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| Iraq |
| Army wives get phone death threats from Iraq |
| 2006-06-26 |
| From England's Royal Military Police Wives and family members of soldiers fighting in Iraq have received telephone calls, believed to include death threats, from insurgents, according to military documents seen by The Sunday Telegraph. The "nuisance" calls have been made with increasing frequency over the past few weeks after insurgents managed to obtain home numbers from soldiers' mobile telephones. The growing number of calls has led to an investigation by the Royal Military Police, which has issued a warning to all soldiers in Iraq to take great care when using mobile telephones to call home. The extent of the problem emerged in a restricted Army document issued to soldiers of the London Regiment, a Territorial Army unit, which has soldiers from its ranks serving in Iraq. The document warns soldiers preparing to take part in operations that insurgents in southern Iraq have managed to obtain the home telephone numbers of soldiers by using electronic intercept devices to hack into mobile phone systems. It is understood that the threats range from claims that a husband or son is dead or will be killed fighting in Iraq, to verbal abuse. Many of those who have received calls say that they were made by people with a poor command of English or with a Middle Eastern accent. The military document states that there have been "many instances in the last weeks of relatives and friends of personnel serving abroad on operations getting nuisance phone calls" from Iraq. It adds: "Investigations indicate that the 'callers' of these nuisance calls have acquired the numbers from personnel using their own mobiles to phone. This is fairly easy using today's technology. It makes no difference whether the mobile is of UK origin or sourced abroad. The MoD is keen to establish the extent of these nuisance calls, to determine whether there is a pattern to them. All ranks are to be aware of the possibility of receiving nuisance calls if using mobiles to phone home." Since the start of the war in Iraq, a number of high profile soldiers are believed to have received death threats from opponents of the war. Cpl Mark Byles, who won the Military Cross in 2004 after leading members of the 1st Bn of the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment in a bayonet charge, received a death threat after his story appeared in the press. Abu Baker Mansha was later sentenced to eight years imprisonment for plotting to kill the soldier. The Ministry of Defence confirmed that families of soldiers serving in Iraq had received "nuisance calls", including people calling the homes of soldiers from Iraq then hanging up. The spokesman said: "We would not describe this as sinister. We have no evidence of anyone receiving any death threats." |
| Posted by:Sherry |
| #24 One other thing. The LTMS was used to look for people after 911 in NYNY. Unfortunately all it found were cellphones. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2006-06-26 22:36 |
| #23 I should point out that the LTMS development manager was transfered to a different division and most of the other folk were laid off. One of the key hardware designers now works as a security guard at a nearby office complex/hotel. It's another example of the current business practice of rewarding good work. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2006-06-26 22:14 |
| #22 Rantburg U rulz!!! Thank you, too, 3dc. That said, may those being harassed find the strength to face their difficulties serenely until the problem is permanently solved. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-06-26 21:54 |
| #21 CDMA is hard encrypted one direction lightly encrypted the other. A few of us know in general terms how to crack it both ways but it would be real hard to do without a $1,000,000 test tool thats been out of production for 6 years. (the CDMA form of a LTMS - good luck finding one of those custom puppies). To just harvest stuff like you can with CDMA - not so easy. Now... CDMA is the most bandwidth efficent commerical method of communicating so its better for CellPhone Providers and since you have multiple connections (hard handoffs are rare) dropped calls are much lower than with GSM or various TDMA methods. So if you own some spectrum in an area you provide better service and make more money with CDMA. All that said.... the best current method to communicate is TimeDomains ultra wideband pulse tech with low duty cycle. The problem is I don't see any nation permitting it for civilan use as your average power output is below the noise threshold. This means transmissions are stealthy and you are almost impossible to locate. (see wwww.timedomain.com) Given my druthers I would choose timedomain. It's elegant, simple and beats all current solutions hands down. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2006-06-26 21:13 |
| #20 Thank you, lotp. That helps a lot. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-06-26 14:56 |
| #19 3dc knows a lot more about this than I do, but ... There's a standards battle going on IIUC, tw. GSM is the preferred standard in Europe. In the US, TDMA and CDMA have traditionally dominated, but as companies buy networks and technology from around the world, there's a battle for which approach will gain market share everywhere. Cingular and T-Mobiles use GSM, since AT&T bought one of the Japanese? (I forget) networks based on it. Other networks here use CDMA or a later version WCDMA. Qualcomm, a US company that holds the patents on CDMA, filed for them based on military radio techniques (some Europeans would say, rather agressively) and has been vigilant about protecting its intellectual property. So phone mfgrs like GSM because they can get higher profit margins from phones with those chips. At least, that's my understanding. But 3dc can maybe bring his expertise to bear more authoritatively on this. |
| Posted by: lotp 2006-06-26 14:44 |
| #18 3dc -- what do we have in the US, GSM or CDMA? |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-06-26 14:18 |
| #17 Most Army wives I've met could spew out a line of filth that would make their little jihadi peckers go limp for a month. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2006-06-26 10:24 |
| #16 GSM - another sick EU gift to the world. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2006-06-26 09:26 |
| #15 Iraqs fault for having GSM cellphones. With CDMA that is near impossible to do. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2006-06-26 09:25 |
| #14 This used to happen in the 90's to certain SOF troops. Our wives would get calls that we were dead or injured. They learned quickly that if it did not come from someone they knew it was just crap and the FBI would deal with it. I'm sure the Britt families and police have this under control. |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2006-06-26 08:51 |
| #13 coordinates? |
| Posted by: Captain America 2006-06-26 08:47 |
| #12 Perhaps some cell phones purpose built in Israel might solve the problem. In a rather explosive way perhaps. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2006-06-26 08:37 |
| #11 Another datapoint in the convergence of islam and the left. |
| Posted by: ed 2006-06-26 08:02 |
| #10 hell if they are calling from the US still use a jdam just warn the neighbors |
| Posted by: Greamp Elmavinter1163 2006-06-26 07:46 |
| #9 If they can get our guys phone numbers, I am sure we can get the numbers they're calling from, and the geographical location too, with a little luck. Enter as JDAM coordinates and proceed. But not if they are calling from the US - not kosher to track those calls. |
| Posted by: glenmore 2006-06-26 07:35 |
| #8 These would be the lions of Islam braver than those who attack cemeteries, but not quite as brave as those who attack grade schools or retirement homes. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2006-06-26 07:33 |
| #7 It's time to follow the muzzies home from the mosques and establish a Where-to-find-a-muzzie database. The knife cuts both ways, scummers. |
| Posted by: wxjames 2006-06-26 07:28 |
| #6 Maybe the Veterans Administration can assist the muzzies and send the entire lot, ie, phone numbers, addresses, e-mail, SSN's, etc. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2006-06-26 07:13 |
| #5 people with a poor command of English or with a Middle Eastern accent. Also know as fuckwhits. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2006-06-26 06:55 |
| #4 Maybe this has already happened - the intelligence for the Forest Gate raid was supposed to have come from a UK jihadi imprisoned for possesssion of a war-hero's address - presumably he intended to pay the soldier / his family a visit... |
| Posted by: Howard UK 2006-06-26 06:32 |
| #3 The real threat is that having intercepted these phone numbers, the terrorists might inform their fellow co-members of the Religion of Peacetm in Britainistan. Those thugs could locate the addresses and actually take action. |
| Posted by: DanNY 2006-06-26 06:22 |
| #2 Information warfare. Of course, this is just a nuisance, but it's the kind of thing that I would do if I were a phone phreak jihadi. |
| Posted by: gromky 2006-06-26 06:01 |
| #1 I'm sure most army wives are more than capable of dealing with Brave Lions of Islam™ - most of them will be confused with cold-calls from India anyway. |
| Posted by: Howard UK 2006-06-26 04:12 |