Hacker News Reader

Comment by alan_cx | Hacker News Reader

Get a friend to call you on your mobile. Answer it. Put the phone in the fridge. Close door. Walk to middle of room. Speak. Can your friend hear you?

View on HN

Probably not, but they also won't be able to hear me if I put the phone in another room. Or if I leave it in a car.

Yeah but "can't hear you" is not the same as "sophisticated signal processing techniques will be thwarted;" putting the phone in another room might not be good enough. Leaving the phones in the car might work, though I suspected that the risk of the phones being removed from the car while everyone is inside would be pretty high in Hong Kong.

All in all, I think the fridge's insulation probably acts as a good sound barrier, and the hum from the compressor probably adds quite a bit of noise. Probably a smart thing for someone in Snowden's position to demand.

Or being removed/replaced and outfitted with an independent bug complete with radio and power supply. Perhaps it exists as part of a covert, replacement spy battery that powers the phone!

The "refrigerator" had a false back. When the phones were placed inside and attention directed elsewhere, NSA agents opened the back of the refrigerator and installed bugging devices (complete with reserve power cells) in the phones. The goal has always been to identify and entrap counter-intelligence targets.

Snowden is a false flag exercise, which would be obvious to anyone who read Catch-22.

You can never be paranoid enough, because they have a million people with TS clearance thinking of ways to get into your heads. That's just in the US.

> though I suspected that the risk of the phones being removed from the car while everyone is inside would be pretty high in Hong Kong.

The crime rate in Hong Kong is relatively low, especially compared to Snowden's country of origin.

And a freezer acts as a surefire way to not catch some conversation, if you end up walking around the apartment or into the room where the cell phone was tucked away.

Had visitors not brought cell phones in the first place, it wouldn't be an issue.

What is safer in this scenario? Sealed fridge or coffee table in another room?

Car wise, well, that could be impracticable: 1) does one have a car in HK? Or did one fly in and hire a cab? 2) Has one just walked up a tower block to get to Snowden? All go down, and come up again? That would be annoying. 3) If I take all the phones and put them in a box, I know I have the phones. I have control.

In a normal apartment, I reckon a fridge is possibly the best place to put turned off phones to isolate them as best you can at short notice with out super spy resources. Not prefect, but looking round my place, I don't see something better than a fridge for the purpose.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com