I was watching some shitty spy movies and I got to thinking about the surveillance technology they often use in these movies, like hiding a camera in someone's hotel room.
What kind of technology do governments actually use to spy on people?
We've all heard of microphones hidden under lampshades, but how long of a battery life can they have while still being so small and discrete?
I guess you could just stick a microphone to a D-battery, an IR transceiver and a paperclip and call it a day. Do governments just drill a hole in the wall and feed a camera on a pole through it when they're trying to spy on someone? Have they given up completely on this sort of surveillance and just try to monitor peoples' computer activity?
I was watching some shitty spy movies and I got to thinking about the surveillance technology they often use in these...
Alexander Phillips
Jordan Long
They put transmitter in cats and send them to the Russians.
Wyatt Smith
I guess they could use these government-accessible internet-connected microphones that everyone carries in their pockets nowadays. Just an idea.
Lucas White
How does one find the 'hidden' cameras
Parker Murphy
What the fuck is that image
Christian Cooper
That lobster looks so happy.
Jose Nguyen
Your phone, computers, smart tvs, surveillance vans
Charles King
My father went to china in the 70's, they found a microphone hidden in the light bulb of their room. It drew power from the light bulb socket to the best of his knowledge
Jaxon Roberts
this right here
Samuel Smith
It all depends on the data you need and the circumstances. Urban or rural? Short term or serveral month? One person or different people? Levels of importance? Legal frame?
The answer depends a lot on this things..
Audio / Video directly from the room like you said require direct access to that room plus a timeframe to install that shit. A lot of things could go wrong here, so you woudn't take such risks and put that much manpower into an operation unless it's worth it. Not talking about the legal requirements here.
Maybe if you are watching some guy who is a real bad boy and you are gonna blacksack him anyway. Then you could get additional information by such measures.
But before you do such stuff, you might consider a visual microphone:
youtube.com
Lot less trouble, a lot less dangers here. A lot harder to prove. Only downside is you need someone close to the point where you listen (the famous "black van" parking in the street or a flat nearby). But this can also be good, i.e. if you want to listen to a meeting in the city. You could sometimes just switch to a directional microfone.
But before you put people in the field you would start with simpler measures, i.e. listening to their phone. Listening to mobile phones is so easy.
If you need computer data, there's just way too many options here. So many layers where you can attack. It's a multidimensional game.
Oh, so you have an encrypted hard drive? No problem. Van Eck Phreaking was demonstated 20 years ago at DefCon IV, and this whole stuff is 50 years old:
>FROSTING (..) was established by the NSA in 1966 to collect and process data from communications satellites. FROSTING had two sub-programs:
>TRANSIENT: for intercepting of Soviet satellites, and
>ECHELON: for intercepting of Intelsat satellites.
>source: en.wikipedia.org
Of course that's extreme measures when you need to completely bypass cryptogtaphy. Oftentimes it's much easier.
Daniel Phillips
Battery life ain't never been a problem.
en.m.wikipedia.org
James Perez
By installing gentoo, pleb.
Nolan Ward
what kind of spider is that
Carter Thomas
That's a lobster, pal
Benjamin Cox
What the fuck is that thing ?!
Blake Green
they're so inquisitive at that age
Evan Evans
It's a lobster. They get big
Christian Foster
That's a spider retard
James Lee
That's a lobster. Cool vid btw. Skip to 1:59
youtube.com
Owen Martinez
why would someone stab a spider in the head with a knife?
Gavin Smith
Where's it's sea snippers?
Hudson Smith
Not all lobsters have big snippers That's a lobster
Kayden Hernandez
Lobsters confirmed for arachnids
Anthony Brooks
>sea snippers
They say, when a spider comes of age they can tear the sea in half.
Sebastian Gomez
That's crazy as fuck.
Lincoln Martin
Fucking idiots. It's a dog, you retards!
Evan Murphy
nature.com
"We study fifteen months of human mobility data for one and a half million individuals and find that human mobility traces are highly unique. In fact, in a dataset where the location of an individual is specified hourly, and with a spatial resolution equal to that given by the carrier's antennas, four spatio-temporal points are enough to uniquely identify 95% of the individuals."
With data that you and I could pay for that probably gets shuttled to a server farm somewhere on the hour you can identify and subsequently track most people.
For those very few that you actually give a shit about - those people can't trust any hardware that hasn't been in their possession 100% of the time.
wired.com
Parker Martin
This is actually incredibly fascinating. Such a complex device in the 1940's.
Sebastian King
Awe shit.