Winston Churchill once said that the one thing that frightened him the most during World War II was the German's u-boat campaign against allied shipping in the Atlantic. "The Battle of the Atlantic was the dominating factor all through the war," Churchill claimed. "Never for one moment could we forget that everything happening elsewhere, on land, at sea or in the air depended ultimately on its outcome." The Battle of the Atlantic was as much a war of scientists and engineers in their laboratories as a war between sailors above and below the surface.
Two "weapons" which helped win the Battle of the Atlantic were radar and something called "Huff-Duff." The former, of course, is relatively well understood; a transmitter sends out a radio signal which bounces off objects and returns to a receiver. The latter may be less well understood; it refers to high-frequency direction finding (HF/DF) equipment which attempted to locate the source of a radio transmission. By using antennas at different locations, Huff Duff received a radio transmission at different angles and used the differences to determine a bearing to the transmitter. What made Huff Duff so successful during the war was the speed with which it could determine the bearing to a u-boat transmitting a radio message; this allowed allied warships to locate and attack the enemy submarine.
The battle of the laboratories continued during the Cold War, and the U.S. Navy spent a lot of effort on what it called "emissions control," or EMCON. The purpose of EMCON was to prevent the Soviets from homing in on the radar and radio transmissions of U.S. Navy ships. EMCON could be as simple as turning everything off, radar, radio and other equipment that emitted an electronic signal. During World War II, the Germans developed a radar detector and such detection equipment became more sophisticated during the Cold War, to the point that it was no longer necessary to use radar to search for the enemy as you could track him through his electronic emissions -- assuming that he had not turned everything off.
Since the end of the Cold War, there has been another wave of technological progress with wireless communications. Rear Admiral William Leigher, USN, a veteran cryptologist who recently carried the title "director of warfare integration for information dominance," stated in a 2013 interview that the electronic emissions problem is significantly greater now that it was in the past.
“It’s not as simple as EMCON that I might have done in the mid-’80s or early 90s,” Leigher warned. For one, you can't just turn everything off because you need your sensors to detect incoming missiles and your jammers to disable them. In the future, suggested Leigher, instead of shutting systems down to avoid detection, a Navy ship might deliberately change the signals it emits to make the enemy think that it is something else -- during World War II, the allies tricked German u-boat commanders into turning their detectors off by suggesting that aircraft could home in on its signal.
Fascinating as all of this is, I'm sure there are many of you who are wondering just what it has to do with anything. As humans, with or without the aid of electronics, we are always emitting something. People see us and hear us, and we send signals through body language as well as through the things that we say -- or even the things that we don't say. Social media allows us to interact with people around the world, even people we don't know -- even people that we are not aware of. We might try a form of EMCON by avoiding people, on social media or in person, but that would leave us isolated and, in any case, probably wouldn't actually work. Even when we keep to ourselves we are sending out signals.
It would be more useful, then, to take a look at what we are emitting. (I have a friend who is a seminary teacher and she recently posted about a comment she made during a class; she was talking about vulnerabilities and weaknesses and said something like "We all have a crack, where is your crack?" The question "What are you emitting?" seems to be just as risky, but I'll go with it anyway.)
Through our body language and our words we may signal happiness and friendship, generosity and other good things, or we may signal anger, suspicion, selfishness, etc. We may signal other things via social media by what we choose to post, or what we choose to like or share.
In recent efforts by members of the LDS Church to share the gospel via social media, people have been using the hastag "sharegoodness". We can share goodness, or we can share things that are less than good. We may even share goodness on the one hand, while also sharing some not so good things on the other, in which case we are sending mixed signals that may serve to confuse.
When Alma the Younger started his mission to the Zoramites, he took along with him Amulek, Zeezrom and two of his sons. One of these sons left his mission to chase after a harlot; Alma later said to this son, "Behold, O my son, how great iniquity ye brought upon the Zoramites; for when they saw your conduct they would not believe in my words" (Alma 39:11)
Alma went on to say, "And now the Spirit of the Lord doth say unto me: Command thy children to do good. lest they lead away the hearts of many people to destruction" (Alma 39:12).
People are watching us, whether we like it or not. If they see in us a good example, they may become interested in learning more about the church. If they see in us a bad example, they may be less likely to become interested.
We, of course, are human, and we will make mistakes -- and there are those who will deliberately seek to push our buttons in order to accuse us of hypocrisy -- but let us strive to be a good example, let us strive to share goodness. Let us be ever mindful of the signals we send when we post, like or share things on social media.
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Freeberg, S. J. (2013) "Navy Battles Cyber Threats: Thumb Drives, Wireless Hacking, & China." Breaking Defense. Accessed September 10, 2014 at: http://breakingdefense.com/2013/04/navy-cyber-threats-thumb-drives-wireless-hacking-china/
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