions after you, every little thing you did can be pulled out, analyzed, and something is certainly there that can be taken out of context, made to sound sinister, and used against you.
heaven help you if you’ve ever actually done something shady while carrying your phone.