The Thing

[huhtenberg]

Soviets attempted to repeat this in the 80s when passive eavesdropping devices were embedded into concrete slabs and columns used in a construction of new US embassy and supplied by local contractors [1].

From what I remember the case lingered well into Perestroika period when complete documentation on this project was passed to the Americans as a gesture of "goodwill and friendship", presumably in exchange for chicken leg imports (aka "Bush legs") and other Western luxuries.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/15/world/the-bugged-embassy-...

[wyc]

Once on an international flight, I overheard some construction workers describe how the US government must fly in US citizenship-holding personnel and US sourced materials in construction of certain foreign projects for security reasons. Does anyone know more about this?

[dlgtho]

There is a famous Soviet joke about it.

Question to Armenian Radio:

- What is American embassy built from?

- Micro-concrete.

- What's Micro-concrete?

- 10% concrete, 90% microphones

[paulie_a]

My memory might be fuzzy but I believe Kevin Paulson had Intel on the embassy bugs. It was years ago when I read it but I kind of assumed that played a role in a shorter prison sentence.

[amelius]

If you are a high ranking government official and receive a gift that you want to keep in your office, then make a replica, and put that on your wall instead.

[unnouinceput]

And lose the opportunity to do a counter-intelligence move on your part? No way. Better analyze the shit of those "gifts", hope they are bugged and then use them to feed false information while you keep your real intelligence room free of anything.

[taneq]

It's like the old "never click on a link in an unsolicited email" rule.

[geekamongus]

You can always re-gift.

[acqq]

The creator is interesting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Léon_Theremin

And his most famous creation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin

[aaronharnly]

There's a great 80-minute documentary about Theremin – I heartily recommend it. The highlight is a very trippy interview with Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys -- the interview really has to be seen to be believed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_0WmqnC6eA

Looks like the documentary is no longer on Netflix, but it is on Amazon Prime streaming. Rotten Tomatoes for the movie:

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/theremin_an_electronic_odys...

[geekamongus]

And if you are interested in buying a Theremin:

https://www.moogmusic.com/synthesizers?type=52

[minipci1321]

Interesting? Wikipedia article doesn't even get close. There are various accounts of his life and achievements, memoirs of witnesses, people who knew him in various contexts, the descendants/family, records of his own recollections -- all available on Internet. Unfortunately, most of it is in Russian. Reading it gives you that messy, undefinable feeling of experiencing a genius.

[gibspaulding]

There are a surprising number of popular songs which have actually used the theremin. Perhaps the most recognizable is "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys. You can hear the theremin especially clearly in the background of the first chorus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eab_beh07HU

[tim333]

Theremin playing a theremin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5qf9O6c20o

[lebowen]

I'm currently reading "Spycatcher" by Peter Wright, I would recommend if you're interested in topics like this.

[jhbadger]

It is fascinating. People often disregard the book because its main thesis, the identity of a mole within MI5, appears to be misguided in light of post-Cold War knowledge. But there's more to the book than Wright's speculations -- it's his direct experiences with things like analyzing The Thing that make the book worth reading.

[ptero]

Lev Termen is a legend. His work and inventions (as a young engineer; under Ioffe; in prison, etc) shows a huge breadth. Such coupling of talent in physics and engineering has always been rare.

[patagonia]

For a moment I was so excited. I thought my favorite road trip oddity made it to HN.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(roadside_attraction...

[0-_-0]

I expected the movie:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(1982_film)

[wyc]

I always wonder why open source mass surveillance isn't in fuller swing. Imagine a Kickstarter for $2 credit card-sized disposable listening devices which can mesh network for autocorrelated quality-enhancing signal reconstruction and 3d localization. They could be hidden behind objects and hard to detect. With a cellularly connected golf ball-sized gateway, they could egress data or receive updates. At this price point, there would be even less harbor from clandestine listening.

[ascagnel_]

Why bother with dedicated hardware when most adults carry around a general-purpose device with a microphone, an internet connection, and some vulnerable software that can do the work for you?

[cookingrobot]

My paranoid fantasy is that this was already built into smoke detectors decades ago. Required by building codes to be in every room, with a guaranteed power supply, and small radioactive detector component that probably has a really small and controlled supply chain.

[phry]

there was a post on here a few months ago detailing something very similar, but for video, not audio. I can't recall the name unfortunately.

edit

found it

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19529921

[bastawhiz]

Because wifi is ubiquitous and everyone has an old cell phone laying around. If you need something the size of a credit card, who the hell are you? Who are you spying on that notices a pocket sized device hidden in a room? You can probably afford to build your own hardware.

Almost everyone that needs to bug a room is either 1. Catching their partner in an act of infidelity or 2. A professional with money to spend, and isn't spying on a nation state.

[hosteur]

Maybe it is?

[madengr]

Maybe someday the Soviet side of things will be declassified, and we can read the technical account from that end. Would be interesting.

There seem to be some technical unknowns in the article. I don’t think you can get FM back from the passive cavity, just AM, unless you can pump the cavity with feedback. Same goes for re-radiating at a harmonic. Maybe if the Q of the cavity were super high. Again, would be interesting to see the technical details of the receiving equipment.

[unnouinceput]

There is nothing unknown in the article. You can do this at home as well. Is very well explained how it works. For start I would suggest you get technical of how Yagi antennas work, it's the same principle coupled with cavity resonator + membrane movement used in a microphone. In the end you get your high frequency beamed back modulated by the sound. And is not AM modulation, is FM modulation. But what article indeed lacks is the power required to get the device working properly. In my experience I would guess at least 1KW would've been beamed directly at the embassy walls when Soviets were doing their surveillance using this device.

[elvecinodeabajo]

I think it stills classified because it stills being in use.

[VLM]

My guess is the excitation power is broadband, which explains the unusually high power required.

Smooth white noise with a spectrum 50 KHz wide centered on the theoretical center of the resonator, then the 3rd harmonic can rebroacast a resonant tiny high Q slice of up to 150 KHz deviation FM as the microphone diaphragm wiggles with sound.

Imagine a transmitter design where you make a very powerful white noise signal, then filter out a little bit of some tuned frequency and pass that narrow sliver out the antenna. A historical example of this transmitter topology would be old fashioned spark gap transmitter generating noise from DC to daylight as they used to say, then couple it to a resonant antenna. "The Thing" is merely a much more elaborate and refined variation on the idea.

[georgeNT]

The receiving equipment is a standard CW illuminator, see compatible model here:

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/01/ctx4000_nsa_e...

[phaer]

First stumpled upon this because it's mentioned in the slides of https://idlewords.com/talks/our_comrade_the_electron.htm

[gene-h]

I wonder if there are any uses for mechanically modulated retroreflectors today. NASA is investigating fully mechanical rovers for Venus because semiconductors do not work very well at Venusian temperatures while mechanical devices do[0]. To get data back from a fully mechanical device they propose to use retroreflectors. Although the bandwidth they can achieve with their approaches, using semaphore messaging with retroreflectors and looking at the doppler shift provided by spinning disks, is low. Perhaps by using a device like the thing they could transmit data at acoustic rates. I am also curious if there are more down to earth applications for devices like the thing other than espionage. [0]https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/201700...

[jchrisa]

It seems like with recent meta-material advances, you could create an object that was a hidden bug, without any hidden parts. Like if you tuned one of those metal concentric ring windchimes just right, it could modulate a radio signal based on acoustic vibrations.

[giarc]

I'm guessing the hinge was added for the museum display right?

[upofadown]

The description of the operation of this thing always seems incomplete. From the Wikipedia article:

>The length of the antenna and the dimensions of the cavity were engineered in order to make the re-broadcast signal a higher harmonic of the illuminating frequency.

That wouldn't actually work by itself. There would have to be some sort of non-linear element to cause the harmonics. Chances are there was something like a varactor in there. The original technical description probably omitted critical details because spooks are like that...

[weberc2]

Another interesting Thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing_(assembly)

[canada_dry]

It isn't hard to imagine that the recent occurrence of mysterious illnesses at US and Canadian embassies (news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17891427) may be related to this. Perhaps they are activating or experimenting with some new type of device. Given that the Theremin type of device confounded detection for years we probably won't actually know for a while.

[szczys]

Yeah... theramin's bug. This is a great story! What a brilliant example of passively powered electronics from 75 years ago. Now it's all the rage to build this king of functionality into passive sensors, etc.

[simonebrunozzi]

> The device, a passive cavity resonator, became active only when a radio signal of the correct frequency was sent to the device from an external transmitter.

Super interesting, especially given this was early 1940s.

[natas]

How far can the receiver be from the thing to still get a good signal?

[Bakary]

Are there any good books on Communist science and innovations?