Have Chloe Patch Me Through.

February 8, 2007 3:22 PM

How realistic is the exchange of information in the show 24?

So obviously, the show's completely unrealistic, but I wonder how close actual technology comes to what we see on the show. If you worked for the most hooked-up intelligence agency in the world - I'm assuming the CIA - and had a team of people devoted solely to getting you information, with the highest level technology available, could you theoretically be as efficient and connected as Jack Bauer is?

Would you be able to have someone "patch you through" instantly; download any maps onto your device; trace any call; intercept messages; tap into surveillence cameras and let you peer in on your pdA; track cars on city streets; and so on?

posted by jtajta to technology (15 comments total)

No.

If you're asking in the context of actual technological infrastructure, even with today's technology an agency would still actually have to get in touch with people operating private systems on the other end and get them to "patch through" cell calls, data transmissions, etc. There's no magical "find this person's e-mail and start reading it" button. Project Echelon monitors terrabytes of data and still requires time and massive system resources to process and filter it. A cursory glance at most newspapers would indicate the limits of the CIA's surveillance capability.

If you're asking hypothetically, then your question is if you could do all this as long as you had the technology that lets you do all that, which sort of answers itself.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 3:46 PM on February 8, 2007

I watch 24 too, and have a computer and security background. The amount of work Bauer is able to do through his pda, while pretty incredible, does not make me laugh, as this is potentially possible to the fabled CTU

It's not even the times where they use existing backdoors into other government or businesses agencies.. this too is within a remote range of possibility.

It's not even the made for tv graphics that tell the viewer what everyone just said.

I laugh at the times when they go in blind at an organization and toss some buzzwords around "running a matrix on the firewall" or somesuch and have exactly what they need in a matter of minutes. That kind of stuff takes days, weeks, and usually involves much more than a magic unlock key. I forgive them for this most times since the show's nature means everything must be done immediately. It's the same issue that distance plays in 24 -- they can't show Jack driving or flying for an entire episode, so they compress this somewhat.

Oh, and a concrete example from an episode ago -- somehow, Thomas Lennox's racial profiling directive immediately made Nadia Yassir's work take 5 times longer due to all the background checks she had to go through...
posted by WetherMan at 3:54 PM on February 8, 2007

jtajta, I work for a private organisation that processes an enormous amount of content daily (albeit in a relatively easy to read text based format) and does lots of special things to make it easy for the user to find (in some cases the users can be parts of the US government). We don't find it easy and we've got the the information providers actually trying to give us the data (and getting paid for it!) so I would guess that trying to do these types of things in a sneaky spy-type fashion has got to be several orders of magnitude harder.
posted by eb98jdb at 3:58 PM on February 8, 2007

A cursory glance at most newspapers would indicate the limits of the CIA's surveillance capability.

The best surveillance is the kind you don't see in the papers.
posted by Mikey-San at 4:48 PM on February 8, 2007

I'd say the exchange of information is relatively realistic. With some sort of privatized cellular network, a lot of the "patch you throughs" and "send it to my PDAs" would definitely be feasible.

The hacking, and cracking, that they do on that show, on the other hand, is pretty fake. Someone's hard drive is encrypted, they have to break it, and it's done in 10 minutes? Nope. There's a corrupted, encrypted image file and they have to put it back together...15 minutes? Nope.
posted by jckll at 5:33 PM on February 8, 2007

Considering that most people can't even set up a conference call without hanging up on someone, and that the rest of them would forget their network login passwords seven times a day I don't think it is possible to ever achieve the smooth as silk transitions that jack has. Howeever I have always wondered what Jack and The rest of the CTI gang do doing commercials. Now I know. They hit redial.
posted by Gungho at 6:10 PM on February 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

Yeah the corrupted, encrypted image file really grated with me. (Well) Encrypted data without a key is fairly close to noise, and if you add corruption in there surely it makes it impossible to decrypt? Isn't that one of those "yes it could be done but it would take 800 million years" things?

Re: patching through: no problem at all if you have a modern PBX with lots of outside lines (e.g. one line out to Jack, one line out to informant, PBX connects them). This isn't done in most commercial instances only because the 'patcher' pays for both calls =). Cheaper to have Jack hang up and call the informant directly, but CTU doesn't care about cheap.

Download maps: no problem. Send them via SMS or even send Jack an internet link to a google map via SMS.

Tap into surveillance cameras: sure, if they are set up with default, googleable, URLS =)

Track cars on city streets: not any random car, except via satellite images. BUT, there's nothing stopping you slapping a magnetic cellular GPS transmitter on the car of your choosing, then tracking it via a website.
posted by pivotal at 6:10 PM on February 8, 2007

nothing stopping you slapping a magnetic cellular GPS transmitter on the car of your choosing, then tracking it via a website.

He he, sparkfun has all the parts you need for that. Don't even have to buy that (probably) horrendously expensive thing. Or just use mologogo on a cheap nextel/boost phone and toss it in the car.
posted by IronLizard at 6:29 PM on February 8, 2007

Yeah, no.

Frankly, there is no way that government agency can get computer systems that work that seamlessly. Take a look at a couple of articles: this one is about the complete goat fuck that was the FBI attempt to replace its computer system - this was a system that was seriously antiquated to begin with, and I vaguely recall reading somewhere, couldn't run a Boolean search for terrorist names; this fascinating article by Seymour Hersh details some of the problems the NSA has had, being overwhelmed by the volume of intelligence they can collect - they just can't analyse it all.

Don't forget the problems in information-sharing between the FBI and CIA that contributed to the failure to prevent Sept. 11. So you can bet that their computers aren't all interconnected.

In short, things aren't as easy as they look on TV.
posted by Dasein at 6:30 PM on February 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

I'll go through these one by one.

Patching the phone calls is easy - this can be done by any number of mechanisms (total cost is certainly sub $5k). Downloading maps is also easy.

Tracking cars on city streets... this is not overly difficult with a GPS device and I can think of any number of ways to get the information to our friend, Mr. Bauer, as previously stated.

Tapping cameras or phones - this is significantly more difficult to do "quickly". On the phone side this isn't outside the realm of possibility depending on the sender or receiver. Relaying the audio to Jack would not be all that difficult. On the camera side, there are a number of wireless cameras that transmit unencrypted clear video. This video is not outside the reach of any modern signals intelligence apparatus but the frequency is not suitable for satellite reception. Retransmitters could be used within a city, but this isn't very practical on a large scale.

On the surveillance camera side, depending how the camera is wired or depending on what wireless technologies it uses, it's not outside the realm of possibility but it would be a significant technological challenge without some previous "canvassing" of the subject cameras and/or surveillance systems.

The hardest thing about 24 for me to fathom as an engineer with some experience in these spaces is the rate of data transfer. Today's mobile technologies "deployed" are not as fast as depicted on the show, but the capabilities seen on the show in terms of raw data bandwidth are not out of reach necessarily. Next-generation mobile data services certainly could achieve what is shown (though there would certainly be some degradation of quality).

My personal belief is that surveillance technology is significantly more advanced than we might think or know, but I don't think it quite approaches the all-seeing eye depicted on the show. However, certain targets could certainly be surveilled in this manner with a little advance work.

With enough resources and budget and the right kind of focus...
posted by arimathea at 7:04 PM on February 8, 2007

I have no technical experience or anything, but perhaps the show taking place slightly in the future should be taken into consideration.
posted by spaltavian at 8:52 PM on February 8, 2007

What's grossly unrealistic is the way the show so rapidly and accurately transforms raw data into actionable intelligence.

That's always been the hardest thing for clandestine organizations to do, and it's been very hard in the war on terror. Technology can't do much there -- it can't overcome the conceptual difficulties of recognizing asymetric threats (bringing down the World Trade Center with boxcutters), and it definitely can't overcome the bipartisan lack of seriousness about the problem at the level of the government and its poltiical opposition.
posted by MattD at 10:02 PM on February 8, 2007

I'm a project manager - most project managers regularly entertain misanthropic notions based on the most flawed aspect of any project - humans. I asked myself the same question the other night whilst watching the ridiculous staccato efficiency in West Wing, it's absurd - but aspirationally absurd. If it weren't for these over zealous, efficient-beyond-belief over achievers, we'd calm down and be happy with our normal under achievements.
posted by strawberryviagra at 2:45 AM on February 9, 2007

What gets me is when they break into someone's house, phone home to Chloe, and say "I'll upload his hard drive and you analize it." Baboom!
posted by JamesMessick at 5:33 AM on February 9, 2007

spaltavian: I have no technical experience or anything, but perhaps the show taking place slightly in the future should be taken into consideration.

Slightly in the future, such as Jan 23rd, 2012 perhaps?
(Ref: http://www.tvsquad.com/2007/01/29/24-time-warp/)

(if you believe what you read on the internets, anyway...)
posted by devbrain at 8:03 AM on February 9, 2007