off the wire
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.