$400 million network upgrade for the Pentagon

Thu Aug 15 02:10:14 UTC 2002

Actually, yes you do block all cell phones and transmissions in these 
facilities.  I'm not sure if you have ever been in one but having cell 
phone access is simply not a concern.  Neither is much open 
comunication.  They are however smaller locked down rooms you would 
never lock down the entire pentagon that way.  I read earlier a point 
about buffer zones or distance between the building and outside world 
and this quite  common.  Many times as well these external areas contain 
electronic counter measures.  Classified environments are very different 
and have an entirely different set of requirements.

On Thu, 15 Aug 2002, 
Brad Knowles wrote:

> At 1:09 PM -0700 2002/08/14, Scott Granados wrote:
> 
> >  As I recall and definitely don't quote me on this:) but there are also
> >  grids of wires in the walls which release broadspectrum noise electronic
> >  noise for jamming small transmitters.
> 
> 	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.
> 
> >                                                                     It
> >  also strikes me that the pentagon is not going to have many interesting
> >  conversations in there not nearly as interesting as some other locations
> >  I won't list here.
> 
> 	Oh, I don't know.  There are the briefing rooms with direct links 
> to the whitehouse and other facilities.  There's the NMCC itself, as 
> well as the OSD-CC (which had even tighter security than I ever saw 
> in the NMCC).
> 
> 	During Desert Shield/Desert Storm, the Chairman of the Joint 
> Chiefs had a regularly scheduled morning briefing every day, and it 
> always started right on time and occasionally ran a little over.
> 
> 	Since I'm sure that the Chairman still has an office in the 
> building, there are probably similar things that continue to occur 
> today.
> 
> 
> 	OTOH, there are definitely other places that probably have much 
> more sensitive conversations that frequently go on.
> 
> 