Audio Record capture demonstration via Android SDK
These pages are for a research project, PilferShush, that examines the hidden methods that the Internet-of-Things uses to communicate with mobile phones and how its unregulated spread can challenge the way we think about public and private space.
This hidden method is the broadcast of inaudible sounds from IoT devices and services using near-ultra high frequency (NUHF) audio between 18 kHz to 24 Khz. The purpose of using such hidden sounds is to identify the person and their phone without our awareness.
Another method, increasingly popular, is to use Audio Content Recognition (ACR) systems. These SDKs are embedded in apps and utilise the microphone to record television adverts, programs and other “ambient” sounds.
Today’s urban landscape is filled with creepy teddy bears, billboards that identify you, televisions that watch you, buildings and shops that track you and phones that will always listen to what you say. Combined they form part of a massive evolution in the way technology defines the economy and mediates social relations.
The deriving of profit from digitised identities, behaviours and actions has seen the rise of outsourcing of labour at the forefront of the digital economy. From the isolated and speculative income of the Uber driver and the unprotected food delivery rider, to the access of vital social services via online apps; the sharing economy socialises the risks, debts and running costs while privatising the profits.
One method to extract profit from human digital labour is to digitise the Time and Motion surveillance of the factory into software known as trackers. This type of software is typically made available for developers to include within their apps. It can provide a source of revenue via the exchange of gleaned statistics about who is using the app and how. Companies profit from this type of information by connecting the capabilities of tracker software with massive relational databases. These databases exist for the specific purpose of identifying people by their behaviours, their traits, their habits and their possessions. And from here the professed intention is to anticipate “your needs” before you are aware of them.
Other than overt surveillance, an app with an SDK in it that uses the microphone for NUHF recordings can be used for contactless payments. While it may offer a secure method with encrypted data, the reliance on audio signals from a potentially unknown source that cause payment transactions directly on the mobile phone may not be the most sensible use of this technology. Several of the companies involved in this area also have partnerships with advertising/marketing tracker companies or are directly involved in advertising. In some ways the use of the mobile phone’s microphone could viewed as if it were a bluetooth radio: something that needs to be turned on manually and has an indication that it is running and can potentially record any audio.
Understanding this process may reveal the current scale of internet based surveillance and why privacy and the right to privacy is important. And why your phone doesn’t need to record your conversations to know anything about you.
A demonstration of an ACR Audio Tracker
coming soon NUHF Audio Tracker page