Heady Stuff

[j minnich]

Henry posted:

> Privacy Implications of Hedy Lamarr's Idea         
> by Ashley Craddock ....
>But organizers of the conference taking place in Burlingame,
>California, this week say the issue is moot and that while
>frequency-hopping technology is currently secure, its inevitable broad
>proliferation will eventually make information transmitted via
>spread-spectrum channels as accessible as anything transmitted over
>analog cellular phones. 
>
>"The transmitters and receivers necessary for these communications are
>still relatively rare," said Bruce Koball, one of the privacy
>conference organizers and a judge for the Pioneer Award. "Once they've
>become standard issue, the need for strong encryption will come back
>in play. And they will become standard issue. Forty companies are
>already manufacturing them." ...

The encryption IS the transmission medium in this case, but if the intended
receiver can decode the message it's only a matter of time (and computing
power) before the unintended receivers can do it too.  Contrary to what one
posting said, I don't think that the frequencies involved are actually
unallocated and unlicensed.  PCS licenses up in the 2Ghz range were
auctioned off for big bucks last year weren't they?  B-but what intrigues me
most about this spread spectrum concept concerns power density of the
radiated microwave energy.  The theoretical limitation for spread spectrum
data transfer doesn't seem to lie in available bandwidth as in all other
communications technologies I know of, but rather in the power density that
you're willing to put out over the air.  This could have health
implications, re the ever controversial standards for human exposure to
microwave energy.  I'm aware of only one "sober" book on the subject of
microwave exposure, and that's Nicholas Steneck's _The Microwave Debate_,
published by MIT back in 1984  (I exclude Paul Brodeur's stuff from my
"sober" category). I've seen some stuff on auditory microwave effects, too,
but that's quite another story.  Does anyone know of anything more recent
than the Steneck book?   A-and who's this here Ashley Craddock?   -j minnich

---------------------------------------------------------------
...The poet is dead.
Nor will ever again hear the sea lions 
Grunt in the kelp at Point Lobos.
Nor look to the south when the grunion 
Run the Pacific, and the plunging
Shearwaters, insatiable, 
Stun themselves in the sea.  
   -Wm. Everson