Classical Values

January 09, 2009

SIGINT

I just happened across an interesting page on signals intelligence. Signals intelligence is about finding out what the enemy is doing by intercepting radio and other electromagnetic signals. There is a lot of information at the link but let me focus on one small part to give you a flavor of the page.

Monitoring friendly communications

More a part of communications security than true intelligence collection, SIGINT units still may have the responsibility of monitoring one's own communications or other electronic emissions, to avoid providing intelligence to the enemy. For example, a security monitor may hear an individual transmitting inappropriate information over an unencrypted radio network, or simply one that is not authorized for the type of information being given. If immediately calling attention to the violation would not create an even greater security risk, the monitor will call out one of the BEADWINDOW codes[9] used by Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States, and other nations working under their procedures. Standard BEADWINDOW codes (e.g., "BEADWINDOW 2") include:

I'm just going to give a couple of the BREADWINDOW codes and an example of how they can lead to an adverse impact during war time.

5. Friendly or enemy key personnel: "Movement or identity of friendly or enemy officers, visitors, commanders; movement of key maintenance personnel indicating equipment limitations."

and

7. Wrong circuit: "Inappropriate transmission. Information requested, transmitted or about to be transmitted which should not be passed on the subject circuit because it either requires greater security protection or it is not appropriate to the purpose for which the circuit is provided."

Leading to:

In WWII, for example, the Japanese Navy made possible the interception and death of the Combined Fleet commander, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, by BEADWINDOW 5 and 7 violations. They identified a key person's movement over a low-security cryptosystem.

The study of crypto and communications intelligence is one of my hobbies. If it interests you the link is provided.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

posted by Simon on 01.09.09 at 10:45 AM

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Comments

then you must know venona... and other interesting things too...

i try to tie whats going on to the shadow stuff. its always there, and FAS.org can lay out more for you (not just sigint), but it is rarely included at all in any discussion of an event.

for instance, almost no one is talking about mumbai being false flag to a degree...

in fact, almost no one takes a map out and looks at it as objectives.. (if you were able to see my psots, i have been posting whats happening just before it happens - i posted that a second front would appear to open... and that looks like its false flag trying to drag another state in that doesnt want to go).

irael is lucky... the somali pirates may have saved them. (a iran ship laden with something caused the deaths of the men that entered the ship, with hair falling out, stomach problems, and death.. te ship left china, and had an unusual make up of crew). (given what the somalies have been grabbing i would guess that someone tempted them with a lie as to whats on board, and they have been doing the dirty work of stopping weapons, and things).

anyway... we rely too much on sigint...

there are otehr weaknesses that i didnt see..

one is that computer audio can play when the computer has been locked... so its possible to cause the speakers to click in a way so that the information can be picked up by a filtered source...

i dont know if anyone is using this...

anotehr one is your hard drive light...

many companies basically connect the drive light to the sequential data stream... well, if you monitor the room one can pick up the LED flashes and one can decode the data that is passing through the pipeline.

tons of stuff...

[one i was thinking of testing was whether the plasma in a cfc light was sending out a vibration modulated signal in the radio spectrum... )

thanks for the post...

artfldgr · January 9, 2009 02:30 PM

In a place far, far away, long, long ago there was a multinational fleet operating.

Each morning, some of the folk in the fleet spent time with super-secret protocols to determine the operating frequency for some of the equipment. Those folk, or others, were then busied setting the equipment up to operate well on the proper frequency.

Then the folks gathered around the nearest PRITAC horn to listen the flagship announce the Frequencies of all Known Sources in the Area, so that all the several ECM shops would not have to waste valuable coffee-drinking time identifying them.

Larry Sheldon · January 10, 2009 02:19 PM