You may never have thought that your daily breathing will one day become the object of being spied on or even used. This is not an exaggerated plot in science fiction movies, but a disturbing trend in the prediction of future scientific and technological crimes. We are used to wearing masks in public places to protect ourselves from viruses, but soon, you may need a new mask to protect your digital privacy.

Imagine this scene: you are in a coffee shop, whispering with your friends. You think your conversation is private, but not far away, a seemingly harmless device is working quietly. It is not a microphone, nor a camera, but a new type of bug using respiratory sensor and air chemical analysis technology. It can capture the trace chemicals that you exhale in the air, such as carbon dioxide and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and combine with biometric algorithms to analyze your tone and mood when you speak, and even restore your voice frequency and speech speed in some cases.

This sounds incredible, but the scientific principle behind it is not complicated. Our breathing is far from a simple gas exchange. Every exhalation carries microscopic information of our bodies. From metabolites to emotional hormones, these "chemical fingerprints" silently tell our physical condition and mental state. Through deep learning of big data and artificial intelligence, criminals can build a huge database of "breathing patterns". When they deploy these micro-sensors in public places, they can match and analyze the captured data in real time, so as to reverse restore your identity information, conversation content and even your emotional fluctuations.

The emergence of this criminal pattern will completely subvert our traditional perception of privacy. We are used to protecting our cameras, microphones and personal data, but we never thought that the physiological characteristics closest to us and the most instinctive will become the new target of attack. The criminal cost of this kind of "breathing eavesdropping" is extremely low. Only cheap sensors and powerful algorithms are needed to collect personal information on a large scale without attracting attention. Imagine that executives of financial institutions talk about the details of transactions in restaurants, politicians make speeches in public, and even ordinary people discuss private affairs with their families at home. Every breath they take may be recorded, analyzed and used.

What is even more frightening is that this technology can also be used in more destructive crimes. By analyzing the stress hormones in breathing, hackers can judge whether a person is in a state of tension or anxiety, so as to accurately manipulate psychology in social engineering attacks. By analyzing VOCs, they can even infer a person's health and provide a basis for extortion and fraud. Your body has inadvertently become a data terminal that exposes all your secrets.

Faced with such a novel and difficult-to-guard threat, traditional security measures are pale and powerless. Firewalls and encryption technologies can only protect the digital world, but they can't protect your physical existence. We may need to rethink the definition of digital identity, which is no longer just a user name and password on the screen, but every subtle feature of our body. In the future, protecting privacy may not only be as simple as turning off the camera or microphone, but also require us to be more alert to our physiological signals than ever before. This is not only a technical war, but also a profound revolution about our physical sovereignty and personal privacy. You, are you ready?

（Writer：Lorik）