Re: LITTLE BROTHER INSIDE

[Jim choate <ravage@bga.com>]

> 
> 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.