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You Can Never Really Tell Who Gets Your Wireless Transmissions

It was interesting to read about an elementary school science teacher in a Chicago suburb whose baby monitor picks up the video transmission from inside the space shuttle Atlantis.

NASA indicates it is not coming from the shuttle itself, but they do say the shuttle transmission is broadcast on their site, so it is not anything secret.

The funny thing is the teacher took the monitor into school to show her students on the last day of class and continued to receive the transmission there also. So, it doesn't appear as though it was being picked up through a wireless Internet AP in her neighborhood. Hmm...so where is she picking it up from?

A somewhat similar situation happened in my home recently. We don't watch that much television so we just use an antenna to bring in the 7 channels we can pick up via the airwaves. I allow my sons to watch PBS, and a couple of mornings right after their last day of school they were watching Arthur, but the sound was not that for the show; it was the communications going over a police scanner. Noah and Heath were fascinated; they learned the police had been dispatched to a school to handle an out of control food fight. I'm not sure which of the towns the scanner transmissions were from, but it was likely one of the small ones within 10 miles of us. They also listened in on a domestic disturbance call and a stray dog in the neighborhood. Oh, and the police took a quick break at Casey's (a convenience store popular in the midwest).

I'm tempted to go up on the roof and reposition the antenna...who knows what else I might pick up!

Regarding the baby monitor incident,

"Summer Infant, the monitor's manufacturer, is investigating what could be causing the transmission, communications director Cindy Barlow said. She said she's never heard of anything similar happening."Not even close," she said. "Gotta love technology.""

Indeed; gotta love technology!

There will always be unknown factors for which even the technology experts are unaware. You can never really know what type of data and information is leaking through wireless transmissions.

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Comments

Rebecca, A few years ago I was listening to Coast-to-Coast (a call in radio show that focuses on the paranormal and such) and they were talking about some guy who said that he picked up a radio show from the 1930's on his window fan. Not sure how much credibility they guy had but if it's true.... really makes you wonder.

Andy, thanks for the great example!

Lol...a window fan! Yes, it definitely makes you wonder...

Think all our wireless transmissions will be ricocheting back to Earth in 100 years, revealing what were meant to be today's secrets?

Speaking of wondering about the future...

There was a great story on the news last night about a time-capsule containing, among other things, a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere buried 50 years ago in Tulsa, OK, that was opened yesterday. It had a full tank of gas because they weren't sure at the time of burial if we would still be using gasoline today. A rather sad commentary that we HAVEN'T evolved beyond the same fossil fuel use we had 50 years ago, isn't it?

You can see a story about it at http://www.kotv.com/news/topstory/?id=128587.

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Rebecca Herold's Bio:

Rebecca Herold,CISSP, CIPP, CISM, CISA, FLMI, has been providing information security, privacy and regulatory assistance and services to organizations from a wide range of industries for over 18 years. Rebecca was instrumental in building the information security and privacy program while at Principal Financial Group, which was awarded the CSI Information Security Program of the Year Award in 1998. IT Security ranked Rebecca as one of the top 59 IT security influencers, and Computerworld put Rebecca their list of the 25 top privacy experts and on their list of the 9 best privacy consulting firms. Rebecca has been CPO for two consulting organizations, and has had her own information privacy, security and compliance business since 2004. Rebecca has written chapters for several books, dozens of articles, and has been writing a monthly privacy column for the CSI Alert newsletter since the beginning of 2001, and is working on her 11th book. Some of her other books include The Privacy Papers, Managing an Information Security and Privacy Awareness and Training Program, The Definitive Guide to Security Inside the Perimeter (Realtime Publishers), The Shortcut Guide to Improving IT Service Support through ITIL (Realtime Publishers), and The Practical Guide to HIPAA Privacy and Security Compliance. In addition, Rebecca is the leader of The Realtime IT Compliance Community where she posts to her IT Compliance weblog. You can contact Rebecca at: rebecca_herold@realtimepublishers.net.