MIT grad student Abe Davis, along with colleagues, has demonstrated the ability to eavesdrop by reading the vibrations on objects such as a potato chip bag. Dubbed the “Visual Microphone”, Davis was able to use a regular digital camera to perform this feat. Which means that someone could appear to be filming the table next to you, but are actually about to decode what you are saying. Davis, along with MIT professors Frédo Durand and Bill Freeman, have also used this method to eavesdrop on the vibrations in a glass of water, and even on the leafs of a potted plant.

SOPA Activist and RSS author Aaron Swartz, co-founder of Reddit, has been found dead in his Brooklyn, NY apartment, from a hanging suicide. The 26 year-old was facing Federal prosecution for allegedly stealing 4.8 million documents from MIT’s computer networks, as well as from JSTOR, or Journal Storage, a nonprofit organization that offers journals and scholarly books to subsidized institutions. The death came as a shock to Swartz’s parents and girlfriend, who never expected him to hang himself, and they contend that the suicide was as a result of a “criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach.”