U.S.-China Surveillance

A Sunday LA Times story, “Public Wi-Fi may turn your life into an open notebook,” describes just how easy it is for others to see what we’re doing and thinking when using public wireless access points like coffee shops or parks, using “free software available online.”

“When people are on a public wireless connection, they have the same expectations about privacy as when they are on the Internet at home,” said Cheung, 32, a computer security expert and an editor for TG Daily, a technology news website.

“But it doesn’t work that way. Someone could be listening in.”

Well, someone could be “listening in” at home too, not using spyware or a similar compromise of your Internet security, but directly sensing your activity and full screen views from just outside your house or apartment. The technique to accomplish this form of surveillance was likely known only within a select number of state security agencies before 1985, when Van Eck published his paper, “Electromagnetic Radiation From Video Display Units: An Eavesdropping Risk?” Since then, the technique has come to be known as “van Eck phreaking.” Van Eck’s paper relates specifically to remotely viewing the screen of a CRT from its electromagnetic emissions, but recent research by Markus Cuhn at the University of Cambridge shows that the LCD screen is susceptible to similar techniques, using “widely available equipment.”