Comment on The Belmont Club, "Pirates of the airwaves"

This was no more a "Hack" than listening to a police scanner radio is. This was just a passive intrusion. If they had inserted their own imagery into the data stream or if the Taliban had gained control of the drones operating circuits, so that it could be retargeted to photograph or attack Kandahar airfield, then that would have been a hack.

In the Navy we always had intrusion detection protocols and authentication codes. If anyone suspected that an intruder was on the circuit they would call out the alert code. The Soviets were good, they would test us by passing maneuvering codes or answering up for someone who was slow to respond. The old guys told me that usually the Russkies were given away by speaking better English than we did. It was assumed that they had a copy of the Signal Codes. The story was that on one occasion someone assigned the soviet shadow to Rescue Destroyer Station, and they complied.