6 ms·

As disturbing as the police use is, I am more disturbed by the possibility (inevitability?) of devices like these, and similar audio devices, becoming so cheap

by jonahx 12y ago

As disturbing as the police use is, I am more disturbed by the possibility (inevitability?) of devices like these, and similar audio devices, becoming so cheap and readily available that even basic privacy from strangers while in your home becomes a thing of the past. It seems to me that before too long anyone could pick up audio and video devices for a couple hundred bucks that would allow them to see you in your own house and hear your every word.

systemtrigger 12y ago
Bouncing lasers off window panes to detect audio is a worrisome development. The counter-measure is to install dual pane windows equipped with acoustic transducers that vibrate the panes with white noise. For the device mentioned in the article, when the technology becomes available to consumers and/or is open-sourced, anyone will be able to count the occupants of any location near to them. The question again becomes one of counter-measures.
- woodman 12y ago
  Development? The technique has been well known for a long time, I remember hearing about it in the late 90s. It isn't widely used because it isn't practical. Also, your countermeasure doesn't work if there is another reflective surface inside the room.
  - acdha 12y ago
    > Development? The technique has been well known for a long time The difference is that these things used to be the domain of major government agencies rather than a hobbyist with a few hundred dollars and a poor sense of privacy.
    - woodman 12y ago
      In the 70s maybe, but in the late 90s? No, it has been a potential hobby project for a long time now.
- enneff 12y ago
  There are plenty of pages online that explain how to do it yourself: http://www.instructables.com/id/Laser-Surveillance-System-for-under-$20/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Laser-Surveillance-System-fo... http://hacknmod.com/hack/how-to-long-range-laser-microphone-spying/ http://hacknmod.com/hack/how-to-long-range-laser-microphone-...
- morcheeba 12y ago
  The other countermeasure is windows angled downward so that the laser would have to be on the premises to get a direct bounce. Not viable for most homes, though.
- mseebach 12y ago
  The bottom line with both of these technologies is that their usecases are simply too narrow to inspire causal use. The radar-gadget is useful if you're about to storm a house full of armed adversaries - in most other cases, you can just peek through the window or knock on the door and get much the same information. The laser-bouncer is great for eavesdropping on people who take some effort to hide their communication - if they don't, hiding a wireless microphone or a high-capacity dictaphone is orders of magnitude simpler and cheaper.
- cmdrfred 12y ago
  You can always do what they did in burn notice and simply tape a vibrator to the window.
  - badpeaches 12y ago
    What a great idea for a new concept industry. Vibrator Windows™. If the windows are shaking, no one can hear you're makin' bacon.
- spyder 12y ago
  ... or just use thick soundproof curtains.
clavalle 12y ago
There has to be some equally cheap countermeasures that can be found.
- foobarqux 12y ago
  It's called metal.
  - sologoub 12y ago
    Can you elaborate?
    - pmalynin 12y ago
      Faraday's Cage
    - kmowery 12y ago
      This is covered in the Range-R FAQ: http://www.range-r.com/FAQ/index.htm http://www.range-r.com/FAQ/index.htm The RF bands they're using apparently don't go through metal so well.
      - Schweigi 12y ago
        By reading the article I would have thought it would be possible to walk down the street while pointing at a house and the device would show if/where someone is hiding but after reading this FAQ I don't think this device is working so well as people expect. Maybe in houses with wooden walls but not in buildings with thick brick or concrete steal enhanced walls. They even recommend to press the device against the wall/floor to get the best results. This means that the device can be used to see if somebody is behind a specific wall but not just somewhere in the house a couple of rooms away.
        sologoub 12y ago
        In the warmer parts of the country, you are not looking at a lot of metal/brick. In California for example, you are looking at a lot of plywood and insulation mostly.
themodelplumber 12y ago
What if you could get a discount on e.g. your insurance payments for a similar device, permanently mounted on the outside of your residence, and readable on location by law enforcement or other responders (like rescue)? Would you be OK with other people taking the deal?
- rubencodes 12y ago
  Seems like the type of thing Big Brother would do to make it more palatable. Personally, no, I would never do sacrifice my privacy for whatever amount they'd give you. But I guess that choice is up to each individual, really.
pdkl95 12y ago
During a typical 2nd Amendment[1] debate ("flame war", really) a common argument was raised about how various "big, modern weapons" required a different set of rules. Regardless of how one felt about people having "small" (i.e. traditional arms with which society has experience), surely it must be obvious that "big" (new, unknown) things like nerve gases or atomic bombs are so dangerous they must be kept from civilian hands. Technology eavesdropping in new ways is a similar "forbidden knowledge". While it may not be a weapon itself, when it becomes simple and cheap enough that containing the forbidden knowledge becomes impossible[2] we face the potential disruption of some of the very foundations of society. The question isn't if the average person will gain access to cheap and powerful eavesdropping technology, or weapons as powerful as atomic bombs, or even worse technologies that we haven't discovered yet. The question is if society will be ready for when those technologies grow and become a cheap commodity. The general purpose computer already did this, and other electronic devices like the one mentioned in this article are experiencing this transition right now. Biotech seems to be ramping up and I suspect we will see the biotech equivalent to the "cheap personal computer" in the near-ish future. The point is we, as a species, really need to learn how to deal with these technologies now, or a future "mass shooting" might instead be an "engineered plague" or "20 kiloton bomb". How do we deal with these threats? I don't know. But I do know trying to keep technologies bottled up as "forbidden knowledge" is at best only a delaying tactic. I suspect that "fixing most social problems" (racism, extreme poverty, etc) is probably a prerequisite. I personally like Roddenberry's idea of fixing most of the basic physical needs with technology; it won't fix everything, but it would probably be a good start. Unfortunately, it is easy to succumb to a defeatist or nihilistic attitude when faced with these problems. Even Feynman thought[3] the success of the Manhattan Project necessarily implied that civilization "would all be destroyed very soon anyway". For me, I try to remember that we can't predict change[4], and worrying about things we cannot change is a waste of time and energy. Big problems grow out of small problems, so I focus on those small things that I can change. There is a real risk that technology will happen faster than our ability to assimilate those technologies, but we should try anyway, because the alternative is to give into natural selection as yet another species that didn't adapt to its environment fast enough.[5] [1] This post is not about the 2nd. Please, there is no need to re-open that highly-charged debate. [2] "information wants to be free", or at least hard impossible to contain. [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgaw9qe7DEE#t=1114 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgaw9qe7DEE#t=1114 [4] See James Burke's ("Connections") non-teleological view of progress [5] aka the speciation of humanity. I highly recommend Bruce Sterling's exploration of this type of "end result" for humanity in his novel Schismatrix[6]. (this is where my username ("pdkl95") comes from...) [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schismatrix http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schismatrix
gambiting 12y ago
I am more worried about thieves using this to see if there's anyone home before robbing it.
ryanmarsh 12y ago
New homes (at least where I live) all have TechShield (or similar) radiant barrier installed for energy efficiency. It's basically siding or insulation covered with a thin layer of foil. It's effective enough as a Faraday cage that some of my friends with new homes can't get a cell signal in their home. I wonder if this will be enough to thwart the casual eavesdropper.
- umsm 12y ago
  TechShield appears to be installed on the framing of the roof. This device is used on outside walls.

by jonahx 12y ago

systemtrigger 12y ago

Bouncing lasers off window panes to detect audio is a worrisome development. The counter-measure is to install dual pane windows equipped with acoustic transducers that vibrate the panes with white noise. For the device mentioned in the article, when the technology becomes available to consumers and/or is open-sourced, anyone will be able to count the occupants of any location near to them. The question again becomes one of counter-measures.

woodman 12y ago
Development? The technique has been well known for a long time, I remember hearing about it in the late 90s. It isn't widely used because it isn't practical. Also, your countermeasure doesn't work if there is another reflective surface inside the room.
- acdha 12y ago
  > Development? The technique has been well known for a long time The difference is that these things used to be the domain of major government agencies rather than a hobbyist with a few hundred dollars and a poor sense of privacy.
  - woodman 12y ago
    In the 70s maybe, but in the late 90s? No, it has been a potential hobby project for a long time now.
enneff 12y ago
There are plenty of pages online that explain how to do it yourself: http://www.instructables.com/id/Laser-Surveillance-System-for-under-$20/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Laser-Surveillance-System-fo... http://hacknmod.com/hack/how-to-long-range-laser-microphone-spying/ http://hacknmod.com/hack/how-to-long-range-laser-microphone-...
morcheeba 12y ago
The other countermeasure is windows angled downward so that the laser would have to be on the premises to get a direct bounce. Not viable for most homes, though.
mseebach 12y ago
The bottom line with both of these technologies is that their usecases are simply too narrow to inspire causal use. The radar-gadget is useful if you're about to storm a house full of armed adversaries - in most other cases, you can just peek through the window or knock on the door and get much the same information. The laser-bouncer is great for eavesdropping on people who take some effort to hide their communication - if they don't, hiding a wireless microphone or a high-capacity dictaphone is orders of magnitude simpler and cheaper.
cmdrfred 12y ago
You can always do what they did in burn notice and simply tape a vibrator to the window.
- badpeaches 12y ago
  What a great idea for a new concept industry. Vibrator Windows™. If the windows are shaking, no one can hear you're makin' bacon.
spyder 12y ago
... or just use thick soundproof curtains.

clavalle 12y ago

There has to be some equally cheap countermeasures that can be found.

foobarqux 12y ago
It's called metal.
- sologoub 12y ago
  Can you elaborate?
  - pmalynin 12y ago
    Faraday's Cage
  - kmowery 12y ago
    This is covered in the Range-R FAQ: http://www.range-r.com/FAQ/index.htm http://www.range-r.com/FAQ/index.htm The RF bands they're using apparently don't go through metal so well.
    - Schweigi 12y ago
      By reading the article I would have thought it would be possible to walk down the street while pointing at a house and the device would show if/where someone is hiding but after reading this FAQ I don't think this device is working so well as people expect. Maybe in houses with wooden walls but not in buildings with thick brick or concrete steal enhanced walls. They even recommend to press the device against the wall/floor to get the best results. This means that the device can be used to see if somebody is behind a specific wall but not just somewhere in the house a couple of rooms away.
      - sologoub 12y ago
        In the warmer parts of the country, you are not looking at a lot of metal/brick. In California for example, you are looking at a lot of plywood and insulation mostly.

themodelplumber 12y ago

What if you could get a discount on e.g. your insurance payments for a similar device, permanently mounted on the outside of your residence, and readable on location by law enforcement or other responders (like rescue)? Would you be OK with other people taking the deal?

rubencodes 12y ago
Seems like the type of thing Big Brother would do to make it more palatable. Personally, no, I would never do sacrifice my privacy for whatever amount they'd give you. But I guess that choice is up to each individual, really.

pdkl95 12y ago

During a typical 2nd Amendment[1] debate ("flame war", really) a common argument was raised about how various "big, modern weapons" required a different set of rules. Regardless of how one felt about people having "small" (i.e. traditional arms with which society has experience), surely it must be obvious that "big" (new, unknown) things like nerve gases or atomic bombs are so dangerous they must be kept from civilian hands. Technology eavesdropping in new ways is a similar "forbidden knowledge". While it may not be a weapon itself, when it becomes simple and cheap enough that containing the forbidden knowledge becomes impossible[2] we face the potential disruption of some of the very foundations of society. The question isn't if the average person will gain access to cheap and powerful eavesdropping technology, or weapons as powerful as atomic bombs, or even worse technologies that we haven't discovered yet. The question is if society will be ready for when those technologies grow and become a cheap commodity. The general purpose computer already did this, and other electronic devices like the one mentioned in this article are experiencing this transition right now. Biotech seems to be ramping up and I suspect we will see the biotech equivalent to the "cheap personal computer" in the near-ish future. The point is we, as a species, really need to learn how to deal with these technologies now, or a future "mass shooting" might instead be an "engineered plague" or "20 kiloton bomb". How do we deal with these threats? I don't know. But I do know trying to keep technologies bottled up as "forbidden knowledge" is at best only a delaying tactic. I suspect that "fixing most social problems" (racism, extreme poverty, etc) is probably a prerequisite. I personally like Roddenberry's idea of fixing most of the basic physical needs with technology; it won't fix everything, but it would probably be a good start. Unfortunately, it is easy to succumb to a defeatist or nihilistic attitude when faced with these problems. Even Feynman thought[3] the success of the Manhattan Project necessarily implied that civilization "would all be destroyed very soon anyway". For me, I try to remember that we can't predict change[4], and worrying about things we cannot change is a waste of time and energy. Big problems grow out of small problems, so I focus on those small things that I can change. There is a real risk that technology will happen faster than our ability to assimilate those technologies, but we should try anyway, because the alternative is to give into natural selection as yet another species that didn't adapt to its environment fast enough.[5] [1] This post is not about the 2nd. Please, there is no need to re-open that highly-charged debate. [2] "information wants to be free", or at least hard impossible to contain. [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgaw9qe7DEE#t=1114 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgaw9qe7DEE#t=1114 [4] See James Burke's ("Connections") non-teleological view of progress [5] aka the speciation of humanity. I highly recommend Bruce Sterling's exploration of this type of "end result" for humanity in his novel Schismatrix[6]. (this is where my username ("pdkl95") comes from...) [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schismatrix http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schismatrix

gambiting 12y ago

I am more worried about thieves using this to see if there's anyone home before robbing it.

ryanmarsh 12y ago

New homes (at least where I live) all have TechShield (or similar) radiant barrier installed for energy efficiency. It's basically siding or insulation covered with a thin layer of foil. It's effective enough as a Faraday cage that some of my friends with new homes can't get a cell signal in their home. I wonder if this will be enough to thwart the casual eavesdropper.

umsm 12y ago
TechShield appears to be installed on the framing of the roof. This device is used on outside walls.