My Secure Dream laptop

ROTFLMAO

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they *aren't* after you ;-)

-- "Electricity is of two kinds, positive and negative. The difference is, I presume, that one comes a little more expensive, but is more durable; the other is a cheaper thing, but the moths get into it." (Stephen Leacock)

Depends on who "those who are after you" are.

If it's a three-letter agency, with budget, they'll have you in minutes. Anywhere.

re

What if I transmit the radio signal in only one direction [i.e. towards the access point only]? Will that make it more difficult to triangulate me?

So where's Osama?

too

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 AE6EO

ior

That's the whole point of the phased array antenna system I was talking about. It can cram (almost) all of your signal into a relatively narrow beam pointed directly at the access point. It "knows" where to aim because that's where the access point's signal comes from.

I said (almost) all your signal because the physics of the situation require what are called "sidelobes" (meaning beams which don't point in the same direction as the main beam, or "lobe") to be generated which are beams of RF just like the main beam, but weaker; think diffraction pattern. The second article I referenced for you gives more details. Read them.

Mark L. Fergerson

Probably commuting into his office in Langley VA at the moment.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

And I call myself an engineer.

How could I forget the rf beam dispersal properties of the hat aren't optimal if it's not pointy. That's 1st year undergrad stuff.

Hangs head in shame. :-(

Nial.

Note that the shiny side should be *out*.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

s too

way

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 AE6EO

rrior

ll

Okay, I read the information both the links. Thanks for the help. I'm curious though, could a maser be used to avoid the sidelobe issue?

Maser is a like a laser [photons are in phase with one another, one- frequency only, one-direction only] except in the microwave spectrum instead of the light spectrum.

Since most wireless adapters/access-points, use microwave-frequency radiation to communicate, could I make myself more secure using a maser? Can the maser be efficient for the telecommunication yet small enough to use on the laptop?

Shh!

;-)

Please build you one, and hold the antenna between your legs. Notice the nice warmth this provides. It also functions as chlorine in the gene pool...

Charlie

(phased arrays)

For transmitting, yes, but...

Yeah, I know. However, even though it's the laser's ancestor there's still some spreading of the beam. Worse, the longer the wavelength, the greater the beam dispersal. In smaller words, you know how a laser pointer's spot gets bigger the farther away you shine it on something? Same for masers, only bigger. Sorry.

Oh, absolutely, though it might need its own power supply. And, it would likely need to be aimed manually; you might be able to cobble up some sort of multiple-antenna receiving array that could DF the access point and then aim the maser at it automatically with servomotors, but that would be sort of a giveaway at frinst internet cafes. I mean, think about what it would look like; a turreted thingy the size of, say, a large soup can attached to your laptop humming as it swings around... if that didn't attract Homeland Severity's attention, nothing would.

Conversely, a phased array has no moving parts and it can be built as a flat planar array which is easily hidden in the laptop lid.

A maser is much harder to hide.

Also, I don't *think* there's any way to use one for receiving, though that's less of an issue for your purposes.

Mark L. Fergerson

Silly me, of course there is; they were, and for all I know still are, used in frinst satellite receivers.

But I don't know if one can serve both receive and transmit functions. Not my area of expertise.

=A0 Mark L. Fergerson

In the White House.

laptops.

Your apology should be to Napoleon XIV who recorded it, not the DJ.

On Mar 4, 3:36=A0pm, "Michael A. Terrell" wrote: MT > They need to ship him to Gitmo and MT > waterbaord him twice a day, till MT > he decides he likes to wear clothes.

What if he LIKES the waterboarding?

Make him sit in THE COMFY CHAIR?

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"

It doesn't matter. Sooner or later he'll really piss off the guards and they will drown him.

Film at 11.

The sort of "fast erasure" laptop you are dreaming about will probably not be either easier or harder to track down, than any commercially available "off the shelf" model you might buy at a computer dealer.

Consider the fact that most of the "volatility" of the laptop's data - the fact that it has no hard disk, that its RAM loses its content when the power goes off - makes no difference at all until *after* somebody has tracked you down and seized the laptop for inspection. At that point, they may be less able to find evidence that it was you who was posting hateful gibberish in a chat room... but they'll already have found you and will know who you are!

As to using phased-array antenna on your laptop - that might make it slightly harder for people to locate you by radio direction finding, if they're starting out at random locations. The same would be true of any directional antenna on your laptop. However, if they start RDF'ing for you from a location near the access point, having a directional or phased antenna on your laptop won't help a bit, since your antenna will be "beaming" its strongest signal right towards the access point. The same problem exists with using a maser (a highly impractical idea, by the way - they're big and clunky, and somebody would probably ask what you're doing pointing something that looks like a bazooka and has liquid-helium tanks at a coffee shop!)

How can they find which access point you're using? Pretty easy! In the situation you're thinking of (coffee shops), your postings will appear to originate from an IP address which belongs to the coffee shop itself. Either the coffee shop will have a range of routable IP addresses, one of which is temporarily assigned to your laptop (uncommon) or they'll have a single IP address, and your laptop's temporary "private network" address will be translated to theirs by their router.

In either case, your postings can be traced to the coffee shop. If you use a bunch of different coffee shops, you'll be revealing additional information about your location and habits. If somebody really wants to locate you, they can... every time you start posting, the access point's location can be determined. Post a few times from a few different locations, and somebody can correlate those times, and start looking at security-camera footage to see which individuals were near those locations at those times.

If you annoy people enough, they'll be able to find you.