Conversations remotely detected from cell phone vibrations, researchers report

An emerging form of surveillance, wireless tapping, explores the possibility of remotely deciphering conversations from the tiny vibrations produced by a cell phone’s earpiece. With the goal of protecting users’ privacy from potential bad actors, a team of computer science researchers at Penn State demonstrated that transcriptions of phone calls can be generated from radar measurements taken up to 3 meters, or about 10 feet, from a phone. While accuracy remains limited—around 60% for a vocabulary of up to 10,000—the findings raise important questions about future privacy risks.

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