I'd like to ask some questions....

Not true, super heterodyne is still very popular.

Not really. Depending on your platform the industry trend is actually going away from DSPs. DSP operations are being implemented in FPGAs these days (since they're faster and the newer Virtex 6 or 7s (and whatever Stratix whatever) are really huge).

You're just talking about different receiver structures (super heterodyne and direct conversion respectively). There's no receiver structure that's specific to SDR (in fact the USRP, which is an SDR, has a super heterodyne structure). IQ sampling doesn't have anything do with receiver structure either, super heterodyne receivers and direct conversion receivers can have IQ sampling (the USRP, a super heterodyne as I mentioned, implements IQ sampling). Also, implementing a filter with a sharp transition band is due to using a digital system, there's nothing special about SDR that let's you implement a 500 tap FIR filter, there *is* something special about digital system (FPGA, ASIC, DSP, GPP) that let's you implement a 500 tap FIR filter.

I work for DoD indirectly (not a defense contractor) and my emplyoer cannot hire non-US citizens, so there are exceptions to that rule.

Actually Guinness is a UK owned company. Diageo owns Guinness

I did my MS thesis on wideband spectrum sensing (just about everything under 2.2 GHz). Turns out the spectrum isn't actually overcrowded, it's underutilized, especially over 500 MHz. Look at some papers by the Shared Spectrum Company www.sharedspectrum.com/. This is common misperception and it's the result of FCC policies (that they're working on changing). The underlying problem is that institutions that have spectrum allocated for them now actually need it, just not most of time.

If the TSA is choosing the lab then this isn't going to accomplish anything

You can get better accuracy by remaining stationary and averaging you location.

Which I was I bought my phone outright, it's an N900 though.

They should use ITAR as a model. Though the A stands for Arms, it covers a lot more than firearms from my experience.

Watch PBS!

Pun Intended

What's to stop you from removing the system logger you don't like and installing whatever you want?? See: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=9

You can write a script to SSH to each machine, copy whatever you need then wipe it. Wiping the machine remotely is the problem, there's a good article from Linux Journal by Kyle Rankin that describes a good way to do this. It's pretty recent (maybe two months ago), I haven't been able to find it on their website.

I don't hate my IT department, I hate RHEL5. (They have good reasons for not upgrading to RHEL6 yet)