Surveilled Student Finds Tracker, FBI Demands It Back

by Hans|Published October 12, 2010|1 comment

Wired’s Threat Level blog has the story of California student Yasir Afifi. His mechanic found an unusual electronic gadget in Afifi’s car, that turns out to be a tracking device. Then he posted pictures to Reddit. Interestingly, the crowd-sourced analysis pegged the exact make and model of the tracking device, an Orion Guardian ST820 by Cobham, price tag $5k-$6k or so. The FBI came calling the next day and retrieved the device.

AUTHOR

Hans

Hans G. Schantz is co-founder and CTO of Q-Track Corporation. Co-inventor of NFER indoor location technology, he has more than 40 U.S. patents to his credit. He is the author of The Art and Science of Ultrawideband Antennas, The Biographies of John Charles Fremont, and the science fiction thriller, The Hidden Truth, available free through Kindle Unlimited. Dr. Schantz earned his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Texas at Austin. He lives in Huntsville, AL with his wife, Barbara, and four children.

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