Teardowns – pure geek porn! And usually reserved for consoles and laptops and whatnot – but what about the gear the government uses to spy on you? Even juicier. iFixit got its hands on the FBI’s GPS stalking stick. Behold the guts.
First off, this ain’t your typical teardown – because the FBI sure doesn’t want anyone sticking their curious fingers inside their spy toy. iFixit says “the screws were coated with so much threadlocker that we had to break out the power drill and eliminate the screw heads”. Yowza.
Other than that, the tracker is surprisingly unsophisticated – just a GPS module, a radio transmitter and a bunch of big batteries to keep the thing pumping along. Tech-wise, it’s actually kind of a dinosaur – the GPS processing chip was made in 1999. Cher was #1 on the Billboard charts in 1999, for context. But the barebones approach works – even if the tech is last decade’s. [iFixit]