New speech-jamming gun hints at dystopian Big Brother future | Hacker News Reader

New speech-jamming gun hints at dystopian Big Brother future

extremetech.com

41 pointsSkippyZA30 comments

>if you’re a firm believer in free speech, you should now be experiencing a deafening cacophony of alarm bells

This article is sensationalist. If a directional mic/speaker is a "speech jamming gun" then a loud speaker is a "free speech area jammer". And you really don't need the mic - just blast Justin Bieber at a conversation and nobody will be able to hear anything intelligible anyway...

If you had a "totalitarian government" that wanted to jam you from thinking there are simpler ways to continuously annoy or distract you. Maybe if Stalin were bored and wanted to f#@* with people for the lulz.

No, but a western democracy could make up some pretext to silence protests under the guise of, say, bringing peace to the lives of all the people who don't give a shit, so that they don't fall so much in the polls.

This is actually useful tech - I've been in many situations where other people talk louder and longer than me (I have a quiet voice and don't interrupt others when they say something - I'm always perplexed when others do it) and instead of escalating and turning a debate into a shouting contest, one could use these devices (though I don't see that actually happening since it would make a lot of people angry).

As for free speech - it's not really a danger - if you're having a protest, the last thing you wanna do is shut people up - they're going to start destroying your equipment and it will quickly turn into a full-fledged riot...

It's not a speech-jamming gun at all.

It's a speaker which plays back your speech to you.

It could be easily circumvented with $.10 earplugs...

Have you ever tried speaking when you can't hear your own voice at all? It's pretty hard, too.

It doesn't cancel your speech - it plays it back to you with a slight delay. You hear what you said an instant ago.

Turn on the TV. Try repeating what someone talking continuously says right after they say it. That's what happens; it jams you mentally. Granted simultaneous translators at the UN do it with a twist, so it's possible.

No, I mean, if you wore earplugs to defend yourself from the jammer -- you can't tell how loud you're talking, and controlling pitch/tone can be hard, too.

(AFAIK, this is why deaf people find it hard to speak.)

I don't think headphones keep you from hearing yourself - the vibrations travel through your jaw from your voice box to your inner ear. Sort of how your voice sounds a bit different when you're wearing high quality noise-cancelling headphones.

Yea, it might be possible with practice.

I guess public speakers could also have their speech pumped directly back into an earbud (like live music singers).

(AFAIK, this is why deaf people find it hard to speak.)

People who have been deaf from birth or youth find it hard to speak because they don't have the experience hearing others pronounce words which lets them develop proper pronunciation (similar to how non-native speakers have an accent).

People born with normal hearing who have lost their hearing due to age or noise exposure have no problem speaking.

I think that you would still hear yourself, because you hear the sound resonating from inside your body, that's why people dislike their recorded voice.

In general, I am not sure that the claim that this is going to prevent people from talking very effectively. Maybe it will be uncomfortable, but with a little bit of training and earplugs would not be effective for too long.

Even the best earplugs only muffle sound to a certain degree. Sound, especially loud sounds, is transmitted very well through the bones in your head.

Bone conduction only works well for lower frequencies, unless a transducer or vibrating object is directly coupled to your body. Earplugs would work just fine in this application.

I've yet to find a pair of earplugs that block conversations in my office enough to let me concentrate, I seriously doubt that they'd be good for a concentrated blast of sound.

From what I understand of the technology at play here, it seems like it could be defeated by a pair of earplugs (or, if you're in a conversation rather than a speech, then a microphone/headphone combination with an additional short delay) - though I'm by no means qualified in this area!

Still, even if there is a workaround, it seems impractical to wear all the time.

Just put your fingers in your ears when you want to speak, or wear noise-canceling headphones.

I often speak with a colleague by phone and for whatever reason our connection creates this effect. It's very disorienting at first, but you can get used to ignoring it quite quickly.

I don't understand how the author of this article thinks this could be applied to an audience or protestors.

For this to work, the audio output to each individual person has to be exactly what each individual person is currently saying. If it's a combined audio mess of an entire audience's voices, it's not exactly going to screw up anyone's speech patterns.

So the only way this could work in an audience would be if the back of every chair in front of people had one of these devices on it which could filter out the noise of everyone else around that person and only output their voice.

In short, imagine if a runaway mega-corporation or government gains control of these earbuds. Not only could the intelligence-destroying blasts from Harrison Bergeron come to pass, but with Delayed Auditory Feedback it would be possible to render the entire population mute.

Is it just me who thought; well if a runaway mega-corporation does come to exist, in a position to force society to wear such earbuds (or whatever)... I doubt the existence, or not, of "speech-jamming guns" will affect matters.

They haven't even thought through the sensationalism!

Yeah - this seems like a sci-fi rant.

The title of the article got me quite frightened for a moment, until I read on and realized the "gun" is more-or-less an audio playback speaker with minor delay.

Early Skype users who made calls to people using their speakers instead of headsets/headphones know how this feels.. disorienting yes, but easily ignored after you get used to it.

I never imagined the effect could be implemented as a directed energy weapon. Just makes me think it would be that much easier to re-make as a DIY project, smaller and cheaper..

The invention itself is not too scary, but the commentary of the researchers is. Perhaps we should silence people like them who put forth such dangerous ideas.

While the title made me wonder if this was a spoof article, I'm surprised that no one here finds the article chilling. Forget the politicians, the intended use is for modifying people's behaviour. From friends' anecdotes (both Japanese friends and those who spent many years in Japan), there is strong pressure to conform in Japanese schools. Imagine this scenario:

Speech jammers are introduced into Japanese schools. From the article: “We have to establish and obey rules for proper turn-taking when speaking." Sounds like a school to me. This type of technology used on kids could have long-term impact on their ability to think during public conversations. And once the teacher realizes they can silence any student at will, do you think they'll stop at the "louder, stronger" voices? Any student with an opinion the teacher doesn't like could get zapped. And the worst part is not that other students won't hear their ideas -- it's that the student herself will have those thoughts disrupted.

Entrepreneurs are who we are because we think outside the box -- we do things we're told can't be done. Most people aren't like that. And imagine if every time you talked about anything "out of the norm" as a child your very thoughts were stopped. Chilling.

I guess if Japanese authorities want that kind of conformity, it might help the US economy...but I'm still not a fan.

This isn't a new idea, it's just a "portable" version of the anti-vulgar-speech system you see at many sporting stadiums that play back delayed recordings of crowd noise when vulgar chants (i.e. "bullshit! bullshit!" after a bad call) start.

I made a simple Pure Data patch (adc > delay > dac) that simulates this effect, and I can confirm that it works well.

I have a VoIP phone that performs this function for free. It's very annoying ...

It's easy to counter-jam, if you're expecting it. Noise-cancelling headphones with a 200ms buffer delay should do it.

Does anyone know of any proof of concept video out there? I would love to see this in action.

Here you go: "SpeechJammer (en)" http://youtu.be/USDI3wnTZZg

I too own a gun that can prevent people from speaking out of turn. It is made by Smith and Wesson

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