HIDDEN MIKES AND SECRET
TAPES
How Can We Protect Ourselves?
by Ross Regnart
They're popping up all over the country--retail stores and internet sites
selling spy equipment to ordinary citizens. Americans are lining up to purchase
the newest cameras and tape-recorders, some not larger than a quarter. News
reports of stores marketing surveillance products and the media coverage
of Department of Defense employee Linda Tripp secretly recording fellow
employee Monica Lewinsky have been an extra shot in the arm for marketers
of spy and counterspy equipment. Consequently, people are increasingly concerned
that they may be bugged, recorded, or filmed without being informed and
without their consent.
But how effective is counter-surveillance equipment in protecting us from
being secretly recorded, bugged, or filmed? Is it reasonable to expect any
detector to locate all hidden bugs and tape-recorders at work in an office,
vehicle, home, restaurant, or on the person sitting next to us?
Honest citizens may be subject to civil suits and/or criminal prosecution
should they be secretly tape-recorded out of context, i.e., their conversation
only partially tape-recorded. For instance, a person may only be responding
to an unrecorded question. But it could appear that the recorded person
is making a statement instead of answering a question. This is sometimes
referred to as "steering." When citizens are tape-recorded in
this unauthorized fashion, the risk can be serious. Some jurisdictions which
have laws against unauthorized tape-recordings have made exceptions in allowing
such evidence admitted into criminal and civil trials. Imagine your voice
played before a jury, out of context, at a trial. Would you trust a civil
or criminal jury to correctly determine the context, the completeness, or
the actual intent of your words? An unauthorized tape-recording could erroneously
make it appear that you gave support to creating a civil liability or furthering
a criminal scheme.
Alert! The California Supreme Court (February 23, 1998) ruled in Stop Youth
Addiction V. Lucky Stores, that under California's Unfair Business Practices
Act, Sec. 17200 of the Business and Professions Code, anyone can sue businesses
on behalf of the public for any unlawful, unfair practice or fraudulent
business act or practice. The plaintiff need not have been injured! An attorney
may be the only individual plaintiff. Imagine a business person's voice
being secretly recorded out of context by an employee or customer. If such
a tape were allowed admitted into court, it appears a business and/or person
could be sued multiple times by different plaintiffs--all using the same
unauthorized tape-recording(s) as evidence.
This writer has found no device on the market that can detect with certainty
the presence of hidden tape-recorders, especially tape recorders that have
no oscillators.
Ironically, many citizens purchase bug detectors to locate transmitters
while completely overlooking the prevalence of micro tape-recorders. Micro
tape-recorders now available in stores are so small that it is usually impossible
to electronically detect them.
Risks: In my work I interview persons from all walks of life. Sometimes
I am contacted by an individual who says something like, "I just got
in from Country X in political turmoil and have information you need to
have." How would writers protect themselves from being tape-recorded,
especially out of context, by the person who contacts them? How would anybody
protect themselves from being roped in as participants, set up, or blackmailed?
As citizen spy-equipment proliferates in our society, we Americans may find
it threatening to speak out and say what we really feel. Someone may be
recording what we say. There is reason for genuine concern.
Rather than citizens being forced to spend a fortune purchasing counter-surveillance
equipment to protect themselves and their privacy, State and Federal legislation
should be passed nationwide which would strictly prohibit citizens from
tape-recording other citizens without their consent. This legislation should
also prohibit the admission into court as evidence any unauthorized tape-recordings
of citizens.