11 ms·

I think the focus on nuclear power in the article is naive at best. Bechtel helps run the national labs, which work on (among other things) nuclear weapons and

by xxpor 6y ago

I think the focus on nuclear power in the article is naive at best. Bechtel helps run the national labs, which work on (among other things) nuclear weapons and anti-proliferation. I would think it's more likely this would be for anti-proliferation work. Have a CIA asset walk near a suspected nuclear facility with this in their pocket while looking like a civilian. Collect radiation data, and if they get arrested or something, it's just an ipod.

RandallBrown 6y ago
Isn't that exactly what the article says?
- ehsankia 6y ago
  That was my understanding too. What other "nuclear energy" related use would there be for a hidden Geiger counter?
- xxpor 6y ago
  Nuclear power != Nuclear weapons, or preventing the spread of them.
  - rangibaby 6y ago
    Nuclear power is a prerequisite to nuclear weapons though. /edit: if you don’t want your country to be an international pariah
    - mywittyname 6y ago
      The first atomic bombs were dropped a few years before the first nuclear power plant came online.
      - rangibaby 6y ago
        Yes, but there weren’t pesky inspectors sneaking around with custom iPods then either
  - neop1x 6y ago
    I have heard Russia decided to build more dangerous reactor types like the one in Chernobyl because they are cheaper + they could use the same radioactive material for nuclear weapons.
autisticcurio 6y ago
Its funny really because I never took my uncle seriously in the 90's when he said I should develop my own Geiger counter amongst other electronic devices. Of course I didnt realise the significance of the fact he had access to the Prestel system which the Govt and Royal Family used for messaging before email became the standard in days when computer hacking was still legal. He also supplied GCHQ with telecomes equipment. Probably contributes to reasons why he broke out of HMP Parkhurst and tried to escape the country. If you wrote his degree titles out in full, it would take half a page of A4 before he could even start writing a letter. It makes me wonder what he knew back then, but as I cant visit him, if he is ever let out, or I dont get another attempt on my life, maybe one day we'll meet & he'll spill the beans more openly. Of course, I can get nodules of raw uranium sticking out the soil eroded by the sea along the Jurassic Coast in Dorset, UK. It doesnt take a rocket scientist to make a dirty nuke or even a decent nuke. There is enough information online from reputable sources like the BBC, Youtube showing 50year WW2 US & UK Govt archive footage and interviews in scientific journals who worked on the Manhattan Project and other nuclear projects to piece together the "meta data" in order to make one, including spotting the spurious info which will make you fail if one should attempt to make one.
- dplavery92 6y ago
  You may be able to find uranium ore with relative ease, but enrichment is a nation-state level project that is unlikely to escape the notice of the world's intelligence and energy agencies.
  - autisticcurio 6y ago
    >but enrichment is a nation-state level project Thats what this man of science said. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69UpMhUnEeY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69UpMhUnEeY >is unlikely to escape the notice of the world's intelligence and energy agencies Thats how Iran and Stuxnet came together. Some history https://www.miningreview.com/uranium/avoiding-covid-fatigue-with-a-relook-at-nuclear-weapons/ https://www.miningreview.com/uranium/avoiding-covid-fatigue-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_in_Namibia#Background_and_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_in_Namibia#Back... Teflon as mentioned in the Youtube vid at the beginning also demonstrates another way to enrich uranium. Are those the only two? I think not.
hindsightbias 6y ago
Or swap it with one an unwitting asset carries around at work.
caf 6y ago
Given that it was DoE it is more likely to be an inspector on an IAEA mission that would carry this.
- xxpor 6y ago
  Why would an inspector need to bother with a hidden detector though?
  - caf 6y ago
    Because their overt inspection activities are in most cases tightly circumscribed.
new299 6y ago
I can’t quite figure out how a Geiger counter would make sense. Typical Geiger tubes (and high voltage generator) would be too big to fit in an iPod. But why would they need such tight integration with the iPod itself? The data isn’t big (each reading would only be an 8 or 16bit int) and could easily be stored on some small flash by something like an PIC12/MSP430. So you’d only need some simple trigger, which might be a hidden menu item which flips a GPIO to take a reading. Or even just tap the audio output and trigger on a specific frequency being played. Audio recordings might make sense. I don’t think the iPod video had a built in mic, so one would need to be added. That doesn’t ring totally true to me either though... The whole thing seems quite weird. I can’t really see any good reason for such tight integration with the iPod.
- 01100011 6y ago
  Have you heard of a scintillator? They are much more efficient than a GM tube and can be constructed from various materials. You can construct them out of silicon, but the energy resolution is poor and does not allow for isotope identification. Using a NaI(Ti) crystal would have allowed them to both measure absorbed dose as well as identify the types of radioactive materials present. As there are commercial products today which are the size of an iPod and detect radiation, I see this as a feasible product. You would want the tight integration if you wanted to steganographically store the recorded information for covert exfiltration. The agencies driving this have a high level of paranoia and may have deemed this necessary for a variety of reasons.
  - new299 6y ago
    There are other detectors you could use. You can use a simple photodiode too. But generally they don’t have the same sensitivity. Generally the sensitivity is too low for most radiation monitoring applications as I understand it. Steganographic storage would make sense, but the article mentions storing on a separate partition. So the tight integration still seems odd to me. Another comment suggested that they wanted to gain general “iPod” modification skills for other projects. That seems like an interesting idea. As an aside... I kind of like the idea of playing specific songs, or a sequence of songs to trigger a secondary processor (which is sampling frequencies played). This could potentially take over the USB port if necessary. That generation of iPods used hard drives, it was possible to replace those with smaller flash drives. This would give you a lot of space to add sensors/secondary compute. And could be done without coordinating with Apple. It does seem weird that they took the chance of this leaking too... and I would have thought they would have taken any other route possible.
ogurechny 6y ago
The radiation detector is either a naive hypothesis, or a false flag. If you want to pretend that your audio player is completely normal, you don't connect any abnormal devices to it. Moreover, any facility in the world that prohibits visitors to have electronics on them prohibits ALL electronics. No one would make an exception for “just an ipod”. Neither would secret services that have been dealing with bugs for decades be fooled by “just an ipod”. If there was additional hardware inside, my guess that it was for unattended covert short range data transfer. Maybe they have even used the famous rock™ interface: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-16614209 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-16614209 But audio recording would be most straightforward function, as it is built in. Switch (or simply re-flash) the player that belongs to journalist or politician when they leave it, then recover the data periodically. That would mean they knew who their target was. By the way, which model did Steve Jobs use? It might be possible that these “secret agents” were not secret agents at all. I suspect that any official business starts and ends with you signing papers that prevent you from, say, talking to newspapers about it because you feel like it, and existence of one-time high-profile project like that is something any sane agency would really like to keep secret. “No paper trail” is actually the most non-ordinary part of all of this, secrecy agreements are a common thing. Oral order to work with two random guys (because they have ominous business cards?), and tell them every corporate secret they need to know? Seems suspicious.

by xxpor 6y ago

RandallBrown 6y ago

Isn't that exactly what the article says?

ehsankia 6y ago
That was my understanding too. What other "nuclear energy" related use would there be for a hidden Geiger counter?
xxpor 6y ago
Nuclear power != Nuclear weapons, or preventing the spread of them.
- rangibaby 6y ago
  Nuclear power is a prerequisite to nuclear weapons though. /edit: if you don’t want your country to be an international pariah
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    The first atomic bombs were dropped a few years before the first nuclear power plant came online.
    - rangibaby 6y ago
      Yes, but there weren’t pesky inspectors sneaking around with custom iPods then either
- neop1x 6y ago
  I have heard Russia decided to build more dangerous reactor types like the one in Chernobyl because they are cheaper + they could use the same radioactive material for nuclear weapons.

autisticcurio 6y ago

Its funny really because I never took my uncle seriously in the 90's when he said I should develop my own Geiger counter amongst other electronic devices. Of course I didnt realise the significance of the fact he had access to the Prestel system which the Govt and Royal Family used for messaging before email became the standard in days when computer hacking was still legal. He also supplied GCHQ with telecomes equipment. Probably contributes to reasons why he broke out of HMP Parkhurst and tried to escape the country. If you wrote his degree titles out in full, it would take half a page of A4 before he could even start writing a letter. It makes me wonder what he knew back then, but as I cant visit him, if he is ever let out, or I dont get another attempt on my life, maybe one day we'll meet & he'll spill the beans more openly. Of course, I can get nodules of raw uranium sticking out the soil eroded by the sea along the Jurassic Coast in Dorset, UK. It doesnt take a rocket scientist to make a dirty nuke or even a decent nuke. There is enough information online from reputable sources like the BBC, Youtube showing 50year WW2 US & UK Govt archive footage and interviews in scientific journals who worked on the Manhattan Project and other nuclear projects to piece together the "meta data" in order to make one, including spotting the spurious info which will make you fail if one should attempt to make one.

dplavery92 6y ago
You may be able to find uranium ore with relative ease, but enrichment is a nation-state level project that is unlikely to escape the notice of the world's intelligence and energy agencies.
- autisticcurio 6y ago
  >but enrichment is a nation-state level project Thats what this man of science said. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69UpMhUnEeY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69UpMhUnEeY >is unlikely to escape the notice of the world's intelligence and energy agencies Thats how Iran and Stuxnet came together. Some history https://www.miningreview.com/uranium/avoiding-covid-fatigue-with-a-relook-at-nuclear-weapons/ https://www.miningreview.com/uranium/avoiding-covid-fatigue-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_in_Namibia#Background_and_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_in_Namibia#Back... Teflon as mentioned in the Youtube vid at the beginning also demonstrates another way to enrich uranium. Are those the only two? I think not.

hindsightbias 6y ago

Or swap it with one an unwitting asset carries around at work.

caf 6y ago

Given that it was DoE it is more likely to be an inspector on an IAEA mission that would carry this.

xxpor 6y ago
Why would an inspector need to bother with a hidden detector though?
- caf 6y ago
  Because their overt inspection activities are in most cases tightly circumscribed.

new299 6y ago

I can’t quite figure out how a Geiger counter would make sense. Typical Geiger tubes (and high voltage generator) would be too big to fit in an iPod. But why would they need such tight integration with the iPod itself? The data isn’t big (each reading would only be an 8 or 16bit int) and could easily be stored on some small flash by something like an PIC12/MSP430. So you’d only need some simple trigger, which might be a hidden menu item which flips a GPIO to take a reading. Or even just tap the audio output and trigger on a specific frequency being played. Audio recordings might make sense. I don’t think the iPod video had a built in mic, so one would need to be added. That doesn’t ring totally true to me either though... The whole thing seems quite weird. I can’t really see any good reason for such tight integration with the iPod.

01100011 6y ago
Have you heard of a scintillator? They are much more efficient than a GM tube and can be constructed from various materials. You can construct them out of silicon, but the energy resolution is poor and does not allow for isotope identification. Using a NaI(Ti) crystal would have allowed them to both measure absorbed dose as well as identify the types of radioactive materials present. As there are commercial products today which are the size of an iPod and detect radiation, I see this as a feasible product. You would want the tight integration if you wanted to steganographically store the recorded information for covert exfiltration. The agencies driving this have a high level of paranoia and may have deemed this necessary for a variety of reasons.
- new299 6y ago
  There are other detectors you could use. You can use a simple photodiode too. But generally they don’t have the same sensitivity. Generally the sensitivity is too low for most radiation monitoring applications as I understand it. Steganographic storage would make sense, but the article mentions storing on a separate partition. So the tight integration still seems odd to me. Another comment suggested that they wanted to gain general “iPod” modification skills for other projects. That seems like an interesting idea. As an aside... I kind of like the idea of playing specific songs, or a sequence of songs to trigger a secondary processor (which is sampling frequencies played). This could potentially take over the USB port if necessary. That generation of iPods used hard drives, it was possible to replace those with smaller flash drives. This would give you a lot of space to add sensors/secondary compute. And could be done without coordinating with Apple. It does seem weird that they took the chance of this leaking too... and I would have thought they would have taken any other route possible.

ogurechny 6y ago

The radiation detector is either a naive hypothesis, or a false flag. If you want to pretend that your audio player is completely normal, you don't connect any abnormal devices to it. Moreover, any facility in the world that prohibits visitors to have electronics on them prohibits ALL electronics. No one would make an exception for “just an ipod”. Neither would secret services that have been dealing with bugs for decades be fooled by “just an ipod”. If there was additional hardware inside, my guess that it was for unattended covert short range data transfer. Maybe they have even used the famous rock™ interface: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-16614209 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-16614209 But audio recording would be most straightforward function, as it is built in. Switch (or simply re-flash) the player that belongs to journalist or politician when they leave it, then recover the data periodically. That would mean they knew who their target was. By the way, which model did Steve Jobs use? It might be possible that these “secret agents” were not secret agents at all. I suspect that any official business starts and ends with you signing papers that prevent you from, say, talking to newspapers about it because you feel like it, and existence of one-time high-profile project like that is something any sane agency would really like to keep secret. “No paper trail” is actually the most non-ordinary part of all of this, secrecy agreements are a common thing. Oral order to work with two random guys (because they have ominous business cards?), and tell them every corporate secret they need to know? Seems suspicious.