Another end of privacy

An astonishing piece of research, found through Bruce Schneier which shows that a sound recording of a typist at work for fifteen minutes can be analysed to reveal almost every word they typed. The trick is that the keys on any keyboar make slightly different noises. You then analyse those noises by frequency (of occurrence not pitch) and that tells you roughly which pitch represents which letter. Then you have a transcript of everything typed. This has been done at Berkeley — but the really scary thing comes in the comments, where someone points out that an open skype connection — or any other voip — means that the bad guys don’t have to sneak in and plant a microphone. I suppose this is good news for spooks. Otherwise, I file it in the same drawer as “RNAi works on humans, too”