How to intercept transmissions?

[RainbowFactory]

I am playing an android character in our latest campaign and my GM has never dealt with one before. I have the telecommunications advantage which I have been using to intercept any and all transmissions being broadcast within the range of my telecommunications (10 miles) but after playing a few sessions in this setting it seems a little overpowered which makes me wonder if perhaps I am not doing this the correct way? I make no rolls right now to do this.

[Anaraxes]

Telecommunication is basically a built-in radio, wired into your head so you don't have to speak or listen. (The distinction is useful if someone might overhear you, or if there's a lot of noise -- like explosions -- where you are.) It's a multi-band radio -- AM, FM, UHF, shortwave, whatever -- which is also a bit better than carrying a box (most boxes, anyway, which are limited to one or a few bands). There's also no mention of an antenna, which is awfully convenient, especially for the shorter wavelengths where antennas can be large.

On the other hand, this radio doesn't give you any more ability than any other radio to understand what's being transmitted. If it's not a public transmission standard or modulation scheme, you can't do anything more than detect radio energy. A US TV set will do you no good in France. And while there is a French TV standard that's public, the paranoid Cabal might have their own proprietary format.

At TL 7+, most things considered valuable -- certainly military comms, but also things like cable TV satellite downlinks -- will be encrypted, and the Telecom advantage alone doesn't give you any ability to decrypt others' communications. At TL 8+, likely _all_ transmissions are encrypted, just because it's cheap and easy to do so. (On the 4E scale, this is probably really more like TL 7.5 and 8.5, but there we are.)

At lower tech levels, the military, or cautious/paranoid will likely be using codes, even if they can't encrypt the actual signal. You might be able to pick up the signal just fine, but that doesn't help if you don't have a copy of the code book, the Enigma machine, or happen to speak Navajo.

To be the NSA's dream agent, you'll need some other advantages and skills to help you decode and decrypt signals that you receive. This may lead to adventures where you or your party members have to acquire keys, codebooks, and so on.

[acrosome]

The ubiquitous encryption thing is the important point, here. Certainly any PC opponent would be likely to use it.

Also, unless you have equipment specially designed for it (i.e. a scanner) you are left to change frequencies by hand until you come across something at the exact moment that someone is talking. That's slow and annoying, and easily frustrated by frequency-hopping techniques. Also, your radio may not work on the same frequencies. Etc.

Note, that signals intelligence uses the Electronics Operation (Electronic Warfare) skill. Your GM should at the very least be making you roll against this- or your default- to find target transmissions, and then Cryptography to defeat codes if appropriate, etc. This is much easier with appropriate equipment; realistically, cracking modern encryption is essentially impossible over tactical timescales. (I used to have this job, back in the day. The Soviets used a lot of unencrypted voice transmissions.)

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Telecommunication is basically a built-in radio, wired into your head so you don't have to speak or listen. (The distinction is useful if someone might overhear you, or if there's a lot of noise -- like explosions -- where you are.) It's a multi-band radio -- AM, FM, UHF, shortwave, whatever -- which is also a bit better than carrying a box (most boxes, anyway, which are limited to one or a few bands). There's also no mention of an antenna, which is awfully convenient, especially for the shorter wavelengths where antennas can be large.

On the other hand, this radio doesn't give you any more ability than any other radio to understand what's being transmitted. If it's not a public transmission standard or modulation scheme, you can't do anything more than detect radio energy. A US TV set will do you no good in France. And while there is a French TV standard that's public, the paranoid Cabal might have their own proprietary format.

At TL 7+, most things considered valuable -- certainly military comms, but also things like cable TV satellite downlinks -- will be encrypted, and the Telecom advantage alone doesn't give you any ability to decrypt others' communications. At TL 8+, likely _all_ transmissions are encrypted, just because it's cheap and easy to do so. (On the 4E scale, this is probably really more like TL 7.5 and 8.5, but there we are.)

At lower tech levels, the military, or cautious/paranoid will likely be using codes, even if they can't encrypt the actual signal. You might be able to pick up the signal just fine, but that doesn't help if you don't have a copy of the code book, the Enigma machine, or happen to speak Navajo.

To be the NSA's dream agent, you'll need some other advantages and skills to help you decode and decrypt signals that you receive. This may lead to adventures where you or your party members have to acquire keys, codebooks, and so on.

Note that listening in is mentioned in Basic:

Originally Posted by B91

because you can shift frequencies,
eavesdroppers must still roll vs.
Electronics Operation (Communi-
cations) to listen in

Settings which involve encrypted radios usually take this enhancement:

Originally Posted by Powers p.81

Secure: Your signal employs securi-
ty measures that make it difficult to
interpret if intercepted. Eaves-
droppers must win a Quick Contest of
IQ (if using Telecommunication) or
Electronics Operation (if using tech-
nology) against your IQ to understand
the content of the transmission. If they
lose, they get garbage. +20%.

[gruundehn]

At the very least you need to roll against your skill in using the equipment plus probably some sort of search to find interesting transmissions (you cannot listen to more than one at a time without Compartmentalized Mind) plus language plus cryptography for codes and such plus analysis to understand what you pick up. In other words I would say the GM provides whatever the plot requires.

And don't forget, if the transmission is not general broadcast then you have to be in line between the transmitter and receiver. General AM and FM radio is broadcast, interesting transmissions are beamed in a tight beam including a maser. You might catch some interesting transmissions on rare occasions but probably not and the ones you do catch are probably encrypted or burst transmissions.

[acrosome]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Note that listening in is mentioned in Basic:

I would propose that if you are using a normal radio (and not specialized SIGINT gear) that it would count as improvised equipment for -5 at best to find a target transmission.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by acrosome

I would propose that if you are using a normal radio (and not specialized SIGINT gear) that it would count as improvised equipment for -5 at best to find a target transmission.

That would be the difference between Accessory (Radio) and Telecommunication (Radio).

[Anthony]

A significant amount of transmissions won't be encrypted even at TL 8; most cell phones aren't yet encrypted, for example, and there are a fair number of transmissions intended for anyone who wants to to be able to listen in. However, there are several other problems with interception:

First of all, remember that there is likely to be a lot of uninteresting stuff out there; radio hearing doesn't give any special way of recognizing 'this transmission is interesting, this transmission is not'.
Secondly, a lot of radio equipment doesn't have much range, and it's tough to snoop on radio from much outside of its normal detection range.
Third, TL 8+ comms are likely to be digital, and even if it's not encrypted, it can be difficult to figure out what a stream of digital data (possibly in an unidentified protocol) is actually saying.

[acrosome]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

That would be the difference between Accessory (Radio) and Telecommunication (Radio).

I disagree. While I'm not sure what "Accessory (Radio)" means, since I can't find it anywhere, I see nothing in the description of the Telecommunication (Radio) advantage that indicates that it is anything more than a built-in multi band radio similar to a high-quality walkie-talkie. The description mentions that you can "shift frequencies" but I'm not sure if a true frequency-hopping capably is implied. They might just mean that the radio isn't limited to one frequency and you can thus arrange with your interlocutor to switch frequencies regularly or something. Or one codeword means "go up 20 MHz", and another means "go down 15 MHz", etc. Which, I will assure you, is not a very good countermeasure to a trained SIGINT technician with dedicated equipment.

Contrast the capabilities of a modern military radio like the SINCGARS with even a dated dedicated SIGINT platform like the TRQ-32A. The TRQ-32 is designed for SIGINT interception. If nothing else it has oscilloscopes that show you a huge bandwidth and displays spikes when a given frequency is active, and remembers where the spikes were so that you can sit on them and wait for someone to trasmit- that alone is a huge help, and something a random regular radio lacks. (Though any HAM enthusiast could easily cobble together something similar, albeit without some of the bells and whistles.)

So it may not be RAW but I maintain that a decent radio should be considered improvised equipment at best for SIGINT interception. It isn't designed for it. What it is designed for is to communicate with your buddy, with whom you have presumably pre-arranged a frequency, commo protocols, encryption, etc. All that this means in practice is overcoming that penalty with extra time spent, which makes sense- you spend a lot of time twiddling dials to search frequencies looking for a transmission. (And recall that if you come across even the correct frequency when no one happens to be transmitting you'd still miss is. But a SIGINT platform sees the whole band, and remembers which frequencies were transmitting...)

As for the argument about how long such a basic task would take, eh, as a SWAG call it about 30 seconds? We could handily see a spike, listen in for a few seconds, and DF it all within 10 seconds back in the day, presumably at a small penalty but with bonuses for decent equipment.

I guess that a decent second-best to preserve RAW would be to allow a decent radio to be considered basic equipment for SIGINT interception, but make the base time for the task much longer- a couple of minutes or something. Then the bonuses for improved equipment when using dedicated SIGINT platforms can be used to cut time spent. At the -90% max reduction you could get an attempt as fast as 12 seconds at -9 penalty. Conversely, at 30x time for a +5 to bonus to counteract the entire -5 penalty for using improvised equipment that's an hour of dial-twiddling. Which sounds about right.

Mind you, I'm assuming an electronic warfare environment in which you suspect that Bad Guys are out there broadcasting, but you don't know on which frequencies or even which band, etc., and you have to go find them. If you know that Joe Bad Guy is broadcasting in the clear on CB 6 then, well, that's not much of a challenge...