Surveillance

 

   I read about a kinda cool technology recently.  What's been written references being able to eavesdrop through walls:

Misleading link: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/10/eavesdropping_t.html

I call the link misleading because it has the process backwards (though it was a proof of concept).

Basically an external transmitter sends radio waves through a building.  Then an antenna picks up the same waves as they bounce off of different surfaces in the building.  Large flat surfaces work best for that and if there's conversation going on near one it's carried in the radio waves that reflect.

Nobody wants to haul a transmitter and and antenna to a building just for invading someone's privacy (yeah there's legit uses for this but that's a different topic).  So some sharp guy or gal turned the problem on it's head and came up with an idea of how to eavesdrop on pretty much every person on the planet at all times.  This is how we do things on planet earth now.

What did they figure out?  That instead of hauling a transmitter around to generate a signal, just use the cell phones own signal (the one that's always turned on if the phones powered up).  The phones's scneen is about as flat a surface as you can find.  And it doesn't matter it's a small surface with the signal being generated so close to it.

So there ya go.

Just add people and we made it to the mythical surveillance society.

On a related note...  I'm trying to locate a group of people or business that use tricks of perception to make it look like they have the technology I've just described. I have a feeling there's a connection to the casinos so they might work as both casino security and private investigators.