Spooks. TV Show. How true to life are somethings in it?

[Magic_x_uk]

Hi. I enjoy the TV Show Spooks.

Just wondered how true to life some things are.

Like being able to follow people via CCTV from face recognition.

Being able to triangulate mobile phone signals

Tiny little tracking devices etc etc

Stealing all your data on your laptop in seconds.


The one that always amuses me is the ability for them to pick up someones phone and quickly get things from it without them knowing. They must go on a course educating them on all phone models out there.


I guess I have always been into the 'james bond' gadgets since a little boy.

Just enjoy this sort of thing.

 

[TheVoice]

It's all exaggerated for the sake of entertainment. Real investigative work still relies on surveillance and gathering of information through more traditional methods. They don't have one-click access to bank accounts or mobile phone calls.

That's not to say that the Security Services can't get such information if required, but it'd be rather more time consuming and complicated than the show makes it look.

 

[Ev0]

A lot of it is 'sexed' up for TV, but a lot of things are doable.

Not sure about getting contents of a laptop in seconds though

The one that always amuses me is the ability for them to pick up someones phone and quickly get things from it without them knowing. They must go on a course educating them on all phone models out there.

Depending on what you mean exactly there is equipment out there which does it for you.

I remember at InfoSec a few years ago there was a stand and the product the company sold was a mobile phone forensics briefcase, was very cool

Had all the different types of mobile connections down one side when you opened it up to plug the phone in, then it went off and did it's thing

 

[aaron]

Facial recognition is available, as well as the ability to identify someone based on the way they walk (stride etc)

Mobile phone triangulation is very possible. Its how things like GPS on phones work and the "find my friends" app on the iphone. Pinpoints your position by assesing data from the three closest mobile phone masts.

Getting data from phones is again completely true.

Mini tracking devices are also around.

The only one im not sure about is getting laptop data in seconds although as long as you know what your looking for you can write a program on a usb stick that bypasses security and steals the documents which can take seconds. Although as i said you have to know what your looking for.

 

[semi-pro waster]

The only one im not sure about is getting laptop data in seconds although as long as you know what your looking for you can write a program on a usb stick that bypasses security and steals the documents which can take seconds. Although as i said you have to know what your looking for.

You're right you'd have to know exactly what you are looking for or at least the folder it is stored in to do the copy. If it is a wholescale copy of the contents of the hard drive as you see on some programmes then it's impossible to do because the limitation is down to the data transfer rate of the USB/IEEE1394/whatever and no matter how cleverly you write the software you're not going to completely surmount the hardware limitations.

As for the rest it's generally possible although I suspect possibly not to the degree of accuracy they show or in the timescales that they normally portray but then I'd imagine lots of the real work done is neither exciting nor quick to show on TV and keep the viewers interested.

 

[Dano]

I just hope the number of agent deaths is exaggerated otherwise it's done a poor job of advertising the job...