Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts, and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you? You know, there's this classic scene in
Speaker 1: Mel Brooks's documentary film space Balls, in which a radar
Speaker 1: operator aboard the bad Guy's spaceship announces that he has
Speaker 1: lost the bleeps, the sweeps, and the creeps. Why because
Speaker 1: the radar has been jammed Raspberry jam to be specific,
Speaker 1: and there's only one man who would Dare give Darth
Speaker 1: Helmet the Raspberry. But I'm ARII getting sidetracked. I thought
Speaker 1: I would do a short episode about signal jamming and
Speaker 1: signal intrusion and broadly how it works, maybe a few
Speaker 1: interesting examples. So let's get the bare basics out of
Speaker 1: the way, because it's actually really simple. Signal jamming occurs
Speaker 1: when someone uses a transmitter to send out signals over
Speaker 1: certain radio frequencies at a strength powerful enough to interfere
Speaker 1: or overwhelm communications equipment in the area. We can use
Speaker 1: an analogy here. It's kind of like trying to have
Speaker 1: a conversation with someone in a really loud environment. Like
Speaker 1: let's say it's a really loud party and you're just
Speaker 1: trying to chat with somebody, and every time you or
Speaker 1: your friend talks, the noise in the space just gets
Speaker 1: louder and you can't hear one another. There's too much
Speaker 1: noise not enough signal. That's essentially what's going on with
Speaker 1: signal jamming, except we're talking about electromagnetic or specifically radio signals.
Speaker 1: No raspberries are involved, sadly. Now, let's really get stuck
Speaker 1: in by talking quickly about the origins of radio, simply
Speaker 1: so that we can kind of have a working understanding
Speaker 1: what's going on here. So the full story of the
Speaker 1: history of radio is a really long, complicated one, with
Speaker 1: lots of important scientists and engineers who made discoveries that
Speaker 1: led up to our ability to make radio transmitters and
Speaker 1: receivers and that kind of stuff. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: do the full rundown. I've done it before in other episodes,
Speaker 1: but here's just sort of like the highlights. So James
Speaker 1: Clerk Maxwell's first stop in the mid nineteenth century. Like
Speaker 1: the eighteen sixties, Maxwell proposed a hypothesis that later developed
Speaker 1: into the theory of electromagnetism. He believed that with an
Speaker 1: oscillating electric or magnetic field, one could generate electromagnetic waves
Speaker 1: that are capable of traveling outward from the source through space.
Speaker 1: You didn't need wires or any other kind of connection.
Speaker 1: You could just beam this energy, which was a pretty
Speaker 1: radical idea at the time, but it was a radical
Speaker 1: idea that would turn out to be correct. So about
Speaker 1: twenty years after Maxwell had published his mathematical equations explaining electromagnetism,
Speaker 1: there was a German scientist named Heinrich Hertz, and he
Speaker 1: created an interesting setup to test the idea of these
Speaker 1: electromagnetic waves. Hertz created what ended up being a very
Speaker 1: simple radio transmitter. So he had a pair of metal
Speaker 1: plates that had these little metal balls extending from them,
Speaker 1: and he put the two metal balls so that they
Speaker 1: were close to each other, but not actually in contact
Speaker 1: with each other, so there was a gap between the
Speaker 1: two balls, and they connected to an oscillating power source,
Speaker 1: so alternating current. In other words, the current would go
Speaker 1: in one direction, then reverse and go the other direction,
Speaker 1: and would do this many times per second. So the
Speaker 1: power source meant since it was alternating, it meant that
Speaker 1: the polarity of the two balls was alternating too, and
Speaker 1: if you had a great enough difference in voltage between
Speaker 1: these two balls, it would induce a spark to jump
Speaker 1: from one ball to the other. It had to be
Speaker 1: a great voltage to do that. If it's too low voltage,
Speaker 1: then you get a charge build up, but it's not
Speaker 1: enough for the charge to discharge. Right now, the fact
Speaker 1: that it was an oscillating current that was going back
Speaker 1: and forth and reversing this polarity, in the words of
Speaker 1: star Trek, meant that the spark would actually oscillate too.
Speaker 1: They would go like from left to right and then
Speaker 1: right to left, and left right and right to left,
Speaker 1: so it was zapping back and forth. Next, Hertz set
Speaker 1: up a length of wire and at the end of
Speaker 1: each end of this length of wire he put another
Speaker 1: metal ball, and he bent the wire into a loop.
Speaker 1: And the two metal balls were close to each other,
Speaker 1: but still having a gap between them, but you know,
Speaker 1: they were on either end of this loop. He put
Speaker 1: this loop close to the oscillating power source where the
Speaker 1: balls were sparking, so again not in contact, but close
Speaker 1: to those first pair of balls, and this loop with
Speaker 1: the second pair of balls Once it got close enough,
Speaker 1: sparks started to go between those two balls too, so
Speaker 1: the balls which were not in contact with the power
Speaker 1: source were also sparking, and what Hurts had created was
Speaker 1: a simple spark gap transmitter. Hertz's experiment was the first
Speaker 1: radio transmission in history. Now, this kind of radio transmission
Speaker 1: covers a broad span of radio frequencies, right, This isn't
Speaker 1: something that was tuned to a particular band. It was
Speaker 1: just kind of blasting out a raw signal of noise
Speaker 1: across effectively the entire radio spectrum. Other folks like Marconi
Speaker 1: and Tesla would make improvements in Hurtz's basic design and
Speaker 1: allow for wireless signaling. But the early days of wireless
Speaker 1: communications were really primitive. You were broadcasting a very simple
Speaker 1: series of signals. Essentially, you were either blasting out noise
Speaker 1: or you weren't blasting out noise. So you can blast
Speaker 1: out noise in tight patterns, such as in Morse code,
Speaker 1: and then you could send meaningful communications. But that was
Speaker 1: about it. These broadcasts were also public, right, anyone who
Speaker 1: had a radio receiver would be able to pick up
Speaker 1: those transmissions. So wireless in the early days was not
Speaker 1: suitable for any sort of communication of a sensitive nature,
Speaker 1: because anyone with a radio receiver who was within transmission
Speaker 1: range would be able to hear the message. One smarty
Speaker 1: pants who worked on this problem was Sir Oliver Lodge.
Speaker 1: Now I should probably do a full episode about him
Speaker 1: at some point because he was a really quirky dude.
Speaker 1: So on the one hand, he was pushing back the
Speaker 1: boundaries of ignorance, right he was exploring radio and a
Speaker 1: time when we were just starting to get a handle
Speaker 1: on it. But on the other hand, he was also
Speaker 1: a believer in the paranormal. He was a spiritualist. So
Speaker 1: I think it's an interesting dichotomy there, right, Like you've
Speaker 1: got a person who is fundamentally adding to our scientific
Speaker 1: understanding of a new technology, and on the other hand
Speaker 1: he believes in ghosts. Anyway, in the late eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: Sir Oliver presented a paper on using special radio transmitters
Speaker 1: and receivers that would be tuned to work in specific
Speaker 1: bands of radio frequencies, so instead of blasting out a
Speaker 1: signal across essentially all radio frequencies, these devices would only
Speaker 1: work within this relatively narrow band. Now, Marconi had developed
Speaker 1: a similar technology and the two of them got into
Speaker 1: kind of a patent dispute over the matter, with Marconi
Speaker 1: wanting to put his tuning technology to use, but it
Speaker 1: was infringing essentially on Sir Oliver's patent. So ultimately they
Speaker 1: were able to settle their dispute, and Marconi bought Sir
Speaker 1: Oliver's patent and gave a good old alie and honorary
Speaker 1: title with the Marconi Company, though as far as I know,
Speaker 1: Oliver never actually did a day's work over at Marconi.
Speaker 1: Tuning would mean you could send a radio signal across
Speaker 1: a specific frequency, and radios tuned just to that frequency
Speaker 1: would be able to pick it up. But this also
Speaker 1: meant you could send signals across lots of different frequencies simultaneously,
Speaker 1: and those transmissions wouldn't interfere with one another, because if
Speaker 1: you had a radio that you could similarly tune, it
Speaker 1: would pay attention to a specific set of frequencies and
Speaker 1: ignore everything else. Right, So if I needed to receive
Speaker 1: a message on one frequency band and you needed to
Speaker 1: receive one in another frequency band, and we happen to
Speaker 1: like live next to each other, we could each tune
Speaker 1: our respective radios into our respective radio frequencies and receive
Speaker 1: those messages without worrying about them getting mixed up. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm going to skip over eight ton of radio history
Speaker 1: at this point because we don't really need to have
Speaker 1: a deep understanding of how radio signals work to get
Speaker 1: to the jammy bits. And besides, like I said, I've
Speaker 1: done several episodes about the history and evolution of radio
Speaker 1: in the past, so no need to go over all
Speaker 1: of that material. It's the same like people have traveled
Speaker 1: back into the past and changed the history of radio,
Speaker 1: so no need to go through it. If they did,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that the Tesla fans would have made sure
Speaker 1: Tesla got his due. Anyway. The radio tuning thing, along
Speaker 1: with signal modulation like amplitude modulation and then frequency modulation,
Speaker 1: these would become important components for transmitting broadcasts with sound,
Speaker 1: as would be manipulating an oscillating signal. Right, a standard
Speaker 1: consistent oscillating signal. Amplitude modulation you you, obviously you manipulate
Speaker 1: the amplitude of that wave frequency. You modify the frequency
Speaker 1: within certain parameters. You can't modify the frequency, you know,
Speaker 1: all higlidy piglidy. You have to do it within the
Speaker 1: bandwidth of that frequency band. But this meant you didn't
Speaker 1: have to blast out as signal and just use Morse
Speaker 1: code or something similar to get your point across. You
Speaker 1: could actually speak or I don't know, you could. You
Speaker 1: can blast out Abbas' greatest hits if you wanted to. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna come back in just a minute to talk
Speaker 1: about jamming, but first let's jam out to these messages
Speaker 1: from our sponsors. Okay, we a quick down and dirty
Speaker 1: overview of how radio works. But what if someone else
Speaker 1: wanted to send a signal on the same frequency that
Speaker 1: you were already using. And maybe you're using it to
Speaker 1: just listen to music, maybe you're using it to communicate,
Speaker 1: maybe you're using it as an infrastructure for wireless communication
Speaker 1: between lots of different devices in your home. Well, if
Speaker 1: someone wanted to use that same frequency band, that same channel,
Speaker 1: if you will, and they happen to be really close
Speaker 1: to you, that could be a problem. It'd kind of
Speaker 1: be like putting a bunch of people who are all
Speaker 1: picking up telephones on old landline systems and talking. Or
Speaker 1: we go back to an analogy where you're trying to
Speaker 1: hold a one on one conversation with somebody, but you
Speaker 1: happen to be sitting at a table with six other
Speaker 1: people and there's lots of cross talk going on. It
Speaker 1: gets confusing. With radio. It could mean that whatever signal
Speaker 1: is strongest wins. You might have been in this experience
Speaker 1: where let's say you're on a road trip and you've
Speaker 1: tuned to a radio station and you're starting to get
Speaker 1: to that point where the radio station signal is weakening
Speaker 1: and it's not as consistent or strong as it has
Speaker 1: been and you're starting to lose it. Meanwhile, you might
Speaker 1: be coming into the range of a competing radio signal,
Speaker 1: and so for a while, your car radio sounds like
Speaker 1: it's tuning to two different stations at the same time. Right,
Speaker 1: you might hear little bits of one song versus chatter
Speaker 1: on another station or whatever it may be, until eventually
Speaker 1: it turns over to the other, the secondary radio station,
Speaker 1: because that's the signal that is strongest and is speeding
Speaker 1: through to your entertainment system. Well, if you're you know
Speaker 1: that's unintentional. That's just two different radio stations that are
Speaker 1: in the same broadcast range, that are on the same frequency.
Speaker 1: But you could also do this on purpose, right, You
Speaker 1: could blast out a radio signal, and you can use
Speaker 1: one that is already in use for something else and
Speaker 1: try to overwhelm it, and the devices in that area
Speaker 1: that pick up radio are going to listen to whichever
Speaker 1: signal is strongest. Countries around the world have over time
Speaker 1: designated bands of frequencies in the radio spectrum for very
Speaker 1: specific purposes, and you're not supposed to use them for
Speaker 1: anything else. So this is intended to avoid interference as
Speaker 1: well as clogging up the airwaves with competing signals. So,
Speaker 1: for example, here in the United States, AM radio frequencies
Speaker 1: amplitude modulated radio frequencies. They range from five hundred thirty
Speaker 1: killer hurts, which is actually reserved for travelers information stations.
Speaker 1: I don't think any AM radio stations are allowed to
Speaker 1: broadcast at five thirty, but it goes up to seventeen
Speaker 1: hundred killer hurts. So five thirty to seventeen hundred that's
Speaker 1: the AM broadcast range. Each station has a bandwidth of
Speaker 1: ten killer herts, so it's ten killer hurts wide, and
Speaker 1: that goes five killer hurts above the signal and five
Speaker 1: killer hurts below the signal. So technically you could say
Speaker 1: five hundred and thirty that's really around five twenty five
Speaker 1: killer hurts up to five thirty five killer hurts if
Speaker 1: you were talking about you know the basic rules here. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: FM stations here in the United States range from eighty
Speaker 1: eight point zero megahertz to one hundred and eight megahertz.
Speaker 1: These channels have two hundred killohertz of bandwidth. Other nations
Speaker 1: have slightly different parameters. You know, it's not universal. And
Speaker 1: these radio signals are used for all sorts of things
Speaker 1: besides just radio broadcasts. Right. Some are used for navigational purposes,
Speaker 1: some are for mobile communications, some are for fixed communications,
Speaker 1: some are for television broadcasts, some are for amateur radio,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And it took a lot of time to
Speaker 1: sort out which frequencies would be used for specific types
Speaker 1: of communications and thus would be off limits to anything else.
Speaker 1: And as I said, different countries have slightly different standards
Speaker 1: for the sort of thing. But back to jamming. So,
Speaker 1: during World War One, radio was still a very young
Speaker 1: science and as such, while it served a purpose during
Speaker 1: the war, it was limited as far as its utility
Speaker 1: was concerned. Transmissions were typically very short range and nature,
Speaker 1: and they could be affected by atmospheric conditions, like if
Speaker 1: you had a storm or something that could really affect
Speaker 1: whether or not you could pick anything up, Like just
Speaker 1: the things like lightning would really mess up your radio communications.
Speaker 1: According to the Digital Public Library of America, and aircraft
Speaker 1: outfitted with a radio during World War One typically had
Speaker 1: a maximum transmission range of two thousand yards, so that's
Speaker 1: not much further than a single mile, and you can
Speaker 1: imagine that in most wartime situations the radio would not
Speaker 1: be instrumental to the success or failure of emission just
Speaker 1: because of that limited transmission distance. Right, you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: in contact with anyone for very long unless you were
Speaker 1: just flying very tight circles in a very small region.
Speaker 1: But by World War Two things had evolved considerably. Radio
Speaker 1: technology was much more sophisticated than capable, and radio transmissions
Speaker 1: would become integral to the war effort on both sides
Speaker 1: of the conflict, and as such, interfering with radio transmissions
Speaker 1: would become part of warfare. Interrupting enemy communication channels obviously
Speaker 1: a high priority whenever you're talking about wartime conflicts. On
Speaker 1: the ally side, there were outfits like the thirty sixth
Speaker 1: Bombardment Squadron the thirty six BS. It was part of
Speaker 1: the Mighty eighth Air Force, and the thirty six BS
Speaker 1: would fly missions over enemy territory and attempt to jam
Speaker 1: or spoof radio axis communications, and sometimes that also meant
Speaker 1: jamming radar stations, just as our little silly example at
Speaker 1: the top of this episode was. Now in this case
Speaker 1: it didn't involve dropping raspberry jam on anybody. They would
Speaker 1: release what was called well, they were called windows, but
Speaker 1: you might know it better as chaff. These are thin
Speaker 1: strips of metal, and it's a way to fool radar
Speaker 1: stations that are on the ground that there are enemy
Speaker 1: fighters overhead, right, because the strips of metal will actually
Speaker 1: interact with the radio waves the radar is sending out,
Speaker 1: and the radar will mistakenly believe that there are enemy
Speaker 1: fighters overhead, when in fact it's just this chaff that's
Speaker 1: falling from bombers that are dropping it. And this becomes
Speaker 1: a distraction for radar stations. And if you're doing this
Speaker 1: as part of an effort of an actual attack, it
Speaker 1: can mean that eyes are on the wrong part of
Speaker 1: the sky, or that anti aircraft weaponry are trained on
Speaker 1: the wrong part of the sky, which is the most
Speaker 1: important bit right, and then you can carry out your
Speaker 1: attack with less resistance from the enemy. But with radio
Speaker 1: often the strategy was to use powerful transmitters to commandeer
Speaker 1: enemy communications and send incorrect information. So this was a
Speaker 1: spoofing attack. You may be familiar with that term spoofing.
Speaker 1: It means that the attacker is pretending to be someone
Speaker 1: or something else and is trying to trick you into
Speaker 1: thinking that a communication is from this particular source, but
Speaker 1: in fact it's a hacker or attacker posing as that source.
Speaker 1: So in this case, the attackers would pose as the
Speaker 1: enemy and would give bad intel or false orders in
Speaker 1: an effort to gain an advantage. So the Royal Air
Speaker 1: Force of the UK had a project called Operation Corona
Speaker 1: that was dedicated to this effort. The RAF found native
Speaker 1: German speakers to pose as flight controllers to confound German pilots. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the German Luftwaffe caught onto this and their response was
Speaker 1: to replace all their flight controllers with women, so that
Speaker 1: if a pilot heard a male voice speaking in German
Speaker 1: giving them new orders, they would know, oh, that's one
Speaker 1: of the allies posing as a flight controller. Disregard those orders.
Speaker 1: Of course, the UK they figured this out too, and
Speaker 1: they began to employ women to serve as these spoofed
Speaker 1: German flight controllers. So it went back and forth in
Speaker 1: an old seesaw. Now, obviously, signal jamming in warfare has
Speaker 1: continued since World War Two. Russia has been doing it
Speaker 1: like crazy to Ukraine, for example. Some methods allow the
Speaker 1: one attacker to suppress radio communications by effectively broadcasting silence.
Speaker 1: You know, in the old days, it was that you
Speaker 1: were using it to intrude upon their signal and send
Speaker 1: something else. Now you can actually just suppress the communications entirely,
Speaker 1: not just you know, intruding on the signal. If your
Speaker 1: targets are unaware that they're being jammed, they might not
Speaker 1: even realize for a bit that no communications are going
Speaker 1: through like other people might be desperately trying to get
Speaker 1: in touch with them, but none of the signals reached
Speaker 1: their destination. And that could be really handy if you
Speaker 1: know you are an enemy of this target and your
Speaker 1: plan an assault of some sort. But outside of warfare,
Speaker 1: there are other uses for signal jamming and signal intrusion,
Speaker 1: though we are largely talking about the murky world of
Speaker 1: illegal activity. In most cases. Keep in mind, the use
Speaker 1: of specific frequencies is a highly regulated affair in most countries,
Speaker 1: and folks founded to have intruded upon those uses typically
Speaker 1: face some stiff penalties when they're caught. We'll talk more
Speaker 1: about these nefarious uses of signal jamming and some famous
Speaker 1: examples after we take this quick break to thank our sponsors.
Speaker 1: We're back, all right. Let's say that you are an
Speaker 1: enterprising young person, maybe Christian Slater, and you want to
Speaker 1: build your own pirate race station so that you can
Speaker 1: broadcast without first securing a broadcast license. So you could
Speaker 1: get in real hot water because you don't actually have
Speaker 1: permission to use the radio frequencies, even if the frequency
Speaker 1: is unused in your area, right like, no one is
Speaker 1: broadcasting on this particular frequency. If you don't have a
Speaker 1: license to broadcast in that range, assuming you're not like
Speaker 1: just broadcasting across amateur radio, well you're going to get
Speaker 1: some trouble. Although a lot of people have gone ahead
Speaker 1: and done it anyway, because I mean tracking down who's
Speaker 1: doing it, that's a different matter. It actually is pretty
Speaker 1: tricky to zone in on the specific location of where
Speaker 1: someone is doing this. If you're transmitting over a really
Speaker 1: large area, it narrows things down because you do have
Speaker 1: to have an antenna to push a transmission out. So
Speaker 1: if you're doing so with a high power transmitter, chances
Speaker 1: are people by'd say, oh, maybe it's the house that
Speaker 1: has the fifty foot broadcast tower behind it. But assuming
Speaker 1: you're not doing a massive area, it could be a
Speaker 1: lot trickier to track the location down. Now a lot
Speaker 1: of this ends up being kind of moot anyway, because
Speaker 1: the Internet and streaming platforms have really made pirate radio
Speaker 1: kind of a quaint and arguably obsolete form of punkish disobedience.
Speaker 1: You still might have to deal with consequences if you're
Speaker 1: choosing to stream and you're including a lot of licensed
Speaker 1: material that you don't you know, actually license, But that's different, right,
Speaker 1: you might get banned from the streaming platform because you
Speaker 1: know you're violating policies by playing ip covered music without
Speaker 1: actually having the license to do so. So I guess
Speaker 1: I'll have to wait on launching my internet radio station
Speaker 1: dedicated to glam punk and new wave hits. But you
Speaker 1: know my time will come now. Some folks have used
Speaker 1: transmitters to overwhelm the airwaves and transmit absolute nonsense and mischief.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they actually do so in an effort to push
Speaker 1: out a public message that in itself isn't necessarily nonsense,
Speaker 1: but the framing of it tends to be a little weird. So,
Speaker 1: for example, in nineteen fifty nine, on April first, one
Speaker 1: or more jokesters used broadcast intrusion. They overpowered the audio
Speaker 1: part of a television signal that was coming from the
Speaker 1: TV station KATV in Arkansas, and if you were tuned
Speaker 1: in to watch the news on KATV on this day,
Speaker 1: April first, nineteen fifty nine, audio would suddenly drop out
Speaker 1: and then you would hear a voice claiming to belong
Speaker 1: to Powell Clayton. Powell Clayton was a general for the
Speaker 1: Union during the US Civil War. He was very much
Speaker 1: dead by nineteen fifty nine. He had also served as
Speaker 1: the governor of Arkansas at one point, and this voice
Speaker 1: was telling KATV viewers that they needed to quote share
Speaker 1: in the Great Awakening end quote. So by that, presumably
Speaker 1: the late general meant that Arkansas citizens were to embrace
Speaker 1: racial integration in the state, which is a serious and
Speaker 1: applaudable message, right integration, Great, that's a great message. It is. However,
Speaker 1: a questionable means of delivering that message. So an investigation followed.
Speaker 1: But while the assumption was whomever pulled off the stunt
Speaker 1: had a good working knowledge of radio, no one was
Speaker 1: actually identified like it was assumed, Okay, this person knows
Speaker 1: their way around radio transmissions or else they wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been able to pull this off. So that eliminates a
Speaker 1: huge number of the folks in the region, right, it's
Speaker 1: just the people who know radio. But it's entirely possible
Speaker 1: it was like a college student who maybe had some
Speaker 1: experience working at the college radio station. There were plenty
Speaker 1: of those in Arkansas in nineteen fifty nine. So while
Speaker 1: it narrowed it down, it didn't eliminate like nearly all
Speaker 1: the suspects. There's still plenty of people it could have been.
Speaker 1: And maybe it wasn't a college student at all, or
Speaker 1: maybe it was someone who had learned in college but
Speaker 1: had long since grad We'll likely never know. But that
Speaker 1: didn't stop some people from proposing outlandish theories about who
Speaker 1: was behind this, and they ranged from everything from a
Speaker 1: communist takeover, because keep in mind, nineteen fifty nine, that's
Speaker 1: like height of the Cold War. To quote an inevitable
Speaker 1: Yankee reinvasion of America. End quote. Now this was a
Speaker 1: quote from a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans,
Speaker 1: so you can imagine this person had a particular point
Speaker 1: of view. But I'm not sure if anyone ever told
Speaker 1: this person that the Union won the Civil War, so
Speaker 1: there was no need for Yankees to reinvade anything, because
Speaker 1: it's not an invasion. The Arkansas was part of the
Speaker 1: Union and remained part of the Union. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a pretty ludicrous act to send a message in
Speaker 1: this way, but it really just revealed more lunacy in
Speaker 1: the state of Arkansas. In nineteen seventy seven, on November
Speaker 1: twenty six, someone in the UK was able to take
Speaker 1: over a broadcast signal from Southern Television. They did so
Speaker 1: in order to send an audio only message. So again,
Speaker 1: the audio of the television broadcast drops out and this
Speaker 1: audio goes in its place, and the audio was a
Speaker 1: person who claimed to be an alien named vrillin Vlo
Speaker 1: n I am told and that this alien wished to
Speaker 1: warn earthlings that they really needed to shape up or
Speaker 1: get the heck out of Dodge. And in this case,
Speaker 1: by Dodge, I mean the galaxy. I am sad to
Speaker 1: report that, despite it being nearly fifty years later, we
Speaker 1: humans still don't have our act together. So I expect
Speaker 1: Villain will be back any day now to chide us
Speaker 1: for falling short. Or you know, it was just some
Speaker 1: random person having a laugh by hijacking a TV signal
Speaker 1: by pushing out a competing broadcast signal of greater strength. Now,
Speaker 1: perhaps the most famous broadcast intrusion event, at least here
Speaker 1: in the United States, happened on November twenty second, nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven. That was the infamous Max Headroom incident, in
Speaker 1: which a person wearing a Max Headroom mask interrupted television
Speaker 1: broadcasts on two separate TV stations in Chicago, Illinois. So,
Speaker 1: for those of y'all who don't have any idea who
Speaker 1: Max Headroom is, he's a fictional character. He was originally
Speaker 1: created to serve as a television host for a program
Speaker 1: that would show music videos on British TV, and he
Speaker 1: was presented as being a computer generated AI character like
Speaker 1: he was supposed to be like a computer animated figure
Speaker 1: and AI controlled. Now, in fact, an actual human being
Speaker 1: was portraying Max Headroom. That human being being Matt Frewer,
Speaker 1: who did a great job. By the way, I love
Speaker 1: old Max Headroom videos. They are weird, like really strange.
Speaker 1: I would like to think that Space Ghost Coast to
Speaker 1: Coast copied a lot from the Max Headroom days. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Max Headroom would go on to become an advertising spokesman,
Speaker 1: a talk show host, and a TV show character like
Speaker 1: in his own sci fi television series. A very unlikely
Speaker 1: thing to have happened, but it did happen. So this
Speaker 1: signal hijacker was wearing a Max Headroom mask and the
Speaker 1: first thing that he did was he interrupted Chicago's WGN
Speaker 1: TV signal. This was like at nine o'clock or so,
Speaker 1: and this incident lasted less than half a minute, so
Speaker 1: not long enough for things to really get crazy, but
Speaker 1: it was very odd and I'm sure unsettling for people
Speaker 1: who are watching television at nine o'clock. And a couple
Speaker 1: of hours later that night, the same person interrupted a
Speaker 1: signal from WTTW, which is a PBS affiliate station in
Speaker 1: the Chicago area, or at least was at the time,
Speaker 1: and this interruption included the man in the Max Headroom
Speaker 1: mask speaking the so it's was very hard to make
Speaker 1: out what he was actually saying. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of distortion in the audio, and plus the mask made
Speaker 1: it difficult to hear. But there was also a second person,
Speaker 1: a female presenting person dressed in a French made outfit,
Speaker 1: who was spanking the Max Hedgerroom masked dude with a
Speaker 1: fly swatter to really really high brow stuff. The weird
Speaker 1: signal intrusion which lasted, you know, just just a relatively
Speaker 1: short amount of time. It made national headlines. It was
Speaker 1: got a lot of media coverage because it was such
Speaker 1: a weird thing to have happened. But to this day
Speaker 1: it's unknown who actually pulled it off. Well unknown to
Speaker 1: most of us, anyway. Some folks surely know about it
Speaker 1: because they did it. But once upon a time, Chuck
Speaker 1: Bryant of stuff you should know, joined to be on
Speaker 1: tech Stuff to talk about this specific incident. You can
Speaker 1: actually find that episode in the tech Stuff archives. It
Speaker 1: originally published on November third, twenty fourteen, ten years ago.
Speaker 1: Holy cow, I've been doing this a long time now.
Speaker 1: Those are not the only incidents of signal intrusion, of course.
Speaker 1: There are others, including cases in which the identity of
Speaker 1: the person responsible is ultimately discovered and that person was
Speaker 1: later punished. But apart from mischief, there are other reasons
Speaker 1: why some folks are interested in signal jamming, like using
Speaker 1: signal jamming as part of an effort to rob someone blind.
Speaker 1: So obviously a lot of homes these days are protected
Speaker 1: by systems that rely on local network connections, often wireless connections.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you're a burglar. You a dirty, dirty,
Speaker 1: dirty person. So you're casing a joint and you notice
Speaker 1: that this particular target has security cameras, and obviously you
Speaker 1: don't want your mug showing up on the five o'clock news,
Speaker 1: not when you got I don't know, see TV and
Speaker 1: maybe some funko pops to sell. I might just be
Speaker 1: looking around the stuff that I have in my house.
Speaker 1: I do not own expensive stuff. I just want that
Speaker 1: to get out there to any potential thieves. The stuff
Speaker 1: I own is largely junk and only has sentimental value. Anyway,
Speaker 1: this is not just a hypothetical problem of thieves using
Speaker 1: signal jammers in order to rob a house and to
Speaker 1: dismantle the security systems, or at least to temporarily block them.
Speaker 1: On July twentieth, twenty twenty four, Mark Tyson of Tom's
Speaker 1: Hardware published an article titled lapd Warren's Residents after spike
Speaker 1: and burglaries using Wi Fi jammers that disable security cameras,
Speaker 1: smart door bells. So Wi Fi of course works over
Speaker 1: radio waves, right like Wi Fi is just a different
Speaker 1: brand of radio. It's a different set of frequencies at
Speaker 1: two point four gigaherts and five point zero gigaherts. Like
Speaker 1: other radio signals, Wi Fi can also be overwhelmed. So
Speaker 1: Wi Fi jammers are a thing now. They are not
Speaker 1: legal in the United States, at least they're not legal
Speaker 1: to use here in the US, but they're there's still
Speaker 1: something that you can find online, Like you can buy
Speaker 1: these things online. They're not even particularly that expensive. They're
Speaker 1: typically less than one hundred dollars or even less than
Speaker 1: fifty dollars. So if you had one of these things,
Speaker 1: you could turn it on and use it to disable
Speaker 1: Wi Fi in an area, and in the process you
Speaker 1: could knock out cameras that are Wi Fi connected and
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be able to transmit or record you sneaking
Speaker 1: up because that connection gets jammed. Same thing with alarm
Speaker 1: systems right that are Wi Fi enabled, And that's important
Speaker 1: to note it is Wi Fi enabled once. If you
Speaker 1: have things that are hardwired, that's different. Right, They're not
Speaker 1: relying on radio signals for their operation. They're transmitting over
Speaker 1: wired connections, so those are not going to be affected
Speaker 1: by these Wi Fi jammers. I mean, you could get
Speaker 1: to a point where you have actual interference through the cables,
Speaker 1: but typically cables are shielded well enough so that such
Speaker 1: interference doesn't actually affect them. They have to be because
Speaker 1: you don't know what kind of environment these systems are
Speaker 1: going to be, and presumably it's going to be in
Speaker 1: one that does have exposure to other radio waves, so
Speaker 1: you have to shield the cables or else, you know,
Speaker 1: you would just get interference from everything. So wired systems
Speaker 1: not as effected. But if it's a Wi Fi based system, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's going to be an issue. And obviously a Wi
Speaker 1: Fi jammer is not just going to knock out the
Speaker 1: security system, it's going to knock out your connection to
Speaker 1: the Internet. Potentially, it could mean that you don't have
Speaker 1: any connectivity to emergency services, so it could be a
Speaker 1: real dangerous situation. So that's the reason why they're illegal
Speaker 1: here in the United States. They're also illegal in several
Speaker 1: other countries. The US is not alone in this. Some governments,
Speaker 1: typically those on the more authoritarian side of the political landscape,
Speaker 1: have been known to employ signal jammers to silence those
Speaker 1: who would question the government. So the Chinese government, for example,
Speaker 1: has a history of jamming incoming signals from Radio Free
Speaker 1: Asia and at times other stations like BBC World Service
Speaker 1: among others. So jamming is often used in conjunction with
Speaker 1: other methods in order to impose censorship on citizens. So
Speaker 1: that's kind of the overview of jamming. The question is
Speaker 1: what can you do about it? Like, what if you
Speaker 1: are the subject of signal jamming, either you're targeted in
Speaker 1: particular or you're affected in a region that is being
Speaker 1: hit by some form of signal jamming, Well, you can't
Speaker 1: do much about it other than move out of the
Speaker 1: range and perhaps get you know, signal again by leaving
Speaker 1: the area that's affected. You could shut down the device
Speaker 1: that's jamming the signal if you can find it, but
Speaker 1: you know, discovering the actual location of a signal jammer
Speaker 1: isn't easy these devices, particularly for the stuff that doesn't
Speaker 1: affect huge ranges, things that are for the more immediate
Speaker 1: area they don't have to be very large, so they
Speaker 1: could easily be hidden somewhere and you'd have to be
Speaker 1: searching around everything in order to find them. Or they
Speaker 1: might even just be like in someone's backpack or something
Speaker 1: as they're walking by. That would be very difficult for
Speaker 1: you to track down. And you wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: just walk up to some random person and say, hey,
Speaker 1: let me see what's in your backpack. That's it's not
Speaker 1: how that works. So you know, if you're talking about
Speaker 1: these small devices, if you've got signal interference as a
Speaker 1: result of jamming, the culprit is likely nearby, like within
Speaker 1: fifteen meters of your location, because these things don't have
Speaker 1: a very long transmission range. Finding the device and turning
Speaker 1: it off is all that you need to do to
Speaker 1: restore service. But you know that is tricky if someone's
Speaker 1: high to get effectively wired communications, obviously, that's a big difference.
Speaker 1: Right if you're using hardwired connections with most of your stuff,
Speaker 1: jammers are not likely to have much of an effect
Speaker 1: on you. Like if you have a router and everything
Speaker 1: you've got is connected by Ethernet cable and that's it.
Speaker 1: You don't have wireless connectivity, then you don't I need
Speaker 1: to worry so much. But I don't know anyone who
Speaker 1: is just strictly hardwired. I mean pretty much everyone I
Speaker 1: know who uses Internet connected devices is relying at least
Speaker 1: in part on wireless ones, so those would obviously be
Speaker 1: impacted by a Wi Fi signal jammer. And again, unless
Speaker 1: you're able to find the source of the jam, it
Speaker 1: kind of stuck until that person or thing has moved on.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's the bad news. The good news is
Speaker 1: I don't think it's that revalent. Apparently it's prevalent enough
Speaker 1: in certain areas of Los Angeles for it to become newsworthy,
Speaker 1: So that is an issue if you live in an
Speaker 1: area like that. Being aware of it is very important
Speaker 1: because you might recognize certain signals to use a pun
Speaker 1: that you're being jammed, and being aware of that is
Speaker 1: very important. Being on the lookout for suspicious activity is
Speaker 1: really important. But apart from that, you're not likely to
Speaker 1: encounter it. There might be occasional case is where someone
Speaker 1: is being disruptive on purpose, Like I could easily imagine
Speaker 1: someone sneaking a signal jammer into say a tech conference,
Speaker 1: in order to wreak havoc as part of a haha,
Speaker 1: I prank to you kind of thing. We saw something
Speaker 1: similar with that a few years ago, several years ago
Speaker 1: now at ces when someone was essentially using the equivalent
Speaker 1: of a universal remote to shut down televisions that were
Speaker 1: on display during a tech presentation, a pr presentation at CEES,
Speaker 1: which was a low class, dirty down thing to do.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I could see someone trying to do something
Speaker 1: like that just to cause disruption. But apart from that,
Speaker 1: I don't know that you're ever going to encounter it, unless, again,
Speaker 1: you happen to live in a place where robberies are
Speaker 1: starting to make use of these technologies in an effort
Speaker 1: to cover up people's identities. Well they target a house.
Speaker 1: That's a serious issue. Anyway. Hey, that is our episode
Speaker 1: on Signal Jamming. I hope you are all well and
Speaker 1: I will talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
Speaker 1: is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
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