Amazing stuff!
What is the definition of serendipity?
"Fiber optic cables used to detect earthquakes may also be able to eavesdrop on nearby conversations. Researchers reported last week at the European Geosciences Union meeting that distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) can accurately capture the faint vibrations of human speech.
DAS works by firing laser pulses down a fiber cable and measuring tiny changes in any light that reflects back. Geophysicists increasingly use the technique to study earthquakes, volcanoes, traffic, and even pedestrian footfalls, taking advantage of both dedicated research cables and unused “dark fiber” already buried beneath cities and oceans.
But in field tests, researchers found that exposed, coiled cables could also pick up nearby speech from several meters away. Feeding the signals into Whisper, a free AI transcription tool, produced readable real-time transcripts.
“Not many people realize that [fiber optic cables] can detect acoustic waves,” said geophysicist Jack Lee Smith. “This could be a privacy concern.”
The effect was limited: buried cables and straight fiber lines recorded speech poorly. Still, researchers say the findings highlight unexpected privacy risks as DAS use expands."
Fiber optic cables can eavesdrop on nearby conversations "Cables used to detect earthquakes can also capture the faint vibrations of speech"
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