My first reaction is that Anne Frank's diary would have been much shorter had this technology existed then.
New police radars can 'see' inside homes
51–60 of 117 posts
Re: New police radars can 'see' inside homes
#52As disturbing as the police use is, I am more disturbed by the possibility (inevitability?) of devices like these, and similar audio devices, becoming so cheap and readily available that even basic privacy from strangers while in your home becomes a thing of the past. It seems to me that before too long anyone could pick up audio and video devices for a couple hundred bucks that would allow them to see you in your ow…
Bouncing lasers off window panes to detect audio is a worrisome development. The counter-measure is to install dual pane windows equipped with acoustic transducers that vibrate the panes with white noise. For the device mentioned in the article, when the technology becomes available to consumers and/or is open-sourced, anyone will be able to count the occupants of any location near to them. The question again becomes…
There are plenty of pages online that explain how to do it yourself:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Laser-Surveillance-System-fo...
http://hacknmod.com/hack/how-to-long-range-laser-microphone-...
Re: New police radars can 'see' inside homes
#53That story links to https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1505137-12-6001.html when talking about a court upholding Denson's conviction, which mentions nothing about using radar to search a house.
I found it here: http://www.ca10.uscourts.gov/opinions/13/13-3329.pdf
Re: New police radars can 'see' inside homes
#54That device is more useful for firefighters than for cops. Firefighters need to find people inside burning buildings. Looking for trapped people is one of the more dangerous jobs in firefighting. The fact that it's being sold more to cops than firefighters indicates that cops are getting too much money for tactical gear.
The device is a fairly basic Doppler radar, although the sensitivity is impressive. Someone might want to look up the FCC approval data for it to get the full technical specs.
Re: New police radars can 'see' inside homes
#55As disturbing as the police use is, I am more disturbed by the possibility (inevitability?) of devices like these, and similar audio devices, becoming so cheap and readily available that even basic privacy from strangers while in your home becomes a thing of the past. It seems to me that before too long anyone could pick up audio and video devices for a couple hundred bucks that would allow them to see you in your ow…
There has to be some equally cheap countermeasures that can be found.
It's basically easy and cheap (once customer base grows from spooks & diplomats to general public) but it will seriously hamper your 4G, and wifi too if you want intra-building insulation.
Re: New police radars can 'see' inside homes
#56Any examples of the display output of the radar device?
The posted pdf to the manual shows a little bit of the device.
But here's another larger and more advanced device (linked in the article). It is doing the same but with an more elaborated output visualization.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt3ecnqdUCo
You can clearly see the output in the video.
Re: New police radars can 'see' inside homes
#57What are the power levels this thing emits?
Re: New police radars can 'see' inside homes
#58That device is more useful for firefighters than for cops. Firefighters need to find people inside burning buildings. Looking for trapped people is one of the more dangerous jobs in firefighting. The fact that it's being sold more to cops than firefighters indicates that cops are getting too much money for tactical gear. The device is a fairly basic Doppler radar, although the sensitivity is impressive. Someone might…
L-3 Communications RANGE-R Operator's Manual
http://blockyourid.com/~gbpprorg/mil/wall/RANGE-R-1.pdf
Internal Photos http://blockyourid.com/~gbpprorg/mil/wall/RANGE-R-2.pdf
External Photos http://blockyourid.com/~gbpprorg/mil/wall/RANGE-R-3.pdf
Test Report http://blockyourid.com/~gbpprorg/mil/wall/RANGE-R-5.pdf
Handheld Radar Frequency Scanner for Concealed Object Detection U.S. Patent 6,950,054 http://blockyourid.com/~gbpprorg/mil/wall/US6950054.pdf
Re: New police radars can 'see' inside homes
#59It's radar. So it is emitting radio waves, with a tiny tiny percent of them bouncing back to the detector. So it can be detected and/or jammed.
Assuming these devices work on a very narrow frequency range, it shouldn't be too hard to passively hear them coming. If detectors appear, these devices would become a serious liability for anyone looking to "storm" a residence.
Re: New police radars can 'see' inside homes
#60I have a really hard time believing that this will pass constitutional muster if this ever the use of this device ever gets challenged or gets into the court system. One's home is generally sacrosanct -- there are some exceptions, but those are few and far between.
Kyllo v. United States [1] Law enforcement used a thermal imaging camera to detect hotspots consistent with marijuana growth inside Kyllo's house. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that this was a 4th amendment violation. [1] http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2000/2000_99_8508
First thing I thought. This is exactly the same. Unless someone starts commercialising mass sales of radars, this is basically inadmissible in court.
For those who don't know, the basis for ruling thermal imaging an unreasonable search is that most people don't have high-resolution thermal imaging devices (so you can't assume you're being watched that way)