If you’ve ever considered your conversations in your own home or office to be private, get ready to feel completely vulnerable. A research team at MIT developed a way to listen in on your conversations using nothing more than high-speed video – even if the video is shot from a distance and through glass.

Sound waves cause minute vibrations in objects near the sound source. The waves are so tiny that we can’t detect them, but high-speed cameras can, as the MIT experiment showed. The researchers pointed a camera at a potato chip bag and played a recording of Mary Had a Little Lamb in the same room. When they played back the video and ran it through a computer program, the program was able to analyze those tiny vibrations and translate them into sound.

The results were eerie. The played-back sound was completely recognizable as the song that had been played in the room. The same result was achieved with spoken words and with music played through a pair of earbuds. The recreated music was even clear enough to be recognized by a song recognition app. The implications of this type of technology are both thrilling and terrifying; it could be easily used for nefarious purposes, but we’re staying optimistic and choosing to believe that it will only be used to catch bad guys and recover lost puppies.

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Information security concerns are at an all-time high in America, especially with people like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden exposing secrets that were never meant to reach the public’s ears. Artist duo Kyle McDonald and Brian House built a project that they hope will raise awareness of the lack of privacy we all experience in public. They call it the Conversnitch, and it’s a little scary just how easily they were able to install it in public places.

The Conversnitch cost less than $100 to produce. Unless you’re extremely observant, it looks just like a regular light fixture or lamp – but it’s much more than that. The device contains a microphone and a mini computer, as well as a light bulb to help it blend into its surroundings. It is housed in a plastic flowerpot, so upon close inspection it would probably be obvious that it is no ordinary light bulb.

The spying tool captures conversations happening near it and uses the nearest open wi-fi network to send the information to Mechanical Turk, Amazon’s crowdsourcing platform. They pay workers to transcribe conversation snippets, then they post them to Coversnitch’s Twitter account. The conversations that the Conversnitch was able to capture were truly shocking. People revealed personal details and expressed opinions that they may not have wanted exposed to the public.

McDonald and House didn’t set out to do anything illegal; they simply wanted to demonstrate how easy it is for anyone to listen in on any conversation. They were able to install the Coversnitch in some very public places without any question from passers-by, though one individual did look a bit suspicious as one of the artists installed the device in a restaurant. According to the artists, one of their goals was to warn people that their conversations, no matter how sensitive, are never necessarily truly private.

(via: Wired)

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Many of us played with “spy” cameras when we were kids, but not all of us know just how long these tiny hidden cameras have been popular. These three cameras disguised as pocket watches were all built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, meaning that photography enthusiasts have been happily snapping secret shots for a very long time.

The Lancaster Pocket Watch Camera was made in 1886, making it one of the oldest examples in the world. The particular model pictured here was the ladies’ version and was only produced for four years. It was quite difficult to use, requiring the user to undo four latches and remove the glass, then place a new metal material holder for each exposure. It did not sell well, and today only four are known to still exist.

The Photoret Watch Camera was made in 1893 by the Magic Introduction Company. For an original cost of $2.50, the little spy camera could take six exposures before it required reloading. Its rotary shutter could be held open by inserting a straight pin into the small hole on the camera’s front, allowing for time exposures.

The Ticka was produced by Houghton in London from 1906. While some versions of the Ticka were solely pocket watch-sized cameras, others (like the picture with the red background at the top of the page) featured a faux clock face with the hands set permanently at 10:07. This hand position indicated the viewing angle that made it possible to take pictures with the Flicka without the aid of a viewfinder.

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In spy movies, someone always has a cool gadget like a pen that takes secret pictures of classified documents. The same technology is now available to regular people in the form of the Pen Sized Scanner from Hammacher Schlemmer. The $125 gadget is a working ballpoint pen, but with a twist of a dial it switches functions to a covert scanner.

When you want to catch a sneaky picture of a document or other piece of information, you just press the shutter button halfway down to project a cool laser frame onto the target. Press the button the rest of the way and the five-megapixel camera snaps the image, which is then stored on the 1GB internal memory. An internal USB plug is revealed when you twist the pen apart, allowing for direct downloading to your computer and, presumably, letting you email secrets to your CIA handler.

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Spy gadgets have come a long way in recent years thanks to shrinking technology. This little camera manages to look like an innocent car remote, but it is actually a powerhouse of covert technology that makes it possible to capture whatever is going on around you.

The device features motion-activated recording, infrared night vision, and the ability to take pictures, video and audio recordings. And unless you really hunt for hints that it isn’t a car remote, it is difficult to discern the tiny camera’s true nature. Even the buttons look like regular car key buttons.

Because every spy needs plenty of space for their evidence, the Spy Cam Car Key comes with 8 GB of built-in memory. The battery recharges via USB, which is also how the data is transferred off of the $60 device. If you carry it on your key ring just like a car remote, you can always be prepared to run an impromptu surveillance operation.

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