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Deploying and maintaining radio jamming devices is _way_ more difficult and expensive than telling an ISP to shut down service.
by markovbot 7y ago
Deploying and maintaining radio jamming devices is _way_ more difficult and expensive than telling an ISP to shut down service.
- trust07007707 7y agoWay more difficult maybe than running a bash script but in real terms it's very doable.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoDepends on the frequencies and types of antennas used. Doesn't take much to disrupt a radio-based service (people do this by accident, that's why RF regulations exist everywhere). It's not that much of an expense for a government to set up a few antennas and make them put out half a megawatt of noise each.
- markovbot 7y agosure, but they have to have the hardware for that ready to go, and they have to get people deploy each site and prevent it from being vandalized or disabled
- viraptor 7y agoWideband noise generators are cheap and trivial to make. Giving them more power is a bit more tricky. If satellite internet becomes a norm, I'd be surprised if most armies didn't end up with one of them.
- JohnFen 7y ago> Doesn't take much to disrupt a radio-based service Particularly satellite signals, because they're very weak to begin with.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoIndeed. High-gain antennas and some math trickery can compensate a bit (see e.g. GPS and its below thermal noise floor signals), but I don't think a commercial transceiver could in any way win with a 50kW signal on a broadcast antenna turned jammer on a nearby hilltop.
- hutzlibu 7y agoBut iraq is quite a big country. So do you think some jammers are enough for the country, or would you have to deploy them on every big hill/mountain?
- viraptor 7y agoYou don't need to deploy them on each hill because you don't need to cover the whole country. Just concentrate on the densely populated areas and surroundings. People both away from the protests and not taking part in organising anything are likely irrelevant to gov in this case.
- baroffoos 7y agoYou can also use directional antennas to find and destroy RF jammers
- mschuster91 7y agoSuch antennas however are an easy target for rockets, grenades, IEDs, car bombs... in a riot situation good luck defending the jammers.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoWhat kind of protests are you imagining? With that kind of ordnance in use, it's no longer a protest but an all-out civil war.
- mschuster91 7y agoLet's face it these things will be used mostly in situations which can at best be described that way. France's Yellow Vests, Hongkong, China and whatever is happening in India at the moment.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoIt's the first time I hear Yellow Vests or Hong Kong protests involving explosive ordnance deployed on either side.
- mschuster91 7y agoThat depends if you're counting tear gas grenades as explosives - I do. But even then, arson has been used as weapon in both conflicts, and a molotov cocktail is pretty easy to build, transport and throw.
- walrus01 7y agoNobody needs to jam anything, a starlink cpe needs to transmit. Try to operate one in xinjiang province, for instance, men with portable spectrum analyzers and guns will come to take it away and arrest you. With a horn antenna tuned to the right band and a portable spectrum analyzer, finding a starlink, kuiper or oneweb cpe will not be technically difficult.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoAlso worth remembering that this kind of equipment, beyond being available to militaries, is also routinely in use by governments everywhere to enforce local RF regulations. Even in times of perfect calm, if you start illegally transmitting and disrupting legit radio activity, you can expect the local equivalent of FCC to quickly track you down.
- walrus01 7y agoKu and mid ka, high ka band spectrum analyzers are no longer a $40,000 item anymore. I'm pretty confident I could put together a (starlink, kuiper, oneweb) locating kit for under $10k USD. The knowledge to run a spectrum analyzer just to locate on class of equipment could be taught to any moderately educated local police in one day.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoNot much is using these bands anyway, especially in places like Iraq. Wouldn't it be even simpler to skip the spectrum analyzer and sweep the area with high-gain antennas tuned for these bands, the fox-hunting way?
- walrus01 7y agoKu and ka aimed at the sky doesn't propagate like vhf, uhf. You'd need fairly high gain horn antennas to detect off-axial-aim emissions.
- JohnFen 7y ago
- aeturnum 7y agoThe technology that "turns off" the internet is not, in any way, required to run the internet. A router that uses deep packet inspection can process fewer packets than one that simply routes. When communication networks can be accessed wirelessly, the devices that can block those communications will simply become part of what we understand as standard communication equipment.