Re: spyproofing your house/work building
Drapes so the lip readers can't see you.
Make sure the drapes block IR. There are instances of even local police forces flooding the front of a house with IR light, and viewing the activities inside with IR viewers -- all of this through closed drapes. Or you could just put a nice incandescent light fixture between you and the drapes; nice IR output from those bulbs. Halogen fixtures ought to work also, but fluorescent bulbs don't produce enough IR. More importantly: attach a contact-speaker to each pane of glass, and feed Top 40 radio to it. There have been reported cases of spy types bouncing laser beams off windows and using the reflected beams to reproduce the vibrations produced in the glass by reflected sound; in other words, the window panes are large membranes which vibrate in sync with the sound that hits them, so you want to override those vibrations with something else. This reeks of paranoia, eh? Jazz
Or you could just put a nice incandescent light fixture between you and the drapes; nice IR output from those bulbs. Halogen fixtures ought to work also, but fluorescent bulbs don't produce enough IR.
Might not work as the incandescent light source still won't stop the window from vibrating. They can still reflect a laser off it regardless of the output of another source. They may have tweak their amps... but it won't help against it.
More importantly: attach a contact-speaker to each pane of glass, and feed Top 40 radio to it. There have been reported cases of spy types bouncing laser beams off windows and using the reflected beams to reproduce the vibrations produced in the glass by reflected sound; in other words, the window panes are large membranes which vibrate in sync with the sound that hits them, so you want to override those vibrations with something else.
Won't work. You need a random, independant source of noise. Each window pane should have its own noise source attached to a speaker. If the speaker is tuned into a radio station, they too can tune into the same station, then substract the two signals giving them a fairly clear ear to listen in from. A random noise source that is independant will do well because they can't substract it out. If two windows in two different rooms also use the same random noise, they can differentiate between the two rooms and get the sound. I suppose they could bounce four or five lasers on the same window in hopes of being able to use two beams for the substraction, but if the speaker is placed in a good location, or several of them are placed on the same window, they'll have a bitch of a time getting anything. In that case they'll probably resort to using microwaves to bounce off a metal item in the room which would also vibrate with any sounds in the room. The only real defense against that would be strong shielding and a microwave detector to see if the shielding failed... the shielding has to be sound isolated or else the walls of the shielding could be used to get sound.. :-( Pretty nasty shit, eh?
This reeks of paranoia, eh
Nope, it's da truth. :-) I'm not doing this out of paranoia. I'm learning about this incase the police state comes anytime soon. It's far better to learn about it before than after it's too late.
| Nope, it's da truth. :-) I'm not doing this out of paranoia. I'm | learning about this incase the police state comes anytime soon. It's | far better to learn about it before than after it's too late. When the police state arrives, doing any of the thigns mentioned here will be cause for arrest. If you didn't have anything to hide, you'd be cooperating with the police, and writing all your mail on post cards. If you want to hide, build deep underground, preferably in hard, mineral bearing rock, like the bottom of a mine shaft. Most of the means of survelience in use rely on thin walls, windows, or easy access for black bagging. Of course, make sure you have plenty of food and water, and multiple lines of communication out. Also, old mine shafts have been known to collapse when the BATF is around. Fighting a police state is much easier before it arrives. Adam -- Adam Shostack adam@bwh.harvard.edu Politics. From the greek "poly," meaning many, and ticks, a small, annoying bloodsucker.
I don't want to stop the fun Jason Zions and Arsen Ray A. are having, but their ideas won't work. Not that I think IR surveillance is the highest priority to worry about, either. But I used to be a physicist, and some of the reasoning here is perpetuating fallacies:
Or you could just put a nice incandescent light fixture between you and the drapes; nice IR output from those bulbs. Halogen fixtures ought to work also, but fluorescent bulbs don't produce enough IR.
Nope. Incandescent bulbs will have a broad spectrum of IR, from the near IR to the far IR. An attacker with a IR illumination system (such as in night-vison or FLIR systems, etc.) can illuminate in a chosen spectral range with a power level much higher in his chosen band than any reasonable bulb will put out. Moreover, he could of course modulate (e.g.. chop) the illumination and lock-on only to the modulated signal. In other words, the attacker has the choice of wavelength and signal modulation to increase his S/N. Still not likely, except for determined attackers and targets of high economic or strategic value. I suspect the Waco compound was under IR and microwave surveillance, for example. I suspect I am not, and in any case, I don't worry about it. (The real danger is not individual targetted surveillance, but widespread and easy surveillance of communications and tracking of locations, purchases, habits, etc.)
More importantly: attach a contact-speaker to each pane of glass, and feed Top 40 radio to it. There have been reported cases of spy types bouncing laser beams off windows and using the reflected beams to reproduce the vibrations produced in the glass by reflected sound; in other words, the window panes are large membranes which vibrate in sync with the sound that hits them, so you want to override those vibrations with something else.
Won't work. You need a random, independant source of noise. Each window pane should have its own noise source attached to a speaker. If the speaker is tuned into a radio station, they too can tune into the same station, then substract the two signals giving them a fairly clear ear to listen in from. A random noise source that is independant will do well because they can't substract it out. If two windows in two different rooms also use the same random noise, they can differentiate between the two rooms and get the sound.
Still won't work well against determined attackers. The entropy of English speech and the _localization_ of the speaker means several things: - multiple windows (or other vibrating conductors, if microwaves are used) will have a correlated signal corresponding to the speaker, whereas the added noise will be uncorrelated (generally...one can imagine clever hacks to try to spoof the listeners by injecting some correlation into the noise, but this is also detectable....you see the point, I hope) - speech models allow phonemes, words, etc., to be plucked out of even noisy environments (we do it all the time....so do folks listening for the characteristic signatures of submarines, etc.) ...
In that case they'll probably resort to using microwaves to bounce off a metal item in the room which would also vibrate with any sounds in the room. The only real defense against that would be strong shielding and a microwave detector to see if the shielding failed... the shielding has to be sound isolated or else the walls of the shielding could be used to get sound.. :-( Pretty nasty shit, eh?
Which is why we'll eventually all plan our conspiracies with non-speech, non-in-person methods, such as with secure telecom.... Wait! Do you think that's what Clipper and Digital Telephony are all about? --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."
With FLIR you have SLIR OTH UV LOW LIGHT from the military (Billy boy is itching to deploy here in the good ole USA). Remote Sensing RADAR SONAR Stealth RADAr, Remote Imaging SYStems all kinds of goodies coming home. TO do what..fight crime..Yeah right. I remember law and order Nixon. Cryptography is the least of your problems. A high tech military is coming home and Billy wants to put them to use on our streets..>!!! He just loves gadgets. Dissent may become passse' in America. Wayne **************************************************************************** * Qjones@infi.net So I'm a dog...what else is new? * * Qjones@larry.wyvern.com Quote from life and times of a man * ****************************************************************************
Wayne Q Jones says:
With FLIR you have SLIR OTH UV LOW LIGHT from the military (Billy boy is itching to deploy here in the good ole USA). Remote Sensing RADAR SONAR Stealth RADAr, Remote Imaging SYStems all kinds of goodies coming home. TO do what..fight crime..Yeah right. I remember law and order Nixon. Cryptography is the least of your problems. A high tech military is coming home and Billy wants to put them to use on our streets..>!!! He just loves gadgets. Dissent may become passse' in America. Wayne
Now Wayne, you remember what the doctor said about you neededing to take your medication EVERY DAY, don't you? Go back to the medicine cabinet and take your medicine or they might send you back to the hospital again and give you more shock therapy. Perry
participants (6)
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Adam Shostack -
jazz＠hal.com -
Perry E. Metzger -
rarachel＠prism.poly.edu -
tcmay＠netcom.com -
Wayne Q Jones