Hey, good news, folks. Soon, the NSA won’t spy on your conversations via the telecom companies. In a few years they’ll simply station an officer comfortably in your living room, probably behind that plant you should really water.
You might be thinking, “That’s stupid, marc. You’re so stupid. I would see him. God, you’re so stupid.” Mayhaps, but I’m also here to scare you with tech news as I play the foil to Kyso’s “Yay! Science!” with “Boo! Abuse!” — ’cause I’m guessing there’s already been some parallel development in the ol’ NSA labs on this sweet gear:
Reporting last week in the journal Science, physicists J.B. Pendry of Imperial College London and David Smith and David Schurig of Duke University described a way to make high-tech “metamaterials” that can funnel light around an object and make it invisible.
Metamaterials, assemblages of small artificial bits of patterned metal films, can be engineered to bend almost any kind of electromagnetic energy. Schurig said that “probably this year” scientists will produce a metamaterial that can shield equipment from microwave radiation. However, protecting objects from visible light — creating an invisibility cloak — is “further out,” he said in a telephone interview — “maybe 10 years.”
Smith compared the process to a stream flowing around a stone — essentially creating a “hole” in the water, where anything can be hidden and remain unnoticed from the outside. “We have shown it can be done for almost any frequency,” he said in a telephone interview. “Being able to build it is another story.”
So we’ve got ten years, maybe less if the military labs are ahead of the game (which the conspiracy theorists assure me is true). After that, cops and spies may soon be able to suit up like the Predator. Hopefully, they won’t make that creepy Predator noise, though.
For my money, I’d like to get my hands on this tech and rent it out to untrusting spouses and parents as a Do-It-Urself PI kit. Then I could retire to my own private island with my infrared cornea implants and live a life of privacy.
Until then, though, I’ll just keep my eye out for any extra crumbs in the corners of my pad. The conspiracy theorists also assure me that, as a side effect of the brainwashing, no NSA man can resist a Cheeto.
First use of metamaterial cloak: Spying on the Pi Delta Pis.
I’m just trying to imagine how much a single suit would cost.
(here I go with commie trivia again)
(but it sort of fits, so there)
Didja know that during Stalin times certain people were given apartments in really posh (well, comparatively) buildings that were bordering on -gasp- luxurious? Those people were generally either the military big wigs or some prominent political figure or sometimes prominent social figure (like a writer). The catch was – I am SO not making it up – practically every one of those buildings had double walls, and there were actual KGB people whose job was to stand in between the walls and listen in on the conversations. Because if you were prominent during Stalin times, it definitely meant that Stalin did NOT trust you. And you couldn’t say “no” to an offer to live in such an apartment.
There were several memoirs by children of those prominent people in which this thing is mentioned, kind of non-chalantely. I remember reading one where the woman said that the KGB peeps were not particularly concerned with being perfectly quiet.
If only the fundies realized how close to Stalin model of the government they are pushing…
*jaw hitting floor*