By Jocelyn Kiefel, Leslie Liu, and Yousif Alnajjar
This project explores avenues for mass audio surveillance, how they can be orchestrated by higher powers to encourage compliance, and how the people would react to such a severe invasion of privacy.
The year is 2035. Emerging research is starting to show a clear trend in the decline of the population's hearing ability. Mass migration to cities, where noise and sound pollution are constant factors, are thought to be behind this boom. Beyond this, it has been found that hearing damage can cause epigenetic changes, causing a compounding impact to hearing ability across multiple generations.
More concerningly (for certain billionaires that profit off the labor of the masses), the economic impact of the decline in hearing has been proven to be catastrophic. Money is being pumped into both public awareness campaigns, and lobbying officials to implement sweeping mitigations.
Money talks. The government has been looking into various methods of protecting and improving hearing. One seems particularly promising: government-mandated earplugs. What some governmental organizations really like about this is the potential for new means of surveillance.
Schemes have been put into place to begin distributing "Plug" devices, initially claiming it as a stop-gap solution while a more effective and long-lasting solution is found by big pharma. Many of the same tactics used to successfully push the COVID vaccine have been adapted for this campaign.
PUBLIC_SERVICE_ANNOUNCEMENT.mp4
At the start, people see this device as a reasonable safeguard for an important aspect of their health. There are some that voice concerns about the intrusiveness of this product. Something just feels off.
As time passes, and big pharma fails to find a lasting solution, the Plug becomes an everyday part of life to the pacified masses. But those who feared at the start only grow more concerned.
A rag-tag group of engineers start working together to explore these devices deeper, dissecting what feels like an overly complex way to protect hearing. After weeks of investigation, a microscopic componenet is identified with characteristics of a microphone. Hiddden in plain sight by a mess of mostly useless components.
In their attempts to spread this infomation, they find their voices crushed by the powers that be. This group, who name themselves plug^2, in honor of the mission of plugging the Plug, find that no matter what they try, they are always one-step behind. The powers have access to their every word - when the devices are modified to remove the microphone component, officials are alerted and replace the altered devices.
This repository is the culmination of their efforts to reverse engineer the devices to build an emulator component that can covertly replace the Plug microphone. It serves as a guide to the plug^2 community that has grown rapidly with the corresponding rise in distrust for the government.
- 01_MODULE
- BUILD.md
- SOUND_GEN_MODEL.pkl
- 02_ARTIFACTS
- DIAGRAM.png
- POSTER_041725.png
- POSTER_080825.png
- MISC
- 03_INSTRUCTIONS.md
| File | Description |
|---|---|
03_INSTRUCTIONS.md |
Instructions on diassembly, microphone replacement, and reassembly |
01_MODULE\BUILD.md |
Instructions on building the microphone replacement |
01_MODULE\SOUND_GEN_MODEL.pkl |
The pretrained AI noise generation model |
02_ARTIFACTS\DIAGRAM.png |
Schematic produced during the reverse engineering process |
02_ARTIFACTS\POSTER_041725.png |
Poster for a community event on April 4th 2025 |
02_ARTIFACTS\POSTER_080825.png |
Poster for a community event on August 8th 2025 |
02_ARTIFACTS\MISC\ |
Miscellaneous artifacts |