Keysight Scary Letter

[0culus]

Besides, I seriously doubt that analyzer in the OP is capable of demodulation of wideband signals like that.

[james_s]

Is it possible that the gear covers "forbidden frequency bands"?  i.e. in the US, cell phone bands are forbidden to "receive" except by authorized (carrier or government/military) users.

Or else this is just some kind of government contract thing where a contract prohibited selling as surplus/redundant into the public?

Such a pointless law too, pushed through by mobile phone companies in the analog days. Scanners were all required to have those bands locked out, but I don't think I ever worked on a Radio Shack Pro 2004, 2005 or 2006 scanner that hadn't had the cellular mod done. Clip a couple of diodes and it was fully unlocked.

My view on the matter has always been if you don't want me receiving your signals, keep them off my property.

[Mechatrommer]

My view on the matter has always been if you don't want me receiving your signals, keep them off my property.

ditto!!! just as if you dont want some of your parts get stared, get that well covered, we got eyes.

[bson]

Is it possible that the gear covers "forbidden frequency bands"?  i.e. in the US, cell phone bands are forbidden to "receive" except by authorized (carrier or government/military) users.

I think this is a good line of thought.  The mobile bands are licensed not by user but by equipment; so you can transmit and receive on them with licensed equipment.  Maybe this SA is a licensed piece of equipment, meaning it can legally be used on cell bands.  It getting out would be a major headache to Keysight as I'm sure the FCC would not be happy to see it circulating on eBay and elsewhere.  I'm sure specially licensed T&M equipment like this needs to be very strictly controlled and tracked or the FCC is going to have a major hissy fit.  It could make it far more difficult for Keysight to sell such equipment in the future.

[swingbyte1]

A's fun as conspiracy theories are the reason they probably want it returned is more boring. Equipment used on certain defence projects is prohibited from sales to hide the nature of the projects. I know it seems senseless but it provides deniability. If I work on one of those projects and you asked me something about it's technology even if the same thing was used for some innocent commercial application, I can't tell you anything as that allows you to speculate on what I might be able to do. So all sorts of ancient equipment is destroyed even though it is obsolete to obscure the projects.



Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[Mr. Scram]

A's fun as conspiracy theories are the reason they probably want it returned is more boring. Equipment used on certain defence projects is prohibited from sales to hide the nature of the projects. I know it seems senseless but it provides deniability. If I work on one of those projects and you asked me something about it's technology even if the same thing was used for some innocent commercial application, I can't tell you anything as that allows you to speculate on what I might be able to do. So all sorts of ancient equipment is destroyed even though it is obsolete to obscure the projects.



Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

In that case they really, really didn't think this through. It's a classic case of the Streisand Effect where everyone is speculation over something that would have passed without much notice.

[1Ghz]

Maybe, it's...

... Opt T01 TEMPEST compliant (HP 8562A only) ...

[Mr. Scram]

Maybe, it's...

So they can't spy on your wibbly lines? Not really a big deal.

[bd139]

Might actually be able to shed some light here having worked in the test gear department of a defence contractor. There is nothing special about this SA. This is all a stupid charade for a defence contractor somewhere. They are extremely fussy about supply chain and disposals. Anything with non volatile memory has to be shredded basically to tick a box on a bit of paper. What happened here is pretty damn normal and that is someone decided "fuck shredding that - I'm going to make some moolah". Now they're chasing the paper trail because a 3rd party auditor couldn't prove that the item was destroyed and it was legitimately sold on. I used to, along with half the engineering team, lift gear out of the aforementioned contractor's disposals skip. Regularly this caused problems because the SN's didn't appear at the disposer's incoming audit.

Now the depressing thing you tend to see in these scenarios is that perfectly fine kit is destroyed for no good reason. The worst thing I saw was a 9 month old fully stacked Sun 1000E worth £400,000 at purchase time get chucked in a grinder. Then a couple of storage arrays of unknown value (£300k+) join it. No one gave a fuck even if you could buy three big houses with that money at the time. Sickens me.

Alternatively what happened was someone sent it away for calibration to a 3rd party cal lab, the calibration lab went under and the disposal company got their hands on it and it ended up on the open market and Keysight want it back so they can give it to the customer. Seen that happen before!

[1Ghz]

So they can't spy on your wibbly lines? Not really a big deal.

Anti-TEMPEST (or Anti-Anti-TEMPEST) device developer will be happy, if he can get TEMPEST compliant device.

[Mr. Scram]

Anti-TEMPEST (or Anti-Anti-TEMPEST) device developer will be happy, if he can get TEMPEST compliant device.

If you need an ancient SA for that, you're doing it wrong.

[bd139]

They build the labs with anti-TEMPEST, not the equipment. I worked in AMSG 720B facility in fuck off great big lined sub buildings. Even the cables were on dampers.

[Jwalling]

Yep, I got one last month from two Agilent scopes I purchased from Outback.

I replied to Mr. Harrington via email and told him that I always re-initialize or replace the drives in equipment I get to how it shipped originally from the factory.
I told him that I don't trust any Windows based disk drives and always assume that there could be a virus or malware on the drives.
I sent him pictures of five drives that I still had in my parts bin that may have come from the scopes mentioned.
The MSO8104A in question got a new SSD (solid state disk). I looked at the drives offline on a USB to SATA adapter and found the one that came from the MSO8104A. I could tell it was the one because the pagefile.sys file had the exact same date as the day I purchased the scope of Feb 28th 2018; Outback must have powered it up one last time to verify that it still booted.

He never bothered to respond to the email, but I knew that he read it as I sent the email with a return receipt requested which his email client honored. 

[MadTux]

Is this an attempt to use "copyright" and "intelectual property" buzzwords to get rid of the high end used equipment market?

[jjoonathan]

Yes, people are dramatically overshooting reality when it comes to guessing what I meant by "special." It was probably just a way to flag the instrument as needing disposal. Or a complete coincidence. I'm being coy to avoid encouraging an easter egg hunt.

> There is nothing special about this SA. This is all a stupid charade for a defence contractor somewhere.

That'd be my guess. In lieu of shredding, they Indiana-Jonesed it into a warehouse and years later it got accidentally liquidated. Oops.

> Is this an attempt to use "copyright" and "intelectual property" buzzwords to get rid of the high end used equipment market?

That was my knee-jerk reaction and the reason why my first move was "tweet it" (EDIT: not literal twitter) rather than "lawyer up." Shockingly, that was probably the wrong move. Not because it got me in hot water, but because I was probably wrong and it was therefore a dick move. Opening with a ridiculous IP claim was also a dick move, though. Fortunately, as we know, two dick moves make... err...

Regardless, I've cooled off. Even if I'm in a position to, I'm not looking to "soak 'em for what they're worth." I don't consider failure to extract maximum possible value from the situation a loss. There's still a big, reasonable middle ground here that makes both of us happy, and a very real likelihood that if I'm unreasonable they can make me unhappy. That's why I'm angling for "reasonable." Perhaps that's naive, but it's what it is.

[Jwalling]

That'd be my guess. In lieu of shredding, they Indiana-Jonesed it into a warehouse and years later it got accidentally liquidated. Oops.

By any chance, did you try contacting Scott Mallery at Outback?
Back in December, the thought crossed my mind, but I never did.

[0culus]

Seems to me that if this Outback and Keysight seem to be so tight with each other they ought to be doing a better job of screening products before they go on sale. It seems especially ridiculous to be coming back on the buyer for HP branded equipment of all things.

[bd139]

There’s a dumbass in every supply chain somewhere. I occasionally see current issue military stuff appear on eBay that shouldn’t be on there! It gets duly reported.

Imagine if someone picks up a coded IFF interrogator...

[coppercone2]

do a firmware dump

must discourage legal thugs

few things shit me as far as the military trying to control the fucking EM spectrum LOL. go play with a tank boys and leave the fucking scientists alone. Literary everything can effect a products reliability and performance. All factors should be measured. Cost and time are the only limits. This is dark age thinking. You are not selling refined weapons plutonium. 

It's not even a transmitter.

Also never respond to this crap and delete the email as junk because you thought it was spam. Sounds like another corporate spectrum analyzer datamining sweep stakes giveaway right? Just fill out some form so you have a 1/10000 chance to get harassed by a sales rep and possibly get some test equipment, your not interested 

I delete all 99% of emails from companies without reading them. time is money friend.

Suggest watching the movie 'war dogs'. These people are jokers through and through. The shadiest shit ends up happening at high levels anyway. You are NOTHING to them.

[KaneTW]

Is it possible that the gear covers "forbidden frequency bands"?  i.e. in the US, cell phone bands are forbidden to "receive" except by authorized (carrier or government/military) users.

Or else this is just some kind of government contract thing where a contract prohibited selling as surplus/redundant into the public?

That is a very silly restriction. Doesn't that make every SDR on the market illegal?

[Mr. Scram]

There’s a dumbass in every supply chain somewhere. I occasionally see current issue military stuff appear on eBay that shouldn’t be on there! It gets duly reported.

Imagine if someone picks up a coded IFF interrogator...

That's only interesting during a conflict and the equivalent of proper key management should make that a non-issue.

[coppercone2]

they will have a man with a suit cased attached to his arm update all of that if there is even a hint that a fly might land on the freaking plane. Its BS. They will fly him in first class too.

The military is nuts, try talking to someone during a military exhibition during a parade or something. They won't tell you the most simple things about ancient declassified gear that's hardly in use anymore (try asking about frequencies!!). You can find it with a smart phone in like 15 seconds standing next to them. But they will turn around and talk when there is a bunch of machine guns on the ground you can interact with lol.... I saw a situation once where if you waited around long enough someone can prob walk away with a heavy machine gun when the grunts get bored.

But hey, no one wants that dirty piece of shit anyway 

[bd139]

There’s a dumbass in every supply chain somewhere. I occasionally see current issue military stuff appear on eBay that shouldn’t be on there! It gets duly reported.

Imagine if someone picks up a coded IFF interrogator...

That's only interesting during a conflict and the equivalent of proper key management should make that a non-issue.

There’s always a conflict. Also key management - don’t even go there. Total mess that.

They dropped SA on GPS not for commercial reasons as an example.

[Mr. Scram]

There’s always a conflict. Also key management - don’t even go there. Total mess that.

Main thing is the firmware is valuable.

I see two problems which can and should be solved from the bottom up, not top down. The latter is a desperate last resort.

[HighVoltage]

How old is this HP 8562A spectrum analyzer?
Probably more than 20 years!

This all seems to be very ridicules !
What if the eBay buyer would have sold it again, without knowing about the "specialty" of this equipment.

I never heard of such thing in Germany.
And I buy used German military equipment all the time on eBay Germany.