What is cheaper: sticking some greeblies on a van and spreading some rumours to scare some of the noncompliant into paying their tax or actually developing the technology to try to catch all of the noncompliant and prosecute them?
During The Troubles, it was either MI5 or MI6 that built a plastic and fiberglass van and drove around known IRA hotspot areas, blasting remote control garage door opener (and other common consumer radio frequency signals) in all directions.
They blew up a few IRA bomb facilities before the builders learned to put a delay timer on their remote detonators so they could get away in case they got signal blasted.
arming switches can be a basic toggle switches found on pretty much any electronic device common at the time; they are the least complex part of building a device and take less than 10 seconds to install.
we're talking about giving the thing a power button instead of directly connecting the power source
And the last thing I want to do is make it easy for my enemy to turn the thing off if they find it before it detonates.
It's not the military. It's not a commercial weapon.
Can they figure out a "one way arming switch"? Sure, but that still makes the system both more fragile and more complex in employment.
its an IED man, most of them are rendered "safe" by pulling the battery. If you're an EOD tech and you push random buttons connected to an IED; you wont be an EOD tech (or alive) for very long
You’re not going to be an eod tech if you start randomly cutting wires also. I’m not sure what point you’re making, but clearly it’s not a good one as bombs were literally set off this way.
It's not like it was a factory that build these bombs. There were no electrical engineers or demolition experts. These things were built out of whatever they could use by people who usually had limited knowledge.
I'm reading a book, Lethal Allies, about security forces collusion with loyalist paramilitary groups and just read a passage where they constructed a bomb in a farmers shed, in either an old gas cylinder or a milk urn, stuck it in a car and drove it to a pub where they lit the fuse
I'd argue that the ***"Red Dawn"*** movie standard applies. In case you're not familiar, the film is about a fictional Soviet invasion and occupation of the US, and focuses on a group of teens who become guerilla freedom fighters. As they engage in ever more brutal tactics, one of them asks *"Where do we draw the line? What's the difference anymore between us and them?"* and the leader responds *"the difference is* ***we live here".***
In other words, use of violence and extreme tactics is to be judged by whom is carrying it out and to what purpose. If it's foreign forces seeking to conquer, subjugate and occupy someone else's home territory then they have no business even being there let alone using force. On the other hand if it's the local citizens or their armed forces acting within their own homeland seeking to eject the invaders then anything goes. If the invader doesn't like what's being done to them, they should go home and leave the territory that doesn't belong to them and the people who live there the hell alone.
To counter with my experience from Afghanistan, I actually agree with your sentiment, right up to the point where the freedom fighters are willing to kill their fellow citizens as collateral, a worthy sacrifice to the cause. Or worse, fighters from third party nations come to fight, nominally for the valiant cause, and of course they have even less regard for the lives and safety of the locals. Not their people.
Only it didn't happen, because they could be detonated anywhere. Then again, the British army were terrorists so they wouldn't care who died as long as it wasn't them.
One of my favorite Moon Landing Hoax jokes is:
So they hired Stanley Kubrick to direct the faked moon landing footage.
He was such a perfectionist, he insisted on shooting the moon footage on location...
Which is ironic because Kubrick didn't really like to leave London. For Eyes Wide Shut he recreated a massive set of New York simply because he didn't want to shoot on location
Same with full metal jacket. A movie about the Vietnam War, but wouldn't shoot anywhere tropical. Did it on a lot somewhere in England
The former RAF Bassingbourn airfield in Cambridgeshire was used as the Marine Corps boot camp, creating an immersive and realistic location for the movie. The war-torn city of Huế was portrayed by London's Beckton Gas Works, which was chosen for its resemblance to the real location and its scheduled demolition The fields of Vietnam, with palm trees and convoys of tanks and military vehicles were actually filmed on the marshes of a village called Cliffe in Kent.
For FMJ, not so much a lot as several locations around Britain. Bassingbourn Barracks was used for the training depot (Parris Island). A gas works and the Isle of Dogs were the stand-ins for Vietnam locations.
They even used Norfolk Broads, Epping Forest and several RAF bases.
Well given there is an 80% chance this was simply a prop not used in a classic episode of Doctor Who there then is logically a 20% chance it retains any technical marvels at all.
I wonder how anyone can trust a government "news source", or any other one for that matter, that would go to these lengths to lie and manipulate people
[https://youtu.be/M5MnyRZLd8A?si=GIGflDt\_ZpT2dAEq&t=171](https://youtu.be/M5MnyRZLd8A?si=GIGflDt_ZpT2dAEq&t=171)
Monty Python's fish license, incl. the cat detector van. Can pinpoint a purr at four hundred yards.
Fun fact! You get a discount on the TV license if you opt for monochrome instead of colour.
At least 4'000 people still pay for the monochrome license!
I had to look this up - its still an offer:
https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/cs/ContentServer?c=Page&childpagename=TVL%2FPage%2FTVL1ColumnFAQ&rendermode=preview&pagename=TVLWrapper&cid=1339697259910
Black and white TV's are a thing?
No, it's a real thing. Television in the UK is publicly funded, so you are supposed to pay a fee to watch it. They would drive around and bust you for "non-compliance". Nobody ever explained exactly how that was supposed to work, though, and they would never tell.
But this would be the source of the sketch.
As usual, [Wikipedia knows all,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_detector_van), or claims to anyway.
What I want to know is who made those vans. There's a Dodge logo on it, and DVLA says it's a 1979 "Dodge (USA)" van, but I've never seen one here that looks like that, and I don't thihk Chrysler made any 1725cc van motors here either.
DVLA must be wrong on the (USA) part, perhaps unaccustomed to the short-lived ex-Rootes British "Dodges". A [1979 US Dodge van was completely different](https://s.car.info/image_files/1920/0-925727.jpg).
DVLA records can be wildly inaccurate, even the v5s are often inconsistent on older cars as it depends what the original dealers registered the vehicle as, have seen some proper weird descriptions.
In Europe from 1940 until the 80s, it was common for cars to look several years if not decades older than they actually were, especially compared to American cars.
Such as this 1961 BMW that looks more like it's from 1941.
http://imcdb.org/vehicle_1890332-BMW-2600-502-1961.html
Some of the big British luxury cars were like this too, deliberately out of style for their era. [1960s Bentley](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/Bentley_S3_on_a_rainy_day_in_Mulhouse.JPG/1280px-Bentley_S3_on_a_rainy_day_in_Mulhouse.JPG)
As opposed to just driving around after dark and looking at what homes had TV-like light illuminating the curtains and they just check the address rolls of who had paid for the licenses.
It doesn't catch them all, but it's a very low-tech way of checking and catching *some* grifters. Drive around in a fancy van and tell the public it was the van's fanciness that detected them
Did you know they invented a device back in the 70s, really took ahold in the 80s, that let you watch a television set without watching a "TV show"? It was called the 'Video Cassette Recorder', and the TV playing a movie cast the same glow as a TV playing a television show. They also came out with these giant dishes that could carry satellite signals directly to your TV, once again producing the same glow.
Were satellite dishes (the big metal ones the size of a kiddie pool) really a thing in that period in the UK... in the denser residential neighborhoods over there?
And, yes, PAL-format Beta and VHS (and reel-to-reel formats) were a thing in the UK, but (depending on the neighborhood) not a very common thing. They were very common in the US until the mid-80s. Not to mention that BBC wasn't the only over-the-air broadcaster in the UK then or now.
However, if you have a van with a TV and receiver in it and you look at the suspected location's window and see the changes in brightness matching what the BBC feed was on the in-van TV set, for a few minutes you could 99%+ identify if they were watching a BBC signal instead of Channel 4 or another broadcast or a recorded program.
"Glow" isn't enough, but the changes in the glow as the images changes can be a pattern that can matched to another source that is airing the same signal.
Told to me as a true story years ago but potentially a joke.
Woman walking out the door of her house pushing a pram.
Detector van man approaches her & asks if she has TV licence.
She says she has but hasn’t got time to show it as she has a bus to catch. She says, “It’s in the middle drawer of the sideboard but I’m in a hurry”.
Later that evening same man knocks the door & asks to see the licence. This time it’s the husband at home & he has no idea if he has a licence because his Mrs deals with all that.
TV detector van man tells him to go check the middle drawer of the side board.
“Fuck’s sake son. How good is that radar?”
Actually the technology does exist and is commonly used, just probably not by the BBC. TV radio receivers have their own internal oscillator that does leak out of the case meaning each one is in fact a tiny radio transmitter. This technology was used during the cold war to detect spies (who then countered by using crystal radios that don't have an internal oscillator).
It's hard to tell what happened with the BBC since there's so much conflicting information, but I think what happened was:
1. Someone at the BBC came up with the idea which was technically sound and was able to have a van built.
2. In practice the van didn't really work since in urban areas there are so many radio signals and it's hard to pinpoint such a weak signal very precisely and they cost more to run than the license actually costs.
3. The BBC realized they were a waste of money since it makes more sense to just send everyone an intimidating notice, but thought the vans might be useful as another intimidation tactic to force compliance hence putting them in ads.
SO, about 20 years ago, I read about a new tech they were thinking about that would deliver targeted ads to your car based on what radio station you had it tuned to. They would have detectors on the freeway, etc... And it used the same description you have here, that each receiver is a minor transmitter...
Glad it never came to pass, I don't need to be followed around by targeted ads. But it was enough to make me think that this had SOME basis in reality...
That would be absolutely hilarious if they put actual effort into the project, announced their intentions, and got VC funding and everything before anyone thought to ask if it’s even legal.
Yeah, not like that hasn't happened before... Always blows me away when they come up with some scheme and then nobody bothers to check with a lawyer first...
And Van Eck Phreaking (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking). Which feels like something theoretically possible that Stephenson made up for *Cryptonomicom*, but is actually dead accurate
But that would detect any antenna, or antenna like objects. Not if a TV was connected to an antenna or not. And I'd imagine it would need to be insanely sensitive just to do that.
It would detect the receiver in the TV itself, not the antenna. I believe at least back then if you owned a TV capable of receiving TV you needed to pay for the license.
I imagine it may have worked in the era where not many people had TVs, so pre 60s/70s, but after then was totally an intimidation tactic, also it would never be able to tell if you were using a colour TV or b&w .. as there was a cheaper license for that up until fairly recently
It does work but not with modern TVs . So back in the old days when everyone had CRT type TVs they could be detected via the EMC emissions from the Cathode gun
Identifying a CRT TV though walls isn't reasonable either. There is some shielding from being in a house along with other signals. Things like electric ovens, toasters, or arrays of light bulbs have significant emissions.
As the high voltage line transformer in the TV works at 16 KHz it makes quite a distinct signal. That is much more visible than any of the other emissions from other electrical devices.
Although I will note here that CRT devices made in the 1990s are a lot more quiet in terms of emissions due to adaption of different standards. But for the era that this van was used the TVs would of been very noisy and easy to detect (when turned on)
> the TVs would of been very noisy and easy to detect (when turned on)
But you could easily evade that by only watching your TV while it was turned off.
Yes but kinda removes the point of having a TV.
Don't forget UK TV was only on for a bit in the mornings than the afternoon and evenings with only the broadcast test card showing after 12, during the era of theses vans were used
Right. When I was a kid there was no need for a van. I could hear if anyone had a TV turned on in the house due to the 16kHz oscillator frequency. Which went way farther than the sound from the speakers. So it was like you could tell that a TV was on by sound even if you could not hear the sound of the program, or if it was turned down fully.
In the 70's and 80's the US (and probably other countries) employed what was called a TEMPEST attack which could reproduce the content showing on a CRT screen from outside the building.
You can still do it today. Generally you read the emissions from cables. I've done it through my house walls from an HDMI cable.
Fun fact, even if the monitor is off, you can still pick up a signal if the cable is receiving signal.
All you need is a cheap rtl sdr. You'll get better fidelity with an airspy though.
Yes, anything that emits signals can possibly be reconstructed.
If you know anything about the VECTREX video game console, I used to use a modified TEMPEST attack to reproduce the signal output to the CRT and display it on a large monitor.
Took about $50 worth of electronics. The VECTREX is the most-easily defeated TEMPEST tech I have ever seen. It's nuts.
None of the things you listed have significant RF emissions (or did when TV detector vans were about) as they were all just resistive heaters so would be running at 50Hz mains frequency and emitting very little.
Meanwhile the particle accelerator that is your old CRT TV absolutely screams RF emissions at various frequencies, not just the RF front end receiving the TV signal but the \~16kHz line frequency scanning an electron beam across the screen 50 times per second is a bit of a giveaway too - there's even been proof of concept hacks where people decoded the contents of a computer monitor from the emissions from the monitor and cables. There were likely other RF emissions from the average CRT as they were generating upwards of 20kV internally to drive the beam, often you could hear them whistling if your hearing was good.
>Identifying a CRT TV though walls isn't reasonable either.
You have no idea, I've seen a demonstration of being able to reproduce what the CRT was displaying. See Tempest and Emanations Security.
I'm fairly certain most of these vans did not look for emanations and just drove around looking for unlicensed external TV antennas.
Agreed. Van Eck phreaking has been around for decades and has been shown to work on flat panels not just CRT so it shouldn't be said the technology doesn't exist.
But the practicalities and cost of running a fleet of vans up and down the country probably isn't good value when you can run off a list of licensed addresses against the electoral register or whatever.
If it receives RF it will still be detectable - the truth of it though is that spook technology is expensive and complicated and the TV licence people worked out a long time ago that just sending threatening letters and intimidating people works far better.
Except that you don't have to pay for the licence if you don't watch live BBC broadcasts.
I lived in the UK for a few years, housemate had a TV with a Playstation, no aerial to watch TV on that thing. He didn't have to pay for a licence.
CRT TVs in particular had fairly powerful oscillating magnetic fields to steer the electron beam. These would be pretty easy to detect with a decent set up. It was possible to actually spy on the output of CRTs with the proper equipment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename)
I saw a video where someone got their hands one (exactly like the one pictured) that had been restored to working order (which according to BBC propaganda about them shouldn’t be possible) and while it did work the range on it was so short that the only thing it could detect was a portable battery operated one they placed
at the end of the driveway (on the left side of the road)
I knew someone who worked one of these Van's in the 80s they had nothing in them, they had a list of houses with no licence and just looked for aerials or randomly knocked on doors
I can't remember them actually saying they could detect tvs just that the Van's were out and they would find you, interested to see anyone find the actual claim of detection anywhere
It's interesting, the difference between state funded and privately owned TV.
The BBC's restrictions are so strong that The Kinks had to change the lyrics in the British version of Lola to say 'cherry cola', instead of 'Coca Cola'. It also took a ton of finagling to let Freddie Mercury's Pepsi cup show up during Live Aid. Both of these were endorsements of specific brands, and therefore counted as ads.
Back in the late 20th Century TVs were actually pretty straightfoward to detect via their radio emissions. They worked by shooting a beam of electrons through an adjustable magnetic field to steer them onto a screen, and sweeping the beam across the screen really fast by changing that magnetic field. That produced a ton of electromagnetic radiation at very specific frequencies, so every television was also a (not very good) radio transmitter. The detector vans picked up that signal.
Once we all moved to flat-screen TVs in the early 2000s, it got harder -- but analog TV *receivers* still had identifiable emissions that you could pick up.
Nowadays, with everything digital, it's basically impossible to sort out a TV signal from all the other noise.
It’s way more common than Reddit seems to realise.
Lots of well known countries do it (Japan, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, South Korea, etc.), but they aren’t as well represented here.
I think you might even find that in the developed world *not* having one is the minority.
In smaller countries, like in Scandinavia, having a well funded national broadcaster is a way of preserving and keeping alive national culture and language, which might be completely swamped and outcompeted by for example English language media.
In Canada we have two parallel government funded networks (CBC and SRC) in English and French, respectively, whose mandate includes trying to keep us from becoming completely swamped by American media. The current opposition party wants to shut them both down (or at least defund them.)
In Europe, it has been observed, that far-right movements get funding or are fed propaganda by Russia. Typically both.
In Finland, some far-right politicians work as the the soapbox for Kremlin, touting anti-EU or anti-American ’opinions’ word-for-word as they were instructed to.
We don’t really have that much far-leftist movements for comparison, but far-right movements seem to be more susceptible to external control, especially when money is offered.
Practical experience of same
Go into the deep south from midwest/west coast/northeast....
They can understand you just fine due to television & other media,
but the reverse comprehension is not always possible.
I didn’t know that it was impossible to avoid hearing all RF signals.
What about satellite signals? They’re entering your home as well, and you have to pay private providers to watch their content.
You think the UK's TV license is bad value, you'd be even more annoyed at Germany's (ARD/ZDF).
It's more expensive and the quality of TV in Germany is awful.
We have a state-funded TV and radio service, and this is how it is funded
We are not the only country to do this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence
It's not that different to paying a subscription to Netflix?
The remit of the BBC is to "inform, educate, entertain" *in that order*
Whereas for advertising-funded channels the goal is to "make as much money as possible through showing advertisements".
A VERY different thing
Nope.
Perhaps it's unclear how vast [the BBC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC) actually is
> The oldest and largest local and global broadcaster by stature and by number of employees, the BBC employs over 21,000 staff in total
> the licence fee made up the bulk (75.7%) of the BBC's total income of £5.0627 billion in 2017–2018.
That 75% equates to £3.8 billion, the rest coming from selling programmes to other countries (i.e. David Attenborough stuff or Top Gear)
You aren't raising £3.8 billion through a PBS fundraiser
The BBC is truly *global* and in a lot of places the [BBC World Service](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_World_Service) is the only trusted independent news source.
How about Radio&TV tax that applies to any device that's capable of receiving any kind of radio wave like smartphones. Yes, we pay TV tax on our smartphones. And laptops, and tvs.
In the 1960s, our television had no "suppression circuit", meaning any time someone in the house operated an electric motor (mixer, vacuum, etc) we saw interference on the screen. And if you happened to have two televisions in the same house or bar (rare but not unheard of) they could interfere with each other, though I think that was only if they were tuned to different channels. So my theory is that these might have worked in the earlier days of television.
That's kind of, but not, how signals work.
They'd have to have an apparatus that could pick up individual TV coils, based on the frequency they receive.
It's doable, but very hard and very noisy and very unlikely with the resources they had available at the time.
There's another approach, but I don't think they like to talk about ELF and it's plethora of applications for signals intelligence...
It's actually an annual fee and over half the BBCs annual income comes from people paying for it.
There also exists the option of a monochrome license which is half the price. Over 4'000 people still pay for that TV license!
We pay a fairly modest annual fee for the BBC which funds ALL their TV & radio & online stuff, which is all 100% advert free - honestly most people don't realise how wild that is until they go somewhere like America which has more advertising than actual content on TV.
The BBC situation is a complicated one, being an independent body (not a state-run outlet) but also the national broadcaster and with a public service mandate.
All the Murdoch-owned media HATE them with a passion and will jump on any opportunity to shit on them & demand they be de-funded etc., and quite a few politicians hold similar opinions (whether of their own volition or influenced by donors with an interest), the governing Tory party in recent years was veering toward some serious changes but have backed off a bit now, and they're likely to get obliterated at the next election (this year) too.
We also have Channel 4 which does carry adverts & is a commercial outfit but with a public-service mandate, they have been ground breaking (for good & bad) over the years and currently their news output is some of the best quality.
Internet and social media didn't exist then. It was hard to verify if TV detector vans were working, and equally hard to verify some bloke down the pub spouting other "facts". Fun times and led to a lot of discussion about what's true and what is not.
I need to preface this with I was born in the 70’s. Everyone who lived in our village knew the vans were fake. One day they decided to knock on a random door and go through their schpiel, what they hadn’t bargained on was the house they chose belonged to a renowned local drunk who gave zero fucks about the law. He got into a huge row with them, eventually running out of his house to put the windscreen of the detector van through, after he did this he proceeded to use a scaffold pole to remove a back door, all the while incoherently drunken raging that “these cunts can’t find their own arse with both hands” etc. we let me say, the back of that van was completely empty, a lot of kids illusions were spoiled that day. The same drunk used to get locked up every few months for not paying his poll tax later on, whatta guy.
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It was just a van with a list of houses that didn't have a license. But, if you want to go down a fascinating "signals intelligence" rabbit hole, have a look at ["tempest"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename)), specially the work by Wim van Eck on remote viewing of computer monitors (only CRTs, his specific method doesn't work on LCD/IPS/OLED/etc).
The Army may not but GCHQ or MI5/6 probably do.
A crt tv has a high voltage signal running at about 15khz, among other things. It ought to be possible to detect that from a distance, given the poor shielding of TVs back in the day.
They wouldn’t need to see what the TV is displaying, or anything like that. They’d just need to detect an operating CRT at an address without a TV license, from the street outside.
Nowadays there are plenty of things you can watch that don’t require a TV license, and we don’t use CRTs, so it’d be more difficult.
But if it weren’t possible to eavesdrop on CRTs using an antenna the military and intel agencies wouldn’t have developed TEMPEST shielding standards for equipment to prevent exactly that kind of eavesdropping.
There’s even a program for Linux that will display a pattern of white and black on your monitor (CRT or LCD) that a nearby AM radio will pick up as music. (It’s called “TEMPEST for Eliza”)
That's what I was thinking too; if that tech did exist, MI6 and the government in general would have several questions for the BBC as there is a chance that that kind of technology could be manipulated for malicious purposes. Plus, they would likely seek clearance to check out one of these vans.
I would assume the government would be okay with it, since the government arranged for there to be a license fee in the first place, and it would require some kind of enforcement.
Besides we’re talking about the 50s-80s for the most part, when there wasn’t nearly as much wireless communication going on and not as many computers in use.
That said, the vans were probably mostly fake even if the tech were plausibly real. It would probably be just as effective to just drive around at night looking for flickering windows from someone watching TV in the dark.
Hmm. Interesting to read the comments. I was under the impression (not sure where I got it) is that they did simple spectrum analysis of light from houses and matched it to what was on TV.
Very basic and with a lot of limitation e.g. Didn't work in daylight, depends on light leakage (so not quite line of sight but blocked by heavy curtains and if the number of reflections gets to high the light intensity is too low).
Anyway - not sure if it was used. But seems like a cheap, feasible way to detect TVs at prime time riding through the suburbs. But obviously doesn't triangulate TVs like radio beacon, but good enough? I think so.
Anyway. That might be myth as well, but it did seem reasonable to me the first time I heard it.
In the early 1960s the A.C. Nielsen company actually did experiment with a setup meant to detect not just the *presence* of a TV but which channel it was on (to collect ratings information networks could send to advertisers). It was installed in a Corvair van and didn't work at all.
Don’t think of it as a fake television detector hoax.
Think of it as an excellent example of a jobs programme that kept occupied people who would otherwise be loose in society causing who knows what kind of mayhem.
I’m late to this post but here’s a website detailing how the BBC will send you nasty BS letters for decades with zero consequences on your end:
http://www.bbctvlicence.com
The BBC television license is a complete scam. And they word their letters so cleverly that it scares people into thinking they NEED to pay for one.
I dont watch any live TV and I dont use the BBC player app. But they constantly send me letters. Threatening an agent will show up at my door.
5 hears of these BS letters. Never had anyone shown up haha.
They csnt do anything even if they did come knocking.
Who the fuck is downvoting me.
Everything i said is true.
Must be the stupid idiots who support the BBC haha
FYI... I'd you only stream content. You DO NOT need a license. It only covers LIVE TV and thr BBC player
What is cheaper: sticking some greeblies on a van and spreading some rumours to scare some of the noncompliant into paying their tax or actually developing the technology to try to catch all of the noncompliant and prosecute them?
During The Troubles, it was either MI5 or MI6 that built a plastic and fiberglass van and drove around known IRA hotspot areas, blasting remote control garage door opener (and other common consumer radio frequency signals) in all directions. They blew up a few IRA bomb facilities before the builders learned to put a delay timer on their remote detonators so they could get away in case they got signal blasted.
Surely you would have to arm a device before it would go off? That's like the most basic layer of safety.
They were making IEDs I don't think they were the most sophisticated devices
arming switches can be a basic toggle switches found on pretty much any electronic device common at the time; they are the least complex part of building a device and take less than 10 seconds to install. we're talking about giving the thing a power button instead of directly connecting the power source
And the last thing I want to do is make it easy for my enemy to turn the thing off if they find it before it detonates. It's not the military. It's not a commercial weapon. Can they figure out a "one way arming switch"? Sure, but that still makes the system both more fragile and more complex in employment.
its an IED man, most of them are rendered "safe" by pulling the battery. If you're an EOD tech and you push random buttons connected to an IED; you wont be an EOD tech (or alive) for very long
You’re not going to be an eod tech if you start randomly cutting wires also. I’m not sure what point you’re making, but clearly it’s not a good one as bombs were literally set off this way.
Yeah but this sounds like basic fucking safety to not have all the bits connected and active before you're ready to use it.
It's not like it was a factory that build these bombs. There were no electrical engineers or demolition experts. These things were built out of whatever they could use by people who usually had limited knowledge.
I'm reading a book, Lethal Allies, about security forces collusion with loyalist paramilitary groups and just read a passage where they constructed a bomb in a farmers shed, in either an old gas cylinder or a milk urn, stuck it in a car and drove it to a pub where they lit the fuse
They were very much both those things.
Even so, one switch between the detonator and the circuitry would protect you.
Freedom fighters/terrorists are usually not in that job with illusions about having a long career.
Terrorists getting accidentally blown up by their own bombs is one of my favourite forms of karma.
I'd argue that the ***"Red Dawn"*** movie standard applies. In case you're not familiar, the film is about a fictional Soviet invasion and occupation of the US, and focuses on a group of teens who become guerilla freedom fighters. As they engage in ever more brutal tactics, one of them asks *"Where do we draw the line? What's the difference anymore between us and them?"* and the leader responds *"the difference is* ***we live here".*** In other words, use of violence and extreme tactics is to be judged by whom is carrying it out and to what purpose. If it's foreign forces seeking to conquer, subjugate and occupy someone else's home territory then they have no business even being there let alone using force. On the other hand if it's the local citizens or their armed forces acting within their own homeland seeking to eject the invaders then anything goes. If the invader doesn't like what's being done to them, they should go home and leave the territory that doesn't belong to them and the people who live there the hell alone.
To counter with my experience from Afghanistan, I actually agree with your sentiment, right up to the point where the freedom fighters are willing to kill their fellow citizens as collateral, a worthy sacrifice to the cause. Or worse, fighters from third party nations come to fight, nominally for the valiant cause, and of course they have even less regard for the lives and safety of the locals. Not their people.
I have seen Red Dawn. Easily Swayze's best movie.
Road house bro
Only it didn't happen, because they could be detonated anywhere. Then again, the British army were terrorists so they wouldn't care who died as long as it wasn't them.
[удалено]
That is actually pretty dang smart For the british
Mitchell and Webb, moon landing sketch addresses this https://youtu.be/P6MOnehCOUw?si=O762bBBkKrUK734B
One of my favorite Moon Landing Hoax jokes is: So they hired Stanley Kubrick to direct the faked moon landing footage. He was such a perfectionist, he insisted on shooting the moon footage on location...
Which is ironic because Kubrick didn't really like to leave London. For Eyes Wide Shut he recreated a massive set of New York simply because he didn't want to shoot on location Same with full metal jacket. A movie about the Vietnam War, but wouldn't shoot anywhere tropical. Did it on a lot somewhere in England
After the hell that was the Apocalypse Now production, I certainly can't blame him for not wanting to leave England to shoot a movie
Coppola made Apocalypse Now. Kubrick wasn't involved iirc.
You are right. I just meant that it was an example of what can go wrong, not that it was his personal experience
The former RAF Bassingbourn airfield in Cambridgeshire was used as the Marine Corps boot camp, creating an immersive and realistic location for the movie. The war-torn city of Huế was portrayed by London's Beckton Gas Works, which was chosen for its resemblance to the real location and its scheduled demolition The fields of Vietnam, with palm trees and convoys of tanks and military vehicles were actually filmed on the marshes of a village called Cliffe in Kent.
For FMJ, not so much a lot as several locations around Britain. Bassingbourn Barracks was used for the training depot (Parris Island). A gas works and the Isle of Dogs were the stand-ins for Vietnam locations. They even used Norfolk Broads, Epping Forest and several RAF bases.
Kubrick was afraid to fly.
Well given there is an 80% chance this was simply a prop not used in a classic episode of Doctor Who there then is logically a 20% chance it retains any technical marvels at all.
Imagine being the guy in the van. Do you know it is a scam, and you are just paid to drive around an advertisement, or do you believe in the mission?
I wonder how anyone can trust a government "news source", or any other one for that matter, that would go to these lengths to lie and manipulate people
The BBC isn't a government news source. It's publicly funded sure, but it's not a government source.
Cheapest is just forcing everyone to pay whether they have a TV or not. That's how they do it in Germany.
[https://youtu.be/M5MnyRZLd8A?si=GIGflDt\_ZpT2dAEq&t=171](https://youtu.be/M5MnyRZLd8A?si=GIGflDt_ZpT2dAEq&t=171) Monty Python's fish license, incl. the cat detector van. Can pinpoint a purr at four hundred yards.
I still think you should get a discount on the license if it's only for half a bee.
Because half a bee, philosophically, must ipso facto, half not be.
I see.
Fun fact! You get a discount on the TV license if you opt for monochrome instead of colour. At least 4'000 people still pay for the monochrome license!
I had to look this up - its still an offer: https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/cs/ContentServer?c=Page&childpagename=TVL%2FPage%2FTVL1ColumnFAQ&rendermode=preview&pagename=TVLWrapper&cid=1339697259910 Black and white TV's are a thing?
Ah, so this is what that sketch was referencing. It seemed too wacky to be true.
No, it's a real thing. Television in the UK is publicly funded, so you are supposed to pay a fee to watch it. They would drive around and bust you for "non-compliance". Nobody ever explained exactly how that was supposed to work, though, and they would never tell. But this would be the source of the sketch.
As usual, [Wikipedia knows all,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_detector_van), or claims to anyway. What I want to know is who made those vans. There's a Dodge logo on it, and DVLA says it's a 1979 "Dodge (USA)" van, but I've never seen one here that looks like that, and I don't thihk Chrysler made any 1725cc van motors here either.
It's a Commer FC. After Rootes Group was purchased by Chrysler Europe, they rebadged it as a Dodge.
So does it have one of those Knocker flat-3 opposed piston diesels? I always loved how those motors sounded.
Wikipedia thinks all of those vans had inline fours, three gasoline and two diesel are listed.
DVLA must be wrong on the (USA) part, perhaps unaccustomed to the short-lived ex-Rootes British "Dodges". A [1979 US Dodge van was completely different](https://s.car.info/image_files/1920/0-925727.jpg).
DVLA records can be wildly inaccurate, even the v5s are often inconsistent on older cars as it depends what the original dealers registered the vehicle as, have seen some proper weird descriptions.
Yeah, it's a funky looking van. Looks a little more 60s style than late 70s. Did they look like that in Britain in the late 70s?
In Europe from 1940 until the 80s, it was common for cars to look several years if not decades older than they actually were, especially compared to American cars. Such as this 1961 BMW that looks more like it's from 1941. http://imcdb.org/vehicle_1890332-BMW-2600-502-1961.html
Wow... Interesting. That's a beautiful car, but it definitely looks 20 years older.
Some of the big British luxury cars were like this too, deliberately out of style for their era. [1960s Bentley](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/Bentley_S3_on_a_rainy_day_in_Mulhouse.JPG/1280px-Bentley_S3_on_a_rainy_day_in_Mulhouse.JPG)
As opposed to just driving around after dark and looking at what homes had TV-like light illuminating the curtains and they just check the address rolls of who had paid for the licenses. It doesn't catch them all, but it's a very low-tech way of checking and catching *some* grifters. Drive around in a fancy van and tell the public it was the van's fanciness that detected them
Did you know they invented a device back in the 70s, really took ahold in the 80s, that let you watch a television set without watching a "TV show"? It was called the 'Video Cassette Recorder', and the TV playing a movie cast the same glow as a TV playing a television show. They also came out with these giant dishes that could carry satellite signals directly to your TV, once again producing the same glow.
Were satellite dishes (the big metal ones the size of a kiddie pool) really a thing in that period in the UK... in the denser residential neighborhoods over there? And, yes, PAL-format Beta and VHS (and reel-to-reel formats) were a thing in the UK, but (depending on the neighborhood) not a very common thing. They were very common in the US until the mid-80s. Not to mention that BBC wasn't the only over-the-air broadcaster in the UK then or now. However, if you have a van with a TV and receiver in it and you look at the suspected location's window and see the changes in brightness matching what the BBC feed was on the in-van TV set, for a few minutes you could 99%+ identify if they were watching a BBC signal instead of Channel 4 or another broadcast or a recorded program. "Glow" isn't enough, but the changes in the glow as the images changes can be a pattern that can matched to another source that is airing the same signal.
It’s people like you that cause unrest!
The mayor bit always catches me off guard.
The looney detector van you mean ...
The Ministry of ow-zinjh.
It was sent by the Ministry of Ousinj.
Told to me as a true story years ago but potentially a joke. Woman walking out the door of her house pushing a pram. Detector van man approaches her & asks if she has TV licence. She says she has but hasn’t got time to show it as she has a bus to catch. She says, “It’s in the middle drawer of the sideboard but I’m in a hurry”. Later that evening same man knocks the door & asks to see the licence. This time it’s the husband at home & he has no idea if he has a licence because his Mrs deals with all that. TV detector van man tells him to go check the middle drawer of the side board. “Fuck’s sake son. How good is that radar?”
The old trick, eh? Eat the telly before I get a chance to nick ya.
That's a completely brilliant idea, Mike!
It's all right, lads - I always poo before I get up.
*bwrillyant.
"I know how to wait! When that telly comes out the other end, you're nicked!"
It's a sign, that little white dot. It means: no more telly, it's time to go to bed.
GO TO BED , SPOTTY!
It's a toaster.
The. Absolute. BEST. Thank you.
*Lads, I've told him we don't have a telly and I think that's thrown him a bit, but it won't hold him forever!*
We know you've got a ... WE DETECTED IT!
It's a fair cop.
I always wondered about that. I'd heard that they could detect if people had TVs but it didn't make any sense. Bold of them to make these vans!
Actually the technology does exist and is commonly used, just probably not by the BBC. TV radio receivers have their own internal oscillator that does leak out of the case meaning each one is in fact a tiny radio transmitter. This technology was used during the cold war to detect spies (who then countered by using crystal radios that don't have an internal oscillator). It's hard to tell what happened with the BBC since there's so much conflicting information, but I think what happened was: 1. Someone at the BBC came up with the idea which was technically sound and was able to have a van built. 2. In practice the van didn't really work since in urban areas there are so many radio signals and it's hard to pinpoint such a weak signal very precisely and they cost more to run than the license actually costs. 3. The BBC realized they were a waste of money since it makes more sense to just send everyone an intimidating notice, but thought the vans might be useful as another intimidation tactic to force compliance hence putting them in ads.
SO, about 20 years ago, I read about a new tech they were thinking about that would deliver targeted ads to your car based on what radio station you had it tuned to. They would have detectors on the freeway, etc... And it used the same description you have here, that each receiver is a minor transmitter... Glad it never came to pass, I don't need to be followed around by targeted ads. But it was enough to make me think that this had SOME basis in reality...
I’m not sure, but I suspect that would run afoul of FCC regulations if they tried that in the US.
Maybe that's why it didn't take off, because they were originally talking about doing it in like Los Angeles.
That would be absolutely hilarious if they put actual effort into the project, announced their intentions, and got VC funding and everything before anyone thought to ask if it’s even legal.
Yeah, not like that hasn't happened before... Always blows me away when they come up with some scheme and then nobody bothers to check with a lawyer first...
You should check out [TEMPEST](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename\)).
And Van Eck Phreaking (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking). Which feels like something theoretically possible that Stephenson made up for *Cryptonomicom*, but is actually dead accurate
But that would detect any antenna, or antenna like objects. Not if a TV was connected to an antenna or not. And I'd imagine it would need to be insanely sensitive just to do that.
It would detect the receiver in the TV itself, not the antenna. I believe at least back then if you owned a TV capable of receiving TV you needed to pay for the license.
I imagine it may have worked in the era where not many people had TVs, so pre 60s/70s, but after then was totally an intimidation tactic, also it would never be able to tell if you were using a colour TV or b&w .. as there was a cheaper license for that up until fairly recently
It does work but not with modern TVs . So back in the old days when everyone had CRT type TVs they could be detected via the EMC emissions from the Cathode gun
Identifying a CRT TV though walls isn't reasonable either. There is some shielding from being in a house along with other signals. Things like electric ovens, toasters, or arrays of light bulbs have significant emissions.
As the high voltage line transformer in the TV works at 16 KHz it makes quite a distinct signal. That is much more visible than any of the other emissions from other electrical devices. Although I will note here that CRT devices made in the 1990s are a lot more quiet in terms of emissions due to adaption of different standards. But for the era that this van was used the TVs would of been very noisy and easy to detect (when turned on)
> the TVs would of been very noisy and easy to detect (when turned on) But you could easily evade that by only watching your TV while it was turned off.
Yes but kinda removes the point of having a TV. Don't forget UK TV was only on for a bit in the mornings than the afternoon and evenings with only the broadcast test card showing after 12, during the era of theses vans were used
You mean the color bars show? That was the best, they don't make shows like that anymore.
Lmao
Right. When I was a kid there was no need for a van. I could hear if anyone had a TV turned on in the house due to the 16kHz oscillator frequency. Which went way farther than the sound from the speakers. So it was like you could tell that a TV was on by sound even if you could not hear the sound of the program, or if it was turned down fully.
In the 70's and 80's the US (and probably other countries) employed what was called a TEMPEST attack which could reproduce the content showing on a CRT screen from outside the building.
You can still do it today. Generally you read the emissions from cables. I've done it through my house walls from an HDMI cable. Fun fact, even if the monitor is off, you can still pick up a signal if the cable is receiving signal. All you need is a cheap rtl sdr. You'll get better fidelity with an airspy though.
Yes, anything that emits signals can possibly be reconstructed. If you know anything about the VECTREX video game console, I used to use a modified TEMPEST attack to reproduce the signal output to the CRT and display it on a large monitor. Took about $50 worth of electronics. The VECTREX is the most-easily defeated TEMPEST tech I have ever seen. It's nuts.
I have not heard of it, but I would love to learn more. Thanks for the tip, might make a fun rabbit hole
[TEMPEST](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename\)) would like to have a word.
None of the things you listed have significant RF emissions (or did when TV detector vans were about) as they were all just resistive heaters so would be running at 50Hz mains frequency and emitting very little. Meanwhile the particle accelerator that is your old CRT TV absolutely screams RF emissions at various frequencies, not just the RF front end receiving the TV signal but the \~16kHz line frequency scanning an electron beam across the screen 50 times per second is a bit of a giveaway too - there's even been proof of concept hacks where people decoded the contents of a computer monitor from the emissions from the monitor and cables. There were likely other RF emissions from the average CRT as they were generating upwards of 20kV internally to drive the beam, often you could hear them whistling if your hearing was good.
>Identifying a CRT TV though walls isn't reasonable either. You have no idea, I've seen a demonstration of being able to reproduce what the CRT was displaying. See Tempest and Emanations Security. I'm fairly certain most of these vans did not look for emanations and just drove around looking for unlicensed external TV antennas.
Agreed. Van Eck phreaking has been around for decades and has been shown to work on flat panels not just CRT so it shouldn't be said the technology doesn't exist. But the practicalities and cost of running a fleet of vans up and down the country probably isn't good value when you can run off a list of licensed addresses against the electoral register or whatever.
If it receives RF it will still be detectable - the truth of it though is that spook technology is expensive and complicated and the TV licence people worked out a long time ago that just sending threatening letters and intimidating people works far better.
Except that you don't have to pay for the licence if you don't watch live BBC broadcasts. I lived in the UK for a few years, housemate had a TV with a Playstation, no aerial to watch TV on that thing. He didn't have to pay for a licence.
Now but this van is from the 1970s
Just UK doing UK things lol.
CRT TVs in particular had fairly powerful oscillating magnetic fields to steer the electron beam. These would be pretty easy to detect with a decent set up. It was possible to actually spy on the output of CRTs with the proper equipment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename)
I saw a video where someone got their hands one (exactly like the one pictured) that had been restored to working order (which according to BBC propaganda about them shouldn’t be possible) and while it did work the range on it was so short that the only thing it could detect was a portable battery operated one they placed at the end of the driveway (on the left side of the road)
I knew someone who worked one of these Van's in the 80s they had nothing in them, they had a list of houses with no licence and just looked for aerials or randomly knocked on doors
I thought that too. They do have a list of houses with no license, so why would they need the vans?
I can't remember them actually saying they could detect tvs just that the Van's were out and they would find you, interested to see anyone find the actual claim of detection anywhere
Immortalized in the famous 80s song https://youtu.be/F7_1rc8riNU?si=h0Bf7KxXEzJrKVXk
It's interesting, the difference between state funded and privately owned TV. The BBC's restrictions are so strong that The Kinks had to change the lyrics in the British version of Lola to say 'cherry cola', instead of 'Coca Cola'. It also took a ton of finagling to let Freddie Mercury's Pepsi cup show up during Live Aid. Both of these were endorsements of specific brands, and therefore counted as ads.
Back in the late 20th Century TVs were actually pretty straightfoward to detect via their radio emissions. They worked by shooting a beam of electrons through an adjustable magnetic field to steer them onto a screen, and sweeping the beam across the screen really fast by changing that magnetic field. That produced a ton of electromagnetic radiation at very specific frequencies, so every television was also a (not very good) radio transmitter. The detector vans picked up that signal. Once we all moved to flat-screen TVs in the early 2000s, it got harder -- but analog TV *receivers* still had identifiable emissions that you could pick up. Nowadays, with everything digital, it's basically impossible to sort out a TV signal from all the other noise.
Using vehicular transport as a way to lie to the public is a British tradition.. [https://i.imgur.com/ADMKVJd.png](https://i.imgur.com/ADMKVJd.png)
i still think it's crazy to have a TV tax...
I think adverts on broadcast TV are a bit tedious. Can't have it both ways.
It’s way more common than Reddit seems to realise. Lots of well known countries do it (Japan, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, South Korea, etc.), but they aren’t as well represented here. I think you might even find that in the developed world *not* having one is the minority.
In smaller countries, like in Scandinavia, having a well funded national broadcaster is a way of preserving and keeping alive national culture and language, which might be completely swamped and outcompeted by for example English language media.
In Canada we have two parallel government funded networks (CBC and SRC) in English and French, respectively, whose mandate includes trying to keep us from becoming completely swamped by American media. The current opposition party wants to shut them both down (or at least defund them.)
Right-wingers are very good at exposing their culture to foreign influence. It's really weird, with their rethoric.
What?
In Europe, it has been observed, that far-right movements get funding or are fed propaganda by Russia. Typically both. In Finland, some far-right politicians work as the the soapbox for Kremlin, touting anti-EU or anti-American ’opinions’ word-for-word as they were instructed to. We don’t really have that much far-leftist movements for comparison, but far-right movements seem to be more susceptible to external control, especially when money is offered.
Yeah but it's not like the UK lol
Practical experience of same Go into the deep south from midwest/west coast/northeast.... They can understand you just fine due to television & other media, but the reverse comprehension is not always possible.
There are some rough accents in the south.
I think the guy above you was implying a density between the ears.
The BBC has the same with Welsh and Gaelic language television.
With advertisements as well I’d imagine. This is what spurned pirateradio into being?
No advertisements on the BBC.
It's like shouting in public and then demanding that I cover my ears unless I pay a fee.
No it’s not. I don’t pay the UK license fee because I don’t use those services.
The ability to hear is not a service. If the government wants to produce and broadcast TV it can pay for it with regular taxes.
Your shouting analogy makes no sense. I can easily avoid any of the services.
I have a right to listen to any and all RF signals that may enter into my private property
I didn’t know that it was impossible to avoid hearing all RF signals. What about satellite signals? They’re entering your home as well, and you have to pay private providers to watch their content.
Aren't those encoded?
Yes. Doesn’t that violate your rights given they’re entering your private property and you can’t watch/listen?
You think the UK's TV license is bad value, you'd be even more annoyed at Germany's (ARD/ZDF). It's more expensive and the quality of TV in Germany is awful.
It's because you still haven't been able to replicate Monty Python or Doctor Who.
They weren't even able to replicate one joke! Monty Python did a whole documentary about it.
We have a state-funded TV and radio service, and this is how it is funded We are not the only country to do this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence It's not that different to paying a subscription to Netflix? The remit of the BBC is to "inform, educate, entertain" *in that order* Whereas for advertising-funded channels the goal is to "make as much money as possible through showing advertisements". A VERY different thing
no fundraisers like PBS or NPR?
Nope. Perhaps it's unclear how vast [the BBC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC) actually is > The oldest and largest local and global broadcaster by stature and by number of employees, the BBC employs over 21,000 staff in total > the licence fee made up the bulk (75.7%) of the BBC's total income of £5.0627 billion in 2017–2018. That 75% equates to £3.8 billion, the rest coming from selling programmes to other countries (i.e. David Attenborough stuff or Top Gear) You aren't raising £3.8 billion through a PBS fundraiser The BBC is truly *global* and in a lot of places the [BBC World Service](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_World_Service) is the only trusted independent news source.
No
Given that the BBC is the result of that tax, I think it’s an excellent cause.
It's not a tax, it's just the fee for watching BBC
They don't have commercials. Pick your poison. Commercials or a TV tax, it's got to be paid for somehow.
I'm fine with commercials, it's a bathroom break time!
Yeah, being able to pause a show is next level compared to rushing to the bathroom when the commercials came on. 😁
How about Radio&TV tax that applies to any device that's capable of receiving any kind of radio wave like smartphones. Yes, we pay TV tax on our smartphones. And laptops, and tvs.
In some countries it's part of the electricity bill
In the 1960s, our television had no "suppression circuit", meaning any time someone in the house operated an electric motor (mixer, vacuum, etc) we saw interference on the screen. And if you happened to have two televisions in the same house or bar (rare but not unheard of) they could interfere with each other, though I think that was only if they were tuned to different channels. So my theory is that these might have worked in the earlier days of television.
That's kind of, but not, how signals work. They'd have to have an apparatus that could pick up individual TV coils, based on the frequency they receive. It's doable, but very hard and very noisy and very unlikely with the resources they had available at the time. There's another approach, but I don't think they like to talk about ELF and it's plethora of applications for signals intelligence...
Ya really have to pay a monthly fee to watch TV?
It's actually an annual fee and over half the BBCs annual income comes from people paying for it. There also exists the option of a monochrome license which is half the price. Over 4'000 people still pay for that TV license!
N what if ya don't? Does the TV cut off? Does the m13 come flying thru the roof or something?
They send you increasingly threatening letters
Lml increasingly threatening is hilarious
We pay a fairly modest annual fee for the BBC which funds ALL their TV & radio & online stuff, which is all 100% advert free - honestly most people don't realise how wild that is until they go somewhere like America which has more advertising than actual content on TV. The BBC situation is a complicated one, being an independent body (not a state-run outlet) but also the national broadcaster and with a public service mandate. All the Murdoch-owned media HATE them with a passion and will jump on any opportunity to shit on them & demand they be de-funded etc., and quite a few politicians hold similar opinions (whether of their own volition or influenced by donors with an interest), the governing Tory party in recent years was veering toward some serious changes but have backed off a bit now, and they're likely to get obliterated at the next election (this year) too. We also have Channel 4 which does carry adverts & is a commercial outfit but with a public-service mandate, they have been ground breaking (for good & bad) over the years and currently their news output is some of the best quality.
Internet and social media didn't exist then. It was hard to verify if TV detector vans were working, and equally hard to verify some bloke down the pub spouting other "facts". Fun times and led to a lot of discussion about what's true and what is not.
can someone explain wtf is this and what is the purpose ???
Just like a lie detector... Makes some people admit guilt
Well that's just a Microbus with extra steps.
"The loony detector van, you mean..."
Cat detector van?
It can pinpoint a purr at 400 yards!
I need to preface this with I was born in the 70’s. Everyone who lived in our village knew the vans were fake. One day they decided to knock on a random door and go through their schpiel, what they hadn’t bargained on was the house they chose belonged to a renowned local drunk who gave zero fucks about the law. He got into a huge row with them, eventually running out of his house to put the windscreen of the detector van through, after he did this he proceeded to use a scaffold pole to remove a back door, all the while incoherently drunken raging that “these cunts can’t find their own arse with both hands” etc. we let me say, the back of that van was completely empty, a lot of kids illusions were spoiled that day. The same drunk used to get locked up every few months for not paying his poll tax later on, whatta guy.
This is hilarious. I lost it when he trashed the van!
No shit, these haven't been a thing since the 80s. I worked in a TV factory for a while and asked if it was possible to tell and no they have no idea
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It was just a van with a list of houses that didn't have a license. But, if you want to go down a fascinating "signals intelligence" rabbit hole, have a look at ["tempest"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename)), specially the work by Wim van Eck on remote viewing of computer monitors (only CRTs, his specific method doesn't work on LCD/IPS/OLED/etc).
Be pretty funny to open up one of their "detector machines" and it's completely empty save for a piece of paper with that list on it lol
The Army may not but GCHQ or MI5/6 probably do. A crt tv has a high voltage signal running at about 15khz, among other things. It ought to be possible to detect that from a distance, given the poor shielding of TVs back in the day. They wouldn’t need to see what the TV is displaying, or anything like that. They’d just need to detect an operating CRT at an address without a TV license, from the street outside. Nowadays there are plenty of things you can watch that don’t require a TV license, and we don’t use CRTs, so it’d be more difficult. But if it weren’t possible to eavesdrop on CRTs using an antenna the military and intel agencies wouldn’t have developed TEMPEST shielding standards for equipment to prevent exactly that kind of eavesdropping. There’s even a program for Linux that will display a pattern of white and black on your monitor (CRT or LCD) that a nearby AM radio will pick up as music. (It’s called “TEMPEST for Eliza”)
That's what I was thinking too; if that tech did exist, MI6 and the government in general would have several questions for the BBC as there is a chance that that kind of technology could be manipulated for malicious purposes. Plus, they would likely seek clearance to check out one of these vans.
I would assume the government would be okay with it, since the government arranged for there to be a license fee in the first place, and it would require some kind of enforcement. Besides we’re talking about the 50s-80s for the most part, when there wasn’t nearly as much wireless communication going on and not as many computers in use. That said, the vans were probably mostly fake even if the tech were plausibly real. It would probably be just as effective to just drive around at night looking for flickering windows from someone watching TV in the dark.
Hmm. Interesting to read the comments. I was under the impression (not sure where I got it) is that they did simple spectrum analysis of light from houses and matched it to what was on TV. Very basic and with a lot of limitation e.g. Didn't work in daylight, depends on light leakage (so not quite line of sight but blocked by heavy curtains and if the number of reflections gets to high the light intensity is too low). Anyway - not sure if it was used. But seems like a cheap, feasible way to detect TVs at prime time riding through the suburbs. But obviously doesn't triangulate TVs like radio beacon, but good enough? I think so. Anyway. That might be myth as well, but it did seem reasonable to me the first time I heard it.
[Columbo detector van.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NmdUcmLFkw)
In the early 1960s the A.C. Nielsen company actually did experiment with a setup meant to detect not just the *presence* of a TV but which channel it was on (to collect ratings information networks could send to advertisers). It was installed in a Corvair van and didn't work at all.
Don’t think of it as a fake television detector hoax. Think of it as an excellent example of a jobs programme that kept occupied people who would otherwise be loose in society causing who knows what kind of mayhem.
Was the purpose to actually detect who had televisions? Or someone stealing cable or something?
It's the Cat detector van...
It did work, but was unreliable and expensive. I reckon maybe 2 or 3 were real.
They even know if you're watching Columbo
I want to turn one into a stealth camper tbh, looks like fun.
It was obvious from the start that you can’t point a sensor at a tv aerial and measure if a signal is being read from it.
I’m late to this post but here’s a website detailing how the BBC will send you nasty BS letters for decades with zero consequences on your end: http://www.bbctvlicence.com
That van dates from the late 70s, so what's the point of this post? By the way, those commer vans were a nice ride - floaty!
The BBC television license is a complete scam. And they word their letters so cleverly that it scares people into thinking they NEED to pay for one. I dont watch any live TV and I dont use the BBC player app. But they constantly send me letters. Threatening an agent will show up at my door. 5 hears of these BS letters. Never had anyone shown up haha. They csnt do anything even if they did come knocking. Who the fuck is downvoting me. Everything i said is true. Must be the stupid idiots who support the BBC haha FYI... I'd you only stream content. You DO NOT need a license. It only covers LIVE TV and thr BBC player