Hidden Microphones as Part of Gov't Surveillance Program in San Francisco Bay Area?
http://linkis.com/cbslocal.com/7Mu8ROAKLAND (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.”
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Thank you, Homeland Security!
Also, the government developed microphones that can listen from outside buildings like, oh, I don't know, your HOME, from outside. I learned of this technology when I read something--don't remember where--about Justice Brennan's telling a someone to lower his or her voice and explaining that they could be overheard. I don't know when he said that, but he died in 1997, so I imagine the technology to be much more powerful than it was whenever he mentioned this.
They can also plant bugs, read your emails, follow your online activities, tap your phone, un-encrypt your phone, follow and/or film you as you perambulate the streets of your city or town (think all the pics you've seen of the Tsarnaevs as they traveled parallel to route or the Boston Marathon), track your car with a GPS device and do lots of other great things, often with no warrant or a warrant obtained after the fact. And then, there are all those private security cameras in every store, many workplaces, etc.
It's just like Paul Revere and all our other heroes who demanded that the Bill of Rights be added to the Constitution always said never, "If you're not doing anything wrong, what the fuck is your problem with all this crap?
Dedicated to the Fourth Amendment, with love and respect.
pointing out one thing in my post that you think is not possible. Fortunately, I don't think people who read DU are gullible enough to fall for anything like that.
Big Brother is definitely here and now.
