WeAreAlwaysListening.com says:
Eavesdropping on the population has revealed many saying “I’m not doing anything wrong so who cares if the NSA tracks what I say and do?”
Citizens don’t seem to mind this monitoring, so we’re hiding recorders in public places in hopes of gathering information to help win the war on terror. We’ve started with NYC as a pilot program, but hope to roll the initiative out all across The Homeland.
A group of anonymous anti-NSA activists claim to have placed hidden recording devices in restaurants, bars, gyms and cafes all around the city to eavesdrop on citizens’ private conversations.
While, as some have pointed out, this claim cannot be verified, a series of recordings uploaded to the group’s Soundcloud page and website last week have got many people talking.
WeAreAlwaysListening.com started blowing up on the viral web over the weekend after being spotlighted by a few high-profile Twitter accounts (like the ACLU’s) and publications (like WIRED.)
ACLU tweeted: Check out https://Wearealwayslistening.com , Brilliant but creepy.
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When asked about the legality of their project by the Guardian late last week, members (who spoke under the condition of anonymity) said that they had been careful not to release “anybody’s first and last names” with the recordings — though, as the Guardian notes, two names were heard in one of the tracks on the site last Friday.
“If it turns out that it’s illegal, we’ll put a full stop to it,” said a group spokesperson. “We’ll continue to keep the country safe from terror until then.”
The refusal to break NSA-agent character appears to be standard for the group, which makes its actual views on the U.S. phone records program leaked by Edward Snowden in 2013 clear with a prominent link to an ACLU petition about letting Section 215 of the Patriot Act expire on its website.
As for the veracity of their recordings, the project creators are adamant that they’re 100 per cent real.
“We can attest to the fact all people recorded are NOT actors and are not knowingly involved in the project in any way,” a spokesperson told WIRED in an encrypted email.
WIRED soon-after received an envelope containing one of the group’s tape recorders (the cheap kind you can buy “for a few dollars at Best Buy,” according to the Guardian) and a USB stick containing the following video, which shows a recorder being planted beneath a restaurant table:
As shown here, hiding a recorder only takes a few seconds. These pranksters are having fun and taking a poke at the NSA, but they are also demonstrating how easy it is to eavesdrop- at a restaurant, an office, a conference room, hotel, or any other location. Consider TSCM sweeps for executive meetings, conferences, and anywhere private conversations are taking place.