The Radio In Your Pocket
It is not your friend
Radios today are more than pervasive; they are invasive. The most invasive are the radio signals associated with your cell phone. Your cell phone has three radios in it. It has a cellular radio for your phone calls. It has a Bluetooth radio for connecting to devices. And it has a WiFi radio for connecting to routers for high-speed internet access. Your phone also has a GPS receiver and newer phones may have a satellite modem. The cellular modem, Bluetooth radio and WiFi are the most problematic.
Cellular radio, Bluetooth, and WiFi enable surveillance beyond any scale that Orwell ever imagined.
Awareness of this and a few simple actions improves your online life and your “IRL” life.
The three radio signals associated with your phone are the cellular signal, Bluetooth, and WiFi. Most people think of these as enabling phone calls, personal devices, and high-speed internet connectivity. They do that but they also enable anyone listening to collect private information about you.
Where you go, how long you are there, how fast you went to get there, who was with you, and much more are collected and matched using the electronic signatures of your phone. Governmental authorities (e.g. police) do this and commercial organizations do this.
Understanding what information is collected and taking appropriate action to control that information collection is part of electronic situational awareness. Electronic situational awareness protects your privacy and it protects your devices.
Electronic situational awareness means a lot of things in a broad sense. For cell phones and other radio-based devices, it is limited to the three radios in your cell phone.
The three radios in your cell phone can be detected and manipulated in lots of different ways by lots of different devices. Stingrays, geofencing devices, the laptop a few feet away from you at the coffee shop, and more can use the data in your cell phone to pester you, defraud your, and worse.
For now, defend your cell phone and yourself by turning WiFi and Bluetooth off when traveling. It only takes a second. Turning them off when traveling will reduce your spam. Turning them off when travelling reduces the ability of marketers and others to track your location and movements. Turning them off reduces the ability of hackers to access your phone.
You can turn the cellular service off too for a bit more security. Your incoming calls will roll to voicemail and you can handle them when you turn the cellular service back on.
Maximum security means leaving the phone at home (try it, it’s very nice actually). A close second is a Faraday bag which blocks incoming and outgoing radio signals. If you buy a Faraday bag, do your research and don’t cheap out.
Learn more about electronic situational awareness in our class at The Sawmill Tactical Training Complex in January 2025. Electronic situational awareness is a much bigger topic for “Prepared Civilians.” Prepared civilians means more than “preppers.” It includes any team or organization that will need communications when the “SHTF.” Learn what you need to know in the “Radios for Prepared Civilians” series of classes at The Sawmill Tactical Training Complex (https://www.sawmillttc.com/)
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