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US orders travelers on Air Force One to throw away gifts, pins, and burner phones after China trip (techcrunch.com)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 121 points 5 months ago* (15 children)

The FBI missed a passive bug that hung in the office of the US ambassador to Russia for 7 years.

Don't count them out yet

Fascinating stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)

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  • [+] -51 points 5 months ago (13 children)

    This is old ASF, if you don't think we can't detect these then 😂😂😂

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  • [–] 16 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Do you know what 'passive' means? It's a basically a mirror for a specific frequency. There's no way to "detect" it other than tearing apart whatever it's hidden in.

    The fact that it was made with 1960's Soviet analog tech should tell you that China could plausibly make something better and smaller now.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago*

    It would certainly be detectable. You could do an X-ray, sweep the RF spectrum and see the energy disappear at the right frequency, things like that.

    They had that tech in the 60s too.

    Also when the bug was in operation it was definitely not passive. It was being fed by what must have been a really strong signal to power it, and transmitted the results back.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    There's no way to "detect" it other than tearing apart whatever it's hidden in.

    The Wikipedia article describes how they detected it at the time, with two different mathods. It was first stumbled onto accidentally then there was a focused attempt to pinpoint the source which was successful. Now that technique can be used any time a thorough check is required.

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  • [–] 34 points 5 months ago (9 children)

    tech is tech. if it’s able to not be detected then it’s able to be not detected now.

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  • [+] -8 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    Why do you think it works like that? They know what it is and how it works, so they know what to look for.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Who "they"? Security services are not the hive, It's not like everyone knows everything pr never misses anything. Or do you think it's like a game where you unlock the "passive listening device countermeasures" technology and suddenly 100% bugs across the country are found and new bugs can't be planted?

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  • [–] -3 points 5 months ago

    Or do you think it's like a game where you unlock the "passive listening device countermeasures" technology

    Kinda, yes. Now that everyone knows how it works, and they will, because intelligence agencies share this stuff with their allies, it would become a lot harder to pull the same trick again.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    Modern version would be a silicon device not using any metal, that has a very low power mechanism (perhaps mechanical/chemical) that wakes it up much later where it then works as a bug. For example.

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  • [+] -8 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    This is assuming one country is lagging behind their advancements. Most countries are finally catching up to our tech made in the 90s my dude.

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  • [–] 13 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    I'm not gonna quibble with the details of that wild exaggeration, but I hope we can agree China is absolutely not one of those countries.

    If anything, we're lagging behind them.

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  • [–] -5 points 5 months ago*

    Sure, in terms of infrastructure. Their military is still playing catch up and Venezuela and Iran both used Chinese defense tech.

    China is good at reverse engineering - it's what they do, but temu tech isn't the same as the original.

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