Comment by GigabyteCoin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by GigabyteCoin | Hacker News Reader

The US border agents have many means of acquiring information.

I have a relative who lives in a Canadian border town.

She was crossing the border with a friend the other day (as they and other locals do weekly if not daily). Her friend happened to make a comment about the border agent's sunglasses when they were a few cars from the gate with their windows closed. There was nobody outside of the car that could have possibly heard them, or so they thought.

When they approached the gate, the first thing the agent said to them was "what dont you like about my sunglasses?"

They ended up getting through, but it just goes to show you the type of game they're playing over there.

I'm assuming they had either lip readers assigned to multiple hidden cameras or directional antennaes manned by many workers inside.

I have personally been lied to numerous times by border agents. Perhaps they just acccused her of being mentally ill because she was going on the march of dimes tour and she got offended, who knows?

Or he could have pointed at his eyes making a sunglass shape and the agent happened to be glancing over the cars really quick. I don't know, this is too conspiratorial for me and it should not diverge from the real issue at hand.

How is the possibility of using listening devices near the border "conspiratorial"? There are many ways to accomplish this using publicly available technology. Using the C word to dismiss a conversation prevents us from having a legitimate discussion about whether something is appropriate.

Listening devices in people's cars is what I think is taking it too far. I am from from calling anything conspiratorial.

They wouldn't need to be in people's cars. You could just bounce a laser off the car windshield to hear what's going on inside.

This strikes me as a great tactic, as I can imagine people that are preparing to lie to the authorities may be corroborating their story as they approach the gate.

What surprises me is that the border patrol officer would tip this hand over such a minor thing.

Fair enough. I was not really aware those technologies are/might be used this intrusively.

Would that work on a car, considering it's vibrating from the engine running?

Check this out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpectraLayers http://vimeo.com/32731023#at=0

Ok that's pretty damn cool, I didn't know that was possible. But the car vibrations might still be too much noise, and I don't know if it's possible to automatically remove the noise like that.

Just considering the possibility isn't too conspiracy theory-ish, but considering it based solely on a single anecdote that could have alternate reasonable explanations (for example, a guard actually was near the car and they just didn't notice) is a little ridiculous, especially when there clearly is a serious issue to be discussed here.

I didn't want to turn that comment into a novel, but the reason they tell that story is because it's generally accepted as fact (among many other local border town residents) that the USA has means of listening to you speak in your car before you even approach the gate.

When did that become a reality? It certainly wasn't the case just 5 years ago.

I have absolutely no idea. That's just what my relatives tell me.

Well, the Canadian border agents were running an eavesdropping program until it became public and they supposedly stopped doing it. I think that if the canadians were doing they were only following in the footsteps of the US side.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/ottawa-halts-program-to-eavesdr...

Border agent has skills. I know there's no way I could manage to question the car I'm supposed to be questioning while simultaneously listening in on the conversations of every other car.

Why would you? Capture the audio, convert to text, trigger on words like "border agent", "customs", "guard", "bomb", "drugs", etc. and then have someone in the basement reviewing the conversations that trigger the alert and passing the important bits up to the guy in the booth.

"they don't like your sunglasses" is one of the important triggers?

No, but talking about the border guards could well be. Then Jim downstairs listens to the clip, gets a laugh, and ims his buddy upstairs "hey Ted, red car says your sunglasses are ugly lol".

Has anybody seen the first five minutes of Super Troopers? The kids in the car no doubt felt the cops had mind reading powers.

"you know how fast you were going?" "65?" "63." [kid freaks out]

"you feeling ok?" "yes sir" "did you say 'yes sir' or yeah sure'?" [kid freaks out]

I imagine that's how most of these stories go in real life. Cop's a bit of a jerk, victim freaks out and imagines all sorts of terrifying threats. And of course the story always gets better in the telling.

I'm pretty sure that's what happened in a nut-shell.

I have a relative who lives in a Canadian border town

She might have simply lied to you about the whole incident.

She could have, sure. But she doesn't have a history of doing that. I have known her for almost 30 years.

I don't get it. How?

Maybe laser microphones aimed at the windscreens. Lots of ways.

If the car motor is on while on the waiting line a laser microphone would probably just register a huge amount of noise

I bet you could remove it fairly easily. Use another laser to count the revs or something. Your brain does most of the work in removing noise from speech.

Or just use two microphones—one aimed at the windshield and one at the bonnet—and subtract one from the other.

Then it turns into a significantly more complex problem. The thing with removing noise from speech is that the amount of vibration from the glass due to speech is negligible compared to the vibration due to the motor

I don't think it's that straightforward, a few feet of difference in source position amounts to a phase shift of significant percentage of a wavelength at audio frequencies. You can't just flip phase and sum. It was also my understanding that laser microphones require very precise alignment, and getting one lined up normal to a convex, moving windshield is at least a tiny bit more than "trivial"

At least at the Washington border, there are large signs telling you to turn off your engine while in line. Presumably this is for environmental reasons, but there maybe additional benefits.

From what I understand about speakers, a vibrating piece of glass would be an amazing one. Especially for sophisticated equipment.

Standard parabolic mic might be good enough.

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