Gossip is the devil’s radio.

— George Harrison

Smartphones may be computers. But first, they’re radios. Radios are the guts of the computer. Hacking the radios of a computer bypasses driver, operating system, firmware and application layer, going straight to the signal. When you hack the hardware—the radio—the software is irrelevant. This blog entry provides some basic information about the radios in smartphones, as well as the antennas that make real estate mobbing—at least mobbing done like the real estate mobbers of northeast Seattle do it—possible.

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Mobbing is another name for cyber-bullying. Real estate mobbing is defined by the United Nations as a type of forced eviction that may result from a host of conditions including real estate and private business actions or “land-grabbing” by entities including armed groups and paramilitaries (Forced Evictions: Fact Sheet No. 25 Rev. 1, http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/FS25.Rev.1.pdf). It’s likely that the list of conditions and agents in the United Nations document should include hate groups. The real estate bullies of northeast Seattle, self-dubbed “mobbers,” have used the term to characterize what they claim is “property war” and even a “professional real estate hit.”

In the United States, harassing someone out of their house is implicitly illegal, undermining basic civil and human rights. Those who would commit such a crime, whether out of hate or for profit, must hide the highly illegal utterances they use to threaten, coerce and con their victims out of their homes. At least in northeast Seattle, this they do by adopting the methods of private investigators, phone phreakers and hackers. Radio figures prominently in all of these.

The smartphone, with multiple radios and antennas, is the quintessential target for mobbers of any kind. Seldom managed and never far from the ear of the victim, the smartphone takes phone phreaking to a whole new level.

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The heart of any smartphone or even its predecessor cell phone, is a “mini-radio” that sends and receives radio signals (“How Smartphones Work,” https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/smartphone1.htm). The use of radio signals alone is increasingly involved in hacks of all kinds. Take, for example, the April 2017 hack of the entire network of Dallas emergency sirens.

Ten years back, Dallas installed an emergency system of 156 sirens throughout the city. The sirens are controlled by tones, like the old Ma Bell telephone system for which phone phreakers—early hackers—discovered that a toy whistle from a box of Cap’n Crunch emitted the 2,600 Hz tone required to unlock long-distance and international calling. Dallas officials were tight-lipped about how the sirens were activated, saying only that the incident was not the result of a computer hack, that the system was radio-operated.

Dallas quickly allocated funds to upgrade the system; as a short-term fix, they took it down over a weekend and added the encryption they hadn’t bothered to purchase ten years before. The technology writer reporting the incident for TechCrunch observed that it sounded like “massive-scale phone phreaking” (“A radio signal hack is what made those Dallas warning sirens go nuts,” https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/12/dallas-emergency-system-100000-dollar-upgrade-radio-hack/, and “Culprit broadcast signal that triggered Dallas’ emergency sirens Friday night,” https://www.dallasnews.com/news/news/2017/04/10/hacker-broadcast-signal-triggered-dallas-emergency-sirens-friday-night).

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A smartphone is provisioned with multiple radio streams to enable data transfer over the cellular network and with other devices. The central component enabling high-speed data transfer between devices—in other words, radios—is the antenna. A smartphone is essentially a “multiradio transmitter” with numerous antenna components (“RF Switches Guide Signals in Smart Phones,” http://www.skyworksinc.com/downloads/press_room/published_articles/Microwave_RF_092010.pdf). It’s the antenna that makes the radio. You might say, that it is the antenna that gives a radio its power.

Smartphones typically have several antennas. A primary antenna receives the cellular signal; a primary RF (radio frequency) switch handles the cellular transmit and receive functions. A secondary antenna provides redundancy, handling transmissions when signal fade affects the primary antenna. The redundant antenna is also called a “diversity” antenna, and is gated by a “diversity switch.”

Diversity antennas are commonly seen in LTE and other data-intensive applications. Band-switches route bands to a frequency-sensitive duplexer; antenna-switching links antennas with the radios required by protocol and signal. Chips that support multiple communications protocols—for example, Bluetooth, WiFi and FM radio—rely on switching to appropriately route the signals from the primary antenna to the radio. Some smartphones may be engineered to use one antenna as the transmitter and another as the receiver. Others may have dedicated antennas for WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS (“How Do Cell Phones Work?” https://pongcase.com/blog/cell-phones-work/).

In its simplest form, an antenna, according to Rong Wang, PhD, is “a metallic element (such as copper) engineered to be a specific size and shape for transmitting and receiving specific frequencies of radio waves” (“How Do Cell Phones Work?” https://pongcase.com/blog/cell-phones-work/). Antennas are designed to receive specific frequency bands. Advances in antenna technologies have contributed to their miniaturization and enabled mobility.

The antenna used to receive satellite radio is highly sensitive and comparable to that of a smartphone. Like antennas designed for terrestrial radio—traditional radio transmitted in waves over the air—antennas that pick up satellite radio are omnidirectional, meaning they radiate uniformly in all directions; see the Wikipedia illustration that shows the radiation pattern of an omnidirectional antenna like the doughnut encircling the hole (“Omnidirectional antenna,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnidirectional_antenna).  However, satellite radio requires a specialized antenna that senses the satellite frequency band (2.31 to 2.36 GHz); an antenna that listens for the FM band (87.9 to 107.9 MHz) or HD Radio band (“HD Radio,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_Radio) won’t work.

This probably explains what happened when, at my request, the dealership for my California commuter car removed the antenna for the satellite radio that comes with many small sporty cars. With a bit of research, I learned that satellite radio antennas are usually positioned on the roof, at the tail end of the vehicle, to ensure unimpeded access to blue sky with a diminished chance of interference from dashboard electronics (“What is a Satellite Radio Antenna?”, https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-a-satellite-radio-antenna-534489).

When the antenna was removed, the volume of what is almost certainly radio-transmitted mobbing harassment dropped instantly, remaining quietest when the ventilation fan is set too low to generate an air stream into the passenger compartment. That air stream, as I’ve noted in earlier blogs about the transmission of sound, becomes a medium carrying any sound waves in its trajectory.

As I noted in an earlier blog entry, I had reluctantly canceled the free year-long satellite radio subscription that came with the car. Nevertheless, it is the antenna that creates the vulnerability; antennas pick up transmissions within range and at the specified frequency. This would explain why a mobber using software-defined radio (SDR) to transmit mobile verbal abuse on the satellite radio band might want to keep an eye out for the telltale signs of satellite radio antennas or other capable antennas mounted on vehicles close to the target vehicle. In my case, the mobile verbal abuse that follows when I drive is not only modulated by conditions that affect radio, the abuse pauses when police patrol cars are in proximity and when trucks that have custom or more powerful antennas are close by. Alternatively, a private investigator who uses SDR or the services of a hacker or radio specialist who does, might create and simultaneously transmit streams onto multiple bands to ensure coverage of the target devices.

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Early on, as the mobbers tried to scare me out of my home, they warned that I’d get cancer if I didn’t “get out” because of “all the RF” they claimed to be shooting into my small 1940s home. It didn’t take long before the sheer volume of threats and hoaxes they tried to run on me led me to conclude that a central component of the bullying crime was a con game.

Radio frequency radiation is in fact all around us, so much so that University of Washington student researchers are using a technique called Ambient Backscatter to transmit sound using nothing more than a low-profile antenna. According to the abstract on the students’ research paper, “Ambient Backscatter transforms existing wireless signals into both a source of power and a communication medium” (Ambient Backscatter: Wireless Communication Out of Thin Air,” http://abc.cs.washington.edu/). The researchers found they could use the technique of backscattering to overlay messages onto the ambient signal of a local NPR (National Public Radio) station. Because the RF radiation was ambient, all they had to do was to use copper tape to embed an antenna on the back of a poster at the bus stop, or use conductive thread to sew an antenna onto a researcher’s cotton t-shirt (“Singing posters and talking shirts: UW engineers turn everyday objects into FM radio stations”, http://www.washington.edu/news/2017/03/01/singing-posters-and-talking-shirts-uw-engineers-turn-everyday-objects-into-fm-radio-stations/). Backscatter is testament to the power of the antenna, if not to the saturation of our environments with radio frequency waves. [Note 10/22/20: As of late, I’ve been thinking that a short piece about the influence of backscatter on mobile harassment might be appropriate. This because whether in a car or on a bicycle, the harassment tends to be louder depending on the closeness of other vehicles and their antennas. The possibility of transmitters that rely on backscatter would probably have to be differentiated to some extent from harassment inflicted while following.]

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A byproduct of antenna miniaturization into the compact case of a mobile device is the potential for interaction between the hardware components—the circuit board and metal frame—and the communicative pattern of the signal itself. When the conductive outer casing is used as an antenna, for example, nearby insulators can cause signal loss. Hence, the iPhone 4 snafu known as “Antennagate,” in which grasping the phone by the lower-left corner resulted in a dropped signal. Professor Gert Frølund Pederson, an expert in antenna performance from Denmark’s Aalborg University explained, “Your finger is a very lossy material” (“Apple Didn’t Learn From The iPhone Antennagate Scandal,” https://www.forbes.com/sites/jvchamary/2016/10/31/iphone-antenna-performance/#714687ea604d). The term “lossy” describes a condition in which data is discarded, usually related to data compression; “lossless” describes the retention of the data in its original form.

Smartphone antenna design is “reasonably complicated,” according to Peter Joseph Bevelacqua, an antenna engineer with stints at Boeing, Apple and Google under his belt. Bevelacqua’s accessible website Antenna-Theory.com, attributes this complexity in great measure to the requirements of regulatory bodies and carriers. Bevelacqua notes that each smartphone is designed with the following antennas:

Primary Cellular Antenna (Transmit and Receive)
Diversity Cellular Antena (Receive Only)
GPS Antenna (Receive Only)
WIFI Antenna (Transmit and Receive)
NFC Antenna

(“Cell Phone Antenna Design,” http://www.antenna-theory.com/design/cellantenna.php.)

Acknowledging the lossy nature of the human body,  for example, in the United States the FCC caps the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) of the primary antenna over 1 gram of human tissue. Because smartphones are engineered to comply with SAR requirements, the primary cellular antenna is almost always at the lower end of the device. This location provides the maximum distance from the ear that you press against your phone. According to Antenna-Theory.com, locating the primary antenna at the mouth end  of the smartphone decreases absorption by increasing the distance between the antenna and your head.

Bevelacqua stresses that, to efficiently radiate at the required frequencies, the primary antenna “must essentially be the size of the whole device.” For this reason, the primary antenna is not simply a component of the smartphone. Instead, the antenna is built on the entirety of the smartphone and its body.

In the case of the iPhone 4, the placement of the slot ending the antenna in the lower-left corner meant that the left-handed user would be most likely to suffer from what became known as the “death grip” (“Apple Didn’t Learn From The iPhone Antennagate Scandal,” https://www.forbes.com/sites/jvchamary/2016/10/31/iphone-antenna-performance/#4402cae3604d). On the Antenna-Theory.com website, Bevelacqua notes that the 2013 HTC smartphone case cleverly incorporated “a thin non-metallic gap in the aluminum” back to allow the antenna to radiate. According to Forbes.com, some claim that the Google Pixel phone does little more than copy the design of older HTC phones (Why Does Google’s Pixel Phone Have Glass On The Back?”, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jvchamary/2016/10/20/google-pixel-phone-glass/#600829fd38fc). Google contends that the rear glass panel of the Pixel, known as the “shade,” improves antenna performance.

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The convergence between the telephone and the radio is evident in the fact that smartphones almost universally include FM chips baked into the ubiquitous Qualcommm LTE modem. April Glaser’s July 2016 Wired magazine piece examines why only one-third of the FM tuners in smartphones work (“Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?”, https://www.wired.com/2016/07/phones-fm-chips-radio-smartphone/).

So why can’t you listen to the radio? Glaser speculates that profit from streaming media services was a disincentive for their activation. Apple in particular, according to Glaser, has been “the biggest holdout.” Apple responded to increased pressure from the FCC for FM chip activation in 2017 with an explanation that later models of the iPhone—specifically, iPhone 7 and iPhone 8—no longer include FM chips (“FCC says Apple should activate iPhones’ FM radio chip, but newer phones don’t have,” https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fcc-apple/fcc-says-apple-should-activate-iphones-fm-radio-chip-but-newer-phones-dont-have-idUSKCN1C328C).

Activation of the FM tuner has typically been left to the carrier; at the time of the 2016 article, AT&T and T-Mobile were following Sprint’s lead and moving to activate Android phones. In 2015, AT&T announced it would activate FM radio chips on all Android smartphones purchased through them (“AT&T to activate FM radio chips in all Android phones next year”, http://www.zdnet.com/article/at-t-to-activate-fm-radio-chips-in-all-android-phones-next-year/).

The NextRadio app, available in the Google Play store, locates and activates the FM chip on Android phones version 4.2 and higher, allowing you to use your smartphone to receive terrestrial FM stations. For more information about NextRadio, see Rick Broida’s July 2017 article on c|net, “Unlock the secret FM tuner in your Android phone,” at https://www.cnet.com/how-to/unlock-the-secret-fm-tuner-in-your-android-phone/.

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As always, the information on the On being mobbed blog is specific to my own circumstances; your mileage may vary. Additionally, this blog entry may include technical inaccuracies. I am not a radio specialist or an antenna engineer; I am simply a writer who is the victim of an ongoing crime, with strong digital components, called real estate mobbing.

You could almost say that smartphones are made for mobbing. Any kind of mobbing, from mobbing by phone phreaking or satellite phone, to mobbing by television transmitter or over any available radio band. Smartphones are the device of choice for cyber-criminals whose bullying is also called “mobbing.” Smartphones also appear to be a favored target in real estate mobbing, a real-world deployment of cyber-bullying where any device with a radio is fair game. It was the mobbers of northeast Seattle, after all, who called themselves mobbers, one of them threatening me, “If you get an iPhone, I’ll fuck you up so bad.” Whether mobbing is bullying in the virtual world or the real world, radio makes it all happen.

Stay tuned for part 3 of Radiohead: Cell phones are radios, in which we’ll discuss the convergence of radio and phone and the simple ways police and the mobbers who use the techniques of private investigators use their radios and antennas to hack yours.