Activate This 'Bracelet of Silence,' and Alexa Can't Eavesdrop

Activate This 'Bracelet of Silence,' and Alexa Can't Eavesdrop

https://www.yahoo.com/news/activate-bracelet-silence-alexa-cant-171339428.html

Excerpt: “I said, ‘I don’t want that in the office. Please unplug it. I know the microphone is constantly on.’” Zhao and Zheng are computer science professors at the University of Chicago, and they decided to channel their disagreement into something productive. With the help of an assistant professor, Pedro Lopes, they designed a piece of digital armor: a “bracelet of silence” that will jam the Echo or any other microphones in the vicinity from listening in on the wearer’s conversations. The bracelet is like an anti-smartwatch, both in its cyberpunk aesthetic and in its purpose of defeating technology. (...) “With the internet of things, the battle is lost,” Zhao said, referring to a lack of control over data captured by smart devices, whether it gets into the hands of tech companies or hackers. “The future is to have all these devices around you, but you will have to assume they are potentially compromised,” he added. “Your circle of trust will have to be much smaller, sometimes down to your actual body.” (...) In 2016, Scott Urban, an eyewear-maker in Chicago, developed a line of reflective frames that turned back visible and infrared light. When a surveillance camera films a person wearing the $164 frames, the reflected light blurs out the face. Urban called them Reflectacles. He is working full time on privacy protection eyewear, including a new version with lenses that absorb infrared light to deter iris-scanning and facial recognition cameras. His customers include privacy enthusiasts, political activists and card counters whose faces have been placed on casinos’ watch lists. [Wow. It seems there ARE ways to dodge around some of the surveillance. Scary for our futures, though. Ron P.]