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Wearable Microphone Jamming
- buzzwords 5y agoInteresting trial. But I'm sure there will be techniques to clean the noise out.
- pzo 5y agoI'm wondering too. I had a glimpse at a paper and it seems it works because even though ultrasound is "inaudible to humans, still leaks into the recorded speech due to non-linear amplification of the microphone’s circuit". The chart thought shows the leakage has small dB (-20) in audible spectrum. Too bad researches didn't leave any samples of recording in the repo. Curious how it would be effective after: 1) filtering frequencies to 0-16kHz 2) getting 1-2sec sample duration of noise profile while nobody speaks and using noise reduction filter from audacity
- lvturner 5y agoDownload the audio from the YouTube video at the top of the page - it has a sample in it
- snovv_crash 5y agoThe idea is that the analogue components are saturated already so there's no available margin for the lower frequencies to further actuate the diaphragm or amplifier.
- grandinj 5y agolots of circuits will fold higher frequencies down into lower frequencies (but at lower energy). If you can generate enough energy, you can push enough energy into other circuits that they saturate (reach the end of their working range) and will output noise.
- Johnythree 5y agoNon-linear circuits l̶o̶t̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶c̶i̶r̶c̶u̶i̶t̶s will fold higher frequencies down into lower frequencies
- grandinj 5y agoPretty much most circuits are non-linear, for real-world circuits "linear" just means "linear within normal operating range"
- kgarten 5y agoCool research. Given that you are also jamming hearing aids and other microphones, don't think it's practical to be used in real life. Off topic: check out Pedro's other work http://plopes.org/ http://plopes.org/ Definitely thought provoking research :)
- nine_k 5y agoDepends of what real life scenario is. A cafe, maybe not. A meeting room, likely yes. There at least you can declare that a hearing aid is used. The very point of the device is to jam other microphones. Not going to last very long, though; ultrasound filters will soon appear on all relevant gear, including mobile phones.
- holonsphere 5y agoyeah, then the ad tech is just moving onto the next best thing. SDR.
- samstave 5y agoThe microphone's worst enemy is the pencil. ((Just wait until some scrappy thesis describes how to determine character being written by pencil based on the vibrations of sound being made from the friction between a carbon based utensil and a paper pulp based medium such that the intended letters can be derived based on the length, count and direction of the audio signals derived from the sounds of the writing utensil against the medium.
- dmd 5y agoCareful, Mordechai Guri can hear you!
- AlbertCory 5y agoYou know, that sounds like language from a patent application. I actually AM licensed as a patent agent, but I'm not practicing so I can't get you that patent.
- ibaikov 5y agoIt's harmful to constantly hear sound, I wonder if it's our perception that makes it harmful even if we don't realize that we hear something? Is it harmful to hear sound threats outside of our range? Is it harmful to constantly use active noise cancelling?
- aemreunal 5y ago> It's harmful to constantly hear sound, [...] Hmm I'm not so sure about that; do you have any source for that? My intuition says that it's nigh impossible to find completely quiet places in daily life; there's always some noise, though it could be imperceptably quiet. If constant sound is harmful, I'd imagine we'd all have lost our hearing by now. I reckon any harm woulc come from volume, not just simple presence.
- ByteJockey 5y ago> If constant sound is harmful, I'd imagine we'd all have lost our hearing by now. I reckon any harm woulc come from volume, not just simple presence. That's assuming it's physically harmful (to the ears). If it were instead mentally harmful, what you would expect is for the incidence of mental illness to increase as life got noisier and noisier (with a lag, of course, assuming this effect takes an appreciable amount of time).
- 4k4ndr 5y agoI am curious about ANC as well. I used to wear headphones with ANC 8h+ a day and started to hear noise in my ear.
- ziml77 5y agoI don't see why that would happen. ANC plays an inverted signal to counter noises. It's not just perception that it makes sound quieter. When the original sound wave and counter sound wave collide they physically cancel out.
- haneefmubarak 5y ago
- rajnathani 5y agoPrevious HN discussion for this (2020 Feb) (236 points): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22367733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22367733
- Goety 5y agoHow quickly are they going to go commercial with this?
- soylentnewsorg 5y agoNo one is going to buy this. It doesn't jam your voice at all. It introduces enough distortion and noise so that computer speech recognition software gets 4/5 words wrong. Let me make a comparison. Claim: Those capchas with "type in the word you see" have an error rate of 4/5 letters when read by a computer. Yet here we are, humans, reading them just fine. Now, if you're a conspiracy theory fake elected moon landing virus hoax person who is afraid of the government having microphones everywhere, running a keyword search on microphones placed around the park.... Still not a jammer - I'm sure whatever voice recognition software this thing confuses, the government has much better ones. Simply from the fact that most of the people they're interested in have accents so thick it's worse than some added "jammer" noise. But to answer your question, "sounds" like they're trying to go commercial soon, because their announcement of this dirt simple product sounds like a cheap advertisement for some dick enlarging pills. meanwhile, your phone speaker can make sonic sounds since they support a sample rate of over 44khz. So can your computer. here you go. you can google and download some files to play too. https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/audioJammerNoiseGenerator.php https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/audioJammerNoiseGenerator....
- Fnoord 5y agoThis is great for meetings. Don't have to ask everyone to put their smartphone off. Just be in a private room without cameras (against lipsync and other private details leaking such as notes). Re: Your computer/phone can make noise. They use an Arduino to power this thing, and it manages to block with natural body movement. I'm pretty sure this is going to ruin ANC headsets too though.
- red0point 5y agoSo what is the effect in the first part of the video on the website then? Are you saying they‘ve faked it?
- josephh 5y agoInteresting to note that someone opened an issue in the linked GitHub repo mentioning that the system doesn't work with iPhone 8 and above: https://github.com/y-x-c/wearable-microphone-jamming/issues/11 https://github.com/y-x-c/wearable-microphone-jamming/issues/... edit: Looks like (from the reply) it's the waterproofing membrane over mic that's rendering the jammer useless.
- Semiapies 5y agoSo, if you're recording a cop in the next few years, make sure to use a waterproof phone.
- Fnoord 5y agoPolice wont't generally use something like this as it would interfere with bodycam which includes a microphone.
- oreilles 5y agoThat is unless they use waterproof body cam.
- ohazi 5y agoThat would likely be seen as a feature
- sitic 5y ago"Police officers in Beverly Hills have been playing music while being filmed, seemingly in an effort to trigger Instagram’s copyright filters." https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvxb94/is-this-beverly-hills-cop-playing-sublimes-santeria-to-avoid-being-livestreamed https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvxb94/is-this-beverly-hills...
- dredmorbius 5y agoApparently numerous jurisdictions. Alamdeda County, California: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210911/21360647545/officer-claims-sheriffs-office-told-him-to-play-copyrighted-music-to-shut-down-citizens-recordings.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210911/21360647545/offic... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28546242 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28546242
- yepthatsreality 5y agoI wonder how portable these could be made to use when visiting someone who owns an Amazon Alexa device?
- 0xdeadb00f 5y agoThis is surprisingly simple tech! Those signal emitters look very similar to ultrasonic distance measuring modules you can get at component/DIY shops.
- franky47 5y agoI wonder how sensitive dogs would be to such a jamming system.
- malwarebytess 5y agoDogs can perhaps hear up to 45,000hz. This emits tones within that range. Article says at 1 meter the sound is mostly less than 70dB and less than 80dB in hot spots. So probably not too bad unless I'm missing something.
- mikro2nd 5y ago70-80dB is really very audible. I'd imagine much worse for dogs given how sensitive their hearing is. edit: Must confess I'd not thought of the potential effect of the device on animals.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Johnythree 5y ago> 70-80dB is really very audible. Not at ultrasonic frequencies it isn't (eg at 45KHz) Plus unless it's dbm (or similar) the statement is meaningless.
- afarviral 5y agoAt a guess, they wouldn't notice the sound after identifying it as not requiring their attention. They have very pronounced adaptive habituation to our noises.
- samstave 5y agoCan confirm. Building a large metal qwanzit-hut and pounding and drilling etc, and the dogs were unphased.
- severino 5y agoSo this system would serve two purposes and not just one.
- chrischen 5y agoI can see the next paper being extracting jammed audio signals using deep learning.
- visskiss 5y agoThat is awesome e
- _yoqn 5y agoIt's a great idea and I would be interested in something like this for myself. Except they would need to figure out how to reduce the size of that device. It's technically wearable but still quite huge.
- ris 5y agoAre they not able to just use phase shifts and beamforming on the transducer array instead of the odd keep-moving-your-bracelet design?
- pepoluan 5y agoThe case would be if someone is recording you with a microphone placed somewhere unknown in the room. With the bracelet, and humans' tendency to move their arms while speaking, microphones around the room will be jammed at least part of the time.
- ris 5y agoBut you could surely just randomly vary the beamforming to get the same effect, right?
- Raidion 5y agoBeam still has to be in the direction of the mic, which wouldn't help if your body is blocking most of the direct waves. You get some scattering, sure, but I think ultrasonic is pretty absorbable, right?
- antattack 5y agoNow we know a possible cause of the Havana Syndrome...microphone jamming.
- foreigner 5y agoIt's illegal for movie theaters to jam cell phones. If this actually works and becomes popular, I don't imagine it would take too long before this became illegal too.
- Zenst 5y agoIt is Illegal to jam the phone signal in case of emergencies AFAIK. Not aware of it being illegal to jam recording devices in such an environment in which they do outline (somewhere) no recording allowed in the theatre. Audio is an odd thing in law - in the UK I can record many things audio more than you would legaly be allowed to video. But privacy laws are the ones that curtail video recordings mostly and with that - this kinda sits on the other side of the fence. However - public nuisance may prove an area and pets may well dislike this, so if anything it may be classed as an assault upon an animal. Depending upon the impact upon animals like dogs. So my main concern would be public area's with people using guide dogs - will this cause the dog distress and what would be the impact. So I'd imagine already laws that may see this fall foul of - but like many things it will be how it is used and not ownership.
- dtgriscom 5y agoIt is illegal to jam a cell phone's EM signals, and it isn't because of the jamming's effects on the specific phones, but because of the jammer's unauthorized transmissions in regulated radio frequencies. The FCC takes their job fairly seriously, especially when someone makes a product that is designed to break their regulations. But, the FCC has no jurisdiction over sound.
- Zenst 5y agoFascinating and I like how cheap it can be made - those ultrasonic emitters are right of a HC-SR04 by looks of it and those are cheap as (got half dozen for £1 each few months back). I did start a project to jam gopro's (audio and visual recording) - was combination of IRDA emitters and resonance inducing the housing - but this is less niche and focused. My design was to use a hat with sensor emitters attached. Though canned progress after friend asked if it could disable a police body-cam, of which I said no and yet it probably would and morally weighed up the pro's and con's and canned that.
- nray 5y agoThis is the research inspiring Naomi "Sexy Cyborg" Wu's wearable microphone jammer (a choker), see https://youtu.be/H1rozZ7ebxQ?t=111 https://youtu.be/H1rozZ7ebxQ?t=111 and later on at https://youtu.be/H1rozZ7ebxQ?t=1319 https://youtu.be/H1rozZ7ebxQ?t=1319 for live testing out in public.
- NullPrefix 5y ago>It prevents [...] our camera from eavesdropping on the conversation How does it prevent the camera from filming speakers' lip movements?
- jonathanstrange 5y agoSay goodbye to your cat...nevertheless, it could be a useful device under certain circumstances.
- AlbertCory 5y agoHow about camera jamming with UV (for example, on your car's license plate)? I imagine this has been discussed on HN before (if so, just send me the link),
- ruined 5y agothat could be defeated with a simple UV filter over the camera lens, likely already in place ir camera jamming is doable and well-known enough to appear in media like crime dramas none of it is very practical because you're still extremely identifiable as "that one with all the lights" and presumably still visible in the visible spectrum when police jam cameras at protests they just use bright visible strobes
- daniel_reetz 5y agoGlass and plastic typically used in camera lenses already blocks UV. Enough UV to upset a camera would be enough to give you cataracts. Infrared is a different story but most cameras have IR filters. Security cameras sometimes have one that only drops in during the day to enable daytime color and nighttime IR.
- mcbits 5y ago> when police jam cameras at protests they just use bright visible strobes Ironically then the story just goes from "here police are brutalizing the people protesting brutality" to "and also being childish with their flashlights." Bright lights aren't nearly as blinding to large-sensor cameras with good lenses as they are to cheap cell phone cameras.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoWhy not active countermeasures? Camera detection device coupled with lasers.
- system2 5y agoOr buy the super dark glass like plate cover just like the ghetto Los Angeles people use.
- egberts1 5y agoAs a long-time hearing aid wearer, I too notice the absence of background noise whenever I flipped on my ultrasonic transducers … back in 1976.
- justshowpost 5y ago> * denotes equal contribution Wow, this otherwise typical four-student team was that equity-stuffed to maintain some level of equal outcome. But... they completely forgot what emitting loud noise is illegal.
- TheDudeMan 5y agoWouldn't it be easy to build a microphone that was immune to this? Up to now, there was little need to do so.
- jataget 5y agoNo person shall make, continue, or cause to be made or continued any loud, unnecessary or unusual noise or any noise which either annoys, disturbs, injures, or endangers the comfort, repose, health, peace, or safety of others, within the limits of the city. For more information, visit the "Noise Pollution" section of the City of Dayton's Municipal Code website.
- afro88 5y agoI wonder if a de-jammer ML model could be built to restore the original audio?