- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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As an american, I always thought these were somewhere between urban myth and scare tactic… Didn’t realize they actually worked!
There was a very small window in time when they could, but they’re all but useless now, simply being touted as a scare tactic.
I can’t find the source for the life of me; but detector van operators haven’t been called to give evidence to support a prosecution in decades; and whereas TV Licensing historically haven’t disclosed their fleet size or operations, their budget drops would suggest that the automotive arm that would support their detector van procurement has been dormant for years.
edit: in fact I think most of the enforcement actions have been outsourced to Capita, which is the equivalent of putting Myra Hindley in charge of a fucking nursery.
I mean, my understanding of the trials of TEMPEST were that it was designed to reproduce the image that was displayed on a screen at any given time rather than detect the use of TV receiver sets.
I understand that for the most part, the TV detector vans used a similar technique used to find cold war spies transmitting covertly - that is to say, broadcasting a specific frequency known to resonate with particular components of a receiver, and listen for the telltale high frequency squawk that was produced as a result of the receiver’s operation.
Advance in technology from the 80s onwards and the move to digital decoding all but fucked this technique.
I’m curious as to how the cat detector vans differed from these.
