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Wearable Microphone Jamming

sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu

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Re: Wearable Microphone Jamming

#61

Post by Zenst »

Fascinating and I like how cheap it can be made - those ultrasonic emitters are right of a HC-SR04 by looks of it and those are cheap as (got half dozen for £1 each few months back).

I did start a project to jam gopro's (audio and visual recording) - was combination of IRDA emitters and resonance inducing the housing - but this is less niche and focused. My design was to use a hat with sensor emitters attached. Though canned progress after friend asked if it could disable a police body-cam, of which I said no and yet it probably would and morally weighed up the pro's and con's and canned that.

Re: Wearable Microphone Jamming

#62

Post by Zenst »

Semiapies wrote: post #10
josephh wrote: post #3

Interesting to note that someone opened an issue in the linked GitHub repo mentioning that the system doesn't work with iPhone 8 and above: https://github.com/y-x-c/wearable-microphone-jamming/issues/... edit: Looks like (from the reply) it's the waterproofing membrane over mic that's rendering the jammer useless.

So, if you're recording a cop in the next few years, make sure to use a waterproof phone.

You may find a small bit of capstan tape over the mic will, whilst reduce the mic's sensitivity a little - equally achieve the same results against this.

Re: Wearable Microphone Jamming

#63

Post by vdfs »

Zenst wrote: post #59
foreigner wrote: post #57

It's illegal for movie theaters to jam cell phones. If this actually works and becomes popular, I don't imagine it would take too long before this became illegal too.

It is Illegal to jam the phone signal in case of emergencies AFAIK. Not aware of it being illegal to jam recording devices in such an environment in which they do outline (somewhere) no recording allowed in the theatre. Audio is an odd thing in law - in the UK I can record many things audio more than you would legaly be allowed to video. But privacy laws are the ones that curtail video recordings mostly and with that…

jamming recording devices will make phones useless for emergencies, no one can hear you

Re: Wearable Microphone Jamming

#64

Post by Zenst »

nine_k wrote: post #11
kgarten wrote: post #8

Cool research. Given that you are also jamming hearing aids and other microphones, don't think it's practical to be used in real life. Off topic: check out Pedro's other work http://plopes.org/ Definitely thought provoking research :)

Depends of what real life scenario is. A cafe, maybe not. A meeting room, likely yes. There at least you can declare that a hearing aid is used. The very point of the device is to jam other microphones. Not going to last very long, though; ultrasound filters will soon appear on all relevant gear, including mobile phones.

If that meeting room also has remote attendee's then that may well prove the issue.

However with ultrasonic filters - you could cone of using this.

Then such approaches have often been used like vibrating windows to curtail laser microphones and yes the trick of taping a vibrator to the window does work - though not in keeping with your boardroom aesthetics unless your Anne Summers or the like.

Re: Wearable Microphone Jamming

#65

Post by Zenst »

vdfs wrote: post #63
Zenst wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is Illegal to jam the phone signal in case of emergencies AFAIK. Not aware of it being illegal to jam recording devices in such an environment in which they do outline (somewhere) no recording allowed in the theatre. Audio is an odd thing in law - in the UK I can record many things audio more than you would legaly be allowed to video. But privacy laws are the ones that curtail video recordings mostly and with that…

jamming recording devices will make phones useless for emergencies, no one can hear you

Sound levels in movie complex's - you would struggle anyhow and why people leave to the foyer or toilets to make calls when movie playing.

Re: Wearable Microphone Jamming

#66

Post by Fnoord »

dylan604 wrote: post #54
sitic wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Police officers in Beverly Hills have been playing music while being filmed, seemingly in an effort to trigger Instagram’s copyright filters." https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvxb94/is-this-beverly-hills...

The cops are not trying to post their footage to the socials. They want you to not be able to do it. If they need their footage, it's to prove you were being an asshat and deserved whatever happened to you. If you need their footage, it'll mysteriously not be available for some technical or clerical error.

Its to provide a PoV from the police officer, yes. Because the PoV of the other side (whatever it might be) may omit details, or could've been tampered with. You're right that it is in the interest of the police (in general, not necessarily the police officer), but if details like sound are not available that only hurts their case.

Re: Wearable Microphone Jamming

#67

Post by jtbayly »

soylentnewsorg wrote: post #14
red0point wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what is the effect in the first part of the video on the website then? Are you saying they‘ve faked it?

No, I'm saying that does literally nothing but add noise. It does not block or change the original signal in any significant way for human ears - only for consumer-level voice recognition software. Which is extremely crappy even without noise for anything more complex than "hey google play some ads in the middle of this song." Once you take the noise out, the voice recognition software has problems recognizing the wo…

There is a short sample of audio in the YouTube link. Your video is not even remotely similar in sound. If you could take the audio from the original and extract easy (for humans) to understand speaking, your confidence that this won’t work would be obviously justified. But so far you don’t appear to have even understood how the device works.

Re: Wearable Microphone Jamming

#68

Post by pepoluan »

ris wrote: post #46

Are they not able to just use phase shifts and beamforming on the transducer array instead of the odd keep-moving-your-bracelet design?

The case would be if someone is recording you with a microphone placed somewhere unknown in the room. With the bracelet, and humans' tendency to move their arms while speaking, microphones around the room will be jammed at least part of the time.

Re: Wearable Microphone Jamming

#69

Post by dtgriscom »

foreigner wrote: post #57

It's illegal for movie theaters to jam cell phones. If this actually works and becomes popular, I don't imagine it would take too long before this became illegal too.

It is illegal to jam a cell phone's EM signals, and it isn't because of the jamming's effects on the specific phones, but because of the jammer's unauthorized transmissions in regulated radio frequencies. The FCC takes their job fairly seriously, especially when someone makes a product that is designed to break their regulations. But, the FCC has no jurisdiction over sound.
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