our communications intercepted very soon. This is how it works. You install the Encrypher app, and it will add an option to your phone dial screen. If you touch this small circle before dialing the app will look for its counterpart on the recipient’s phone and encrypt the call. The encryption will kick in within the first three seconds of the call, so it’s pretty fast. When the encryption goes active, both call parties will hear a quiet beep.”
“Excellent,” Alex said. “I was wondering how we were going to manage communications.”
“Also, when you get to either place, you should buy a cellular data access token and subscription. Don’t go through anyone else’s Wi-Fi with your data transmissions, not even your hotel’s. You never know who’s watching.”
“Yeah, I can see why. Cellular data transfers via tokens are actually the safest wireless data transfers available when you travel outside your firewalled home network. They have their own number that doesn’t appear anywhere, in any records, so it’s pretty hard to even know they exist, not to mention intercept.”
“Correct. To the average surveillance team it will appear as if you’re not connected to the Internet. If they’re watching your screen they’ll figure it out though and start looking for a signal to intercept. Be careful.”
“What if the surveillance team is more than average?”
“We’re getting there,” Brian said, picking the last remaining item on the table. “This is a bug sweeper, a counter surveillance tool of very high performance. It will detect any active surveillance or tracking devices, such as hidden cameras, mics, GPS trackers, essentially anything that transmits any signal from your location, wired or wireless.”
“What did I miss?” Steve asked, barging through the door.
“A bucket load of gizmos,” Alex said. “Nothing else.”
Steve grabbed a seat across the table.
“Don’t stop because of me. I’m here for the next part,” he said.
“We’ll get to that shortly. Just finishing up with the devices,” Brian answered. “OK, so back to counter surveillance.”
Alex was listening, fascinated. She had never had the opportunity to learn about these things other than from movies.
“The first instinct, when we find a bug, is to rip it apart and flush it down the toilet,” Brian continued.
“Totally.” She laughed.
“Yeah, but what does that do? That informs whoever’s listening that you know you’re being bugged, which will increase their level of attention, and most likely, the caliber of surveillance they’re deploying. They’ll bring bigger, better, more sophisticated tools that you might not be able to uncover that easily. So what do you do when you find surveillance gear in your space?”
“Nothing?” Alex ventured a guess.
“Not really, no. You start feeding them what you want them to know. Behave as normally as possible, and use the blind spots in their surveillance to do the things you don’t want them to know about or see.”
“It doesn’t sound that easy,” Alex said.
“It isn’t,” Brian confirmed. “Sam will show you how to do this. He’ll bug one of the rooms here and walk you through how to handle bug sweeping, because you can’t really show up on their cameras with a bug sweeper in your hand, either.”
“Oh, OK, that’s a good idea. But how am I going to carry all this stuff with me and not have anyone see it? They could search my room when I’m out, go through my luggage.”
“Correct. That’s why you’ll be carrying it all with you in your laptop bag. It’s gonna be heavy, I know,” Brian said in response to Alex’s raised eyebrows. “You’ll also have to get into the habit of never letting it out of your sight. If anyone picks up on that just tell them you don’t carry a purse and that all your personal stuff’s in there, and they’ll back off. Remember, you’ll have to take the bag with you everywhere you go. Restroom, dinner, meetings, everywhere.”
She looked in disbelief at the pile of hardware on the table. Maybe, if carefully organized in the bag, they could all fit. The Inmarsat terminal was the issue. The rest were small enough not to pose problems.
“In case of emergency, if you absolutely have to leave the bag behind, take this with you, in a pocket or something,” Brian said, pointing at the SatSleeve. “Make sure you can call us anytime; that’s the number one priority.”
“Thank you. For all of it.” She gestured towards the pile of devices.
“One more thing,” Brian said, “do you have the ‘Find My iPhone’ app installed on your cell?”