[bigiain]

Does anybody else wonder how advanced audio surveillance tech is, if commercial off the shelf consumer products are _this good_ at eavesdropping?

Has anyone ever tried putting a HomePod at the focus of a large parabolic (audio) reflector, and pointing it at their neighbours windows or people across the park?

[rjplatte]

The parabolic reflector might be unnecessary...

[bigiain]

When I was a kid, I had this toy that was a cardboard tube with a 12-14" plastic parabolic dish on it and a microphone at the focus with earphones. It was surprisingly effective at letting you hear conversations from long-ish distances.

Reading this page made me wonder just how good the NSA's version of that toy is these days assuming they've got multi-microphone and signal processing gear at least as good as (and probably an order or two of magnitude better than) what Apple will sell you for a few hundred bucks...

Hi gain 2.4/5GHz antennas aren't "necessary" for wardriving, but they make new things possible if you do use them...