Notes for season 1 episode 3 “Mission Creep”
01:20 The show makes an early reference to something familiar, yet obsoleted by new communications technology, as Reese jokes about checking newspaper classifieds for a job.
04:20 Reese has replaced the unfashionable Jawbone-style headset from the first two episodes with more discreet earbud.
12:30 Carter again looks at a pixelated CCTV image on a CRT and her sixth-sense of being able to tell if someone was in the military manifests. (Because that’s how they trained to rob banks back in Iraq?) She takes a copy of the CCTV on a DVD which, while still contemporary in 2011, now feels dated.
15:00 The gang provides Reese with a single-call receive-only disposable cell phone. This makes it seem like they’ve got hardcore opsec… except we already saw them receive the bank robbery address by SMS to the personal phones they presumably then carried to the bank.
18:40 Carter identifies the radio as a 148, and indeed it appears to be an AN/PRC-148 – but in reality that’s not a radio that was restricted to military use and therefore could have come from police or firefighters. Indeed, you can pick them up on eBay rather than knocking over an army base. (The difference is that US military-specific version has stronger encryption, but this isn’t something you could tell from CCTV. The non-military version can have a little 3DES as a treat.)
21:34 It’s a little painful watching this scene where bankers trying to start a fight with soldiers over who’s had it worse since 2008.
25:25 Reese asks Finch to monitor the police band. Police band scanning, at least in movies and tv, feels like such a US phenomena. And it’s one of the main sources for things like the Citizen app.
A lot of police forces switched to encrypted radios in the years following 9/11. NYPD radios look like they’ll be switching from 2024.
25:34 Molina says “I tracked Teddy Galloway’s GPS” with little context for what that actually means. I read it as having received approximate location details of his cell-phone by issuing a subpoena to his service provider. (Disappointing, as the prior evidence they had was circumstantial – he was stationed at the same army base that lost some radios, and he’s – wait for it – left handed.) Generally the phone network (in usual circumstances) only has approximate location – for actual GPS location, something the phone would need to be explicitly broadcasting it. This facility was around in 2011 with things like “Find My iPhone”… an armed robbery suspect was tracked down using it around the time this episode aired.
26:50 Despite the gang loudly saying the police are on the way, none of the patrons think to leave the underground casino before the cops arrive?
33:30 The gang has finally realised that carrying their personal phones might be an opsec issue, so they end up putting all phones (and pagers) in a tub of water. So in telco records, four phones, all travelling together in the direction of the robbery location, all disconnected at the same time. Ah, the perfect crime.
35:40 This is the second time we see that the gang didn’t check if someone in uniform might have a second weapon. Doesn’t this come up in their military training?
39:00 Reese holds the radio upside down to obscure the antenna, and to look like a phone. Or perhaps to look less like a hipster with a retro-1980s phone.