[Closed] TV License Nazis?

Cor, I feel left out. We don't have a telly, we do have a letter from the TV licence people saying "thank you for telling us you don't have a telly" and haven't heard a peep from them since.

If telly is crap then why do you bother to watch it, with or without a licence?

[i]compared to the lack of outrage directed at the evasion of import tax on bike components, despite this being proper tax which might actually get spent on something useful.[/i]

Probably the most intelligent and insightfull post of the year so far.

The license fee is effectively a tax, which gets used to fund a national broadcaster.

Personally, I believe that it's crucially important to have a broadcaster that is not bound purely by ratings figures, and is actually obliged to be impartial and educational (it's in the BBCs charter which is renegotiated and evaluated regularly - and it's not a foregone conclusion each time either). There are lots of 'reality TV shows' around, on the BBC as well, but it's actually rather interesting to note that a lot of the ones on the BBC are rather educational and interesting, as well as voyeuristic. For example, if you are watching say 'Bank of Mum and Dad' you might be watching just to see the wreckage of people's lives, but the way the show's made you learn a lot about psychology (the psychology of denial in this case) if you look closely. You might even argue that the viewing public would learn this subconsciously. Some shows on foreign or commercial TV simply set up arguments and conflicts for the sake of watching people argue - which isn't educational at all.

I do believe in public service broadcasting as a concept, and the fact that it is funded through non-commercial means is vital. But then again, I am a lefty who believes in spreading the light.

I think it's most definitely true though that the BBC has raised the bar in the UK for TV. Most other countries have absolutely crap telly - many many people have said (on here too) how bad telly is in other countries. Yes, we watch a lot of American telly but to be honest it's mostly formulaic, unoriginal and we only see the best 5% of it anyway. There is an incredibly vast amount of pure sh*t on telly in the States, and even that's better than most countries.

Detector vans are actually pretty basic technology. TV signals is just electromagnetic transmission after all, fairly easily detectable, and no need to see whether the telly's flickering in the corner.

Can't see what the fuss is about, You haven't paid it, now you'll probably have too. Life's like that sometimes.

[i]Detector vans are actually pretty basic technology.[/i]

do they really have to make them look soo sinister? All the kit on the roof or is that designed as over-kill to scare the masses into paying?

get a black and white TV, its cheaper! (or at least it used to be!)

Or poke your own eyes out. I think being blind saves you a tenner or so....

Detector vans are actually pretty basic technology. TV signals is just electromagnetic transmission after all, fairly easily detectable, and no need to see whether the telly's flickering in the corner.

Yes, the TV [u]transmission[/u] signal is everywhere - but how do you detect that someone is actually receiving and decoding it? They could probably try to detect some kind of weak interference from the electromagnetic deflection coils in the back of a CRT. But that wouldn't tell the difference between a telly and a monitor, it wouldn't detect non-CRT tellies and it definitely couldn't tell them what channel you are watching.

They currently require a warrant to enter the house. If they had working detector vans then such warrants would be easily obtained as they would have clear evidence of law-breaking.

A warrant? What would they do strip your house down until they found something?!

The theory was that some of the frequencies developed in the telly (ie the horizontal scan) would cause a corresponding signal in the supply to your house, and then this frequency could be detected externally with a sensitive antenna. Or something - anyway I think the theory was controversial at the time, and it almost certainly doesn't apply to new nicely shielded CRT tellies and I'm definitely sure it doesn't apply to flat screen tellies. After all, there's no difference between them and a PC monitor.

A warrant? What would they do strip your house down until they found something?!

Err.. no, I imagine in most cases they just walk into the front room, say "There's the telly" and you join the 400,000 other people who were caught that year.

The detector vans aren't a myth, and you can detect emissions from LCD and Plasma's. The cost bit is right tho.

There was a IT security bod who did a seminar here at work, talking about hacking techniques using vans with detection kits to gather information from peoples screens.

Okay, for what it's worth I think the original research you are talking about is:
[url= http://jya.com/emr.pdf ]Electromagnetic Radiation from Video Display Units: An Eavesdropping Risk?, [i]Computers & Security 4 (1985) 269-286[/i] Wim van Eck (PDF)[/url]

Which is one of the motivations behind the NATO "Tempest" program (which is basically electromagnetic shielding on PCs and monitors).

I doubt this would work today. Legislation means we now have a more shielding on our TVs; plasma and LCDs don't use electron guns which is the biggest EM source; and there are many more EM sources in a modern home which would pollute the signal.

A detector van in use

[img] ?size=572&uid={47B525BE-BE95-415B-8DA3-D940E22C0271}[/img]

and you don't think that in 24 years that research hasn't moved on a bit? I can't for the life of me remember who gave the talk, I can ask around though if people are really that interested.

Loads of cool and imaginative ways to monitor/steal data, only real inhibitor is cost at the moment.

nb: seen this http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/p-c-tech-advice-technology/27921-researchers-find-way-steal-encrypted-data.html last time this was mentioned on here (about 2 years ago) it was laughed off as something off spooks as people didn't believe it was possible.

edit: I think uplink might have a picture of the best way to detect people 🙂 however I think they normally have a bacon sarnie in the other hand

I can't for the life of me remember who gave the talk, I can ask around though if people are really that interested.

Yes please. Or better still find me some research papers on it!

Yeah I saw the [url= http://hackaday.com/2008/05/13/cold-boot-encryption-attack-video/ ]"cold boot attack"[/url] thing.

But...
[img] [/img]

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this is a bit off at a tangent, from the original thread.

Anyhow I will ask at Lunchtime, when I can corner some of the 'interesting' security researchers, might be pre patent/papers though but it shouldn't be as I am 99% certain its been presented at BlackHat and SANS as well.

Very accurate cartoon 🙂 social hacking is always going to be the best bet, however kinda hard to steal the data without them reporting it afterwards when you have smacked them around the head, whereas a server crash is a bit easier to hide.

Just to clarify:

We talk about a [i]licence[/i] (noun), or the act of [i]licensing[/i], which is the present participle of the verb [i]to license[/i]

Easy!

ZOMBIE THREADS RETURN FROM THE DEAD>>>>

did you go looking for this thread?

🙂

Seeing it has been resurrected, and just in case anybody is interested, then I thought it worth pointing out that TV detection equipment detects the RF emitted by the local oscillator in the TV receiver which is used to downconvert the broadcast signal. Hence they can detect LCD or plasma screens just as well as traditional CRTs, and won't detect computer monitors or anything where the receiver has been disabled.

Regarding TV Licencing - I seem to have stopped getting threatening letters from them which started after I brought a PVR (maybe next thing will be a bloke on the doorstep). They pointed out quite correctly that I don't have a licence in my name - obviously their database can't manage to search based on an address!

aracer - might have been the case 30 years ago, but no longer. The decoding on a modern TV is solid state, look at the thumbstick sized receivers for PCs. The only detection they have is to stick their noses against your window.

I used to work for tv licensing for a short while and they do have detector vans.

You can make superhet receivers solid state, flaperon - you don't have to have tubes and stuff to generate the IF. From [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Television_Works ]Wikipedia[/url]:

Signal reception is invariably done via a superhet receiver

Not having read the rest of the thread;

I though they'd virtually go top the point you had to prove you didn't have a telly to get off the licence now?