Well, it was definitely a Macaque moment.
Posted on 01/15/2008 3:49:55 PM PST by Androcles
BTW... it is extremely likely that worldwide 24/7/365 recordings are made by satellite of a large chunk of the commonly used RF spectrum.
You see it is now easy to record a large frequency range as data and sift through it by computer looking for interesting data.
If the NSA does not do this then they are incompetent.
Send a random message on a freq above 30mhz from any point on earth and I’d bet that somewhere it would be recorded and decoded.
Even VERY weak ground based RF signals are easily picked up from space...for example those little half watt walkie-talkies (FRS) you can buy anywhere deliver a strong signal to the International Space Station.
They just did. Only difference, the large objects they dropped in the water apparently weren't mines.
Could this be a Tokyo Rose type situation?
Oh!!! Such a cute funny boy you are...
Darling? Hand me my aircraft carrier...
.....
Fine. We are both right.
Have you seen those amazing pictures from the Hubble telescope? Impressive civilian technology used to support scientific progress. Now that we know the technology exists, is there any reason to doubt that the military has made full use of it? Of course not. Our spy satellites are probably just equivalent to the Hubble but pointed groundward.
Now think about the GPS system with its near synchronous satellites. Do we use RDF, Radio Direction Finding, to pinpoint a receiver's position on Earth? No. The receiver compares synchronized signals from various satellites and computes position from the observed differences in arrival time at the receiver.
Now let's ask ourselves, "Would it be useful militarily to have a system whereby the military can pinpoint the location of radio stations on Earth? The obvious answer is "yes".
Now we ask ourselves, would the technology to do so be prohibitively expensive? For the U.S government? Heck, no!
So what does the system have to look like? It looks surprisingly like the GPS system. It may even use the same satellites.
Want to pinpoint the location of a transmitter operating at 200MHz? Program all the GPS satellites to monitor a narrow band around that frequency and record the transmissions with high fidelity. On command from the ground, download the high fidelity recording of the transmission from each satellite along with the exact time that the signal was received.
Then compare the recordings to identify identical transients in each recording and note the exact time that said transient was recorded at several satellites. The same algorithm used by a receiver to calculate its position using GPS will then enable the military to calculate the position of the radio transmitter.
In case this system hasn't been invented or patented, I hereby claim rights as its inventor with the intention to enrich myself consistent with its commercial value.
I wouldn’t get too alarmed about this.
The only reason it became a news item was because of the ‘additional’ voice, making remarks about “you will explode”, in English.
It was different from the voices of what the radio operator indicated was the operators of the cigarette boats.
Apparently, there have been times that ‘enemy’ ships have been so close to US ships while passing through the straits that they could play catch with a baseball between ships.
It just wasn’t newsworthy at the time.
These ships had no armaments (visible), no ID , and for all we know were the Iranian Special Guard’s cousins out screwing with the US Navy to impress their wives.
We were prepared to fire. They turned and fled. The boxes were a probably styrofoam coolers.
We didn’t fall for any of it. And we didn’t shoot any Iranian citizens without due cause.
We won.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.