parnass@ihu1h.UUCP (Bob Parnass, AJ9S) (12/06/85)
x Putting Ears to the Airwaves Rather Than the Ground from November 11, 1985 New York Times William J. Broad Electronic eavesdropping - once the domain of Federal agents, foreign spies and a handful of amateurs with hours to spend tuning their ham radios - has come of age. Thanks to a new generation of sophisticated and often inexpensive hardare, the snoopers can sometimes be snooped upon, as two members of Congress disclosed last week in the case of a band of drug smugglers in Florida last month. According to Federal agents, the gang had used the latest in off-the-shelf hardware and a knowledge of the Government's communications channels to keep track of law enforcement officers who were trying to keep track of them. Among the paraphernalia seized when investi- gators closed in was a 62-page list of transmission frequencies used by hundred of local, state, and Federal agencies, including the Customs Service, the Coast Guard and the Drug Enforcement Administra- tion....... ......Even the White House has reason to worry, accor- ding to Stewart Stogel, a television news technician in Mt. Vernon, N.Y., who spend his spare time scanning Federal frequencies with a ham receiver. He says he has tuned in on President Reagan's aircraft communica- tions and eavedropped on unscrambled calls to Vice President Bush. On the day the President was shot in 1981, Mr. Stogel overheard a White House aide urging Mr. Bush to hurry back to Washington. The voice from Mr. Stogel's tape library advises, "The President is in surgery, and they're taking out the bullet." He said he once overheard the State Department privately helping Richard M. Nixon arrange a trip to Saudi Arabia. Mr. Stogel added that one of his guides to knowing where to eavesdrop is something called the "Confiden- tial Frequency List," a 304-page book sold for $15.95 by Gilfer Associates Inc. in Park Ridge, N.J. Chief among the new snooping technologies is the compu- terized scanner. "Any housewife with $150 can go out and buy a scanner," said J. Michael Nye, a Hagerstown, Md. consultant who publishes a $75 guide called "Who, What, & Where in Communications Security." Scanners "quickly find radio traffic, so it's not like looking for a needle in a haystack," Mr. Nye said. ....[discussion of the vulnerability of mobile telephones]... ....The only way to insure confidentiality, according to security experts, is to use scramblers and other encryption devices more frequently..... "Most Government agencies are becoming aware that they're being monitored," said Rod O'Conner, an execu- tive with the Motorola Government Electronics Group in Scottsdale, Ariz. "Rather than suddenly starting over from scratch, which would be enormously expensive, they're slowly changing over to secure equipment. It will take time, but this problem will largely take care of itself." -- =============================================================================== Bob Parnass, Bell Telephone Laboratories - ihnp4!ihu1h!parnass - (312)979-5414