You don’t have to be in the Vietcong or KGB, of course, to spy on a computer by radio. Today a smart snoop can walk casually into your computer area and leave behind a miniature transmitter—perhaps hooked up to the maze of wires that snake under the floor of many modern offices. “I could then find out everything that you were sending for a year,” says Harold Joseph Highland, “which is the life of the unit I could transmit with. I could buy it for
9.50 from any of the large supply houses. There’s one more expensive that will transmit up to five miles away. With the forty-buck one I can park across from the building and keep a tape recorder going.”
Wiretapping
Some say it’s rare in the computer world. The thinking goes, There are easier ways to steal. Why tap when so often you can just call up your victim’s computer and be greeted with a friendly electronic whine?
But don’t count on wiretapping not existing.
Your local radio store carries cheap equipment usable for tappers.
And electronic banking and new computer services will grow, making wiretapping more tempting. A security consultant, J. Michael Nye, opened an unlocked closet of the second floor of an office building in Hagerstown, Maryland, and pointed to the telephone wires inside. “See these?” he asked me. “They’re hooked up to a bank’s computer. If you wanted to change the amount of money in a deposit, you could attach a portable computer and no one might be the wiser.”
The wiretapping threat may increase because of the break-up of the Bell system—as more and more repair people parade in and out of wire closets.
You might be able to get around the threat, or at least reduce it, by electronically scrambling the messages you transmit over the phone wires.
For the moment, don’t let fear of wiretapping obsess you unless, say, you’re routinely transferring millions of dollars via computer.