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I know you're being funny, but the NSA does have a reason to get rid of all hardware too.

http://www.spybusters.com/Great_Seal_Bug.html

In theory a cable could be used as an antenna, they probably have some working group at the NSA that does just that, hell they probably think Snowden stole the document about it.

The Seal Bug was just one bug. Later, the Soviets kindly built us an embassy with bugs built into the very concrete of the walls.

Good luck eavesdropping on my pillow talk from across the street when my windows are closed and my curtains are drawn. This is actually impossible, given the current state of technology

Highly questionable as to whether it's impossible with current tech -- see the 2010 update on laser eavesdropping on this page -- but even if it is, so what? Why should you have to close your windows and draw the curtains to enjoy the same expectation of privacy in your own bedroom that your grandfather had, before parabolic mics became common? He could leave his window open on a pleasant summer's night and murmur sweet nothings to your grandma, knowing that no one could hear without hanging right outside the window, trespassing.

And why should your grandchildren have to put in place active defenses against laser eavesdropping? There's a much better, more respectful solution: the just use of sanctions, including the use of force, against people who violate other's rights to privacy. In an anarchy, I'd simply punch an eavesdropper directly in the nose, and my neighbors would be fine with it; under a government, the state threatens to punch them in the nose (or shoot you) if they don't go sit in a room and have a long time-out and think about what an asshole they've been.

Hell, one can collect your DNA without ever coming to within hundreds of miles of you, so no stalking is required.

Would you care to explain how?

if you expect a piece of information to be private, then publishing millions of copies all over the place is the single worst thing to go about it.

Your fundamental error is in holding unintentional information leakage to be equivalent to publishing. If I went around leaving vials of my blood for folks to analyze, that would be publishing; the completely involuntary shedding of skin flakes and hairs, is not.

I repeat: the expectation of privacy is not negated by the theoretical possibility of surveillance.

Okay, here is a citation. There was a microphone and an antenna in there. With a little MEMS work, though, you could put the microphone on a minuscule chip and bond it into a PCB to which wires were attached, and probably get the whole thing down to the size of a SMT LED. How did I get marked troll anyway?

This isn't as far fetched as you might think. Anybody can buy hidden recording devices disguised as working pens, clocks, smoke alarms or whatever. They are not as high tech as they once were. The stuff Intelligence agencies have access to are even more high tech. When you have buildings full of highly intelligent people thinking up ways to spy on each other non-stop, you end up with some pretty innovative things. This for example http://www.spybusters.com/Great_Seal_Bug.html

I'm just a lowly Electrical Engineer who works in RF.

So am I.

There is no way that a working transmitter can be fitted into a mockup coin.

Sorry, but you're dead wrong here.

You'll have to have some kind of processor.

No you don't. Although some people may find it hard to believe there are tons of electronic devices that have no computers in them at all.

It's actually really easy and really simple to build a small AM transmitter. You're talking less than ten parts. This doesn't even consider more exotic possibilities such as the "Great Seal Bug".

So how does this work, again?

Money. Lots and lots of money.
Think custom battery, and construction techniques similar to a MMIC.
I think you need to understand the type of resources a gov't can put towards projects like this.

If I was to build something like this, I'd have a guy designing the battery, a guy making cases, a guy designing the antenna, and a guy doing the actual circuitry.
-The battery guy would give me the highest energy density in the smallest package he could. It would probably be some custom lithium manganese dioxidecell.
-The case guy would take pairs of coins and mill them down to half thickness, then mill out a cavity inside each one.
-The antenna guy would design something similar to a Yaego 4311-127-00500. (Digikey part 311-1230-1-ND) The size for that part is only 3.5mm x 2.7mm x 0.9mm.
-The circuitry guy would probably be fabbing a custom IC.

Months later, take all these parts, hook them toghether, glue the coin shut and hand it off.
You could probably do $4 million for a thousand bugs. I'd suggest that's easily within the price range of any first world nation.

Sure it's not something I could accomplish on the weekends with no budget, but you just needed to apply some imagination to the situation.

i guess i'm not the only one who is a bot dissapointed by these spy gadgets, since they all seem a bit wannabe-james-bond.
anybody know of real high-tech (or highly sneaky) gadgets that real spies use or used?
one of my favourites was the Great Seal Bug

The whole story. It was found in the fifties in American embassy in Moscow. The metal post was stuck in a carved wooden eagle schoolchildren gave to the ambassador. When found, the device was called "The Thing" because the US couldn't figure out what it was for. Peter Wright of MI5 eventually figured it out.

I guess with the processing power and algorithms of NASA, the US can do this microwave espionage without a metal post. Hrm.

I also seem to recall some funny business with a UN Seal with a tuned resonant cavity that was able to be used as a microphone by bouncing a beam of microwaves from a distance.

Ah, here it is: http://www.spybusters.com/Great_Seal_Bug.html

A wodden copy of the Great Seal of the United States was bugged. Part of the seal was used as a diaphram and was used as a passive resonant reflector. This would pass most bug sweeps as the device was not active, but passive. When painted with a 330 Mhz signal, it would modulate it.

The only update in the article is now they use microwaves and common materials already in a room.

Details here;
http://www.spybusters.com/Great_Seal_Bug.html

This bug is was delivered in 1946 and discovered in 1952.

So what do you guys wanna bet that at least a few of these researchers have their phones tapped at this point?

I can't think of any intelligence agency that that wouldn't like a few days head start with any more findings these guys come up with.

I'm not really headed anywhere specfic with this comment, other than getting this thought out there. People have been bugged to gain access to much less exciting information than this.

Interesting reading.

(Theremin was also the guy who invented the widget that makes the eerie flying-saucer sounds in old sci-fi movies -- called, unsurprisingly enough, a "theremin".)

The Carved Wooden seal given to the American embassy contained a microphone and a passive transciever. It operated by a principle similar to modern passive RFID tags. The Soviets would transmit high frequency radio waves at the antenna, which whould be modulated by the audio vibrations in the room, and then received by an antenna on the soviet end.
Link for the skeptics

It was a very nice bit of spycraft, quite advanced for it's day, but involved no highly directional audio microphones, sorry.

It was a two-foot wide wooden sculpture of the great seal of the United States, complete with a microwave resonant cavity, modulator and antenna.

Details are here.

What about this location tracking scheme in the US and this report?

You should read on the subject before you start calling security conscious people like me paranoid.

It sounds like the RFID technology is similar a
famous Russian listening device.

This device was totally passive, but when hit with a specific RF frequency (via a very directional beam) it would reflect the beam back but modulated by the sound in the room. The Russians could demodulate the signal and get the audio back. They hid the device in a carved wooden Seal of the United States that they presented to the US Embassador to Russia who proudly hung it above his desk. The Russian were privy to all conversations that took place in his office.

After a while the American figured his room was bugged so they sent in technicians to find the bug. The Russians weren't stupid - they knew when technicians arrived and simply turned off the directional RF carrier beam. They would turn it back on when the technicians left. Finally the Americans got smarter and all left but one who hid in the office with RF listening gear. When the Russians turned the RF carrier on, he detected it and figured it out it was embedded in the Seal. It was quite a scandal.

"Low-cost, passive chips like this have a range of only about 10 ft, however, so don't go too 1984."

Actually, they just have a range of 10 feet with the power supplied by, and with a receiver the sensitivity of, the default reader.

It's all about inverse-square. If you quadruple the power of the 'reading field' (solonoid induced fluxuating magnetic field, creating a sympathetic current in the RFID tag's own solonoit?) then you double the range. Crank up the sensitivity fourfold and you've doubled the range again.

This was the scientific rationale behind the Great Seal Bug in the American Embassy in Moscow 56 years ago, so while perhaps we shouldn't go '1984' we can safely go 1946.

Not only does this sound like a pretty bad idea from the radiation/cancer standpoint, but think of the privacy problems here also.

Sure it's nice because nobody can overhear your conversation because the conversation is in your head. What about tracking you though? It's getting easier and easier for the cell phone companies and government agencies to track and triangulate the position of cell phones. It's not a big deal right now because if you don't want to be tracked, just don't bring your cell phone, or turn it off.

Now if the cell phone is implanted in your teeth or jaw, you can't just leave it behind, and what sort of switch mechanism are they going to have for this so you can turn it off? I may not be doing anything illegal or even be giving anyone a reason to track my where-abouts, but do I really want people to be able to do so?

Also it's still really not all that hard to intercept cell phone conversations if you have the proper equipment and the knowledge to use it. Even digital calls can be intercepted. Now if some flaw existed in the firmware on the implanted phone, a spy could turn your microphone on remotely and listen to everything you say and hear.

I know I for one won't be getting any electronics implanted inside my person anytime soon, unless someone invents a miniturized beer distillery that replenishes itself automatically and constantly keeps me supplied with a beer.

Actually you can and its a standard technique that has been used quite a bit.

...and here are a few pictures of that seal, along with an in depth story concerning past American blunders in the USSR...

e.g. IIRC the embassy in the USSR (having been built by soviets, using soviet materials) was bugged *so* badly, deeply, and ingeniously that the US was forced to build several extra floors (using US labor and materials) on top of the original.