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Cone of Silence 2.0
Village Idiot sends word of a patent granted to MIT researchers for a cone of silence a la Maxwell Smart. This one doesn't use plastic, but rather active and networked sensors and speakers embedded in a (probably indoor) space such as an open-plan office. "In 'Get Smart,' secret agents wanting a private conversation would deploy the 'cone of silence,' a clear plastic contraption lowered over the agents' heads. It never worked — they couldn't hear each other, while eavesdroppers could pick up every word. Now a modern cone of silence that we are assured will work is being patented by engineers Joe Paradiso and Yasuhiro Ono of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ... Instead of plastic domes, they use a sensor network to work out where potential eavesdroppers are, and speakers to generate a subtle masking sound at just the right level. ... The array of speakers... aims a mix of white noise and randomized office hubbub at the eavesdroppers. The subtle, confusing sound makes the conversation unintelligible." One comment thread on the article wonders about the propriety of tracking people around an office in order to preserve privacy.
Just go into your office and CLOSE THE DOOR.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Agents: "Can you hear me now?"
Eavesdroppers: "...... No.."
a sensor network to work out where potential eavesdroppers are...the array of speakers... aims a mix of white noise and randomized office hubbub at the eavesdroppers
How do you point your white noise at a hidden mic or two? Or three...
I have a feeling that if this device ever sees the light of day, that it will stay true to the legacy of the device it was named after.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
To process the audio so eavesdroppers could hear with crystal clarity while the actual conversants could hear only static.
This is just another example of technology turning sci-fi into reality.
Up next for these guys is Hymie.
Yasuhiro Ono and the plastic domes are no more?
rewriting history since 2109
The Baron Harkonnen will be quite pleased.
It's an expensive version of turning the radio up.
Don't forget folks: if you are speaking in a room with windows, a laser can be pointed at the windows to pick up on vibrations due to conversation. http://www.google.com/search?q=laser+window+eavesdrop
. . . you can bet your hairy ass they do! They generate sound to exactly cancel out the sound of their propellers.
. . . so that sound cancellation technology on your ear buds was pioneered/sponsored by the DoD back in the early '60s. It even used some of that newfangled "transistor" technology.
Maybe the "Get Smart" gag was just misinformation to convince the Russians that the idea was asinine and would never work?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The array of speakers... aims a mix of white noise and randomized office hubbub at the eavesdroppers.
And what if they use brown note?
This dont make silence, but try to turn deaf what they think are the potential listeners. Is like putting a photo of a sunset in front of a specific vigilance camera.
There was a old sci-fi story about a similar device, that did something like echoes the sound with a delay to make the sound waves cancel and make silence. That wouldnt work in real world, but if is the same basic idea could the patent be challenged?
FFS noob! Everybody knows the SI unit for a shit is the couric!
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
This just means that instead of overhearing by ear, you can now plant a listening device in the machine generating the interference signals and rather easily infer what's being said from the interference generated. After all, they're basically doing Bose-like noise-cancellation, which means the generation of an inverse-wavelength signals-- which can easily be reversed into intelligible signals. That means the machine is constantly sampling what they're saying in order to cancel it out, which means a bug in the machine can now transmit the entire conversation. So, I'm not sure they're doin' it right. The single most secure way to have a secret conversation is still to show up together in secret in a crowded venue and essentially whisper in each other's ear. Concerts work too.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
It's been a ridiculously long time since I read Frank Herbert's Dune (or any of its sequels), but I remember at least one of the books had a couple of scenes with a "cone of silence" much along these lines.
Anyone inside the field could communicate with each other; anyone outside the field couldn't hear them. For added security, the conversants would face the inner wall (iirc the "cone of silence" was walled on three sides) to prevent lip-reading - something that this approach to the idea doesn't cover.
Of course, there's nothing preventing you from simply holding your hand over your mouth...
Good luck using this to defeat hidden microphones. And if you can identify the location of hidden microphones, you don't need a cone of silence to defeat them.
Not necessarily.
If you find the mics you may want to leave them in-place. This way you can let them listen in on conversations that are unimportant and feed them false information on sensitive areas. The cone could then be activated during times when you want real confidentiality. Or perhaps activate the cone for your talking, and sending out a pre-recorded signal of innocuous things to mask your real activity.
Leaving the hidden mic in place while you trace the receiver could also be useful if you don't know who your adversary is.
Judging by the descripton this device apparently operates by beaming additional sound at the people who are not supposed to be in a conversation, rather than attempting to cancel the conversation at their ears. So this is a selective noise generator.
It's equivalent to creating enough background noise to drown out the conversations, but doing it selectively at the ears of the victims. Of course this means increasing, rather than decreasing, the noise level of the environment, and doing so with snippets of conversation that can ALMOST be understood - resulting in increased stress both from the high level of noise and the failed processing in the victims' brains.
Sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Village Idiot sends word of a patent granted to MIT researchers
The patent application published. It was not granted. It hasn't even been examined yet. Patent applications usually haven't by this point - examination happens 2-3 years after application. It is a simple procedure Slashdot; why can't you seem to wrap your head around it? I'll write it very BASICally so you can understand:
There, you can easily refer to this when reporting in the future. Slashdot is consistently WRONG on how it reports on whether a patent is granted/published/applied for and I would really expect more from a site that prides itself on being intelligent and for intelligent people. See the recent story on IBM allegedly "getting" a patent on the 40-minute meeting (hint, they didn't. It hasn't been examined yet).
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
...is the ultimate cone of silence. Everyone can hear you but no one can understand you, and you can always claim you've been misinterpreted. Best of all it doesn't require any technology and it doesn't ever break down.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
This tech would kick ass in the studio, or perhaps the theatre or practice room
Doesn't Herman Miller already offer a product that does something similar? http://www.bfionline.com/babble/
I want something that cancels street noise inside my home. Is such a device available?
Why not an inverse wave form of the actual conversation?
Speak low when you speak, love
Our summer day withers away too soon, too soon
Speak low when you speak, love
Our moment is swift, like ships adrift, we're swept apart, too soon
Speak low, darling, speak low
Love is a spark, lost in the dark too soon, too soon
I feel wherever I go that tomorrow is near, tomorrow is here and always too soon
Time is so old and love so brief
Love is pure gold and time a thief
We're late, darling, we're late
The curtain descends, ev'rything ends too soon, too soon
I wait, darling, I wait
Will you speak low to me, speak love to me and soon
1. Just go into a bathroom,
2. turn on the Shower spray,
3. then you can have your private conversation,
4. Profit . . .
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
Masking systems have been used for years in courtrooms and banks to keep people from hearing things they shouldn't. When the lawyers approach the bench, they turn on the system and it allows them to have a private conversation while the jury can't here it. Masking systems are also used in conjunction with paging/background music systems, and if it was installed properly, you don't even realize that you are listening to filtered white noise. No fancy "sensors" or crazy DSP (ok,just a little DSP).
Seems pretty apt.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Because it wouldn't work. First off, any error in the produced waveform, including latency which is unavoidable, and you're no longer fully canceling the sound--in fact you may be amplifying it at some frequencies. Also, unless the generated sound is coming from the same location as the to-be-canceled sound, then the phase difference (cancellation) depends on the listeners location, and again you will be selectively amplifying certain frequencies at certain locations.
I saw a demo of something very similar in 2006 at a medical technology convention. The basic idea was that when your ear is flooded with similar sound your brain cannot interpret the actual words of the conversation you're trying to listen to. They would record your voice, and then their software would chop it into random increments and play six simultaneous layers back over speakers. You could then have a phone conversation without people being able to understand what you were saying. It worked quite well and the sound wasn't any more annoying than someone on the phone.
I can say [REDACTED] anytime I want!
And I was 'That' close to inventing this myself.
So what we have is some white noise thrown in a blender with audio clips of office chit chat. How about instead we tune a radio to some static, or maybe stand by some running water, a big office fountain or something.
Just keep the white noise loud enough that s/n ratio suck for any equipment trying to parse out the conversation.
I'll leave you to your own creativity how best to insert some office hubub.
Or buy their shit.
What if you could place a number of small devices in a public space and gain the freedom to speak there without being overheard?
I agree that the issue of needing to locate listeners is a big issue. But there are, I suppose, potential uses still.
Max: Do you mean there could have been as many as fifty devices in this room as long as only 2 were listeners?
Harry Hoo: That's right Mr Smart.
Max: Wow. It must have been really crowded in here.
Harry Hoo: Amazing!