My concern was lip reading, and it wasn't theoretical. We had a case where this was the method of eavesdropping. The president had a corner office on Park Avenue. Big glass windows. Scores of vantage point offices across the street. We caught them in the act.
The visual eavesdropping info-target is bigger these days. Lip reading concerns have expanded to concerns about: whiteboard / projection / computer screen reading and now... reading the reflections off of shiny objects in the room. ~ Kevin
via Scientific American..."Through the eyepiece of Michael Backes’s small Celestron telescope, the 18-point letters on the laptop screen at the end of the hall look nearly as clear as if the notebook computer were on my lap.
I do a double take.
Not only is the laptop 10 meters (33 feet) down the corridor, it faces away from the telescope. The image that seems so legible is a reflection off a glass teapot on a nearby table.
In experiments here at his laboratory at Saarland University in Germany, Backes has discovered that an alarmingly wide range of objects can bounce secrets right off our screens and into an eavesdropper’s camera. Spectacles work just fine, as do coffee cups, plastic bottles, metal jewelry—even, in his most recent work, the eyeballs of the computer user. The mere act of viewing information can give it away." (more)
