When do you expect to find one of these stuck to the bottom of your car? ;)
In all seriousness, do you believe it would be possible for the FBI to make a similar device to use on bicycles (inside handle bars), motorcycles, scooters, or Segways?
I don't know the answer to either of these questions. It appeared to be a standard GPS receiver, but some investigation would reveal whether the manufacturer supports military mode.
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:7hhk_GsNmTQJ:w...
I never saw it on the car, but the antenna mount had a hinge that would allow it to stick out from the side of the car. But that would be rather conspicuous—I think that's why the antenna is so large.
AFAIK 433MHz can be used for any short-range application, similar to 27/49MHz for R/C cars. There are plenty off-the-shelf 433MHz transceivers for hobbyists, and I think car remote-unlockers use that band as well. And this doesn't appear to have a particularly powerful transmitter, so you'd have to bring the transmitter relatively close to the receiver (like <100ft, usually) in order to download...whatever.
If they're able to put this thing on your car in the first place, I guess it's not infeasible for them to drive by to download updates.
Why would tampering with such a device be illegal? Or blocking their signal? It's your car and until proven otherwise, you have no reason to bear with other people or the government installing such surveillance equipment.
If you're a convict then you might be released earlier but with some electronic surveillance, but even that is with your own consent.
We have not—I had limited time with the device at Wired's office. We powered it on and used a frequency analyzer on it, but that was the extent of our investigation. We were concerned that black helicopters might show up if we left it on too long. But I hope someone else does!
What, you mean for all the other devices we take apart that regularly phone home to their manufacturer, who would show up at a moment's notice in a black helicopter to put an immediate halt to our technical analysis?
Of course! We have to block RF transmissions all the time!
For the manufacturer, maybe. But then you have to factor in bribes to the federal procurement officers and junkets to Atlantic City to land the contract, and then medical payments for the workers who burned themselves hand-soldering resistors on that board. That's gotta up the price to at least $3K/unit or so! :-)
Can't really. Cost of BOM bears no relationship to selling price. His post below says it costs about $30 in 1k quantities. So estimating about $50 in 10pc prices, if I were building a few for a government agency/large corporation, ignoring NRE charges I'd probably price them upwards of $1000 each. This is not exactly something you can purchase at Best Buy...
