Slashdot Mirror
Hidden FBI Microphones Exposed In California (cbslocal.com)
An anonymous reader writes: "Federal agents are planting microphones to secretly record conversations," reports CBS Local, noting that for 10 months starting in 2010, FBI agents hid microphones inside light fixtures, and also at a bus stop outside the Oakland Courthouse, to record conversations without a warrant. "They put microphones under rocks, they put microphones in trees, they plant microphones in equipment," a security analyst and former FBI special agent told CBS Local. "I mean, there's microphones that are planted in places that people don't think about, because thats the intent!" Federal authorities are currently investigating fraud and bid-rigging charges against a group of real estate investors, and the secret recordings came to light when they were submitted as evidence. "Private communication in a public place qualifies as a protected 'oral communication'..." says one of the investor's lawyers, "and therefore may not be intercepted without judicial authorization."
They put a microphone in my iPhone.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
They can admit it, as this came to light as the article explains when the recordings were submitted as evidence.
It would be nice to have a crowdsourced google map however. Anyone know how to set one of those up?
Along those lines, california is a two-party consent state for wiretapped conversation-- this sounds like a zero-party consent program. Even in a public space, you can't record private conversations without both parties being aware and consenting to the practice. So I wonder if this involves some kind of waiver, otherwise the investigators, if operating without a warrant, would seemingly be in violation of this law, which is usually taken very seriously by judges in California
Finally, once that crowd sourced map shows up (which would be nice to include speedtraps, fake mobile towers, and license plate readers), there's no reason I could think of for volunteers to go have a private reading of some crime drama such as a scene from "Cops" or something-- hopefully no copyright laws would apply here.
I was being ridiculous to prove a point - but then I read this!
They were listening and you gave them an idea.
Ezekiel 23:20
What this really means is that there is a group of people who are encroaching upon a wealthier and better-connected group of people's interest. And the FBI, serving its purpose, is being used as a tool to prevent competition.
Mod up the truth.
The FBI is doing it, so it must be legal... /sarcasm
It's time that these abuses of rights were charged as criminal offences. Sadly this requires an organisation with the ability to investigate the FBI and bring charges. The US constitution gives that power to a grand jury, but it would be a brave prosecutor who enpanelled one to do it.Oh well - here's hoping...
In the 1980's a high-rise Telecom building with no windows opened in my city and it had security cameras in the lobby to film anyone entering. This was ostensibly because communications hubs were considered a strategic civil asset to be defended from attack. Do you know that a lot of people refused to enter the building or take jobs there because they thought it was a violation to be recorded without their consent (banks notwithstanding)? A couple of years later it was a non issue. Now the cameras record us on the streets and nobody minds. Trepidatious at first, the authorities have found that there is little or no pushback at all to the encroachment on our privacies and rights and they're ramming home the intrusions while they can.
This kind of BS is behaviour I'd expect from an Eastern Bloc dictatorship rather than a Western liberal democracy. I say that reluctantly because invoking East Germany or the USSR is usually a sign of hyperbole. But ... what other countries plant hidden mics in trees to track citizens rather than aliens?
What they are doing is quite interesting legally speaking. So what are the realistic expectations of privacy in a public space, why would a sound recording differ from a video recording. The second point, the fine point about randomly recording events at a specific location, rather than specifically targeting an individual, does that public location have an expectation of privacy. The legal fine point, you sit in a public space with a smart phone and make a call, does someone sitting close by have an expectation that you will stop using your phone so as not accidentally capture and transmit their communications with someone else.
So cheeky but not really illegal as they are continuously recording a public space and have no control over who wanders into it and what they do or say in it, no different to a video security camera, so add in a microphone and is a security camera that monitors public space illegal.
Police have a duty to monitor public space and citizens had a right to monitor police in that public space. A fixed microphone at a location versus a mobile one tracking a specific individual. By happen stance when recording bird song in a public park I recorded two people plotting a murder, keep in mind the recording was purposeful but not targeted at a specific individual, except if you take into account the private communications of those birds. So provide that recording to the police or destroy for invading the privacy of those individuals plotting the murder, so which is the greater crime, invading someone's privacy or accessory before the fact to a crime, specifically in this case a murder.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
The lack of warrant, or other check on power is the objectionable part of this.
Which makes such evidence inadmissible...
If I were an FBI agent promised a decent reward for making the lawsuit go away, maybe, I would've thought up a scheme like this... I'd demonstrate the zeal and the willingness to bend the rules (and the Constitution) — and the charges would be dismissed because the primary evidence will be thrown out.
I may get fired for the failure, maybe even reprimanded for the rule-bending, but not prosecuted for the bribery, which no one will even suspect...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Try filming the police (in public only) on a massive scale. I expect if that caught on they would find an excuse to ban cameras in public places.
The 1% now has so much wealth at their command they don't know what to do with it, which fuels these speculative bubbles.
If the middle classes had this money instead, they'd be buying houses and living in them--arguably much healthier for the market than the very rich bidding up these assets because they've got nothing better to do with their money.
It's just another of the ways that the 1% is going to destroy the goose that laid the golden egg--the middle class--via their own unfettered insane greed. Because unless the people have money, there is no market, eventually, for the things the rich make via their assets.
--PM