[Okay. Here is where this intro belongs!
]
On vent the other night something was said that caused me to recall out loud information about an article I'd recently read about how they're devising amazingly clever schemes to eavesdrop on computer users: "Listening" to a user's typing sounds to determine what they're writing, and grabbing full-screen images in real time ... off of the
USER'S EYEBALLS! (Or even a coffee mug on the desk behind them!)
Enoch was somewhat disbelieving, so I said I'd post about it in the forums.
The remote visual surveillance article can be read in the
online version of the May 2009 issue of Scientific American. It describes - AND SHOWS - how any computer screen could be watched in real time from as much as
four miles away.
All that's needed is line-of-sight access into the room where the computer and its user reside. 
(Of course, sometimes it's easier than others, but chances are it can be done in almost any existing computer-user's environment....)A graphic in the article shows how it can work from 57m using a $10,000 commercial Celestron telescope, too. (Therefore much farther with military-/scientific-grade instruments....)
The scariest part of this newly uncovered method is: it leaves NO TRAIL, and it need NOT BE located within the confines of the victim's environment. (I.e. A "bug" or such would need to be located within the office, and send out signals that might be detected. Note that listening into a room from OUTSIDE of it is a method that is also non-intrusive, and already widely in use today....
)
The article made passing reference to another "computer snooping" technology that's been around for a while now: "listening" to the user typing, and recreating their keyboard entry from only the audio of the keystroke action. (Prior to that a similar method involved listening to the electromagnetic pulses made by the keystrokes via radio detection. [Google "keyboard emissions"...] )
So this particular article only makes an aside to prior "keyboard snooping" technologies, but the audio/acoustic one is the one in question... So
here's an article about the Berkeley guys getting 96% accuracy from 10-minute audio recordings of people typing. (Note the dateline!!!
)
So there you go.
You're never safe OR secure!
Deal with it!
