FutureWatch: Laser Through a Keyhole Can Expose Everything in a Room (somewhat)

If you're worried about privacy, it might be time to cover up your front door's peephole.

Being able to see inside a closed room was a skill once reserved for super heroes. But researchers at the Stanford Computational Imaging Lab have expanded on a technique called non-line-of-sight imaging so that just a single point of laser light entering a room can be used to see what physical objects might be inside...

It’s an incredibly clever technique, and one day it could be a very useful technology for devices like autonomous cars that would potentially be able to spot potential hazards hidden around corners long before they’re visible to passengers in a vehicle, improving safety and obstacle avoidance...

The research could one day provide a way for police or the military to assess the risks of entering a room before actually breaking down the door and storming their way inside, using nothing but a small crack in the wall or a gap around a window or doorway.  more

FutureWatch – The Eyes Have IT

One of the more interesting aspects of Technical Surveillance Countermeasures (TSCM), or sweeping for bugs, is looking into the future. Seemingly an exercise in entertainment at first glance, looking forward has a serious purpose—staying ahead of the bad guys, not one step behind (as some TSCM’ers seem to be proud to say). Smart contact lens technology caught my eye for this episode of FutureWatch.

Taking a look at “future vision” we see… more

While we don’t have smart contact lenses yet, we do have X-ray vision.

FutureWatch - Super Microphones Coming to Eavesdropping Devices and...

... more mundane items like smart speakers and cell phones...  

 A KAIST research team ... has developed a bioinspired flexible piezoelectric acoustic sensor with multi-resonant ultrathin piezoelectric membrane mimicking the basilar membrane of the human cochlea. The flexible acoustic sensor has been miniaturized ... is ready for accurate and far-distant voice detection. more

Imagination Becomes a Reality... somewhat.

≈1990 - Murray Associates... "Picture this. You’re the Chief of R&D at a mid-sized snack food company. You have just discussed a new project with your staff of fifteen. Top secret. Your company is preparing a new cookie. Encapsulated chocolate bits make noises when bitten. From loud pops to whistles to burps, depending on speed of the bite. Your kids loved the idea. But this is only half the secret. In addition to being Sonic, it’s: Natural, Oven-baked, Oil-free, Kalorie-free, and Yogurt-enriched. The staff affectionately names your pet project ‘SNOOKY the Cookie.’ Top management is excited. Sales potential is incredible if you get to the marketplace first." from, Corporate Espionage - The Missing Business School Courses

2021 - Hostess Brands, LLC is introducing a new texture-rich item for consumers looking to indulge their sweet tooth with the launch of its creamiest and crunchiest snack yet, Hostess Cr!spy Minis™. Available in two irresistible flavors, Cookies & Crème and Strawberries & Crème, the incredibly poppable Cr!spy Minis come in a resealable, stand-up pouch for optimal freshness. more

FutureWatch: A New TSCM Detection Tool is in Development...

The developers just don't know it yet.
It's an Electronic Dog Nose (EDN).

New sensors developed by Otto Gregory at the University of Rhode Island, and chemical engineering doctoral student Peter Ricci, are so powerful that they can detect threats at the molecular level, whether it's explosive materials, particles from a potentially deadly virus or illegal drugs entering the country.

"This is potentially life-saving technology," said Gregory. "We have detected things at the part-per-quadrillion level. That's really single molecule detection."

Because Gregory's sensors are so small and so powerful, there is a wide range of applications. more

Kevin's analysis...
Specially trained dogs have been used to sniff out covert electronic items, like cell phones in prisons, for quite a while now. The secret to detection is the device's electronic circuit boards. They contain these compounds: triphenylphosphine oxide (TPPO) and hydroxycyclohexyl phenyl ketone (HPK). This second compound is also found on CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, the old tech floppy disks.

FutureWatch: Technical Surveillance Countermeasures (TSCM) professionals have many types of technologies at their disposal for detecting illegal electronic surveillance devices. To name a few... Non-Linear Junction Detection, Infrared Thermography, and Radio-frequency Spectrum Analysis. We are now well on our way to adding EDN to our kit.

Tin Foil Hat Alert: Tiny, Wireless, Injectable Chips Use Ultrasound to Monitor

Columbia Engineers develop the smallest single-chip system that is a complete functioning electronic circuit; implantable chips... that can be injected into the body with a hypodermic needle to monitor medical conditions.

Researchers at Columbia Engineering report that they have built what they say is the world's smallest single-chip system, consuming a total volume of less than 0.1 mm³. The system is as small as a dust mite and visible only under a microscope. In order to achieve this, the team used ultrasound to both power and communicate with the device wirelessly. The study was published online May 7 in Science Advances.

“We wanted to see how far we could push the limits on how small a functioning chip we could make,” said the study’s leader Ken Shepard, Lau Family professor of electrical engineering and professor of biomedical engineering. “This is a new idea of ‘chip as system’—this is a chip that alone, with nothing else, is a complete functioning electronic system. This should be revolutionary for developing wireless, miniaturized implantable medical devices that can sense different things, be used in clinical applications, and eventually approved for human use.” more

Industrial Espionage Quote of the Week: Most In-Demand Career

"...companies are increasingly at risk from hacking and industrial espionage. Protecting data and defending corporate networks is poised to be one of the most in-demand careers of the future." — Doros Hadjizenonos, Regional sales manager at Fortinet  more

Information Security as a Service (ISaaS) - The Future of Information Security

Free-world businesses know they have a problem. They are bleeding their life-blood. Manufacturing was phlebotomized first. Bleeding now is their intellectual property and confidential information. What happens when these are gone?

We are watching a death of a thousand cuts, but it can be stopped. This paper examines how to do it... more

Clearly Creepy - The Billboards are Watching You

 Clear Channel Outdoor, one of the world’s largest billboard companies, will in coming days roll out technology across Europe capable of letting advertisers know where people go and what they do after seeing a particular billboard.

 Sounds creepy, no?

Well, brace yourself. Clear Channel has been quietly using this technology in the United States for the last four years, including in Los Angeles.

“They’re spying on you in your own neighborhood,” said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy.

“You don’t know it’s happening,” he told me. “You don’t know who they’re sharing the information with.”

Chester and other privacy advocates said Clear Channel’s system is an example of how private companies are building out commercial surveillance networks right under our noses. more

Verizon Launches Hyper-Precise GPS Location Technology

Verizon launched its Hyper Precise Location using Real Time Kinematics (RTK), a location technology that provides location accuracy within 1-2 centimeters, on the Verizon network. 

Verizon has built and deployed RTK reference stations nationwide to provide pinpoint level accuracy to RTK compatible internet of things (IoT) devices. RTK will also support emerging technologies that depend on high level location accuracy such as delivery drones and customer-approved location data for first responders during emergencies...Additionally, the rollout of hyper-precise location services paired with Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband (UWB) network and 5G Edge, will pave the way for more autonomous technologies. more

FutureWatch: Early (1930) Facetime Smartphone Calls

"This technology was predicted by many authors, futurists, and illustrators in the past. This one is one of the earliest illustrations on this subject; it was made in 1930. Again, the resemblance with a modern gadget that we all know as “smartphone” is uncanny." more

When We All Have Pocket Telephones

Daily Mirror, England, January 23, 1923

Proposed Bill: Anti-Espionage Theft in Airports

U.S. Rep. Ross Spano (R-FL) signed on to co-sponsor a bill designed to protect the transportation infrastructure from espionage and intellectual property theft. 

The bill, HR 6917, the Airport Infrastructure Resources (AIR) Security Act, would prohibit federal airport improvement funds from being used in the purchase of passenger boarding bridges made by companies that have violated the intellectual property rights of the United States.

Introduced by Reps. Ron Wright (R-TX) and Marc Veasey (R-TX), the bill is intended to keep the Chinese Communist Party from spying on American airline passengers, and to prevent China from any further power grab, Wright said. more

TSCM Nightmares Today, Reality Tomorrow

These give some technical surveillance countermeasures specialists nightmares.

Emerging technologies like the ones below are interesting. They could be used for illegal eavesdropping in the future. Combining the first two could produce a wireless bug that never has to have its batteries replaced. It could also be incredibly small.

Some people say, "the bad guys are always one step ahead of us."
I say, "do your homework and you will be one step ahead of them."

Ultra-Low-Power WiFi Radio Enables IoT Devices

• Housed in a chip, it lets IoT devices communicate with existing WiFi networks.
• Housed in a chip smaller than a grain of rice.
• The radio could last for years on a single coin cell battery.

It consumes just 28 microwatts of power and does so while transmitting data at a rate of 2 megabits per second (a connection fast enough to stream music and most YouTube videos) over a range of up to 21 meters.



New Green Technology from UMass Amherst Generates Electricity ‘Out of Thin Air’

The laboratories of electrical engineer Jun Yao and microbiologist Derek Lovley at UMass Amherst have created a device they call an “Air-gen.” or air-powered generator, with electrically conductive protein nanowires produced by the microbe Geobacter.

The Air-gen connects electrodes to the protein nanowires in such a way that electrical current is generated from the water vapor naturally present in the atmosphere. “We are literally making electricity out of thin air,” says Yao.



Seeing Around Corners to Detect Object Shapes
Special light sources and sensors see around corners or through gauzy filters, enabling reconstruction of the shapes of unseen objects.

A technique was developed that enables reconstruction of images in great detail. Researchers computed millimeter- and micrometer-scale shapes of curved objects, providing an important component to a larger suite of non-line-of-sight (NLOS) imaging techniques.

Most of what people see — and what cameras detect — comes from light that reflects off an object and bounces directly to the eye or the lens. But light also reflects off the objects in other directions, bouncing off walls and objects. 

Spy vs. Spy - The Movie

The Spy vs. Spy comic strip has been a regular fixture in Mad magazine for almost sixty years. In that time, the two identical birdlike espionage agents — Black Spy and White Spy — have also featured in video games and cartoons, but a live-action big-screen adaptation has continually eluded the warring duo. However, that could all finally change, if new developments go according to plan.

According to Collider, Rawson Marshall Thurber is in talks to direct the movie for Warner Bros. and Imagine Entertainment. Ron Howard and Brian Grazer are on board as producers, which makes sense as they’ve been attached to the project since its inception. It remains to be seen if Dwayne Johnson will star, but that wouldn’t be surprising as he’s Thurber’s go-to guy...

The movie, as silly as it will undoubtedly be, might also be very smart and biting. The original comics are rife with political satire, often taking aim at America’s involvement in wars. Given that there’s still plenty of real-life drama to comment on, don’t be surprised if the movie pokes fun at current affairs...

If the film lives up to its potential, Spy vs. Spy will be one entertaining, wacky ride. more

"The Warehouse" by Rob Hart (book)

"The Warehouse" by Rob Hart: A thrilling story of corporate espionage at the highest level ... and a powerful cautionary tale about technology, runaway capitalism, and the nightmare world we are making for ourselves” is how Blake Crouch, New York Times (NYT) bestselling author of Dark Matter describes this book. more

"A chilling and all-too-believable portrait of a not-so-far-off future where free will succumbs to big business."--Alafair Burke, New York Times bestselling author of The Better Sister





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How Not to be Seen - Evading CCTV Surveillance

It's theoretically possible to become invisible to cameras. But can it catch on? 



Right now, you're more than likely spending the vast majority of your time at home. Someday, however, we will all be able to leave the house once again and emerge, blinking, into society to work, travel, eat, play, and congregate in all of humanity's many bustling crowds.

The world, when we eventually enter it again, is waiting for us with millions of digital eyes—cameras, everywhere, owned by governments and private entities alike. Pretty much every state out there has some entity collecting license plate data from millions of cars—parked or on the road—every day. Meanwhile all kinds of cameras—from police to airlines, retailers, and your neighbors' doorbells—are watching you every time you step outside, and unscrupulous parties are offering facial recognition services with any footage they get their hands on.

In short, it's not great out there if you're a person who cares about privacy, and it's likely to keep getting worse. In the long run, pressure on state and federal regulators to enact and enforce laws that can limit the collection and use of such data is likely to be the most efficient way to effect change. But in the shorter term, individuals have a conundrum before them: can you go out and exist in the world without being seen?

Bottom line as of now...
All of the digital simulations run on the cloak worked with 100-percent effectiveness, he added. But in the real world, "the reliability degrades." The tech has room for improvement.

"How good can they get? Right now I think we're still at the prototype stage," he told Ars. "You can produce these things that, when you wear them in some situations, they work. It's just not reliable enough that I would tell people, you know, you can put this on and reliably evade surveillance." more

The Potato Chip Bag Spy

Back in 2014, the potato chip bag became an audio eavesdropping device...
Want to listen in on a juicy conversation? Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Microsoft, and Adobe have designed an algorithm that can pick up conversation by analyzing the vibrations from speech as they ripple through a potato chip bag, MIT News reports. more

In 2020, the potato chip bag became a visual eavesdropping device too...
Mirrors aren't the only shiny objects that reflect our surroundings. Turns out a humble bag of potato chips can pull off the same trick, as scientists from the University of Washington, Seattle have made it possible to recreate detailed images of the world from reflections in the snack's glossy wrapping.

The scientists took their work a step further by predicting how a room's likeness might appear from different angles, essentially "exploring" the room's reflection in a bag of chips as if they were actually present. This is analogous to a classical problem in computer vision and graphics: view synthesis, or the ability to create a new, synthetic view of a specific subject based on other images, taken at various angles. more

The future?

AI News: The Farm Bots Are Here... finally

IL - In a research field off Highway 54 last autumn, corn stalks shimmered in rows 40-feet deep. Girish Chowdhary, an agricultural engineer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, bent to place a small white robot at the edge of a row marked 103. 

 The robot, named TerraSentia, resembled a souped up version of a lawn mower, with all-terrain wheels and a high-resolution camera on each side.

In much the same way that self-driving cars “see” their surroundings, TerraSentia navigates a field by sending out thousands of laser pulses to scan its environment. A few clicks on a tablet were all that were needed to orient the robot at the start of the row before it took off, squeaking slightly as it drove over ruts in the field. more

Farm Bots from 48 years ago,

in your weekend movie,

                      Silent Running...

FutureWatch: You've Probably Been Photo-Napped by an App

Clearview AI, devised a groundbreaking facial recognition app. You take a picture of a person, upload it and get to see public photos of that person, along with links to where those photos appeared.

The system — whose backbone is a database of more than three billion images that Clearview claims to have scraped from Facebook, YouTube, Venmo and millions of other websites — goes far beyond anything ever constructed by the United States government or Silicon Valley giants...

The computer code underlying its app, analyzed by The New York Times, includes programming language to pair it with augmented-reality glasses; users would potentially be able to identify every person they saw...

Searching someone by face could become as easy as Googling a name. Strangers would be able to listen in on sensitive conversations, take photos of the participants and know personal secrets. Someone walking down the street would be immediately identifiable — and his or her home address would be only a few clicks away. It would herald the end of public anonymity. more