Who's Listening?

MANNERS & MORALS

Californians had a good case of Orwellian creeps. While no Big Brother was watching them, they had flatly been warned that almost everyone else was--or could be--listening. The state senate Judiciary Committee, hoping to draft 20th century laws to cope with ingenious invasions of privacy, set many a Californian on his ear with a report on a lengthy study of electronic eavesdropping and wiretapping, found that for all the benefits of electronic enterprise there have also been some disturbing developments. Among them:

P: Small, high-quality microphones that will pick up conversations anywhere in a normal-sized room and carry them--either through undetectable, hairlike wires or radio transmission--to receivers or recorders that may be located in the next room or a car a block or two away.

P: Pocket microphone and recorder units so tiny and effective that they may be operated undetected in an ordinary briefcase; e.g., a private eye could plant the briefcase in a conference room, pick it up at the end of the day and listen to as much as five hours of tape transcription.

P: So-called wireless microphones packed into transmitters no bigger than a pack of cigarettes and so sensitive that they can pick up whispers in an average room, transmit them by radio to receiving and recording equipment hundreds of feet away. The wireless mike can operate as long as four days without running down.

P: A wireless unit that can be hidden in a car to pick up conversation as well as to record and transmit signals reporting the starts, stops and changes of direction; the signals are picked up by another car following several blocks behind.

P: A "shotgun" microphone that can be aimed at a point up to several hundred yards away, pick up even a hushed conversation. Fair game: conversations in a nearby house, a skyscraper across the street, a boat on a lake. Best protection against the shotgun: talk behind closed windows.

Much of the testimony came from private investigators and equipment manufacturers, who were reluctant to be too specific about their clientele. Nonetheless, in closed-door testimony, the committee learned that some companies employ the devices to listen in on what their employees are saying in rest rooms, company dining rooms and elsewhere in the plant. In Los Angeles some used-car dealers bug rooms where prospective car purchasers are left with their wives; thus the salesman can pick up tips for a new pitch by listening to the family discussion of who likes what and how much the family budget will stand.

One expert related just how serious electronic warfare can get. An attorney who had learned that his opponent planned to introduce into court the tape recording of a secret meeting carried a powerful, battery-operated electromagnet into court in his briefcase. He placed his briefcase near the opposition lawyer's tape. The magnet erased the recording, left the rival attorney with a blank tape and blank expression when he got up to play the evidence.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.