And Neal Stephenson used the word numerous times in his Cryptonomicon, to describe the practice of extracting from a distance what was being displayed on a computer monitor by analyzing the microradiation it emitted.

"von Eck phreaking," he called it, with enough a sense of everyone-knows-that to make you wonder whether it really was a well-established phenomenon. Or at least a potential (though as-yet-unrealized) one.


EDIT: Memory is indeed fallible. Should have been van Eck. Thanks, Bill !
12/14/2003 4:17 pm EST