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Wearable Microphone Jamming

sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu

21–30 of 129 posts

Re: Wearable Microphone Jamming

#21
post #2

How quickly are they going to go commercial with this?

No one is going to buy this. It doesn't jam your voice at all. It introduces enough distortion and noise so that computer speech recognition software gets 4/5 words wrong. Let me make a comparison. Claim: Those capchas with "type in the word you see" have an error rate of 4/5 letters when read by a computer. Yet here we are, humans, reading them just fine. Now, if you're a conspiracy theory fake elected moon landing…

This is great for meetings. Don't have to ask everyone to put their smartphone off. Just be in a private room without cameras (against lipsync and other private details leaking such as notes).

Re: Your computer/phone can make noise. They use an Arduino to power this thing, and it manages to block with natural body movement.

I'm pretty sure this is going to ruin ANC headsets too though.

Re: Wearable Microphone Jamming

#22
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.

Police wont't generally use something like this as it would interfere with bodycam which includes a microphone.

Re: Wearable Microphone Jamming

#23
post #15

Interesting trial. But I'm sure there will be techniques to clean the noise out.

I'm wondering too. I had a glimpse at a paper and it seems it works because even though ultrasound is "inaudible to humans, still leaks into the recorded speech due to non-linear amplification of the microphone’s circuit". The chart thought shows the leakage has small dB (-20) in audible spectrum. Too bad researches didn't leave any samples of recording in the repo. Curious how it would be effective after: 1) filteri…

lots of circuits will fold higher frequencies down into lower frequencies (but at lower energy).

If you can generate enough energy, you can push enough energy into other circuits that they saturate (reach the end of their working range) and will output noise.

Re: Wearable Microphone Jamming

#24
post #2

How quickly are they going to go commercial with this?

No one is going to buy this. It doesn't jam your voice at all. It introduces enough distortion and noise so that computer speech recognition software gets 4/5 words wrong. Let me make a comparison. Claim: Those capchas with "type in the word you see" have an error rate of 4/5 letters when read by a computer. Yet here we are, humans, reading them just fine. Now, if you're a conspiracy theory fake elected moon landing…

> Yet here we are, humans, reading them just fine.

I've met a lot of captchas that I couldn't reliably solve. I guess that proves I'm a robot.

Re: Wearable Microphone Jamming

#25

I wonder how sensitive dogs would be to such a jamming system.

Dogs can perhaps hear up to 45,000hz. This emits tones within that range. Article says at 1 meter the sound is mostly less than 70dB and less than 80dB in hot spots. So probably not too bad unless I'm missing something.

70-80dB is really very audible. I'd imagine much worse for dogs given how sensitive their hearing is.

edit: Must confess I'd not thought of the potential effect of the device on animals.

Re: Wearable Microphone Jamming

#26
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Police wont't generally use something like this as it would interfere with bodycam which includes a microphone.

That would likely be seen as a feature

Re: Wearable Microphone Jamming

#27
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Police wont't generally use something like this as it would interfere with bodycam which includes a microphone.

That is unless they use waterproof body cam.

Re: Wearable Microphone Jamming

#28
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Police wont't generally use something like this as it would interfere with bodycam which includes a microphone.

"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...

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