Customer Reviews

Electronic Circuits And Secrets Of An Old-Fashioned Spy

5 star:		(5)
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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

WOW. Let me say right up front that this book is "No-holds-barred". It's obviously written for people who already know electronics at least at a hobby level. I'm almost afraid to put this one online, so let me say that it IS ONLY for Academic Study! While not as detailed and comprehensive as some other books I have reviewed, what it does cover is "In your face", down and dirty, and from my experience as an Electrical Engineer, VERY workable. How to crack answering machines and make free calls are among the listed topics, Paladin makes it clear that this is for Academic Study only. Brother, if you are caught doing anything this book shows, you WILL go to jail!

Don't let the name fool you, this book is as modern and up-to-date as it can be. The "Old Fashioned" refers to the type of person who gets out and does the spying himself. I spent a few hours tracing the schematics of a few of the circuits shown, and I have to say, he's got some clever ways to get around modern problems... Can't find the device you need? No problem, he shows you several ways to build one. I consider it a book to get before any books are banned in this country, cause this one will be on the list!

I'm only 12 and I saw this book and wanted this bad. When it got here me and my friend went straight to Radio Shack and bought almost part to build a room bug for my sisters room after ordering the rest of the parts off the net we finished it. It works great. there are many other prodjects to build too.

In the introductory chapter, the author writes "This book explores some important tools for gathering firsthand information on spouses, CEOs, politicians and the girl next door." There aren't too many techniques for eavesdropping on CEOs or politicians in this book, so we assume the average reader would be concentrating on the other targets. The author describes himself as a semi-retired private investigator. Like most authors within this genre he tells a few war stories, but his clients mostly seem to be suspicious husbands or wives and a couple of insurance or workers compensation cases. So this is a book on how to eavesdrop on soft targets.

The book is not technically demanding and relies heavily on converting consumer products readily available at Radio Shack in North America but mostly unknown elsewhere. There is almost nothing here for foreign readers. He spends about six pages explaining how to convert a "Mr Microphone" toy into a room bug, and how to modify its frequency to outside the FM broadcast band, as wells as using it as a phone tap. He has a circuit diagram of a home brew bug (nothing original here). He spends thirteen pages on the design of a DTMF tone decoder, a product there is little difficulty in buying these days. He also takes ten pages to describe how to defraud North American telephone companies with a "red box" a well known circuit, but useless in the rest of the world and rapidly becoming useless in the USA.

As an investigator he relies heavily on monitoring older style analogue cordless phones and baby monitors with a scanner. There are eighteen pages describing how to eavesdrop on the North American analogue mobile phone network (the rest of the world has moved on to secure digital phones). There are also several pages on how to hack into answering machines, a topic better covered in numerous Internet sites.

The bibliography is of little practical use and seems chosen at random. The author lists two web sites (and he has a third recently set up) where you will find corrections and a bulletin board but whose main purpose seems to be to market his other books and to sell his DTMF decoder.

There is little here for the electronics professional and nothing to justify the price for a reader outside the US and Canada

A word of caution here. Most governments have made illegal the construction, possession, distribution (by sale or otherwise), use or use of material obtained from eavesdropping devices except in special circumstances so you are advised to check your local laws if you want to do more than read this book.

On the other hand, successful prosecutions are rare and similar devices are openly advertised for sale. Detection of these devices is difficult. Any competent hobbyist could produce this equipment from readily available components or by disassembly of consumer items.

But before you go into business consider This advice. Whether your clients are cops, spies or gangsters, they are eavesdroppers and conspirators - they are inherently untrustworthy. They don't regard you as an electronic genius - you're just the hired help, some geek who is useful but expendable. Look after number one! The smartest player is often the one who does not join the game.

I recently purchased this book, thinking that it would be very interesting to see how various bugs and things work. I skimmed through it, and am currently building a room bug to see how the transmitter works, etc. I thought it was very cool, especially the chapter about bugs already in place. Gives you an idea of how easily someone can be watching over you.

WOW. Let me say right up front that this book is "No-holds-barred". It's obviously written for people who already know electronics at least at a hobby level. I'm almost afraid to put this one online, so let me say that it IS ONLY for Academic Study! While not as detailed and comprehensive as some other books I have reviewed, what it does cover is "In your face", down and dirty, and from my experience as an Electrical Engineer, VERY workable. How to crack answering machines and make free calls are among the listed topics, Paladin makes it clear that this is for Academic Study only. Brother, if you are caught doing anything this book shows, you WILL go to jail!

Don't let the name fool you, this book is as modern and up-to-date as it can be. The "Old Fashioned" refers to the type of person who gets out and does the spying himself. I spent a few hours tracing the schematics of a few of the circuits shown, and I have to say, he's got some clever ways to get around modern problems... Can't find the device you need? No problem, he shows you several ways to build one. I consider it a book to get before any books are banned in this country, cause this one will be on the list!

Saw the other review (not a real bad one) that said the book needs updating. In Sheldon's defense, I'd like to state that the book references his web site, which does, in fact, have updates. Mr. Charrett appears to have taken great pains to keep the text updtated and I strongly advise the other reviewer to consider this fact. His support sites are: phreak.co.uk/sxc and jillett.com/sxc. He has corrections listed there as well.

Circuits I've tried work great.

The first half of the book has some useful information. It gives the schematics and even PCB tracing patterns for a couple of decent devices, one of which is a very simple (and thus small) crystal controlled voice transmitter. In my opinion these 10 pages or so of useful info are not worth the price of the book. There is better stuff out there. The second half of the book contains some very outdated info on things like analog 800MHz cell phone interception and listening to the old style 46Mhz and 900 Mhz analog cordless phones. He also wastes a great deal of space on a dtmf tone decoder, which are not very expensive or difficult to find anyway. All in all a poor excuse for this kind of book.

The book is good and has some good projects. It needs serious updating on a fair portion of the book.