Originally published at: The Case of the Top Secret iPod - TidBITS
15 years ago, Apple helped the US government develop a custom iPod for clandestine missions. Of course, neither Apple nor the US government will admit this ever happened. Former Apple engineer and inadvertent intelligence operative David Shayer tells the story of the iPod that never existed.
A great article! Though Iâll bet that Apple is under very strict non disclosure agreements that would make an Apple TV+ movie or series impossible, it could even be morphed into a James Bond-ish spy story. There has been years of coverage about Apple and Netflix dukeing it out over acquiring the rights to James Bond:
And they do have some espionage titles in the works:
I donât think the secret project would have been a dosimeter or Geiger counter. It is possible, of course. But film dosimeters are highly effective and very small. 15 years ago they were almost exclusively used for this kind of âintegral doseâ measurement. Additionally, the case of the iPod would block a lot of radiation. Finally, the most important thing to know is if there is radiation at all - you donât need a complex recording system and you wouldnât really need to keep it a secret if you are measuring it. The level of detail described here in terms of capturing data to a secret partition would really be unnecessary for radiation dose, since itâs mostly just cpm at a given time. A simple graph or even audio file could record this data, and these iPods had microphone input already as a standard feature.
I think itâs more likely the device was recording some kind of electromagnetic emissions, maybe intercepting WiFi traffic or radio traffic of some kind. Thereâs also a lot more situations where you would want to stealthily capture traffic or information that way. They could even have another hidden device doing the broadcasting, or just be capturing traffic for analysis later.
That was tremendously entertaining. Crazy to say it but⊠simpler times.
explained it couldnât leave the building
I find it quite amusing that you helped spys build a tool to exfiltrate data, but expected them to follow the rule not to exfiltrate your own data
While Betchel does do a lot of work for the Department of Energy, I think possible that the custom iPod was actually for the DoD or a three letter agency such as the CIA. This would open up a lot more possibilities as to what the custom hardware was designed to do. Itâs also possible that Betchel was making several different types of modified iPods, each with different capabilities. The information that was provided to them by Apple was not specific to the custom hardware, so they could have easily configured different devices with specific custom hardware for various end users. If it was actually just the DoE, the metal back of the iPod would likely make it a non-ideal candidate for a Geiger counter, especially as there where other similarly sized electronics on the market at the time which had plastic bodies. Thanks for sharing, this was an amazing story.
Thanks, great story. Looking forward to more behind the curtain Apple stories as theyâve all been fascinating so far, like Don Melton and friends. Wonder if Phil will ever spill any beans.
Hi Dave,
Your article really takes me back to old times. I think I was at some of those poker games you talk about, with Steve Bollinger, Nitin Ganatra, Jeff Robbin, etc⊠I was the long haired kid who drew an inside straight flush to the ace, and then barely bet anything on the hand. Good times.
Very interesting story, I enjoyed reading it.
Fun story, thank you. Itâs also interesting to see how this has been picked up â and misunderstood â by other outlets. Theyâre all coming from the same source (right here) yet get different aspects of it wrong, or at least spun sideways.
The part about no ARM compiler for Mac was funny because Apple definitely had one on Mac back when I was involved in the Newton project! It was hosted by MPW (Macintosh Programmerâs Workshop, a semi-friendly command line driven system).
SoâŠRubenstein, Fadell, Rogers?
Iâm very familiar with MPW. I used MPW from 1.0 beta 1 through the last version. According to wikipedia the last version of MPW came out in 2001. The events in this article take place in 2005. MPW ran in classic Mac OS, but by 2005 everyone was using Mac OS X. Also, iPod used newer ARM cores than those supported by the Newton ARM compiler.
Not Rogers.
I loved listening to Don Melton tell Apple stories on the old Debug podcast. Worth looking up.
Perhaps work on the Stuxnet delivery vehicle began at this time.
The Debug podcast was an important document of the wider Apple ecosystem, definitely worth checking out.
Did they have you under any kind of NDA?
I found this excellent news about âThe Case Of The Top Secret iPodâ via Apple News. Though CNN Business characterizes the article as a âblog post,â a click on the link leads directly to the clearly marked TidBITS page.
Congratulations to David Shayer and Adam Engst. Itâs always great to see good journalism, especially with a mysterious twist, recognized.
Itâs a few hours later and the story is rolling like thunder, getting lots of coverage in national and local media all over the globe. From a quick search, it looks like there are a wealth of pick ups:
And across the globe:
https://www.wionews.com/world/apple-helped-us-build-a-top-secret-ipod-claims-former-engineer-321806x
This is barely scratching the surface of all the coverage, and itâs just about 24/48 hours since publication. I hope it results in more TidBITS readers and Talkers.