Last Sunday, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden likely raised a few eyebrows in his Hong Kong hotel room. Snowden demanded that advising lawyers place their phones in his refrigerator, Heather Murphy of The New York Times reports.
But why? Snowden was hoping that the metal walls of the fridge would block any radio signals to the phones — preventing outside sources from listening in. And while this homemade remedy sounds pretty outlandish — the theory is based in fact.
Snowden was trying to create a homemade Faraday Cage, or a box that uses electrical currents and a conductive outer shell to cancel out incoming signals.
And while there’s no guarantee that every refrigerator is designed to work like this, it’s certainly possible that Snowden’s paranoia was just smart thinking. And this isn’t the first home-brewed fridge use that’s made the news.
The ill-received “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” featured Harrison Ford surviving a nuclear blast in a led-lined refrigerator, a stunt that Cinema Blend argues is possible too. Suddenly Snowden doesn’t seem that crazy.