New Holographic Camera Can See Around Corners – Or Inside Your Skull

It sounds like something out of Star Trek: the doctor aims a camera at your chest, and a computer generates a hologram of your heart and blood vessels. She enlarges the image and takes a look at some of your smallest capillaries, each beautifully rendered in sub-millimeter detail. 

But thanks to a team at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering, that may soon be a reality. They’ve created a prototype technology capable of seeing around corners and through everything from fog to the human skull. Their results are published in the journal Nature Communications...

“Our technology will usher in a new wave of imaging capabilities,” he said. “Our current sensor prototypes use visible or infrared light, but the principle is universal and could be extended to other wavelengths. For example, the same method could be applied to radio waves for space exploration or underwater acoustic imaging.”...

“It’s like we can plant a virtual computational camera on every remote surface to see the world from the surface’s perspective,” explained Florian Willomitzer, first author of the study. “This technique turns walls into mirrors.”...

“It can be applied to many areas, and we have only scratched the surface,” he added. more

Just think of the benefits to the CIA... 
and eventually the trickle down to corporate espionage types.

 

How to Hide from Drones in the Age of Surveillance

Drones of all sizes are being used by environmental advocates to monitor deforestation, by conservationists to track poachers, and by journalists and activists to document large protests. As a political sociologist who studies social movements and drones, I document a wide range of nonviolent and pro-social drone uses in my new book, “The Good Drone.” I show that these efforts have the potential to democratize surveillance...

...it’s time to think about how many eyes are in the sky and how to avoid unwanted aerial surveillance. One way that’s within reach of nearly everyone is learning how to simply disappear from view.

How to disappear

The first thing you can do to hide from a drone is to take advantage of the natural and built environment.  more tips 

DRONE SURVIVAL GUIDE (with info-graphics)

More Security Scrapbook drone posts

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

Spies in the Skys

SPY ONE
From 1957, when he first started working on the project, until 2011 when it was declassified, Dave McDowell was sworn to secrecy.

But now, the results of this once top-secret Kodak program is on full display at the Strasenburg Planetarium.

“Awe” is how McDowell described what he felt standing in front of the exhibit. “It’s something we designed and built in Rochester, and this one didn’t fly in space, but 48 others exactly like it did.”

The top-secret project was the optical system for Gambit-1, a national reconnaissance satellite. Kodak engineers designed and built what was essentially a large camera encased in a capsule. It was a revolutionary technology at that time, and it played a significant role in U.S. national security in the Cold War era. more

SPY TWO

On January 20, something rather strange happened in orbit. A Russian satellite suddenly maneuvered itself so that it was closely shadowing a US spy satellite.

The pair are now less than 186 miles (300 kilometers) apart—a short distance when it comes to space. While we don’t know for sure what’s going on, the Russian satellite’s actions strongly suggest it is there to spy on the US one—and there is very little the US can do about it. more

Smokin' - New Camera Can See 28 Miles - Through Smog

A new camera can photograph you from 45 kilometers away...

Developed in China, the lidar-based system can cut through city smog to resolve human-sized features at vast distances...

Zheng-Ping Li and colleagues from the University of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai show how to photograph subjects up to 45 km (28 miles) away in a smog-plagued urban environment.

Their technique uses single-photon detectors combined with a unique computational imaging algorithm that achieves super-high-resolution images by knitting together the sparsest of data points...

Click to enlarge.

The results speak for themselves. 

The team set up the new camera on the 20th floor of a building on Chongming Island in Shanghai and pointed it at the Pudong Civil Aviation Building across the river, some 45 km away...

The entire device is about the size of a large shoebox and so is relatively portable. more

FutureWatch: Invisible-Light-Powered Eavesdropping Devices

Wi-Charge uses safe infrared light to deliver power from a distance. Our products provide enough power to charge a phone across a room, to power smart devices and enable new experiences. With Wi-Charge, mobile and IoT devices appear to charge autonomously. New applications open for homes, offices, factories and public spaces.

Battery-powered devices are portable, but battery capacity limits functionality and the need to replace batteries degrades the user experience. Moving wired devices, routing or hiding the power cords is a pain. Wi-Charge delivers 100x the power budget of battery solutions. With Wi-Charge, you can have the convenience of wire-free portability with a power budget approaching to a wired solution. more

Lots of good uses, and possibly some evil ones. 
Thanks to another Canadian Blue Blaze Irregular for spotting this one!

Eyeglasses and Earbuds for Real Spies

Misumi Electronics Corp. is a prestigious name in the fields of Spy applications, Surveillance system, Industrial inspection, and Medical application. They specialize in making modules and finished products, including camera modules, transmitters, UVC, USB capture cards and grabbers, and accept customized camera request as well.

The example below shows off the high-resolution of their cameras, including the ability to read computer screens and instantly transmit the video elsewhere. A spy wearing these eyeglasses and earbuds can see in three directions at once, in high-definition, without anyone knowing!

Their tiny, high-quality, HD video cameras have been mass produced for years. Should you come across one, keep searching. There is likely more to find. more

Click to enlarge.

Facial Recognition Technology – Not Ready for PRIME Time

Amazon.com’s facial recognition tools incorrectly identified Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and 27 other members of Congress as people arrested for a crime during a test commissioned by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, the watchdog said Thursday...Amazon’s so-called Rekognition technology — already in use at law-enforcement agencies in Oregon and Orlando — is hampered by inaccuracies... more

Security Scrapbook Flashback to 2008.

Facial Recognition Glasses Used by Police to Identify Suspects

Chinese police are using dark sunglasses equipped with facial recognition technology to spot criminal suspects.

The glasses, which are being worn by police at a busy train station ahead of the Chinese New Year travel rush, are linked to a central database which contains details of criminal records.

Wearing the technology, police can almost instantly view an individual's personal details, including name, ethnicity, gender and address.

The scene would not look out of place in an episode of science fiction television drama Black Mirror, which often depicts dark scenarios of humans being overcome by technology.

China is deploying new technologies to monitor people in ways that would unnerve many in the West. more

Spike in Spy Camera Sales Online Causes Concern

Over a period of time, a sales engineer in Singapore amassed 280 obscene films, many of which depicted women in various stages of undress in public bathrooms and changing rooms.

The unsuspecting women, including schoolgirls, were filmed with secret cameras, and Joel Chew Weichen, 27, had collected the films for distribution.  

Based on checks by The Straits Times, a worrying trend has emerged - the sale of such cameras is on the rise.

On online shopping platform Lazada, which has more than 600,000 hidden camera products available, sales of such cameras have grown 1.5 times this year compared with last year. The cameras come disguised as clocks, pens and even smoke detectors.

A spokesman said spy pens, which can cost about $12, are the most popular. Spectacles with built-in cameras may cost about $85...

Chew, who was sentenced to six months in jail this month, was the first of five individuals to plead guilty to having the obscene films for distribution.

He was also part of groups that share and download such videos.

The victims were secretly filmed while in bathrooms in cafes, schools, offices, changing rooms of popular fashion outlets, and bathroom showers in private homes. more

Note: An on-line spycam detection training course is available to organizations and individuals.

Drone Over Your Home? It’s the Insurance Inspector

When Melinda Roberts found shingles in her front yard after a storm, her insurer didn’t dispatch a claims adjuster to investigate. It sent a drone.

The unmanned aircraft hovered above Ms. Roberts’ three-bedroom Birmingham, Ala., home and snapped photos of her roof. About a week later a check from Liberty Mutual Insurance arrived to cover repairs.

“It took a lot less time than I was expecting,” Ms. Roberts said.

Drones, photo-taking apps and artificial intelligence are accelerating what has long been a clunky, time-consuming experience: the auto or home-insurance claim. more

Business Espionage Cautionary Tale - Bugs, Taps and Now... Drones

Australia - An international drug syndicate used drones to conduct counter-surveillance on police...

"During the investigation phase, this syndicate has used aerial drones to conduct counter-surveillance on police activity," Commander Beveridge said.

"The syndicate was using a drone when they were holding their meetings, to conduct counter-surveillance, to see if anyone, like law enforcement, was watching...

"It did cause the surveillance staff to initiate procedures and methodologies to defeat it. "These syndicates are getting a lot more sophisticated, and so are we. We've just got to be awake to it." more

Murray Associates Industrial Espionage Takeaway Points:
• Even with an upper floor office you are no longer immune to optical surveillance.
• If you have window blinds, use them.
• Make sure computer screens and whiteboards don't face windows.
• Institute a clear desk policy.
• If you see a drone, don't assume it's some hobbyist playing. Take a photo or movie for evidence.
• Be alert. A drone in your parking lot can grab all license plate numbers in a minute. (One of the first warning signs of an espionage attack.)

TSCM Questions We Get - "How small is a bug's microphone?"

A. Very small.
You probably carry the one shown in the photo, in your cell phone.


In some cases, microphones are invisible. Before you say impossible, hear me out...

You are surrounded by items which can be commandeered for surveillance eavesdropping wherever you go. Solids and liquids conduct sound even better than air. Vibrations through these items may be picked up and amplified at some distance using: a piezoelectric contact microphone, a hydrophone, or light / sound beams (laser / ultrasonic).

Optimic1140 fiber optical microphone

There is also one esoteric microphone to consider—the fiber optic microphone. No wires. No electricity. Just connected to a clear glass thread.

It is so unusual, many people who claim to be technical surveillance countermeasures (TSCM) technicians don't know it exists.

So, when you add Technical Information Security Surveys to your organization's security program, ask the vendor what they know about fiber optic microphones. Good ones will tell you all about it, and how it works. They will also be impressed with you for asking.

Click here for more questions we get.

Anti-Surveillance Sunglasses – Q Would Be Proud

via... digitaltrends.com
...there’s a new set of spectacles on Kickstarter that might help you bamboozle even the most sophisticated facial recognition tech.

The Eko shades, as they’re called, are rimmed with a type of retro-reflective material that bounces light back to exactly where it came from. Most surfaces reflect light by diffusing or scattering it in all directions, but this material is specially designed to reflect light back at the exact same angle as it arrived.

If caught in flash photography, retro-reflective material will send most of the light back to the camera’s sensor. This will put the dynamic range of the camera’s sensor to the test, and likely result in an image that’s underexposed for everything but the rims of your glasses.

Of course, this won’t help much for any camera that doesn’t require a flash, but it’s still a pretty interesting concept. more

...and the DIY hat to go with them!
1937 prototype anti-mind control device.
(Ok, who said, "Too late. She has already lost hers.")

Optical Spying Through Office Windows

With talented hackers able to break into just about any device that's connected to the internet, from a computer to a car, the best way to keep sensitive data safe is to cut the cord completely.

Keeping an "air gap" between a hard drive and other devices forces any would-be thief to physically go to the machine ... or so you might think. Cyber security researchers have shown that hackers could hijack the innocent flashing LED on the outside of a computer, and use it to beam a steady stream of data to a waiting drone.

...digital criminals can be extremely crafty, using acoustic signals to jump the air gap between devices from a distance or untangling typed text by listening via Skype to the clickety-clack of a keyboard.

Now, a team at the Ben-Gurion University Cyber Security Research Center has demonstrated a new way that creative crooks could crack that isolated data. A piece of malware infecting an air-gapped computer could harness the hard drive's LED, making it flash in a very controlled and very fast manner. Flickering thousands of times a second, the virus could blink out a binary code of the desired data, at a rate that a human sitting at that computer wouldn't even notice. Special cameras or light sensors – say from a drone hovering at the window, with a line of sight to the LED – could then receive and record that information. more

Spybusters Tip #792: External visual surveillance through windows is easy using high-powered optics, or even cameras on drones. Keep computer screens, and their blinky lights, away from external line-of-sight. 

Spybusters Tip #793: Enforce a "Clear Desk Policy" when sensitive information is not actively being used. ~Kevin

Weird TSCM Science - Tuning Windows to Block Radio Frequency Eavesdropping

A new flexible material developed by engineers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) is claimed to be able to tune out various portions of the electromagnetic spectrum while allowing others to pass through, such as being opaque to infra-red but transparent to visible light, for example. This material has the potential to vastly improve the efficiencies of solar cells, or create window coatings that not only let in visible light and keep out heat, but also stop electronic eavesdropping by blocking electromagnetic signals.

Though still very much at the working prototype stage, the researchers intend to further their research by analyzing the effects of different materials, physical arrangements, and semiconductor properties in an attempt to create materials that absorb light at different wavelengths for use in a variety of applications.

The results of this research were recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. more

Not the World's Smallest "Camera" but... Possibly the World's Smallest Camera Lens

Tiny 3D-printed medical camera could be deployed from inside a syringe.

Getting inside the human body to have a look around is always going to be invasive, but that doesn't mean more can't be done to make things a little more comfortable. With this goal in mind, German researchers have developed a complex lens system no bigger than a grain of salt that fits inside a syringe. The imaging tool could make for not just more productive medical imaging, but tiny cameras for everything from drones to slimmer smartphones.

Scientists from the University of Stuttgart built their three-lens camera using a new 3D printing technique. They say their new approach offers sub-micrometer accuracy that makes it possible to 3D print optical lens systems with two or more lenses for the first time. Their resulting multi-lens system opens up the possibility of correcting for aberration (where a lens cannot bring all wavelengths of color to the same focal plane), which could enable higher image quality from smaller devices. more

Vintage Spy Camera Auction in Hong Kong

An incredible archive of rare vintage spy cameras that would rival James Bond's own collection has emerged for sale for £400,000.

Among the rarities is one of only two existing examples of the Lucky Strike Spy Camera developed for the US Signal Corps between 1949 and 1950. The camera, made by the Mast Development Corp, was built to fit inside the outer wrapper from a packet of Lucky Strike cigarettes. Despite its size it was capable of taking 18 x 16mm still photographs with varying shutter speeds, but ultimately it was rejected. It is worth around £43,000. more

A $50. Audio Video Bugging Device is Child's Play

Remote Spy Mode
The Video Walkie Talkies act as a hidden camera. Place one Walkie in a secret location, press the activation button on the other and you’ll instantly have a hidden, live-feed surveillance cam. If you leave your Video Walkies for 15 minutes unused they automatically turn off to save power. When your mission is complete, the Video Walkie Talkies easily fold up for compact storage and screen protection! Gear up with the Spy Gear Video Walkie Talkies!

No Data or Wi-Fi Required
The Video Walkie Talkies do not require Data or Wi-Fi to use! Just press the activation button and you can wirelessly communicate with your friends on video! With a range of up to 160 feet you’ll be in constant communication with your fellow agent.

Quick Set Up – Easy As 1-2-3
Only Spy Gear has the spy technology to let you stay in constant 2-way, visual and audio communication at long range! Open up your Video Walkie Talkies and turn the power on. You’ll instantly be able to see your friends on the LCD screen. Now press the TRANSMIT BUTTON for audio communication with the other Video Walkie. Want to go stealth? Plug headphones into both Video Walkies to listen in secret and communicate without pressing the TRANSMIT BUTTON. more

Bud Flight - Spies on the Go

The two-state battle for a federal spy agency’s new regional headquarters is heating up,
with Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon on Wednesday announcing plans to publicly push to keep the agency in St. Louis as hundreds of supporters gathered across the Mississippi River to tout a potential Illinois location.

At stake in the bistate regional fight are more than 3,000 high-tech jobs at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency paying an average of $75,000.

The defense and intelligence agency is considering four sites to replace its current location near the Anheuser-Busch brewery south of downtown St. Louis. more