 Kauai Studios. This is another episode of Security Matters. I'm your host, Andrew Lanning. Today I've got Cameron Javdani with us. We're going to talk about audio insecurity. Cameron, thanks for joining me today, sir. Hi, Andrew. It's good to be with you. Hey, thanks, man. You built me out. I had a cancellation, so I'm glad you were available. We're going to talk about, this is something a lot of people don't think about, is audio insecurity. You know, the world's used to seeing video and we've heard about all those stories. I think a lot of people don't even know that audios attach to alarm systems and they don't know about remote video or audio verification. Which is something I think I was playing with over cellular, as a matter of fact, back in the early 90s. You know, I remember these old, I think it was Eagle boards and you could attach like an electric microphone and you know, you could have your central station listen in. I know when a thief's making, you know, stealing stuff, he's opening drawers and making all this noise. And then when you ask for who you are, he says, oh, I'm the plumber, you know, or whatever, and then they try to keep him there until the police arrive, right? So that was always a gimmick. But anyway, you've got a long history with audio. Why don't you take our audience for those who may not know you through your, as much as you care to share your history and bring us up to how you got in the role you've got today. Sure, be happy to. I'm coming up on roughly a decade in the security industry entirely with sound and security systems, audio in integration with camera systems or recording systems. It's funny you mentioned that you were using sound back in the day because frankly, it's not a new technology to the industry. It's a very straightforward technology for the industry. But we see it used quite sparingly for a few different reasons. My background in the industry came when I joined liberal electronics in 2011. I think they got going in 1979. So perhaps well before you were, you were working with the equal boards and attaching mics onto them. I think today we might take raspberry pi boards and attach an electric condenser microphone onto there as well. So I worked there for quite a few years and last summer found it sound secure with the intention of doing something a little bit different for the industry to bring audio more mainstream to make it more accessible for a lot of customers that were choosing between something at the high end or something at the low end with garbled quality or distorted sound. So we see it used from time to time in retail applications and law enforcement applications. Like you mentioned for that evidentiary equality or to just find out what happened when video doesn't give you that clear explanation. When I was playing with it, the most dissatisfying thing was like when somebody would turn away from the mic and their voice would fail. And so in certain conditions you had to sort of build like a little soundstage and that was something you could do with LaRue. You could have multiple mics and you could, I think it was, I want to say eight by eight. Was that a product that was involved with, I did some, it was a video and audio. I think I tied LaRue to eight little eight by eight boxes. There was so many, so much that stuff going on back then, it was interesting. But for your purposes, when you were with LaRue, what was the sort of push? Where was the market strong? Like when you started. So we see a big shift in the industry and when I started with LaRue in 2011 the main users of audio for their security systems were police and they used it primarily in interview rooms. So does that count as a security system against intrusion or burglary or robbery or fraud? Potentially, I mean it's tied to cameras, right? But the risk in that interview room is certainly different if you're a retailer looking to protect your shop and your inventory. Over time though, what we saw was a broadening of demand across a number of different verticals. And I think the big driver on that was not our own industry. It was the fact that consumer electronic devices have integrated sound for years. And now everyone is accustomed to whatever piece of electronics they have. It's got to have sound on it. If you think of Alexa or Google Home or Siri on your iPhone, they're all using sound. And if you open up your camera on your phone and record video, your camera records audio automatically. And so practitioners of security among end users are saying, why do I have this feature in function on my cell phone but not in my security system? I'm not going to go hang iPhones around my building, right? So I think more and more regardless of the market sector, consumer electronics are driving demand for our types of technology for security applications. That makes total sense. I really didn't consider how just common it is, right? When you turn on a recording device for video today, the audio of course gets picked up. Have there been major improvements in quality? I mentioned how the electric microphones you turn away and all of a sudden you couldn't hear. I don't know if people in our audience, if folks have had to review video of an event where there is no audio. And it's amazing the content that's contained in that audio when you can put it together with video. So it's super valuable. What's driven improvements, I guess, in there for tying it into video? Because even on your iPhone sometimes, the audio is not the best, but it's usually pretty good. Of course, that's a phone. It's usually really good and functions like speech to text are getting pretty accurate now. But I think more and more we see a number of signal processing features like background noise cancellation echo cancellation and a focus on voice for a lot of different applications. Certainly our focus of sound secure is to pick up voices. So when we talk to a convenience store who wants to have a mic over the point of sale. So in case of a robbery, they can pick up additional evidence of the robber. They don't want to hear the home of the ventilation system didn't want to hear the home of the cooler with the ice cream right in front of the cash register. They want to pick up on those vocal frequencies. So having circuitry that's designed for voice and a frequency response that's designed for voice is very advantageous for a large number of mainstream users of security equipment who want to add an audio. Now when you look at products with a large frequency response for for the sounds that they hear from say 300 Hertz all the way up to 16,000 20,000 Hertz. Those are advantageous for technologies like gunshot detection. So depending on what the customer is looking to pick up or the nature of their security system will help inform what Mike type to pick. So just like you have different camera types with different features and functions, you're going to have audio devices and mics and speakers that all have those that variation in their features and functions as well. For our purposes, where we look to convenience stores or quick service restaurants or broadly speaking the retail industry. Typically the point of sale is the area of focus because if there's a robbery at a convenience store going to happen at the cash register. There's a robbery at a quick service restaurant or if someone's complaining that they ordered cheese burgers but they got chicken nuggets instead. That's going to happen at the point of sale. So customers are primarily concerned with voices in those areas, which is why we put together technology that focuses specifically for voice and cancels out those other higher frequencies that are needed. So is that like a tunable feature? Can you dial it in for voice and then also expand it or is it a different type of a chipset that's required? It's possible to do it through software programming, but most of the time when systems are put in, you set it and forget it. I'm sounding like that infomercial from back in the 90s, right? You don't want to have to constantly be tuning your security system for anticipated situations, right? So if you are an owner of a convenience store and you want to have a mic over the register in case of a robbery or in case of employee fraud or internal theft, you're not going to want to have to change the settings on your devices all the time to then pick up gunshot detection frequencies or glass break frequencies. You would probably want either independent systems or an all-in-one system, which is possible, but there are trade-offs to do that. So more and more we see, especially for our customer base, we see customers that want to pick up voice at point of sale who probably don't need the same caliber of systems that the federal government uses with the FBI or in military CID interview rooms, but they want to have audio that's clear, that's not garbled, that's not distorted. And so our solution is geared towards that segment of the market. And was that some engineering? Was there a gap in the market when you said, you know, we really could do this better? So you went into manufacturing mode and decided to branch out? Yeah, the impetus behind it was if I stood back and I took a look at the offerings in the industry today, and you have high-end technology out there that works for FBI interview rooms, that works for law enforcement across the board, federal, state, and local, that works for military police. Super high quality, you can hear a whisper from 20 or 30 feet away. On the other side of the spectrum, you had cheap consumer electronic type devices that you can pick up at a retailer like Best Buy, but the quality maybe wasn't there, the pickup range wasn't there, maybe it broke down after a few months, maybe it was garbled or distorted. And you had those two offerings at polar opposite ends of the market and absolutely nothing being offered in the middle. So the idea behind starting up SoundSecure was to offer a product that would fit that segment in the middle of the market where customers need audio, they want to pick up sound for the reasons that you mentioned, but they don't need to break the bank necessarily and they don't need that super high level of technology that the feds are using or that law enforcement are using. Yeah, and I know I think everyone's been on the, you know, at the drive, driving in a gate trying to talk to the guard and he's going rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah. And you're talking as you slow down and he slows down, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah. You know, it's like really, is it that hard? You know, because your phone works, like you said, you know, that the consumers use to that quality. And when it doesn't happen at a, like a security gate, for example, that's a really bad experience. I mean, you know, it makes our industry look bad. It's, it's interesting. It's always interesting to me. It happens all the time. Absolutely it does. And if you think about other instances, other events where sound is used, if you ever go to a conference and there's a speaker at the conference who's practically eating the microphone and the sound is distorted and garbled, everyone says, stop, hold on, we got to fix the sound quality, right? Or if you start a presentation and your lapel mic isn't working, and everyone in the back says, stop, we can't hear you. Yeah. But when it comes time to play back the footage of a robbery at a convenience store or the cash register, it's silent. And so offering that we have is one that solves that problem where you can hear what's going on. And you get that additional evidence. The other benefit that we're seeing more and more of today are central stations wanting to verify alarms before dispatching police to respond to them. In a number of municipalities that are escalating fines for false alarm dispatches. So if you have a typical security system of cameras and access control and audio included, the central station can then pull up the live feed of the mic and listen for people yelling for help or glass breaking or gunshots or some other type of sound that would indicate a crime in progress or an emergency in progress that they would need to dispatch for. So it's a very cost effective way to mitigate false alarms. And then on top of that, after the fact you get the evidentiary quality sound and evidence for the investigators to refer back to. It's awesome. Doesn't it? It makes you wonder, you know, how do we do this without audio? You know, as an industry, it just, it got put in. It didn't get built in, which is kind of interesting. So you're definitely filling the niche that we need. It's interesting Andrew too. If our audio cut out on this webcast, I have a feeling the producers would panic, right? Because, you know, look, I like you, but the video feed of you and I isn't something that's going to get a lot of work, right? Yeah, we let the video suffer and we pop up your face, you know, your face shot and we just keep talking. The audio usually persists, but the video... That's the sound of all the viewers clicking off right now. Well, let's go pay some bills. We take about a one minute break here and we'll be right back. Hi, I'm Rusty Kamori, host of Beyond the Lines. I have a TV show based on my book, which is also called Beyond the Lines. It's about leadership, creating a superior culture of excellence and building winning teams. We are having a fun drive for Think Tech Hawaii and please, please, please, please help us keep these shows going. Please go on our website, thinktechawaii.com to donate. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, Aloha and welcome back to the studio. We are live. We're talking about audio today and if you haven't played with a lot of audio and security cameras walking us through why you should be looking at this for your customers. Where were we? Let's see. We were talking about adding this product on. We were talking about bringing value. Let's talk a little bit about some of the things that held it back and I think there were... I think people misunderstood some of the laws, some of the privacy stuff that might be considered. What's the... Well, maybe a little history of that and then what's the status today? What concerns do you come across most about recording audio? I think a lot of folks in the industry are rightfully concerned about people's rights to privacy. That's something that our industry is addressing regardless of the technology, if it's sound, if it's facial recognition today. Back in the day, you remember people saying, you can't put up cameras in the workplace. It's an invasion of privacy. And then when it was communicated how people are properly managing that data, people become a little bit more accepting of it. But the rights to privacy are certainly at the forefront of people's minds. So for audio specifically, post Watergate, a number of state statutes were enacted under wiretapping laws. So you couldn't have your neighbor's phone line, right? No one wants to have that. But the way the laws were written is more broadly than just wiretapping. So across the country today, in all 50 states, except for Vermont, which has no state wiretapping law but is still subject to the federal wiretapping law, you'll find states are either one party consent or all party consent. So in 38 states, if one party consents to a conversation, you can record it. If you and I are meeting at ISC West in Nevada and you want to record our conversation, Nevada is a one party consent state and you can do that. If you come to my office in California, California is an all party consent state. So everybody needs to be informed and acknowledged and consent to audio being recorded. However, all of that said, assumes there's an expectation of privacy to begin with. So if you've ever called a 1-800 customer service line, what's the first thing you hear? This call is recorded for training or for quality or for whatever reason they give you. What they're doing when they tell you that is removing your expectation that you're having a private conversation that isn't being reported. So to say that audio recording is illegal would be an indictment against every call center in the United States, which would be ridiculous, right? If you want to take it to a further degree, think of that cell phone example I gave you earlier. So if you're on vacation and you open up your camera phone to record a vacation memory and it records audio by itself, are you now breaking the law because your phone records audio? Of course not. So the application of the technology is almost more important than the statutes themselves. I'll give you another example. You and I are recording this, right? So there was no notification given to me prior to saying we're going to record your voice on this broadcast, but I have a webcam in my face. It's assumed that I know it's being recorded, right? So there's no expectation of privacy here. So what we always recommend to customers is yes, put up signage, yes, circulate a memo in your office and have people sign off on it. One way or another, remove that expectation of privacy and notify people that audio is being used. I think one of the causes of concern in our industry is that a lot of folks take the idea of security and surveillance to the nth degree and an nth degree too far in that they think they need to be the NSA or the CIA and have super top secret equipment. And the fact of the matter is most of the time you want to make sure business operations continue uninterrupted for security threats. So when we talk to, again, a convenience store, and they put up notification on their door that says 24 hour video and audio monitoring, or you talk to a retailer who plainly has a microphone over a cash register. One, they've given notice. So at that point, it doesn't matter if you're in an all party or one party consent state because you've been informed, same as the call center example. So I think for our industry, we're becoming a little bit more comfortable with audio overall because of consumer electronics again. And because people are more and more realizing hey all these other devices have this capability, something like 90% of IP cameras have audio inputs, probably 100% of analog DVRs have them. If this were an issue I wouldn't see all that opportunity for integration I wouldn't see these inputs on all these devices so I think our in our industry is having a bit of a light bulb moment when it comes to using sound for security systems. So it's something that we want to have a very objective view on. So on our website at sound secure.com, you can link over to various law firms that list out the state statutes you don't have to take my word for it you can look up the state statute. There are a number of journalism organizations that list out state statutes because if you imagine a reporter asking hey, you know Niners versus chiefs who's your team in the Super Bowl and they stick a microphone in your face to find out your answer. Did that reporter just break the law no of course not that's a ridiculous assertion. So I think more and more as people are accustomed to the various applications. They're more comfortable with embracing sound for security systems. That said, one market that we are not pursuing is the residential market, because there is such a heightened expectation of privacy in a residence that's not to say you couldn't use audio in a residence. It's just to say that the levels of privacy expectations are so high in a residence that it's not a market that we we see a lot of demand for with the carve out for residential care for elders and seniors because senior abuse is a concern. And when that happens, there is express consent typically given there's a memorandum that's given out that says we're using audio to prevent cases of abuse or monitor service levels or that sort of thing. And everyone signs off on it so it's it's very expressly consented to in that residential instance. Yeah, it's interesting you bring up the idea of the sign on the door and how how most people just assume these things are happening so they don't. I don't think they often consider like consent so like they do have the option to not enter the store when they see the sign. So they're, but I don't think most people realize they just consented to being recorded both audio and video when they entered, you know, they don't go through the process. Right, there's a difference between implied consent and express consent so press consent is you signing a document that expressly consents to something implied consent is when you stay on the phone line with that 1 800 customer service wrap. And tell them that you you know you have a service issue or you need tech support or whatever it might be. So there is a difference in terms of the two types. But again, that that signage that notification that phone recording, you've removed the expectation of privacy to begin with right this this broadcast, there's no expectation of privacy for me here. If it's going to be something embarrassing, or something else embarrassing, then, you know, it's going to be played back, and that's out there and I don't have any recourse for that, but that's. Eric to edit it. Right. So, where I'm leaving. Let's leave residential alone because the iot guys are getting in enough trouble recording people in their homes when they didn't think they were being recorded all that so we'll leave that be. Yeah, where do you think we're going to go because I, as an evidentiary component we did we've had some recent shootings here we had shooting on Pearl Harbor, and those guys. I know there's not audio there in the public spaces they were the cameras are but do you think we're going to start to see surely for that that evidence here use in public space. More and more, you know, audio recording alongside the video or what do you think what do you think the expansion space is going to be. I think retail is an obvious one, but beyond that one. Well I see quite a bit in in retail and convenience stores and when you talk about these different market segments. Some folks in our industry are a little bit bored with them, right because they are not the highest spending segments of the industry quick service restaurants are in there as well. In some cases they they do put in high end equipment but most of the time if you have a low margin business like a convenience store like a fast food restaurant that needs security, you don't have practitioners breaking the bank open to pay for the equipment. When you talk about gunshot detection, especially when you have municipal gunshot detection in public spaces. That's not a cheap technology, especially if you need it to work well. So I think we're going to see broader segmentation between the high end and the lower end in the middle of the market. But I don't anticipate seeing mics on every street corner I don't anticipate seeing you know every town square, having some kind of sound capability. One of the reasons one is the design of sound systems is just very different than video systems today with high resolution and 4k 8k cameras you can put up one or or just a few cameras and cover a huge area with just that one device. Audio doesn't work that way you need to be as close as you can be to the source of the sound that you want to hear. And when we talk about public spaces. If there's an incident or an emergency that source of the sound is going to be moving around. So it becomes very difficult to have a permanent installation with a public space. But most of the time the threats themselves that our industry exists to protect, especially in the commercial sector are going to be at those businesses that have thinner margins that need security equipment for alarm verification and evidentiary review after an emergency happens. Awesome. Super insightful. So I got one minute left. What, what would you like to share with our audience something that they maybe that we haven't covered that you think they ought to know. Well, I think just the basic of if you're in the industry and you've been doing alarm panels or DVR kits for 10 1520 years. And haven't taken a look at sound because of a preconceived notion about whether or not you can use it or because it's a new different type of technology to you and it works differently than cameras do. Don't be afraid to take to take a bite at it. Give it a try. You can reach out to us will walk you through all the steps that you need. And again, 90 plus percent of cameras have the capability you just plug the mic right into the camera or in an analog system plug it right into the DVR. And frankly, you're set to go. It's a straightforward technology. It's easy to add but the value it gives is is pretty darn high. Awesome Cameron. Thank you so much for joining us today and sharing with us. You know, if you're out there as Cameron said, reach out to sound secure. Try to add some audio because you really don't know what piece of evidence you may capture that you're not capturing today with video alone. So thanks again. I like all of you to remember that we're gone here every Tuesday at 10 am Hawaii time right now that's noon PST that the clock moves around a little bit. Cameron, I look forward to watching what sound secure does and I think I'll see you at IC West pretty soon, sir. I'll see you there, Andrew. Thank you for having me. Take care.