[HN Gopher] Spies can eavesdrop by watching a light bulb's vibra...
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       Spies can eavesdrop by watching a light bulb's vibrations
        
       Author : lelf
       Score  : 146 points
       Date   : 2020-07-26 22:22 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
        
       | imglorp wrote:
       | The article involves a remote device watching the light bulb but
       | it would also make sense to think about devices in the room as
       | well.
       | 
       | Your device might have its microphone disabled, in hardware even,
       | but I wonder if the ambient light sensor has enough gain to see
       | audio frequency variations in room lighting. We already know hard
       | drives and speakers and whatever else can act like mics for
       | exfiltration...
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | codezero wrote:
       | In college for a project I wanted to encode messages over small
       | brightness variations in light bulbs. It's a pain to deal with
       | AC, so I ended up doing it with a laser pointer. It turned out to
       | be stupidly easy with a laser pointer and photodiode attached
       | almost directly to a pair of PC speakers. All these devices have
       | a +5v DC signal. I could attach my iPod headphones to the laser
       | pointer directly, then the photodiode to the speakers, and boom,
       | music at about 100 yards, with almost no quality decrease, though
       | I didn't do anything quantitative :)
       | 
       | I've always wondered what places communication started getting
       | hidden since we went online and no longer rely on things like
       | numbers stations or drop boxes (though I assume dead drops still
       | exist)
        
         | miahi wrote:
         | You can also send the sound via the laser directly to a MEMS
         | microphone, if it's exposed:
         | https://www.wired.com/story/lasers-hack-amazon-echo-google-h...
        
         | amatecha wrote:
         | K what? That's amazing! Apparently I need to learn more about
         | lasers.... haha :) I guess it's pretty "fragile" since the
         | slightest misalignment of the source laser & destination sensor
         | would mean a total loss of signal, right?
        
           | wonderlg wrote:
           | You'll probably also need to debug it often on warm summer
           | evenings.
        
           | dwohnitmok wrote:
           | Given that the laser forms a spot, minor misalignments are
           | very easy to debug (just line up the red spot with the sensor
           | again). Also given a laser with sufficiently wide spread,
           | minor misalignments would manifest themselves as volume loss.
           | 
           | Not great if you don't have easy access, but reliable enough
           | for e.g. a dorm room or a living room.
           | 
           | This was a lab we did in an intro EE class in college and it
           | worked wonders as a "whoa cool" demonstration with very basic
           | EE knowledge required.
        
           | codezero wrote:
           | The other commenter is right, store bought lasers have a
           | descent spread over a few dozen or hundreds of feet. And the
           | signal is still pretty readable to the receiving photodiode.
        
           | rorykoehler wrote:
           | You should find out how the starlink network will communicate
           | if you're worried about accuracy.
        
         | panda88888 wrote:
         | A long time ago back in college our team designed a free space
         | optical gigabit digital link via laser diode and photodiode. We
         | were transmitting I think 1 Gbps easily over maybe 50 meters.
         | We didn't have enough time to polish the system or test faster
         | speed because the sponsoring corporation took our design back
         | to their RD group.
        
           | dkarl wrote:
           | Twenty years ago I worked at a place that had offices in
           | buildings across the street from each other and had a laser
           | network link between them in case the link through our ISP
           | stopped working. I don't recall if we ever had to rely on it
           | while I was working there, but I remember the guy in charge
           | of monitoring it used to complain that it didn't work on
           | foggy mornings. One end of the link was on the 21st floor,
           | and we got fog at that level a lot more often at that height
           | than at ground level.
        
             | codezero wrote:
             | I bet this was a microwave dish, super common to connect
             | buildings with line of site., and prone to fog and weather
             | :)
        
               | vt240 wrote:
               | The Wikipedia entry for FSO networking is pretty
               | misleading. There have been commercial products on the
               | market for quite a while.
        
       | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
       | Didn't anyone watch or read Clear and Present Danger? Laser
       | microphone. This has been done for the past 40 years or so.
        
       | kainer wrote:
       | Those stories keep fascinating me, ever since I talked about
       | side-channel attacks during my study times.
       | 
       | Re-creating CRT images through walls, listening in on keystrokes
       | through the electric wires of a building or learning about
       | traffic patterns while observing network interface flashing LEDs.
       | 
       | Just a fascinating world when you leave aside what they are aimed
       | towards.
        
       | helios_invictus wrote:
       | This technology and technique has been known for a number of
       | decades. Intelligence agency use a variety of counters to avoid
       | this issue. SCIFs don't have windows for a reason. The standoff
       | distance for intel buildings are far, and well monitored for
       | similar reasons. Some facilties use double insulated glass with a
       | randomized noise maker in the frame. Some corporate board rooms
       | use similar technology and safe guards.
        
       | Jestar342 wrote:
       | A friend of mine had a side-gig at an electronics factory that
       | used to fit/repair government printers, telegram, and fax
       | machines in the 80s. When he first started he noted that the
       | schematics said to double up the number of capacitors. When he
       | raised this as a potential error in the schematic with his boss,
       | he was told that it was quite deliberate and was there to stop
       | giving away what was being printed by anyone measuring the power
       | fluctuations. Feels kinda obvious now but when I first heard it I
       | had a mini-mind-blown moment.
        
         | polishdude20 wrote:
         | That seems like a good way to make a piece of equipment just
         | not work. The stuff inside the printers also probably relies on
         | proper capacitor values.
        
           | jstanley wrote:
           | Seems unlikely. It's probably ~all digital, so I expect the
           | capacitors are literally only there for filtering the power
           | supply.
        
       | monadic2 wrote:
       | Pretty sure state intelligence has been doing this for decades,
       | and we all know the laser-off-the-window pane trick by now.
       | 
       | I'm much less worried about spies than I am about the powers
       | directly around me, namely my own state and the large
       | corporations that run society.
       | 
       | I have no clue who greenlit this article but it seems starved for
       | context not spoon-fed by the research team itself.
        
       | kanobo wrote:
       | Tomorrow's news: Privacy Lightbulbs that vibrate pre-recorded
       | messages to throw these pesky spies off their trail is invented.
        
         | turbonaut wrote:
         | Whilst the suggestion is clearly not serious, having pre-
         | recorded or even repeated random noise is akin to re-using a
         | one time pad. Continued 'listening' - even long after the
         | relevant conversation - could first be used to extract the fake
         | noise and then from this the signal.
        
           | kerkeslager wrote:
           | Yeah. You can't just produce random white sound[1] to cover
           | the signal either, because speech has enough redundancy to
           | still communicate over a static-y soundscape. The term here
           | is that white noise lacks "diffusion"--analogous to the ECB
           | vulnerability (see the picture of the encrypted Linux penguin
           | image on this page[2]). I can't think of a good way to
           | provide diffusion for sound--a better cover might be to
           | provide alternate signals, i.e. a few layers of random human
           | sounds spoken in a deepfake-d version of the voice of the
           | person speaking.
           | 
           | I'm skeptical even this wouldn't have vulnerabilities
           | however, as history has shown us that cryptography which has
           | not been formally proven is often broken.
           | 
           | [1] I'm using the word "sound" here to differentiate the
           | noise in the auditory sense from noise in the "signal versus
           | noise" sense.
           | 
           | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_cipher_mode_of_operat
           | ion...
        
             | kanobo wrote:
             | Would it be possible to use the tech in noise-cancelling
             | headphones and put a tiny speaker that phase-cancels audio
             | it hears to solve this issue? I'm asking as someone who
             | knows very little about this.
        
               | kerkeslager wrote:
               | Well, it's definitely possible to do that but I'll make
               | no claim that it would actually provide security. There's
               | definitely some bleed-through with noise canceling (i.e.
               | the beginning of sounds don't get canceled because the
               | noise-canceling has a "reaction time"). It's probably
               | better than nothing, but I would guess that a
               | sophisticated-enough attacker could get around it.
               | 
               | Again, I have no proof of concept here, so take with a
               | grain of salt.
        
               | dasudasu wrote:
               | Then you can hijack the noise canceling device and obtain
               | the original signal. Also the canceling effect is likely
               | never perfect, so there would still remain part of it
               | going through.
        
               | [deleted]
        
             | matham wrote:
             | What if you use one random source to contentiously change
             | the white noise parameters (mean, std).
             | 
             | E.g. use something like a illuminated disco ball that
             | continuously randomly changes the source light angle and
             | intensity.
        
               | kerkeslager wrote:
               | I think it would be very difficult to escape from
               | diffusion problems.
        
           | kanobo wrote:
           | I'm going to put on my pop-science-fiction hat on and revise
           | the Privacy Bulb to include a geiger-muller vibrating tube
           | and a dollop of uranium for random vibrations. I was a fan of
           | spy vs. spy as a child and I am full of bad ideas right now.
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | We've known each other, for so long...
        
         | SilasX wrote:
         | Since you mention it, I got to thinking about whether we can
         | have a microphone equivalent to the physical covers for webcams
         | -- that is, a physical means that ensures the device can't
         | detect anything usable, even if an attacker was able to turn it
         | on without you knowing.
         | 
         | Something like, a vibrating module that you don't really notice
         | but which clouds out any sounds the microphone would pick up
         | (or, to go your route, injects fake audio). You turn it on when
         | you want to be sure the microphone isn't listening, just like
         | you can cover the webcam.
        
           | plutonic wrote:
           | You mean something like this [0]? You could use this to trick
           | your computer/phone into using the audio jack for its
           | microphone, but since the mic-lock passes no usable signal,
           | you'll be better protected. It doesn't otherwise incapacitate
           | the internal microphone, though.
           | 
           | [0] https://www.amazon.com/Mic-Lock-Microphone-Blocker-Pack-
           | Surv...
        
             | SilasX wrote:
             | It would need to block the microphone itself that picks up
             | ambient noise -- I don't think there's anything on e.g. a
             | MacBook Air that you could plug that into and block sound.
        
           | kanobo wrote:
           | Some offices employ white noise privacy machines, you can
           | find them on amazon. And the Japanese have the Sound Princess
           | for flush noise privacy at the toilet. I have yet to find a
           | product where you don't notice that it's on though, would be
           | a great invention if possible.
        
           | spockz wrote:
           | Or you could turn on the shower and faucets in the bathroom
           | and talk there. Or does that only work in the movies?
        
             | briandear wrote:
             | It does work, but you can have filters that can remove that
             | noise electronically enough to get some actual voice
             | signal. Faucets along with whispering directly in the ear
             | would work. But a better choice is to simply write on a
             | piece of paper instead of talking.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | feralimal wrote:
       | Sorry - but that sounds like BS. Think about it - a hanging light
       | bulb vibrates when you speak... Really? I don't see any movement,
       | and I'm right there.
       | 
       | But yet, that can be picked up 25m away by a telescope? With
       | equipment that costs less than $1000? No way.
       | 
       | Sounds like some phony story to me, that's meant to make us think
       | spies have superpowers, or even that we're all being spied on.
       | (Which we are, but not like this.)
        
         | jamesgeck0 wrote:
         | > Think about it - a hanging light bulb vibrates when you
         | speak... Really? I don't see any movement, and I'm right there.
         | 
         | I don't see any movement on my computer speakers or mic when
         | they're emitting or receiving sound, but they wouldn't function
         | if vibration wasn't happening. You can measure the vibrations
         | from a short distance away with a laser setup that costs about
         | $300 IIRC.
         | 
         | So the basic concept is sound. After that it's just a question
         | of what kind of measurement setup a government agency with
         | absurd amounts of time and money could cook up.
        
         | meritganset wrote:
         | I can't tell if this is serious or not. You realize that not
         | all vibrations are visible by eye, right? In fact, the vast
         | majority aren't.
        
           | feralimal wrote:
           | Do you really think a telescope can pick up the reflected
           | vibrations from a lightbulb, using a telescope 25m away?
        
             | bbbobbb wrote:
             | Here similar experiment, 6 years ago:
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKXOucXB4a8
             | 
             | If you think that actual government agency cannot do even
             | more easily with better equipment in 2020 you're kidding
             | yourself.
        
               | feralimal wrote:
               | I watched the video. I'm sorry, but its inane. This is
               | the worst sort of science magic. In fact its just
               | trickery.
               | 
               | Do you seriously think that you have been provided
               | evidence in that video? All that happened is that I ended
               | up looking at a leaf and packets of things that weren't
               | moving at all. That's not evidence!
               | 
               | It says that they are picking up vibrations from a leaf
               | or bag of crisps. But they don't show you those
               | vibrations. They just give you a bunch of graphics and
               | fuzzy sounds and tell you that they have done something.
               | 
               | You do see that this is could be very simple video
               | trickery right? As with the initial article - there's a
               | claim, but nothing to really be able to use to verify
               | that claim. Just a graphic, and references to Shazam.
               | Perhaps this is guerrilla marketing for Shazam? Its a
               | more viable thesis anyway, given the evidence!
        
               | thebean11 wrote:
               | You should discredit the Wired article
        
               | feralimal wrote:
               | Well, ok.
               | 
               | Firstly, note that it provides no evidence. It has a
               | claim, and shows a fancy graphic. That's it. Its not
               | evidence. Anyone can make that sort of thing up. How can
               | one differentiate this from a story I just made up?
               | 
               | Digging in, it says: "LED bulbs also offer a signal-to-
               | noise ratio that's about 6.3 times that of an
               | incandescent bulb and 70 times a fluorescent one."
               | 
               | Why? Why are LEDs better for this noise reflection stuff,
               | than incandescent or fluorescent ones? They're all in
               | glass. The heat of the glass is stable. The LED itself
               | surely can't help.
               | 
               | Why does Shazam feature in these tests, at all?!
               | 
               | It also says: "Researchers have known for years that a
               | laser bounced off a target's window can allow spies to
               | pick up the sounds inside. Another group of researchers
               | showed in 2014 that the gyroscope of a compromised
               | smartphone can pick up sounds even if the malware can't
               | access its microphone."
               | 
               | Right. Are we meant to believe that this is what spies
               | do? I mean, a spy just has to access whatever systems are
               | already at his or her disposal and listen to your calls.
               | They don't need to do any of that!
               | 
               | And: "Still, Nassi says the researchers are publishing
               | their findings not to enable spies or law enforcement,
               | but to make clear to those on both sides of surveillance
               | what's possible. "We want to raise the awareness of this
               | kind of attack vector," he says. "We're not in the game
               | of providing tools.""
               | 
               | So, they even say that this article is about raising
               | awareness of this kind of attack vector. They are raising
               | awareness. Thanks spies!
               | 
               | The article is a joke. At best this is a puff piece for a
               | spy agency, or more likely just to increase paranoid
               | awareness amongst those in tech. Be scared, danger
               | everywhere! There are spy agencies listening to you
               | everywhere - they're not using your phone, they use light
               | bulbs and leaves!!
        
               | x2f10 wrote:
               | The video is a simple demonstration. If you want more
               | details, there's an accompanying website and white paper
               | published by MIT [1].
               | 
               | 1. http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/VisualMic/
        
               | feralimal wrote:
               | PS, at what point would alarm bells ring for you, re this
               | story. If they had said that they could pick up voices
               | from a lightbulb with a telescope that was 50m away?
               | 100m? 1000m?!?
               | 
               | I suspect that alarm bells wouldn't ring at all....
        
         | feralimal wrote:
         | And why should some skepticism of an article relating to the
         | purported tools of spycraft be downvoted? Its ok to expect more
         | than a simple schematic, surely?
        
           | deadmetheny wrote:
           | It's because you're point-blank wrong and keep doubling down
           | on it instead of taking the L.
        
       | Dahoon wrote:
       | Of course it is Israeli..
        
         | fortran77 wrote:
         | @dang -- this seems like an unproductive comment.
        
       | partiallypro wrote:
       | I'm not sure on the cost, but I know it's common to use lasers at
       | an angle on windows to spy on conversations via a laser
       | microphone. That requires less of a line of sight. Is this a
       | cheaper method?
        
       | ravenstine wrote:
       | One way you can do this without another light source is to bounce
       | a laser beam off a window or other things that are reflective.
       | 
       | In fact, the same principle can be achieved with radio. The
       | Russians once planted a device in a wooden seal they gave to a US
       | ambassador as a gift which, when a focused radio beam was aimed
       | at it, would reflect and oscillate that beam due to vibrations in
       | the air.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_%28listening_device%...
        
         | perch56 wrote:
         | Leon Theremin was a genius that also created one of the first
         | electronic instruments carrying his name now.
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin
        
         | mhh__ wrote:
         | In any building spies had access to there was a game of cat and
         | mouse as (for example) spies would see people with radio
         | equipment scouring rooms through the window as they heard their
         | bugs go pop one by one.
         | 
         | Peter Wright (who wrote spycatcher) was the one who first got
         | to look at The Thing; He actually broke it and had to make a
         | new membrane for the microphone. He also invented (within MI5
         | at least) their technique for detecting superhet receivers
         | (RAFTER), at one point they apparently were parked next to the
         | soviet receiver.
        
         | russellbeattie wrote:
         | I remember in the 1990s I was doing contracting work in SoCal
         | and got a job at one of the big defense contractors near LAX.
         | (Trying to remember which one... Hughes?) I lasted only one
         | week as the building was totally secure - no windows at all.
         | Life is waaaaaay to short to work in a hole like that.
         | 
         | Maybe someone with more info can fill in the details, but if I
         | remember correctly, when Nokia changed their Silicon Valley
         | offices to downtown Sunnyvale almost a decade ago, they were
         | worried because Apple had offices in the adjacent building. If
         | I remember correctly Nokia put in a bunch of security glass to
         | prevent spying from vibrations in the windows. (There's some
         | irony there, I know...)
        
           | panda88888 wrote:
           | Yup. It's fairly standard. For classified work the rooms and
           | entry/exit protocols have to meet certain security
           | requirements based on the classification level. No windows
           | and no electronics are standard. No walls that is exposed to
           | the exterior. I've been in room within a room setup when it
           | was warranted.
        
         | acidburnNSA wrote:
         | Back in the 90's I found an old cardboard box full of
         | radioshack electronics components and a paper schematic of how
         | to put it together. I asked my dad what it was. He had been
         | into an electronics hobby in the 1980s and told me that it was
         | a amplifier to receiving laser light bounced off of a window
         | for spy stuff. I couldn't believe it. The kit became my first
         | significant soldering project. I got it all together and put my
         | beloved laser pointer on a tripod and tried bouncing it in. I
         | never did get it to the point that I could hear voices but boy
         | could I ever hear cool vibration noises when I tapped the
         | window.
         | 
         | It was extremely fun and I've been soldering things here and
         | there ever since.
        
         | balls187 wrote:
         | Most of my office windows at Boeing had little ultrasonic
         | buzzers on them to prevent such an attack.
         | 
         | On my offices was actually in a large farad cage to
         | reduce/eliminate EMF leaks from workstations.
        
           | SEJeff wrote:
           | I take it you work on some "government" projects? I wonder if
           | that is all TEMPEST grade shielding.
        
             | akamia wrote:
             | When I worked at Boeing, we even had them on the windows of
             | offices that weren't being used for government projects.
             | The company's commercial business was also a target for
             | spying so they were very protective in general.
             | 
             | To this day, the company's laptops don't have cameras and
             | they have a whole process that you have to go through to
             | use a camera anywhere on company property.
        
             | balls187 wrote:
             | Yeah, used to work for Boeing's defense groups.
        
           | acidburnNSA wrote:
           | Wow. That's super interesting. So it was considered a
           | credible threat.
           | 
           | Huh you can actually buy such things on Amazon.
           | 
           | https://www.amazon.com/Shomer-Tec-SHLSD-Laser-
           | Surveillance-D...
           | 
           | Edit: yikes, those reviews...
        
             | spitfire wrote:
             | Woah. Check out the recommendations on that page. There's
             | some great stuff in there.
        
             | ravenstine wrote:
             | It's basically a 555 timer, some resisters, and a piezo
             | buzzer. Hardly worth 50 bucks! You can build one yourself
             | for a mere fraction of that.
        
               | freehunter wrote:
               | For a big business like Boeing, buying one at $50 would
               | be far more palatable than building one from parts.
        
               | ravenstine wrote:
               | Dang, you're right! _This is a business I need to get
               | into._
        
               | zszugyi wrote:
               | I'm sure getting vetted to be a vendor for DoD/Government
               | projects is super easy.
        
           | jascii wrote:
           | Ultrasonic buzzers? I kinda fail to see how that would help,
           | shouldn't be too hard to filter out the ultrasonic range
           | noise.
        
             | Zenst wrote:
             | Basically drowns out the room vibrations upon the window as
             | it is a in direct contact. You can make your own with piezo
             | discs and small circuit to drive them. That and high
             | frequency will not cause added noise noticeable to humans.
        
             | noir_lord wrote:
             | Not if it's random.
             | 
             | It's the vibrations from sound on glass they want and those
             | are tiny by comparison to the input.
        
       | GhostVII wrote:
       | Important caveat:
       | 
       |  _The voice and music recordings they used in their
       | demonstrations were also louder than the average human
       | conversation, with speakers turned to their maximum volume_
       | 
       | I can clearly see vibrations in glass near loud speakers with my
       | naked eye, but when someone is speaking I generally can't see any
       | vibrations. Still really cool that they were able to reproduce
       | sounds this way, but it's not like you can spend 1k and be able
       | to actually listen to conversations using this method.
        
         | lostmyoldone wrote:
         | If their chart is correct, the 30cm mirror show a 20db
         | improvement in SNR at 200Hz compared to 20cm, same curve but
         | 20db lower gain.
         | 
         | That is an absolute crazy scaling, I'm not entirely sure how
         | that's possible, though I have a suspicion. If it's an actual
         | scaling law that can be exploited, I would expect you can
         | extend this to entirely practical audio volumes on a shoestring
         | budget.
        
       | Puts wrote:
       | Apparently this is 1947-tech:
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_microphone
       | 
       | I even remember there where schematics for a laser-microphone
       | circulating on the early 2000s internet that could translate the
       | vibrations of windows into sound.
        
         | OkayPhysicist wrote:
         | I built one of those in college. Hardware's super simple, but
         | actually getting it alligned is a total PITA.
        
       | mdturnerphys wrote:
       | Previous discussion of source:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23498185
        
       | wallacrw wrote:
       | I've always wondered -- if I used this on the board room window
       | to listen into public company earnings meetings, is that inside
       | information? Technically, the information is "public" in that
       | anyone could do what I'm doing...
        
         | pmoriarty wrote:
         | Along similar lines, I've wondered about how often restaurant
         | and bar owners have bugged their own premises.
         | 
         | There's probably a lot of valuable information discussed in
         | such establishments.. especially, say, around Wall St.
         | 
         | Regarding the legal aspects, I'm not sure how much of a legal
         | expectation of privacy one has in a "public" place such as a
         | restaurant or bar, and we've pretty much already accepted
         | ubiquitous video surveillance in such places (even if such
         | videos are often without sound).
         | 
         | Someone could potentially infer speech just by lipreading
         | soundless videos, but if someone did decide to use audio
         | surveillance on their own property in a bar, restaurant, or
         | other place of business, is there any law against that?
         | 
         | Quite apart from the legal and ethical objections that might
         | arise against doing this, I'm sure some business owners are not
         | above giving in to the temptation to spy on their patrons,
         | especially if there's a big profit motive (like getting access
         | to inside information by spying on Wall St execs gossiping over
         | drinks or dinner).
         | 
         | That's not to mention dirt that might be revealed in
         | conversations considered to be "private", which could be used
         | to blackmail people or for other nefarious purposes.
         | 
         | The technology to perform such spying has been around for a
         | long time, and in a bar or restaurant the owner (or rogue
         | employee, or customer even) wouldn't have to resort to exotic
         | techniques such as this light bulb trick. A simple microphone
         | would suffice.
        
           | jeffdubin wrote:
           | Some Dunkin Donuts stores in the New England area were
           | (decades ago) accused of listening to their customers by
           | having microphones at seats where customers ate. Not sure if
           | that was intentional or part of their security system as they
           | claimed. [0]
           | 
           | [0] https://apnews.com/d7e29ace8f0cfdd8e4377e70ef26eff8
        
           | briandear wrote:
           | > Along similar lines, I've wondered about how often
           | restaurant and bar owners have bugged their own premises.
           | 
           | In a few select Houston strip clubs.. all the time, or at
           | least ten years ago some did, the ones owned by certain
           | organizations. I haven't been around that scene for a decade,
           | so I can't speak to now. I know of a few other places that
           | seemed to magically never have trouble with city officials or
           | permitting. Another such place, an after hours club, was
           | frequented by the mayor's "party-oriented" daughter, never
           | had trouble with police raids, or fire marshals. The venue
           | survived unscathed until the next mayor took over and such
           | leverage became unavailable. The Texas Alcoholic Beverage
           | Commission was the only real challenge, but often the local
           | cops would be knowledgeable about pending raids and would
           | graciously provide some advance notice. It certainly helped
           | that many of those cops were paid as off duty private
           | security by the venue. DEA was another frequent adversary,
           | but those folks aren't as undercover as they thought they
           | were. I might suggest that the DEA was (or maybe still is,)
           | one of the more sketchy law enforcement agencies in the
           | government.
           | 
           | Just under the surface of "normal," there is some really
           | fascinating stuff that goes on.
        
         | ColanR wrote:
         | I'm sure that one way or the other, that question has been
         | dealt with exhaustively. My guess, the information you obtain
         | is considered definitely not public, even though it's possible
         | for a member of the public to obtain.
        
         | oh_sigh wrote:
         | Yes - Economic Espionage Act of 1996
         | 
         | It is not public because there is a reasonable expectation of
         | privacy.
        
       | pier25 wrote:
       | This is only for incandescent lightbulbs, right?
        
       | Romanulus wrote:
       | All cool tech aside, I'll be sure to update the single light-bulb
       | hanging from a thread in my interrogation room now.
        
       | irontinkerer wrote:
       | I was expecting to be dissapointed (I thought this was going to
       | be a test in the same room, with perfectly calibrated equipment)
       | but I was wrong. Very impressive that you can do this at that
       | distance and with affordable ($400) equipment. I wonder how long
       | intelligence agencies have been using this capability.
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | I knew someone who started building one of the laser based
         | units in the fall of 1990, in high school. So that's 17 or 18?
         | 
         | By the end of the decade or beginning of the next, we had
         | telecom hardware companies filtering the signal to the activity
         | LED so that you couldn't read packet info out of the
         | flickering.
         | 
         | Odds are good that someone combined those ideas a lot earlier
         | than we might like to think.
        
         | helios_invictus wrote:
         | I believe since the 80's
        
       | draw_down wrote:
       | To defeat this, don't you just do what the mobsters in movies do?
       | Play music or make some other loud noise and then whisper or talk
       | softly close to each other?
        
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