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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.."
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?
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...
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
Absolutely!
What's worst is the device works by surrounding your secret meeting with an array of discreet sensors (aka, microphones). So if two or three extra microphones were to appear in the room, no one would suspect a thing.
I guess it would work for the random passerby...