They can hear you: US buses fitted with eavesdropping equipment

RT | December 11, 2012

Cities across America are equipping their public transport systems with audio recording devices, potentially storing every word spoken by passengers onboard. Rights activists say the surveillance plan by far exceeds what is necessary for security.

­The multimillion dollar upgrade is underway in several US cities, including San Francisco, Eugene, Traverse City, Columbus, Baltimore, Hartford and Athens, reports The Daily, which obtained documents detailing the purchases.

The money partially comes from the federal government. San Francisco, for example, has approved a $5.9 million contract to install the eavesdropping systems on 357 modern buses and historic trolley cars over the next four years, with the Department Homeland Security footing the entire bill. The interception of audio communication will apparently be conducted without search warrants or court supervision, the report says.

The systems would be able to record audio and video from several locations in a bus for simultaneous playback. In Eugene transit officials explicitly demanded microphones capable of distilling clear conversation from the background noise. The recordings would generally be retained for 30 days. One of the systems produced for transport monitoring supports up to 12 high definition cameras, each with a dedicated microphone.

The system may potentially have additional capabilities added like timing the recording with GPS data from an onboard navigator, using facial recognition technology to identify people recorded or connecting wirelessly to a central post for real-time monitoring.

“This technology is sadly indicative of a trend in increased surveillance by commercial and law enforcement entities, under the guise of improved safety,” Ashkan Soltani, an independent security consultant whom the online newspaper asked to review specifications of equipment marketed for transit agencies, told The Daily.

Transport authorities gave various explanations for beefing up surveillance. A San Francisco contractor says the system will “increase passenger safety and improve reliability and maintainability of the system”. An Arkansas transit agency official said it is needed to deflect false complaints from passengers, describing it as “a lifesaver for the drivers”. Maryland officials openly called it a tool for law enforcement.

In some cases the systems are being installed despite resistance of civil liberties activists and lawmakers. In Maryland a legislative committee rejected a bill that would allow the local transport agency to proceed with its plan over concerns that it would violate wiretapping laws. The state’s attorney general advised the transportation agency to use signs warning passengers of the surveillance to help the system withstand a court challenge.

Privacy law experts say audio surveillance systems on buses pushes the boundaries of what is necessary to protect the law.

“It’s one thing to post cops, it’s quite another to say we will have police officers in every seat next to you, listening to everything you say,” said Neil Richards, a professor at Washington University School of Law.

With the microphones, he said, “you have a policeman in every seat with a photographic memory who can spit back everything that was said.”

Public transport is not the only place where citizens are worried about being constantly monitored by keen-eared recording devices. Similar systems combining audio and video recording with wireless connectivity are being installed in lampposts across the US.

Related articles

• Big Brother’s Listening (thedaily.com)
• Baltimore bus passengers now subject to secretive eavesdropping (rt.com)

The Israel Lobby in San Francisco

By BINOY KAMPMARK | CounterPunch | July 2, 2010

‘I was the child of the survivors of the Holocaust.’  With that, Roz Rothstein of the activist group Stand With Us that hopes to transform the image of Israel on US campuses sets the moral authority before a small audience at an office on Howard Street, San Francisco.  One can, she explains, disagree with Israel, but there are ‘limits’ to such doubting behavior.  Exceeding those limits constitutes the gravest sort of anti-Semitism.  As people devour the food and drink put on by the associates of Blumberg Capital, serious politics is being discussed.  ‘We are being demonized,’ she insists.  Whether she means Israel, Jews or Jews in the US is hard to tell.  Presumably, no true distinction is intended.

The gathering teams with Republicans, many of them competing with each other for various posts in upcoming elections.  Candidates who are going to be competing for House positions are also there including John Dennis who hopes to undermine Nancy Pelosi.  The room smells of political hustling and over-eager libidos.

All are, however, there for one reason: defending Israel.  Israel is besieged, the David in a sea of overly keen Goliaths.  A good deal of agitprop is necessary to convince the audience, and perhaps the speakers, of this bizarre scenario.  Pro-Palestinian groups are swarming across American campuses attacking Jews and pro-Israeli students alike.  The UN is ‘obsessed’ with Israel and prefers, we are told, not to look at the stain of character on other states.  One must be on the look out for the ‘Three Ds’ suggested by Natan Sharansky. (The speakers intone this in irritating fashion – we are in a kindergarten of ideological instruction.  Remember ‘demonization’, ‘double standards’ and ‘delegitimization’, for one.)

The language merchants are busy attempting to find the right good to sell. ‘We must be out there to counter our enemies.’  Evidently, the Gaza dead, with their galvanic properties must be astonishingly good at public relations – they are, it would seem, the ignoble savages who dare speak from their status as the deceased.

The campaign being waged is yet another indication of how the Israeli lobby, so peevishly dismissed by Israeli supporters as non-existent, arises with effective force when fear is packaged and retailed in this faux salon manner.  These are the first people who would insist that such a thing is anathema, only to then gather their forces and funds to effectively provide assistance to a foreign power.  Young, well-groomed men listening intently will be doing service at some point with the Israeli Army, a problematic situation given mixed allegiances.  The framers of the US constitution would have had something to say about that.

What is most striking in this display is the rehearsed language of doom. (We are ‘besieged’, a ‘well planned tsunami’ is being put into place, argues Rothstein.)  The Palestinians do not exist except in the negative, a dark eminence with Satanic overtones.  Hamas, a body once supported by Israel for Machiavellian purposes, is not a force that can or should be dealt with other than through force.   Beware their Charter.

It all comes down to ‘information’.  ‘They do not know the information,’ explains Dr. Michael Harris, who was a founder of San Francisco Voice for Israel before it became the San Francisco chapter for Stand With Us.  So, with this in mind, a packet is distributed, bulging with fascinating ‘facts’ rendered on glossy paper.  How far it will go is not something these agitprop peddlers make clear.

A brief summary of what is on show then.  A booklet entitled ‘Middle East: Apartheid Today’ is designed to focus on Arab and Muslim prejudice (murderous ‘gender apartheid’ is practiced amongst the Palestinians).  ‘We don’t do apartheid in the Holy Land’.  South African apartheid is also singled out as spectacular, singular and totally different from Israeli policies.  And besides, many want to leave Islam – they want to assimilate, to become like ‘us’.

There are pictures of hanged men from Iran reproduced in distributed booklets showing homosexuality to be a capital offence in that benighted part of the world.  (Would Orthodox Jews disagree with such treatment, one wonders.)  In short, the apartheid fiends, the promoters of segregation, sexually motivated crimes, honor killings and institutionalized racism, lie outside Israel’s sacred, threatened borders.  Instead, focus is directed on such things as ‘Israel’s gift to the world’ on a card that speaks about its ‘Intel laptops’ and ‘mobile phone technology’ amongst other things.

On the coattails of doom is that of self-praise.  No one would hate us if they knew how humanitarian we really were.  An example is adduced: the hospital in Haiti, emphasized in the publication ‘Israeli Heroes in Haiti’.  This gesture, it seems, rinses guilt and cheers the consciences.  Far better to build hospitals in Haiti than Gaza, where a humanitarian crisis is all too real.  The mantras are almost hypnotic, and said with repeated, mechanical hollowness: ‘We are the glowing light in the Middle East’.  This is the Winthrop covenant of the Holy Land, Americans who have confused Israel with the ‘light on the hill’ and a puritan assertion of exceptionality, and would prefer to be there than in San Francisco. (Dare one ask?)

The questions posed by the anesthetized audience are variously comical and absurd in their businesslike approach.  A political candidate for the twelfth district in San Francisco suggests a screenwriter for an appropriate film to display Israel on American campuses in a good light.  Another suggests ‘feel good’ images that re-enforce notions of the genteel Jew.  ‘Cuddly, yes, cuddly and warm.’  Things are getting rather slippery here, and the hold on reality, if it was ever there, is now being lost.  Another suggests that Israel is ‘the canary in the coal mine.’  An announcement of thanks is made to the speakers: an anonymous donor has just penned a cheque for an undisclosed sum running into the thousands.  Money for jam.  This place, presumably a refuge from the coalmine, is an asylum of unreality. And one is simply happy to leave it.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne and is currently in San Francisco.  Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

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