Comment by cantrevealname | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cantrevealname | Hacker News Reader

Let's think about possible applications of audio-video recorders camouflaged to look like something in the form factor of credit cards:

- Induce your target to apply for a certain credit/debit card, gym/movie/gallery/store membership, airline pass, then mail them a bugged card

- Blindly mail a $100 gift card to your target along with a plausible sounding cover letter about why they are receiving it

- Give your target a badge to wear when they are visiting your office so you can hear and see what they do when they're not in your presence

- Leave your bugged card on the table while having dinner with your targets at a restaurant to hear the conversation while you go to the restroom

- Substitute one of the targets legitimate cards with a bugged card via covert entry at the target's home or office

- Obtain the cooperation of the target's employer or health club to swap their usual ID card for a bugged ID card

- With the cooperation of the target's bank or credit card issuer or insurance provider, send the target a replacement card or "upgrade" card which is now bugged

- Issue a bugged driver's license whenever the target goes to renew their license. Or send them a fine by mail to force them to visit the driver licensing office and then invent a reason to reissue the target's driver's license when they visit

- Whenever someone applies for or renews a Global Entry, Sentri, or Nexus card, issue a bugged card if they are on the target list

You're missing a very important limiting factor: battery life. You can't fit a lot of battery in the space of a credit card, and you can't exactly count on unwitting carriers to properly recharge and maintain them.

Given those constraints, practical applications would be severely limited. As the article mentions, it's probably undercover personnel who are carrying these. The power budget would likely rule out remote access or remote streaming. I'm guessing these credit card snitches are little more than local audio/video recorders with very limited run time.

You'd be very surprised just how little energy a radio can get away with. We're talking energy scales where ambient radio waves are a viable source of power.

It's totally viable to have a device like this with an essentially infinite battery life. You have to compromise on audio quality, recording time, and upload rate, but you can. It's not even anything particularly crazy or difficult.

The more practical way is a remote power supply. You can get a small amount of power at a good distance with radio. Just enough to keep the recorder ticking and to charge a capacitor for transmit bursts.

Most of these are obviated by a wallet app on the phone.

What you say is true.

But I find it funny that we can prevent expensive highly-targeted individual bugging by using a ubiquitous worldwide realtime tracking and surveillance system (a smartphone!).

So I guess some analysis methods:

1. The center of gravity will likely be all off.

2. X-ray or just a powerful enough light

3. My favourite and I wish hamas did this for their pagers: carolimetric analysis (ie: set it on fire and see how many btu’s come out): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorimeter

(Oops, hezbollah, not hamas!)

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