Radar detection with Linux [LWN.net]

Radar detection with Linux

Posted Dec 23, 2010 23:37 UTC (Thu) by gdt (subscriber, #6284)
In reply to: Radar detection with Linux by jag
Parent article: Radar detection with Linux

Whilst it could, that's also an action for which your nation's equivalent of a "radio inspector" can find before breakfast and for which his manager would think was time well spent.

A covert-like jamming would be taken very seriously. The matter would likely be referred to your nation's air force. Finding a few radar pulses in the RF environment is a typical "electronic warfare" task.

I doubt a judge would think that anything less than a custodial sentence was appropriate.

If you were stupid enough to attempt this in one of the world's trouble spots you could expect incoming ordnance followed by a special forces operation to recover the hardware and people concerned with this previously-unrecorded EW device. Neither hardware nor people would likely be seen in public again. On the plus side, you'd get a NATO weapons designator :-)

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Radar detection with Linux

Posted Aug 24, 2011 9:11 UTC (Wed) by ortalo (subscriber, #4654) [Link]

Thanks for the info. and early warning.

If you are knowledgeable in this field, do you think such situation will be sustainable in the future by regulatory/military organizations?

They keeping permanent control of the entire radio frequency space sounds more and more unrealistic to me as time goes and more and more smart/programmable RF devices and general useful applications enter the scene. I cannot refrain from seeing a parallel with the situation with respect to cryptography in the 90s.

Radar detection with Linux

Posted Feb 28, 2013 12:42 UTC (Thu) by ctpm (subscriber, #35884) [Link]

I wouldn't compare the RF Spectrum Management situation with the crypto restrictions from the 90s.

RF Spectrum regulation has been around for a _lot_ longer than that and actually is, generally, a Good Thing. Granted, we've had some regrettable episodes related to some national regulators kind of wanting to make a profit by selling big chunks of RF spectrum to the highest bidder and all other users be damned, and perhaps some other over-the-top power demonstrations.

But the bottom line is, IMO, the RF spectrum really does need to be managed and, in some cases, enforced. Anarchy tends to work badly in this case -- it just lowers the Signal/Noise ratio and ends up making everyone's life miserable. Think of it the same way you think of the streets: you don't desire oppression, but you also don't want to be run over or mugged every 5 minutes. Some some cops and _also_ _some_ _voluntary_ _cooperation_ is needed to keep things civil. On the street and over the radio (note that I'm not talking about freedom of speech, just the RF technical side of things).

And this is true for hardware that is supposed to transmit, as well as for other electrical stuff that had nothing to do with radio in the first place, but ends up radiating lots of crap and harassing every RF user around. Some degree of regulation is needed in this case, _as well as_ some degree of design common sense, which doesn't always happen, sadly (ask any Ham Radio operator, the folks that operate the HF Air Traffic Control radio stations, the radio astronomers, or the guys at the Deep Space Network).

As for the military and related branches, although they usually get priority access to spectrum, especially in conflict/problematic zones, they normally are just another user with their own allocated frequencies and channels, and normally the other users should not be impacted by this.