NEW PRIVACY MENACE: Your Touch Screen Display is NOW a MICROPHONE!

originally posted by: TerryDon79
a reply to: Aliensun

I've worked with computers, servers, laptops, printers, mobiles and a host of other things since the late 90s. I do know a little bit about tech lol.

The touchscreen material doesn't move enough to decipher sound waves. It's really that simple.

If the op would have said the speakers can be made into microphones, then I would have agreed, but even then it would take someone to physically change the wiring.

--

If you read the above links, ALL GLASS AND PLASTIC SURFACES
vibrate under application of pressure waves (sound!) and can be
interpreted from afar! How do you think RUSSIA kept listening
in on US Embassy conversations up to the late 1990's?

They were bouncing a laser off the embassy windows and
converting the minute vibrations from conversations into
digital audio waveforms.

---

I can even use a high-speed, ultra-high resolution camera to photograph
the minute vibrations of the FURNITURE IN YOUR ROOM as you talk
and convert that minute pixel movement into audio waveforms!

Most touchscreen devices already have microphones and even video cameras attached to them. Hackers have been known to watch people through their webcams.

a reply to: StargateSG7

No you can't. The vibrations are too small. You would need a larger vibration to recognise anything. The best you would pick up would be what sounded like someone mumbling under a pillow. There would be no recognisable words at all.

originally posted by: TerryDon79
a reply to: StargateSG7

So in other words you would need to make sound wave into electoral frequency then have something installed on your device to translate the electrical frequency into sound and something else to transmit it.

You know what that's called on a mobile phone?

A microphone.

ETA: The screen on your 4K isn't made from glass. Sorry.

---

The circuitry in ALL touchscreen displays
is ALREADY fully capable of interpreting the
spurious electrical noise into electrical signals!

What is different NOW is that newer touchscren
display models use software-upgradeable chips
which can be modified VIA software update
to DISABLE the low-pass and high-pass filters
so that the digital signal processing software
can AMPLIFY and use statistical analysis algorithms
to estimate what the audio waveform SHOULD lOOK LIKE!

And this software can be serruptiously installed
from Microsoft/Apple/Andorid app stores during
any update cycle and can have encrypted data
compression and communications routines to
save and forward your captured audio waveforms.




Actually YES IT IS Made of glass...!!! It better be!
its a $30,000 Broadcast Reference Monitor!

It's a phone, it already has a microphone...

Why go through all the trouble?

a reply to: StargateSG7

The things got a microphone in it. Whoever told you about sound frequency changing to electrical frequency was either misinformed about how microphones work or just watched something on YouTube.

As for your $30,000 monitor? You'd actually want to pray it's not made of glass. If it is then you got ripped off.

originally posted by: TerryDon79
a reply to: StargateSG7

No you can't. The vibrations are too small. You would need a larger vibration to recognise anything. The best you would pick up would be what sounded like someone mumbling under a pillow. There would be no recognisable words at all.

In terms of sounding like a muffled pillow,
you are CORRECT in that matter !!!
.
BUT....when you compare the captured waveform
against multiple saved versions of common phonemes
(voice sounds) recorded at various sound quality levels,
your statistical analysis software CAN RECONSTRUCT
either the text itself or a "synthetically produced estimate"
of a reconstructed waveform.

It HIGHLY DEPENDS upon the sophistication
of the interpreting software...BUT THEN AGAIN...
now that even my WATCH has a gigabyte of RAM
and a decent CPU in it, that analysis software
can be VERY sophisticated ... AND VERY PORTABLE!

a reply to: StargateSG7

There would actually be too many variables for pitch and tone. Each person uses a different pitch and tone with each word and sometimes that pitch and tone changes due to varying things (anger, excitement, speaking quickly, tiredness and so on). The algorithm would take a simple sentence and translate it into vastly numerous sentences.

The idea, I guess, is slightly plausible. In reality it's just not possible.

originally posted by: TerryDon79
a reply to: StargateSG7

The things got a microphone in it. Whoever told you about sound frequency changing to electrical frequency was either misinformed about how microphones work or just watched something on YouTube.

As for your $30,000 monitor? You'd actually want to pray it's not made of glass. If it is then you got ripped off.

---
I think you're misunderstanding me on an engineering level.
The acoustic waves DO NOT CREATE THE ELECTRIC ENERGY
(although they CAN if the receiving material is pressure-wave
sensitive peizoelectric material!) ... BUT RATHER the sound
modifies the CONDUCTANCE of the atmosphere locally near
the surface of the capacitive touch sensitive display.

The CHANGE in the local conductivity allows MANY (if not all)
displays to cause a spurious emission into the display's circuits
BELOW THE BASELINE trigger voltage of the conductors built
into the display's surface. This electrical signal has to be above
(or below!) a certain value before the signal is interpreted as
a "real" finger touch. Any signal NOT within the bounds
is considered ELECTRICAL NOISE and is filtered out....
...BUT...that noise STILL CONTAINS valuable signal
which can be analyzed and since acoustic energy
will create electrical noise in a specific pattern
and timing that "noise" can be examined, amplified
and CONVERTED to a digital waveform for playback
or further speech-to-text analysis.

---
P.S. The BVM series is similar to this one but at 4k and IS SEALED GLASS SUBSTRATE:
pro.sony.com...

Still 30k though!

originally posted by: TerryDon79
a reply to: StargateSG7

There would actually be too many variables for pitch and tone. Each person uses a different pitch and tone with each word and sometimes that pitch and tone changes due to varying things (anger, excitement, speaking quickly, tiredness and so on). The algorithm would take a simple sentence and translate it into vastly numerous sentences.

The idea, I guess, is slightly plausible. In reality it's just not possible.

---

It's WAAAAY beyond slightly possible....it's REALITY....

This is what a home HOBBYIST DID with lasers and window panes!
Imagine what a GOVERNMENT with nearly unlimited resources can do!

Laser microphone for audio surveillance via window panes:
www.youtube.com...

---

I would LOOOOVE to reveal my source and supporting
documentation on CAPACITIVE TOUCH SCREEN-based
acoustic-to-electrical signal conversion but THAT REPORT
seems to be rather sensitive material...HOWEVER, I will
try to find a PUBLICLY DISCLOSED paper on that and will
post the link when I find it!

a reply to: StargateSG7

I know how a touch screen/sensitive phone, laptop and screen works. You're idea, however, doesn't. It's that simple. It doesn't work.

You can't create the necessary stable electrical field to make acoustic energy into an electrical signal. The electrical signal would dissipate in the electrical field as the electrical signal would be lower than the electrical field. What you would end up with is nothing more than static and maybe a bit of pitched noises (at best).

a reply to: StargateSG7

I get the laser microphones, but they translate sound waves. You're talking about electrical energy. There's a massive difference.

a reply to: StargateSG7

This is my FAVORITE FUNNY VERSION OF THIS TYPE OF TECHNOLOGY:

Extracting audio from visual information
Algorithm recovers speech from the vibrations
of a potato-chip bag filmed through soundproof glass.

news.mit.edu...

Researchers at MIT, Microsoft, and Adobe have developed an algorithm that can reconstruct an audio signal by analyzing minute vibrations of objects depicted in video. In one set of experiments, they were able to recover intelligible speech from the vibrations of a potato-chip bag photographed from 15 feet away through soundproof glass.

In other experiments, they extracted useful audio signals from videos of aluminum foil, the surface of a glass of water, and even the leaves of a potted plant. The researchers will present their findings in a paper at this year’s Siggraph, the premier computer graphics conference.

“When sound hits an object, it causes the object to vibrate,” says Abe Davis, a graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and first author on the new paper. “The motion of this vibration creates a very subtle visual signal that’s usually invisible to the naked eye. People didn’t realize that this information was there.”

Joining Davis on the Siggraph paper are Frédo Durand and Bill Freeman, both MIT professors of computer science and engineering; Neal Wadhwa, a graduate student in Freeman’s group; Michael Rubinstein of Microsoft Research, who did his PhD with Freeman; and Gautham Mysore of Adobe Research.

This above link show JUST HOW SOPHISTICATED
digital processsing software is!

SO YES this technology IS real and it CAN
be used on capacative touch screen displays.

a reply to: StargateSG7

Apart from that being deciphering audio from video and nothing to do with the op.

Also, did you note this from the article?

Reconstructing audio from video requires that the frequency of the video samples — the number of frames of video captured per second — be higher than the frequency of the audio signal. In some of their experiments, the researchers used a high-speed camera that captured 2,000 to 6,000 frames per second. That’s much faster than the 60 frames per second possible with some smartphones, but well below the frame rates of the best commercial high-speed cameras, which can top 100,000 frames per second.

(Highlighted is my emphasis)

a reply to: StargateSG7

That topic was discussed to death when it was first posted and (mis)represented on here. You're clutching at straws.

You seem to be starting with a wacky idea and then scrambling to find anything even tangentially related (in your mind, at least) to string together a narrative. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.

a reply to: introvert

I don't know about that. Do you have a Telescreen by any chance?

originally posted by: TerryDon79
a reply to: StargateSG7

Apart from that being deciphering audio from video and nothing to do with the op.

Also, did you note this from the article?

Reconstructing audio from video requires that the frequency of the video samples — the number of frames of video captured per second — be higher than the frequency of the audio signal. In some of their experiments, the researchers used a high-speed camera that captured 2,000 to 6,000 frames per second. That’s much faster than the 60 frames per second possible with some smartphones, but well below the frame rates of the best commercial high-speed cameras, which can top 100,000 frames per second.

(Highlighted is my emphasis)

---

I knew about the high frame rate as they probably used
a high-speed camera similar to a Phantom Miro:

See link:
www.highspeedcameras.com...

It ain't cheap but it DOES WORK!

---

Now in terms of the Original Post again,
I will try and find a public PDF file to post
a link to so that I don't "Burn" my source.

I kinda need them for my glorious,
if not nefarious, secret reporting work!

----

You can't create the necessary stable electrical field to make acoustic energy into an electrical signal. The electrical signal would dissipate in the electrical field as the electrical signal would be lower than the electrical field.

Your reasoning IS normally sound...BUT it is NOT stable electrical
waveforms we are trying to interpret but rather pulsed noise
which can be ARTIFICIALLY RECONSTRUCTED into a digital
audio waveform which is then further processed by
digital signal processing and analysis software!

Taking advantage of how people speak (i.e. sibilance)
and "Popping Their P's" and the issue of various consonants
TEND to create explosive acoustic waves that WILL TRIGGER
a pressure wave impulse at a high enough level to trigger
the touchscreen display due to the way atmospheric dust
and water vapour movement will EVER-SO-SLIGHTLY change
the conductance of the air near the screen surface
as thsoe acoustic waves bounce off the display surface.

Those impulses of electrical noise will be converted
to digital waveforms and the blank spaces
"Filled In" with statistically derived waveforms
or text that is ESTIMATED to be the corrrect one
based upon common phonemes interpreted
as the incoming electrical energy is converted
and sampled to find impulses, rise-times and
the fall off-slopes of common spoken words.

originally posted by: sligtlyskeptical
a reply to: introvert

I don't know about that. Do you have a Telescreen by any chance?

===

I can run Facetime and Skype on the 4k monitors
so I guess that could be called a telescreen.

So whatcha gettin' at?

a reply to: StargateSG7

While certain letters MIGHT cause a distinct enough vibration, that does not mean that it is even conceivable that an algorithm could construct a full sentence with a couple of letters from each word at the most.

You said yourself that touching the screen would cause an electrical field. You also said that sound waves would be changed into electrical energy. Now, the electrical field would be higher than the electrical energy produces by changing sound waves. Sorry, but that's just the way it is. The electrical energy produced would get absorbed into the electrical field and be non translatable as it would be mainly static.

You're argument relies on a hoax that's over a decade old. Nothing about your argument is any different than the original. It's nothing new and (as yet) has no evidence of it being even slightly possible.

originally posted by: GetHyped
a reply to: StargateSG7

That topic was discussed to death when it was first posted and (mis)represented on here. You're clutching at straws.

You seem to be starting with a wacky idea and then scrambling to find anything even tangentially related (in your mind, at least) to string together a narrative. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.

===

As per your own screen name...my DUTY
on ATS is to absolutely get YOU HYPED and
with my media training that means bait-click
like HEADLINE WRITING !!!
.
That Said! My source both verbally and via
WRITTEN documentationsays to me on a
scientific basis, that a certain party in
a certain country has been doing this
since touch screens came out into the
widespread CONSUMER market since
at least early 2000's --- That means the
technique itself was invented
OVER TEN YEARS AGO!
(and probably longer!)

Someone has been NAUGHTY!