I was watching some shitty spy movies and I got to thinking about the surveillance technology they often use in these...

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?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=FKXOucXB4a8
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)
youtube.com/watch?v=6ClOkhtilEg
nature.com/articles/srep01376
wired.com/2010/11/hacker-border-search/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

They put transmitter in cats and send them to the Russians.

I guess they could use these government-accessible internet-connected microphones that everyone carries in their pockets nowadays. Just an idea.

How does one find the 'hidden' cameras

What the fuck is that image

That lobster looks so happy.

Your phone, computers, smart tvs, surveillance vans

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

this right here

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/watch?v=FKXOucXB4a8

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/wiki/ECHELON

Of course that's extreme measures when you need to completely bypass cryptogtaphy. Oftentimes it's much easier.

Battery life ain't never been a problem.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)

By installing gentoo, pleb.

what kind of spider is that

That's a lobster, pal

What the fuck is that thing ?!

they're so inquisitive at that age

It's a lobster. They get big

That's a spider retard

That's a lobster. Cool vid btw. Skip to 1:59
youtube.com/watch?v=6ClOkhtilEg

why would someone stab a spider in the head with a knife?

Where's it's sea snippers?

Not all lobsters have big snippers That's a lobster

Lobsters confirmed for arachnids

>sea snippers
They say, when a spider comes of age they can tear the sea in half.

That's crazy as fuck.

Fucking idiots. It's a dog, you retards!

nature.com/articles/srep01376
"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/2010/11/hacker-border-search/

This is actually incredibly fascinating. Such a complex device in the 1940's.

Awe shit.