OAKLAND (CBS SF) — Hidden microphones that are part of a clandestine government surveillance program that has been operating around the Bay Area has been exposed.
Imagine standing at a bus stop, talking to your friend and having your conversation recorded without you knowing. It happens all the time, and the FBI doesn’t even need a warrant to do it.
Federal agents are planting microphones to secretly record conversations.
Jeff Harp, a KPIX 5 security analyst and former FBI special agent said, “They put microphones under rocks, they put microphones in trees, they plant microphones in equipment. I mean, there’s microphones that are planted in places that people don’t think about, because that’s the intent!”
FBI agents hid microphones inside light fixtures and at a bus stop outside the Oakland Courthouse without a warrant to record conversations, between March 2010 and January 2011.
Federal authorities are trying to prove real estate investors in San Mateo and Alameda counties are guilty of bid rigging and fraud and used these recordings as evidence.
Harp said, “An agent can’t just go out and grab a recording device and plant it somewhere without authorization from a supervisor or special agent in charge.”
The lawyer for one of the accused real estate investors who will ask the judge to throw out the recordings, told KPIX 5 News that, “Speaking in a public place does not mean that the individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy…private communication in a public place qualifies as a protected ‘oral communication’… and therefore may not be intercepted without judicial authorization.”
Harp says that if you’re going to conduct criminal activity, do it in the privacy of your own home. He says that was the original intention of the Fourth Amendment, but it’s up to the judge to interpret it.
Hmmm
Shades of East Germany circa 1980. Oh how the wheel turns. It was never the “terrorists” that wanted to take away our freedom. It is the ruling elite that control our country that have stolen our freedoms. The enemy was never radical religious fundamentalism, the enemy is the richest 1/10 of 1%.
Tyrants of any color will use technology to their ends. Legal or not legal they will do it . It is what they do, act accordingly.
Russia in the 80’s. The only opportunity for a private
conversation was out of doors in the middle of a public
square. Of course, for a small gift (they get to live)
a tipster could report you to the cops for suspicious behavior.
http://personalliberty.com/fbi-wont-say-whether-it-listens-in-through-home-automation-systems/
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_ec169697-a19e-525f-a532-81b3df229697.html
This sort of stuff works two ways.
Cops and such are getting secretly recorded all the time as well.
Maybe we should expand beyond just Cops on the street and include other agents as well?
Something that groups like “Anonymous” seem to be spearheading lately in their own unique sort of way..
We used to bounce inaudible beamed sound waves off of glass window panes, catch them, demodulate and amplify the result and listen to conversations inside. I’m sure that is like 8 Track technology now.
Suzanna, is that first hand experience or are you just repeating something you have heard?
I am from Eastern Europe and was shocked to hear the nonsense that teachers were telling their students about life behind the Iron Curtain.
Most people that were trying to get Western Europe or the US were doing it for economic reasons.
Sinply put, these countries were decimated by WWII and communist was not an economic system that brings prosperity.
People still mocked government and there was no repercussions unless you advocated overthrowing the government.
Modern drones have very high quality directional microphones and can listen to you from 10,000 (or more).
Aheinousanus so there was no spying on the people? The Stasi and KGB were just protecting their governments?
I know a Romanian defector who painted a much different picture of life behind the Iron Curtain.