http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1
Paranoid? Better skip to the next story. A technology being researched by a pair of University of Oslo Physicists pairs a video system to 300 microphones arranged in a circle, allowing the system to “zoom in” on individual noises or conversations. The video demonstrates how at one time it can listen to a player venting his frustration or someone popping bubble gum next to the coach.
It works by, well, having 300 microphones pointing in every direction to begin with — but there’s more to it than that. The video system has to figure out when the sound from a certain spot would have reached various microphones, and then use interference information from those microphones to find the “right” sound.
Pretty creepy, eh? They might install these all over the place if they were a little smaller.