tv detector vans, surely bogus?

[trotsky]

"The specially-equipped BBC spy vehicles circulate up and down residential streets constantly searching for the distinctive signals given out by receivers, and checking those indications against the list of licensees, for violators" (this weeks commentary)

I have, for many years, been telling everyone that these vans do not exist and were in fact psuedoscience (with very limited sucess as everyone has seen or knows someone who has seen one). I filed this under urban myth and forgot about it.

However, now Randi seems to be perpetuating this myth perpetrated on the British people.

or is he? am I wrong in this?

I've not seen a detector van. I have seen vans containing tv licence people who have a list of all addresses which do not have a licence. I know they can't enter your house without a police officer and I know how hard it would be to get one to accompany them. Meaning they have to resort to lying that they know u've got a tv on.

I remember the basic facts behind my knowledge of knowing these vans don't exist. It was around 12years ago there was a debate in a broadsheet letters page. this ended with a prof of physics from ?? University stating he was researching detectors that could do this and they only worked up to 6 inches from a tv screen so the bbc must have had access to e.t technology for 30 years.

So what is the truth would anyone like to enlighten us?
thanks

[Hitch]

What you have to worry about are the Cat Detector Vans from the Ministry of Housing. hey can pinpoint a purr at 400 yards. So, if have have a particularly happy cat, best make sure it's licensed.

[trotsky]

hmm I'll have to remember that if the Liberals bring back the dog licence!
oh ono they won't get in :D

[Darat]

I am going to err on the side of believing they do exist since the TV Licensing page has this to say:

http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/information/tvdetectorvans.jsp

...snip...

Our TV detector vans and enforcement officers are equipped with state-of-the-art detection equipment which can tell in as little as 20 seconds whether you are using a TV.

...snip...


Now if they don’t exist that means a statutory body is and has been for years blatantly lying, and for all I don’t have an inherent trust in public bodies it seem too "big" a lie for then to have got away with it for all these years.

Also see: http://www.bushywood.com/tv_detector_vans.htm

[Odin]

I also thought this was a myth, I thought that the BBC assumed everyone owns a TV, so therefore targeted anyone without a licence, There was a story a year or so ago about a ruined castle (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_go1632/is_200303/ai_n7406692) that the BBC tried to get the owner to pay a licence fee for. Also when you buy a TV you have to give your address so they can check you have a licence.
I can't see how it would be possible to distinguish between your TV if you hadn't payed the licence and a neighbours who had especially if you lived in a flat or your house was attached to theirs.

[trotsky]

http://www.tvlicensing.biz/detection/images/tv_detector_van_50s.jpg

that van is from the 50's so they had them then?
And the equipment must have been very small considering you can see into the back.
If we've been lied to i demand justice.
national brainwashing

[geni]

It's just about doable. TVs do give out a fair bit of EM radition at least the old ones did.

[Donn]

In South Africa, the SABC (The National broadcaster) is also assumed to have these detection vans riding around in the streets. I have never seen one, but then again, when I'm watching TV I don't tend to watch the street!

[geni]

certianly this article suggests it is posible

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_security

[jmercer]

In the early days of cable TV here in the states, the cable company was able to detect "stolen" taps without actually accessing the house. I don't know if they could do it without physically using the connections on the poles or not, but I do know it is possible.

[Donn]

I wonder if Microsoft does something similar? Only they use black helicopters and they drop into your house when they detect pirate serial numbers!
"Whaddaya want from me?" you may cry.
"Bills, lot's of them!" they reply.
"Isn't the one you have enough already?".

;)

[BillyJoe]

There are no TV detector vans in Australia.

[Zep]

There's a small market for a UK electronics magazine to provide a build-it-yourself circuit for children that generates exactly the same range of EMF as a TV set does. Then have one in every home, TV or no TV, switched in permanently. Then the detector vans will not be able to detect a home that has a TV from one that doesn't, rendering the detectors effectively useless (not to mention the whole licensing idea in the first place).

Really, it's almost certain that 99.9% of UK homes have at least one TV set, so why not drop the whole licensing idea and go for a straight payment from general tax revenue instead.

[NoZed Avenger]

Originally posted by Hitch
What you have to worry about are the Cat Detector Vans from the Ministry of Housing. hey can pinpoint a purr at 400 yards. So, if have have a particularly happy cat, best make sure it's licensed.

Ministry of "Housinge," actually.





I am very observant.



N/A

[Billy]

Although I haven't seen one for many years (probably the seventies)- I can confirm that TV detector vans do or at least did exist in the UK.

Randi referred to a tax that we pay for having a TV. I had never thought about it as a tax, but I suppose it is, only the BBC prefer to call it a licence fee (there even used to be a difference in licence prices for black and white or colour sets). Even if you own a TV and only ever watch commercial or cable channels and never watch the BBC you still need to pay. I agree that these days they probably expect every house to have a TV, and if your household doesn't show up as having paid for a licence they will suspect that you are a licence dodger.

I always suspected that the vans themselves were a bit of propaganda that were just used for cruising around and frightening people into paying the tax - sorry I mean making their fair and just contribution to the BBC. I can't imagine a detector van going round some of the inner city high rise blocks and pinpointing who is watching a TV (apparently the TV needs to be switched on to show up).

The fact that you are legally bound to pay for the licence (as they love to remind us), they are answerable for their output and what sort of programs they are spending our money on. And yes they are a business and do get drawn into ratings wars. But there is some hope - they recently announced that they are getting rid of a lot of the "reality" shows and the like.

I know that to a lot of other countries the idea of paying this "tax" for a state run television company might seem strange. But it's not all bad - there are several BBC tv and radio stations that cover a wide variety of tastes. And best of all there are no commercials on any of them! There has been talk of the BBC abandoning the licence fees altogether and becoming a commercial station - given the choice I prefer to pay the fee.

[BillyJoe]

In Australia the ABC remains public and there are no licence fees. ;)

[crimresearch]

Originally posted by jmercer
In the early days of cable TV here in the states, the cable company was able to detect "stolen" taps without actually accessing the house. I don't know if they could do it without physically using the connections on the poles or not, but I do know it is possible.

That was supposedly done by measuring the increased impedance per foot...adding enough cable to string between apartments or floors of a house would be detectable at the cable junction box outside.

[Soapy Sam]

It's just about doable. TVs do give out a fair bit of EM radiation at least the old ones did. - geni


geni- they certainly do! It's particularly noticeable in the visible part of the spectrum, :D , which is exactly what the guy in the van, with the licence address list in his paw, is detecting, by looking out of the van at your window.

The answer of course, is lead-lined curtains.

The BBC has to be funded somehow. The answer decades ago was to avoid commercialism and have the service funded by the users. That was in the days when the beeb was the only station available. Also, the UK government had a history of issuing licences to own things- dogs, for instance. It worked for a time.
Things have changed, just a bit. And it can't work for much longer. Soon they will have to extend it to PCs , which increasingly come with RF tuners, and to broadband users.

My own solution was simple. I refuse to pay a tax on EM radiation which comes through my window whether I like it or not. So I have not owned a TV set for some 22 years. You know what? I never missed it.

[Peter@Beoworld]

I was surprised to see this piece in the Commentary. The BBC is indeed paid for by the license fee as otherwise it would require advertising revenue - and hence adverts - euch!- or be paid from by general taxation. As the fee is only levied on those with a TV set, it seems fair. I know in these days of multi-channels , some may say they never watch the BBC but should it be part of general taxation, it would seem to be even less fair. Besides one also gets the benefit of the best radio service available and with enough choice for almost anyone.
As for the BBC being a Goverment organisation, I can only suggest asking Andrew Gilligan about that!:D
Peter

[John the Skeptic]

The TV aerial (antenna) receives all of the frequencies that are broadcast by all of the stations.

To pick out one frequency (one TV station) the frequency of an internal “local oscillator�, which is tuneable (used to be done by turning the dial on the front), is compared to the incoming frequencies.

The TV will be tuned into a frequency that is a set difference between the local oscillator frequency and the frequency of the incoming signal. By increasing/decreasing the frequency of the local oscillator the individual channels can be tuned into.

The local oscillator actually transmits, via the input coax cable, from the aerial.

So the claim that was made a long time ago by TV licensing, “we can not only tell that you have a TV, we can even tell which channel you’re watching� was true. They could tell by the frequency of the local oscillator in the TV.

That’s the theory anyway. How practical it would be with a multitude of aerials close together on a housing estate, I have no idea.

Detector vans may have been more practicable in the days when TV ownership was comparatively rare.

[dann]

Originally posted by Soapy Sam
You know what? I never missed it.
I can see why you wouldn't, but aren't lead-lined curtains awfully heavy?

[Soapy Sam]

You have to run them from a gantry girder, but they double as protection from microwave beams from alien saucers.

And you can get them in a pretty pink chintz.

[huw12345]

Originally posted by Billy
there even used to be a difference in licence prices for black and white or colour sets There still is. From the TV licensing website (http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/information/)
A colour TV Licence costs £126.50 and a black and white licence costs £42.00.

Originally posted by Soapy Sam
Things have changed, just a bit. And it can't work for much longer. Soon they will have to extend it to PCs , which increasingly come with RF tuners, and to broadband users. They already have. From the same site If you use a TV or any other device to receive or record TV programmes (for example, a VCR, set-top box, DVD recorder or PC with a broadcast card) - you need a TV Licence. You are required by law to have one. I don't know about broadband users since (as far as I know) they don't actually broadcast much over the internet yet, although they have come under some criticism for having such a large budget for their (also excellent) web presence. In response to this criticism they argue that they are a public information service and should be providing that information across as many media as is practicable.

With regard to whether detector vans are real, I have also gone through three belief stages:
At first I blindly accepted that they must be real because "they wouldn't lie to us, would they?".
I then realised that I'd never seen one, had heard a few rumours that they didn't exist or that the big dish on the top was just for show, and I learned a little bit of science that made me think that the RF put out by a TV is probably below a reasonable detection threshold/difficult to distinguish in flats/yadda yadda.
Most recently I've seen TV programs with more modern technology for actually seeing what is being displayed on a TV screen at some distance (see this paper (http://web.archive.org/web/20000830130750/www.shmoo.com/tempest/emr.pdf) by Van Eck for something similar). This all leads me to believe that they probably do have these detector vans after all.

I doubt detector vans are particularly cost effective though. Recently I got rid of my TV and was subjected to a very effective mail campaign threatening me with various forms of punishment if I didn't renew my license. The effect of the campaign is to get you either to stump up, or to state categorically that you do not own a receiving device. Presumably, the TV licensing people, after they've got a few of these categorical statements in an area, will send someone round with a hand-held detector to try to catch you in the act. The categorical statement will presumably help them in court should they discover that you've actually got a TV after all (one more quote from the site): We can use a hand-held scanning device. These measure both the direction and strength of a signal, making it easy for us to locate TVs - even in the hardest to reach places.

Finally, some circumstantial evidence against detector vans (once again from the site): We have a range of detection tools at our disposal in our vans. Some aspects of the equipment have been developed in such secrecy that engineers working on specific detection methods work in isolation - so not even they know how the other detection methods work. This gives us the best chance of catching licence evaders. What a crock! This strongly reminds me of all the other pseudo-scientific stuff that we are directed too so often from this website. This is clearly just intended to scare us - if they really had the technology to allow them to detect our TVs, wouldn't it be much more effective to publish the papers and the technology? Surely this would be even scarier? [Actually, I guess publishing the technology will increase the risk that people will develop countermeasures, so I suppose it might make some sense not to reveal the info, but it still smells bad]

Huw

[Soapy Sam]

For several years after getting rid of the box, I received letters from the licencing authority asking me to confirm that I neither owned nor operated a receiver at my home address. Last one was about three years ago and asked me to inform them if things changed, which, being boringly honest, I actually would.
I also had a person call on two occasions, claiming to be from the TVLA and asking to inspect my licence.
They did not get past the front door and showed no authority to demand entry. That last happened about fifteen years ago.
One letter stated that they had found the most effective way to do their job was to write to addresses where there was no record of a licence.

In my reply, I pointed out that this is tantamount to prior assumption of guilt before trial, in the absence of any but the most indirect circumstantial evidence, which is a violation of a fundamental principle of law.

It's a difficult question. The BBC is unashamedly commercial on its BBC World broadcasts and the quality of programming is low. I do not want to see it go commercial at home, nor do I wish it to become what Randi mistakenly called it- an arm of government.
I expext some compromise will emerge.

[Undodog]

I recently received a letter from the licence folks basically telling me that they know I’m watching telly and that I don’t have a licence for it at that address.
How did they know? Less than a week before I got the letter I bought a FreeView box with a credit card. A slight violation in my opinion, especially as it could have been a gift, but the most annoying part is that it took them a day to pounce on me for not having a licence but they couldn’t be bothered to check if anyone else at that address might have one.

[Undodog]

Originally posted by John the Skeptic
So the claim that was made a long time ago by TV licensing, “we can not only tell that you have a TV, we can even tell which channel you’re watching� was true. They could tell by the frequency of the local oscillator in the TV.
It has bothered me for a long time that this contradicts my memory of a program that ‘explained’ how the ratings were worked out.

According to this program, there were specially selected families living around you that had, installed on top of their TV sets, a gadget that made a record of which channel was on and when. The family also had to make a log of when they left the room or just had the TV on in the background.
This log was then collected as some sort of base average, multiplied and dished out as ‘viewing figures.’
Yet no-one I knew had this gadget and no-one they knew had this gadget and I’d hazard a guess that no-one you (UK readers) knew knew anyone who knew anyone who had this gadget!

So if it was all a lie the question remains, how were the ratings compiled?
If they knew what we were watching, they obviously knew that we were watching.
Would the only remaining alternative be that they simply made up the ratings?

[Odin]

Originally posted by Undodog

So if it was all a lie the question remains, how were the ratings compiled?
If they knew what we were watching, they obviously knew that we were watching.
Would the only remaining alternative be that they simply made up the ratings?

I think they conduct surveys of what people watch and work it out from that. I can remember filling in a survey like this once. Possibly they randomly poll houses and shoppers, I know they ask at events they sponser or are involved in.

[Fra Mauro]

Originally posted by Undodog
Yet no-one I knew had this gadget and no-one they knew had this gadget and I’d hazard a guess that no-one you (UK readers) knew knew anyone who knew anyone who had this gadget!

So if it was all a lie the question remains, how were the ratings compiled?

Undodog, your question brought me out of hiding due to curiosity. I work in television advertising in the US and I wondered what are the differences, if any, between our (US) system and your (UK) system for generating ratings.

To answer my question there are some differences, though not that many (which is what I expected).

To answer your question, the program you saw is correct. The reason you don't know anyone with a meter ("gadget") in their home is that currently in the UK there are 5,100 homes that have meters. These homes are used to create ratings in the UK TV household universe, 24,700,000.

According to these numbers there is 1 metered home for every 4,843 homes. I guess you would have to know quite a number of people.

Odin - It seems that the UK rating service (BARB (http://www.barb.co.uk/index1.cfm?flag=home), my source for this information), only conducts surveys to decide the make-up of the UK population so that they can then decide where they will place their meters. They don't seem to use these surveys to create any TV viewership information.

However, in the past they must have used some sort of diary survey, where groups of people just wrote down what they watched. I guessing here because I don't know the history of television ratings in the UK.

Back to lurking for me.

[Seismosaurus]

Originally posted by huw12345
I doubt detector vans are particularly cost effective though. Recently I got rid of my TV and was subjected to a very effective mail campaign threatening me with various forms of punishment if I didn't renew my license. The effect of the campaign is to get you either to stump up, or to state categorically that you do not own a receiving device. Presumably, the TV licensing people, after they've got a few of these categorical statements in an area, will send someone round with a hand-held detector to try to catch you in the act. The categorical statement will presumably help them in court should they discover that you've actually got a TV after all (one more quote from the site):

I also went through this, but with different results. I moved into a flat some years ago and bought a TV. I filled in the name and address form as required, but did not buy a license.

I got the barrage of mail, but I took a different approach; I read every one and then dropped them straight into the bin. Never bought a license, never confirmed or denied having a TV. I got many letters saying that TV detector vans were operating in my area, that I would soon be checked, etc. Three years after moving in I moved on, still never once having had so much as a sniff of a knock on the door. The letters were still coming regularly when I moved out.

So either detector vans are a complete myth, or they're possible but the BBC operates extremely small numbers of them.

I know several other people who have done much the same, with much the same results. I have never, ever met one person who has been taken to court for not having a license.

Personally I think that the whole system is based purely on the intimidation factor. I strongly doubt the BBC has any vans at all - they just try to scare people into paying with adverts and letters.

[Undodog]

Originally posted by Fra Mauro
According to these numbers there is 1 metered home for every 4,843 homes. I guess you would have to know quite a number of people.
Ah. It's true, I don't. :(
Welcome, by the way.

[MRC_Hans]

On the technicalities (I suppose most is already said, but that never deterred me in the past): It is technically possible to detect a TV and any other receiving equipment by the radiations given off by circuitry inside it. The frequency range that TV sets operate in lends itself well for compact directional antennas, so it is also quite possible to find the approximate position of each TV set, even in an apartment building.

Whether it is cost-effective to find non-payers in this way is entirely another question. Obviously, in the present day, where non-owners are an exception, the easiest approach is to take the list of licence payers, and visit or send letters to those few that are not on it. However, the possible existence of detection gear will of course enhance the effect.

The stuff about sooper seekrit methods and research is BS. Detecting EMI sources is a mainstream technology, and the exact same gear is used by authorities all over the world to track down various disturbance sources. If some of their researchers really don't know what the others do, it simply reflects on the quality of their internal communication :rolleyes:.

Hans

[Bfef]

A couple of years back I saw a "TV detector van" getting a parking ticket in Bristol, UK. Very satisfying!

Actually it was a 16 seater with blacked out windows and TV Detector painted on the side. It didn't look very scientific, more like a coach to ferry the door-to-door pests about.

I am convinced that all they do is record the addresses of people who don't renew. After moving house so many times I can see the patterns.

Wouldn't one of the new LCD TVs get around the supposed EMF radiation detectors anyway?

Also, I have often considered a projector hooked up to a DVD player and world standards VCR (no tuner). That way I can watch my favourite DVDs and tapes and no tuner is involved.

Cheers, Bfef.

[badnews]

I don't realy understand the whole idea of paying for "free to air" tv?
Don't they get the money from advertising???
We don't have such a problem here in Aussie-land.

[EdipisReks]

Originally posted by huw12345
see this paper (http://web.archive.org/web/20000830130750/www.shmoo.com/tempest/emr.pdf) by Van Eck for something similar
van eck phreaking, as a practical technique, is extremely limited. i personally don't believe in magical detection vans, but as a non UK citizen i really couldn't care less.

[Lavie Enrose]

Originally posted by trotsky
So what is the truth would anyone like to enlighten us?

1952: Test drive for TV detector vans (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/1/newsid_2521000/2521357.stm)

New generation of television detector vans hit the streets (http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2003/06_june/24/licensing_detector_vans.shtml)

[ktesibios]

Pretty much any superhet receiver will emit some radiation from the local oscillator. I've observed an FM receiver tuned to stations at 93.3, 93.7 or 94.1 MHz causing colored "herringbones" on the screen of a TV in the same room which was tuned to channel 12. The second harmonic of the FM receiver's local oscillator fell within the bandwidth of channel 12's color subcarrier.

Besides radiation from the local oscillator, a TV which uses a CRT for display will produce some strong EMI at the horizontal sweep frequency and its harmonics, although those won't disclose what channel the set is tuned to like the LO radiation will.

A lot of receivers also emit EMI from their IF strips. If you tune an SW receiver around the 10.7 MHz area you can often pick up distorted audio which is identifiable as an FM radio station- IF leakage from the nearest FM receiver.

So the principle sure seems feasible. Of course, how much in the way of resources are actually used in this way is debatable. The idea of detector vans is kind of like the telescreens in Nineteen Eighty-Four- since there was no way of knowing how often or on what system the Thought Police actually monitored any individual telescreen one had to live as if constantly under surveillance.

[richardm]

Would the amount of energy that they'd need to detect be more or less than that detected by, say, a radar receiver? It doesn't seem to me to be an intrinsically impossible thing.

[Psi Baba]

Originally posted by Lavie Enrose
New generation of television detector vans hit the streets (http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2003/06_june/24/licensing_detector_vans.shtml) ...designed to make them look like any other white van on the streets.

"Because we are able to remove the TV Licensing logo, licence evaders won't know we're in the area unless we want them to.
Lovely. So the new vans will be indistinguishable from those used by child abductors. :eek:

[Soapy Sam]

Child abductors need a licence now?

[epepke]

Originally posted by Soapy Sam
Child abductors need a licence now?

No. Just transvestites.

[ChrisH]

Originally posted by Psi Baba
Lovely. So the new vans will be indistinguishable from those used by child abductors. :eek:

Oh, really? What kind of van do they use? It would be useful to know...

[Robaato]

Here in Japan, the NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyoukai) has a similar license ("contract") system There are different price levels for B&W TV, Color TV, and satellite digital/HD receivers.

I don't think they use detector vans, though. Every once in a while, the friendly NHK guy comes to your door and asks for money. They do occasionally have some high-tech doodad in a satchel, but I don't know if it's a detector or just an info terminal.

When I first came to Japan, the NHK guy came about a month after I had moved into my apartment. At that time, I knew almost no Japanese, and pretended to know even less. I somehow managed to communicate this fact to the guy, who promptly pointed out that I still had a TV. I then pointed to the PlayStation 2 and VCR. After a quick attempt to sell me the enhanced, "pay" satellite channels (which included American cable networks), he gave up and left.

They left me alone for two years. The next time the NHK guy came knocking on my door, he could hear that I was watching sumo wrestling on the (free) satellite channel. (They had English commentators on the SAP.) I paid up.

Interestingly, due to some scandals that NHK has been implicated in, many people are refusing to pay their license fees in protest.

[Psi Baba]

Originally posted by ChrisH
Oh, really? What kind of van do they use? It would be useful to know...
Plain white vans ... so I'm led to believe.

[ChrisH]

Originally posted by Psi Baba
Plain white vans ... so I'm led to believe.

Why would child abductors all use plain white vans?

Amazing what you can learn here...!

[bruto]

I'm sure it's technically possible to detect a TV set (or any poorly shielded superheterodyne receiver) with a detector van, but it must be very difficult to track one down if the area is densely populated, and just about impossible in the case of high rise apartments and the like. I'm guessing the vans exist, and probably even occasionally bag a set, but whether or not they do any better than they would if they just knocked on doors and took a chance is probably irrelevant. Just as with prophets and dowsers and the rest, after all, it's the hits that people remember. If they get people to believe that they're tuning you in all the time they win. If they can scare enough people into licensing by running conspicuous vans around town, they might recoup the cost even if they never turned the detectors on.

I think the BBC scheme is silly, though, a holdover from a time when channel choices were virtually nonexistent, and TV's were still a novelty. Considering how nearly universal TV's are now, taxing set owners whether or not they watch BBC is not much different from taxing everyone anyway, and a general tax would save on the cost of policing.

[Stitch]

Originally posted by Lavie Enrose
1952: Test drive for TV detector vans (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/1/newsid_2521000/2521357.stm)

New generation of television detector vans hit the streets (http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2003/06_june/24/licensing_detector_vans.shtml)


"However, the technology is so secret that even the engineers working on different detection systems worked in isolation – not even they know how the other detection methods work."


http://www.keeling-net.co.uk/smilies/images/Suspicious.gif

[Soapy Sam]

Originally posted by bruto
Considering how nearly universal TV's are now, taxing set owners whether or not they watch BBC is not much different from taxing everyone anyway, and a general tax would save on the cost of policing.


As one of the 3% who don't own a Devil Box, I think I already support enough non-taxpayers who sit around all day watching TV. Damned if I pay for that too. Get thee to the Nether Regions.
And take Gordon Brown with you!:p