arrow_back_ios

Main Menu

See All Acoustic End-of-Line Test Systems See All DAQ and instruments See All Electroacoustics See All Software See All Transducers See All Vibration Testing Equipment See All Academy See All Resource Center See All Applications See All Industries See All Insights See All Services See All Support See All Our Business See All Our History See All Our Sustainability Commitment See All Global Presence
arrow_back_ios

Main Menu

See All Actuators See All Combustion Engines See All Durability See All eDrive See All Production Testing Sensors See All Transmission & Gearboxes See All Turbo Charger See All DAQ Systems See All High Precision and Calibration Systems See All Industrial electronics See All Power Analyser See All S&V Hand-held devices See All S&V Signal conditioner See All Test Solutions See All DAQ Software See All Drivers & API See All nCode - Durability and Fatigue Analysis See All ReliaSoft - Reliability Analysis and Management See All Test Data Management See All Utility See All Vibration Control See All Acoustic See All Current / voltage See All Displacement See All Load Cells See All Pressure See All Strain Gauges See All Torque See All Vibration See All Power Amplifiers See All LDS Shaker Systems See All Vibration Controllers See All Accessories for Vibration Testing Equipment See All Training Courses See All Articles See All Acoustics See All Asset & Process Monitoring See All Custom Sensors See All Data Acquisition & Analysis See All Durability & Fatigue See All Electric Power Testing See All NVH See All Reliability See All Smart Sensors See All Vibration See All Weighing See All Automotive & Ground Transportation See All Calibration See All Installation, Maintenance & Repair See All Support Brüel & Kjær See All Release Notes See All Compliance See All Our People
arrow_back_ios

Main Menu

See All CANHEAD See All GenHS See All LAN-XI See All MGCplus See All Optical Interrogators See All QuantumX See All SomatXR See All Accessories See All BK Connect / Pulse See All API See All Microphone Sets See All Microphone Cartridges See All Acoustic Calibrators See All Special Microphones See All Microphone Pre-amplifiers See All Sound Sources See All Accessories for acoustic transducers See All Experimental testing See All Transducer Manufacturing (OEM) See All Accessories See All Non-rotating (calibration) See All Rotating See All CCLD (IEPE) accelerometers See All Charge Accelerometers See All Impulse hammers / impedance heads See All Cables See All Accessories See All Electroacoustics See All Noise Source Identification See All Environmental Noise See All Sound Power and Sound Pressure See All Noise Certification See All Industrial Process Control See All Structural Health Monitoring See All Electrical Devices Testing See All Electrical Systems Testing See All Grid Testing See All High-Voltage Testing See All Vibration Testing with Electrodynamic Shakers See All Structural Dynamics See All Machine Analysis and Diagnostics See All Dynamic Weighing See All Calibration Services for Transducers See All Calibration Services for Handheld Instruments See All Calibration Services for Instruments & DAQ See All On-Site Calibration See All Resources See All Software License Management

Eavesdropping

Peeking from behind net curtains, or through a keyhole, listening to neighbours through a wall – such images smack of silent movies and murder mysteries. However, we are all guilty of eavesdropping. Curious by nature, we listen in on conversations in cafés, on public transport, in the office. We can’t help ourselves, we like to know what’s going on in people’s lives, it’s interesting, it’s fascinating, and mostly harmless.

Historical and literary accounts of eavesdropping and espionage go back as far as ancient civilization, 6000 years ago. Egyptian hieroglyphics reveal the presence of court spies. The Trojan Horse, a tale of Ancient Greek subterfuge is described in length in Virgil’s Aeneid. Rome’s most famous case of espionage resulted in the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC.

Eavesdropping in England during the Middle Ages was a punishable offence, not, according to records, to protect people’s right to privacy, but because eavesdropping was “damaging to local harmony, goodwill, and peaceful relations between neighbours.” (Ref. 1)

eavesdrop /'i:vzdrɒp/Origin: Early 17th century: back formation from eavesdropper (late Middle English) ‘a person who listens from under the eaves’, from the obsolete noun eavesdrop ‘the ground on to which water drips from the eaves’, probably from Old Norse upsardropi, from ups ‘eaves’ + dropi ‘a drop’. 

Source: Oxford Dictionary, Oxford University Press

 

The rise of domestic surveillance

The origins of global surveillance can be traced to the late 1940s when the UK and US governments entered into the UKUSA Agreement, that culminated in the creation of a global surveillance network, code-named ECHELON. Created to monitor military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War of the 1960s, the system could, by the late 1990s, intercept satellite transmissions, PSTN communications, and even transmissions carried by microwave. ECHELON’s existence was denied by both Britain and the US, but a report by the European Parliament in 2001 confirmed the programme’s existence, warning Europeans that this was “a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications.” (Ref. 2) No longer a military or political act, surveillance was intruding into our private matters.

knowledge, resource center, articles, eavesdropping origin

The telegraph revolutionized espionage operations. Using the dots and dashes of Samuel Morse’s code, governments started sending messages over telegraph wires, and it wasn’t long before rival intelligence services learnt how to listen to the messages by tapping the lines. Source: ”The Boy Spy” by Major J. O. Kerbey.

Domestic surveillance escalated significantly in the 2000s. In Britain, ‘an organized trade in confidential personal information’ (Ref. 3) had developed and was widely used by the British press. Unscrupulous and cynical journalists gathered information by every means possible from hacking private voicemail accounts and computers to entrapment, blackmail and theft of mobile phones. 

The public’s awareness of domestic surveillance heightened with the unravelling of the News International phone-hacking scandal involving News of the World and other newspapers published by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation. Employees were accused of phone hacking, police bribery, and exercising improper influence in the pursuit of stories on celebrities, politicians, and members of the British Royal Family. However, the revelation that the phones of a murdered schoolgirl, the relatives of deceased British soldiers, and victims of the 7 July 2005 London bombings had also been hacked caused public outcry, leading to several high-profile resignations, including that of Rupert Murdoch as News Corporation director. 

In 2013, computer programmer, and former subcontractor for the NSA, Edward Snowden, made headlines when he handed over 200,000 top-secret documents to various media outlets, many of them detailing the monitoring of American citizens. The leaks reinforced the enormity of domestic surveillance proving that regardless of who you are, details of purchases you make by credit card, websites you visit, emails you send, hotels you book and events you attend are stored in some massive database somewhere to be searched through and assessed.

When Snowden’s identity was revealed at his request, he said, “I do not want to live in a world where everything I do or say is recorded.” And if we ignore the hero/traitor controversy that surrounds his person, who can disagree?
 

Hacked off

A customer concerned with mobile phone security contacted Brüel & Kjær for help in designing a device to prevent hackers from eavesdropping on conversations by misusing mobile phones.

The resulting box provides high attenuation of sound thanks to its optimized construction. To augment the sound attenuation, and ensure further enhanced security, random noise is produced inside the box once it is closed and activated. The noise is inaudible outside the box but masks even the loudest of conversations from the phones inside. Green indicator lights on the front of the box show when it is safe to talk. While there might be other ways to enhance the security of discussions, such as RF shielding or turning the phone off, the true benefit of the box is that it doesn’t prevent the phone owner from receiving messages or calls. An event on any of the phones in the box is detected and a blue light indicates an incoming message or call. The meeting attendees can then decide whether to pause discussions, open the box and take the call or ignore it.  

02-Nowhere-to-hide

Support Content