Snooping Through Walls with Microwaves

denis-The-menace writes "According to an article from newscientist, scientists have devised a system to use microwave energy for surveillance. If people are speaking inside the room, any flimsy surface, such as clothing, will be vibrating. This modulates the radio beam reflected from the surface. Although the radio reflection that passes back through the wall is extremely faint, the kind of electronic extraction and signal cleaning tricks used by NASA to decode signals in space can be used to extract speech. Although, I doubt it would work in this room"

1st sign the feds are onto you...

[titla1k (875330)]

is there's a van sitting outside your house, with a whole lot of kitchen appliances pointing at it.

Re:1st sign the feds are onto you...

[moviepig.com (745183)]

If people are speaking [then] clothing... will be vibrating.

So the hell with eyes... it's actually possible to undress her with your diction...

OLD NEWS:This has been in active use since the 50s

[goombah99 (560566)]

The first sign the Fed's are listening to you is when they give you a nice small bust of lenin for your mantle peice. That's exactly what the British did to the russian ambassador back in the post world-war two era. They gave him a a gift of a small statue and inside it they had mounted a corner cube which is a passive device that enhances the retro-reflection of microwaves beamed at it. (read about it is Peter Wright's (banned in UK) book Spycatcher--wright [amazon.com] was the science officer for MI5 and inventor of the technique [bbc.co.uk])

The second sign is when you feel toasty warm and the chair feels cold. In the 70's and 80's the carter and reagan administrations were perpetually complaining that the level of microwave energy measured inside the US embassy exceeded the OSHA limits for exposure. Eventually the US built a new embassy with enhanced shielding. UNfortunately the Soviet's put listening devices into the bricks. The embassy had to be knocked down and rebuilt. Of course, peter wright [bbc.co.uk] did exactly the same thing to the Soviet embassy in canada. Each night he snuck into the construction site and pulled wires up the inside of the walls to his microphones in specially made window sills. The soviet's learned about it from a mole in MI5 and had to build a second interior wall so that no rooms were near the windows.

Doppler microwave spying is quite old. As is laser vibrometry on windows.

Invest in AA

[TripMaster Monkey (862126)]

I think I'm going to buy stock in Alcoa Operations [alcoa.com]...with shenanigans like this going on, they can only increase in value.

In the meantime, here's some telltale signs you might be under microwave surveillance:

• You feel slightly warmer than is normal.
  
• Your food seems to be cooking itself.
  
• Metal objects in your house give off sparks for no good reason.
  
• Your coffee remins hot for a very long time.
  
• Your beer remains cold for a very short time.
  
• All your CDs are covered with tiny cracks and will no longer play.
  
• Your house pets smell delicious.
  

Watch for these signs and protect your privacy...cause the government certainly isn't going to.

Re:Invest in AA

[by Anonymous Coward]

Aside from the fact that farmers and subsidies have all but shut down Alcoa in the US, Aluminum is a poor choice, and hence wouldn't be used. Lead. That would be the metal of choice. It has properties which make it excellent at sound proofing. Vibrating aluminum would modulate their signal quite nicely.

Re:Invest in AA

[mikiN (75494)]

There is no such thing as the English language. There are, however, at least two widely spoken dialects, both of which use different spellings for the word aluminium [wikipedia.org].

Just Friggin' Great

[SecureTheNet (915798)]

Now, when the NSA spies on me, my wi-fi network will be unable to work due to interference!

oh no

[NoGuffCheck (746638)]

luckily my parents basement has thick walls.

Makes little difference

[polysylabic psudonym (820466)]

How many criminals protect against laser audio surveillance, where a laser beam is bounced off a window or other rigid surface, and the sound from the room vibrates the surface, wobbling the beam, the wobble being translated into audio by the snooper.

The laser can be defeated by double glazing (I think), devices to vibrate windows and laser detectors (to tell you if you're being listened to).

A microwave device can be defeated by the good old tinfoil hat - by which I mean wallpapering in foil or otherwise turning the room into a faraday cage.

Re:Makes little difference

[cheekyboy (598084)]

If the crims are making 100's of millions, spending 0.01% of counter measures is INSURANCE

hence, the drug lords of south america spend tonnes of tonnes of cash on goodies.

The best crims are never found out hence, their success and covertness.

a) buy gold
b) hide in 50% legit 5% return businesses
c) learn sign language
d) study tonnes of tonnes of history of cold ware espianage
e) never ever talk , paint a false picture to everyone including your wife/kids
f) cover tracks and never park anywhere, unless you own the govt, or they owe you billions.

Re:Makes little difference

[Dogtanian (588974)]

The best crims are never found out hence, their success and covertness.

a) buy gold
[..]
e) never ever talk , paint a false picture to everyone including your wife/kids

Doesn't that include not discussing it on Slashdot either? Plus, you forgot...

(g) Don't give away all your secrets.

Re:Makes little difference

[Jetboy01 (550638)]

With all these new snooping devices being invented, I think it's time someone devised the 'tinfoil flat'.

Re:Makes little difference

[Talas213 (881991)]

A microwave device can be defeated by the good old tinfoil hat - by which I mean wallpapering in foil or otherwise turning the room into a faraday cage.

I'd suggest lining the walls with bags of popcorn. That way you'll know when you're under survellance and have a nice snack readily available.

Re:Makes little difference

[jolyonr (560227)]

Therefore anyone listening to rap music must be a criminal!

Arrest them straight away!

Jolyon

Not new tech

[by Anonymous Coward]

I don't think this a new technology. I think that this is just a new take on a technology that Léon Theremin (inventor of the Theremin instrument) was working on for the KGB in the 50-60s. He was using infrared bounced off of windows to detect conversations inside (or something). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L [wikipedia.org]éon_Theremin

Fluff piece

[gtoomey (528943)]

This "story" is just a reference to a patent application [uspto.gov].

Even at 100GHz, the wavelength of microwaves is 3 mm. But sound waves inside a room would cause a surface to vibrate perhaps 0.001 mm. You cant modulate a 3mm wave to record 0.001 mm changes.

Re:Fluff piece

[Ancient_Hacker (751168)]

>"You cant modulate a 3mm wave to record 0.001 mm changes." You're partially correct. It would be difficult to detect the modulations, EXCEPT that if you're also the sender of the original signal, you can mix the incoming and outgoing signals and extract the phase difference. Subtraction is a VERY powerful signal-extraction method!

There's an anecdote in the engineering field: where some poor sods at Racal-Dana had a phase detector at 50MHz that was so sensitive to vibration they had to stop their experiments whenever a plane took off from Orange County Airport (quite a few miles away). They eventually had to get special thick aluminum wall castings to enclose the phase detector to block the vibrations. And this was at just 50MHz. Phase detectors get more sensitive proportional to operating frequency, so a 5,000 MHz phase detector is *mighty* sensitive!

Re:Fluff piece

[pz (113803)]

Even at 100GHz, the wavelength of microwaves is 3 mm. But sound waves inside a room would cause a surface to vibrate perhaps 0.001 mm. You cant modulate a 3mm wave to record 0.001 mm changes.

Interference detectors, more commonly known as interferometers, can detect distances far below the wavelength used to make the measurements. For example, 800 nm infrared laser light can readily be used to resolve 5 nm differences (I've worked on the development of such a system). Further, the distances being considered for measuring the movement of things like clothing or the throat and chest of the speaker are far above one micron (0.001 mm): put your finger on your throat and speak; think that's one micron you're feeling?

It was news... 45 years ago.

[Ancient_Hacker (751168)]

The Soviet KGB have been doing exactly this since before 1960. Windowpanes make good microwave reflectors. All it takes is a simple microwave source and mixer. Nothing new to see here.

Re:It was news... 45 years ago.

[Ancient_Hacker (751168)]

Uh, not quite. For many reasons.

• There were no "lasers" in 1960. At least not the very stable continuous-wave lasers that you need for this, and especially not in the USSR.
• Think-- do lasers go through glass? Do lasers bounce off glass? Might other wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation act similarly?
• Microwaves bounce off most anything, if you pick the right angle. Conveniently, most buildings have the windows recessed a bit, and any concave corner makes an EXCELLENT "corner reflector", which has the amazing property of bouncing any incident beam right back to the sender.

Not only did they bounce microwaves off glass-- they had the hutzpah to give the US ambassador a honorary plaque, which he hung on his office wall. Unbeknownst to us, there was a little diaphragm inside the plaque, just the right wavelength to reflect K-band microwavesm, which vibrated very nicely to every word spoken in his office. Look it up.

Food fun

[Snamh Da Ean (916391)]

Man, I knew that burrito I put in the microwave last night when I came home from a party was speaking to me...

Very dangerous!!!

[elgatozorbas (783538)]

The summary mentioned microwave ovens, so some may be tempted to play around with a DIY radar. Don't!!! Of all domectic appliances a microwave is about the most dangerous to take apart. The RF radiation has a very high power and is invisible. When exposed to the electromagnetic field, currents start to flow inside the human body (mostly close to the skin) giving rise to burn-like wounds. Especially the risk of eye injury is significant. Don't try this at home.

Not quite microwave

[Ge10 (803950)]

This has been around for a long time. In the book "Spycatcher" by ex-MI5 agent Peter Wright, he describes a bug used by the KGB to spy on the American ambassador in Hawaii (I think). There was a metal membrane hidden inside a wooden carving, which would passively vibrate with sounds in the room. A strong RF beam of around 900 MHz (details are hazy again, and it's not quite microwave) was directed towards the office from a fair distance away, then the signal would be minutely modulated and reflected by the metal membrane. It was able to work for several years, and this was in the 1960's. You can only guess what's available now.

Re:In analogue phone days

[Richard_at_work (517087)]

MI5 developed this in the 1950s, and called it Special Facilities. All it required at the start was a modification to the phone - a single washer, and the phone could be used as a surveillence device. Later versions enabled activation using high frequency radio waves to activate the telephones microphone and required no modification to the phone itself.

Survellience was also carried out against embassy cypher machines using unshielded telephone cables picking up eletromagnetic emissions from the cypher machines, in many cases enabling the reading of both the en clair message and the cypher material.

None of this was admissable in a UK court. Phone tap evidence still isnt.

Re:In analogue phone days

[!IH (33751)]

I didn't think that sort of evidence was admissible in a UK court.

Evidence?? Court?? You are running an old version of UK, please upgrade where these bugs have been removed in an effort to improve security.