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Lebanon Pager Explosion
Context:
- Recently, Lebanon was rocked by a series of devastating explosions involving handheld pagers. The incident is considered one of the most significant security breaches in recent history.
- These devices, primarily used by Hezbollah members, were rigged with explosives, leading to widespread casualties and chaos.
Key Highlights:
- Hezbollah has continued to use pagers as a low-tech means of communication, helping them evade Israeli tracking.
- Pagers operate on their own frequencies, making them less susceptible to interception compared to mobile networks.
- The recent explosions have highlighted the risks associated with this seemingly outdated technology, as the embedded explosives in the pagers led to tragic consequences.
About Pagers:
- A pager, or “beeper,” is a small, portable communication device designed to receive short messages, typically numeric or alphanumeric, over a radio frequency.
- Pagers were widely used before the rise of cell phones, especially by professionals like doctors and journalists, as they allowed for important messages and alerts even in remote areas.
- Pagers operate by receiving radio waves that trigger an alert sound. Users then locate a nearby landline phone to respond to the message.
- The first pager was patented in the US in 1949, and by the 1960s, Motorola introduced models that could send audible alerts. Over time, newer models began to feature small screens for displaying messages.
- By 1994, there were approximately 61 million pagers in circulation worldwide, but with the advent of mobile phones, their popularity declined rapidly by the late 1990s.
- Despite this, pagers still find use in certain sectors, particularly hospitals in the U.S.