Paranoiacs rejoice!<\/p>\n
Last week, Heather Murphy\u00a0of the New York Times<\/em> explained<\/a> that Edward Snowden had lawyers place their cell phones in a refrigerator to block the signals, using the fridge as a makeshift Faraday cage<\/a>. Murphy quoted Adam Harvey,\u00a0a countersurveillance products designer, who said that a martini shaker is a foolproof Faraday cage that can accommodate most cell phones.<\/p>\n However, some readers tested their refrigerators and found that the calls went through. I suspected that the typical apartment fridge in the U.S. may be less effective than other kinds, including the huge GE Monogram that lives in my kitchen. More for my own amusement than out of true scientific curiosity, I tested out this theory of refrigerated signal blocking and tested the martini shaker as well. You can see the results here:<\/p>\n