$400 million network upgrade for the Pentagon

Thu Aug 15 22:43:44 UTC 2002


>I'm sure that they have all sorts of methods.  On the other hand,
>cellphones make devilishly difficult "bugs" to eliminate, especially
>the ones that are capable of automatically answering the call and
>activating the microphone without any audible ring.  You can't just
>block all cellphones, because many people carry pagers that work on
>the same frequencies, and many people carry cellphones that they
>depend on.

	You can, and they do. Most of the secure government facilities I've been 
into have a strict policy that absolutely nothing that can or does output a 
signal is permitted into the building. That means cellphones, two-way pagers, 
you name it.

	The official reason I was told was that such a device may 'accidentally' 
transmit classified information out of the facility. But I suspect the real 
reason is so that any signal they detect that they don't know about can be 
treated as hostile.

	DS