Chinese Spying Devices Installed On Hong Kong Cars

jjp9999 writes "Spying devices disguised as electronic border cards have been secretly installed on thousands of Hong Kong vehicles by Chinese authorities, according to a Hong Kong newspaper. A translation of the story states Chinese authorities have been installing spying devices on all dual-plate Chinese-Hong Kong vehicles for years, enabling a vast network of eavesdropping across the archipelago."

Comments

The article is kind of pathetic

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Those who RTFA can read this:

Apple Daily says they took the device to a university professor and a private investigator, both of whom attested to the espionage potential of the units.

or this:

An Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at City University of Hong Kong, Zheng Liming, took apart one of the devices and confirmed that it can listen in on conversations

and see a photo in which a hole in the plastic shell is marked "cavity for receiving sound" (a microphone would have been more convincing), two quartz crystals (the likes of which can be found in almost every modern electronic devices) marked "generate carrier frequency for radio transmission" and a nondescript chip that "turns voice signals into digital information".

You know what? I think I'll take a photo of my cellphone's innards, photoshop conveniently spy-sounding labels into the photo, bring my cellphone to a university professor who will testify that my device has a microphone, a crystal, an antenna and a processor that definitely has the potential to turn it into spying device then write an article about it.

Some journalism...

Re:Hey, we're learning from the market leaders!

[tmach]

Actually, the current suggestion is to put a device on your car to track the mileage so they can tax you based on how much you drive.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/18/news/economy/gas_tax_drivers/?section=money_latest

the source...

[mathfeel]

I clicked the link and was about to RTFA, then I spotted that it's from "The Epoch Time" referencing an article from "The Apple Daily". I am from HK and those are not two news sources that I trust. The first is a media front for the Fa Lun Gong, which as much as I dislike communism, I have a worse distaste for a money sucking "religious" cult. The latter is a sensationalist tabloid paper. It is famous for its yellow journalism. If you want a report on fact, that's not it.