Anon Archived Serious thread: infosec, opsec, guerrilla war, advice (8chan)
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Anon Archived Serious thread: infosec, opsec, guerrilla war, advice (8chan)
submitted ago by 2980539?
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[–] 16204097? ago
OPSEC ruminations by An Anon With a Clue™
https://archive.fo/jv0qa
If every tree falling in every forest might soon be heard by an internet-connected microphone, what hope is there for our privacy?
Wwhen you’re sitting in a room with an iPhone (spy phones), an Apple Watch (spy watches) and a smart assistant like Amazon Echo or Google Home (spy applainces), you’re surrounded by a dozen microphones. (Newer iPhones have four and the Echo has seven, while the smartwatch has just one, for now.)
Add in the latest smart wireless headphones (bugphones) — Apple’s expected next-generation AirPods (spypods) or competing ones from Bose or Shure — along with talking microwave ovens (spy ovens) and TVs (spy TVs) from Samsung, LG and others, and anyone at home or in an open-plan office could soon be within earshot of hundreds of microphones.
The roadmaps of tech giants and startups alike show how sound is poised to become the first ubiquitous connection between users and the artificial-intelligence hive mind the internet is becoming.
Driving this change are massive volumes of components, originally designed for smartphones and other mobile devices. Cancer grows after all.
For a hundred years, microphones consisted of a relatively large membrane whose vibrations were converted to electrical impulses. But starting in the 1980s, engineers worked out ways to make microphones tiny, bordering on microscopic. Most still have a pocket of air trapped behind a vibrating element, but now they can be carved out of silicon, just like the microchips to which they’re attached. Smartphones, smart speakers and any other gadget that listens for your voice all use these kinds of microphones.
One ongoing challenge for microphones has been physics: The smaller microphones get, the more of them you need to capture a sound, and the more processing of that sound is required.
Startups such as Boston-based Vesper Technologies, Inc. — which has received money from Baidu, Bose and Amazon’s Alexa Fund — are meeting the challenge with even tinier, yet more capable designs built around minuscule flaps of silicon that generate electric current when bent by sound waves. Vesper claims this gives their microphone unique capabilities, like understanding your voice even in windy conditions, and drawing zero power when awaiting a “wake word,” since sound itself generates the power the microphone needs.
We’re moving toward a world in which everything with a plug or battery can respond to a voice command.
Apple’s next AirPods (spypods) could have many of the capabilities that Vesper claims its microphones will enable, such as built-in noise cancellation. (In the past, Apple has used several suppliers for its microphones.) Meanwhile, the CEO of Samsung’s consumer-electronics division recently told The Wall Street Journal that by 2020 his company plans to equip every single device it sells—from TVs to refrigerators—with microphones.
It could be unnerving to be surrounded by listening devices, but the paradox is that as the technology develops, so does our ability to free these gadgets from having to connect to the internet.
Consider the voice-controlled trash can (spy cans) from Simplehuman. Say “Open can” and it opens—and then closes on its own once the user walks away. That’s it.
It’s easy to make fun of a high-tech trash can, especially one that costs $200.
As anyone who lives with multiple virtual assistants can attest, it is tricky to talk to one without inadvertently involving the whole crowd.
Consumers must do everything to stop this from happening and BOYCOTT all these spy products.
Puke peice here: https://archive.fo/u2rcj