Snooper’s tools of trade

Press, 11 February 1983, Page 16

Snooper’s tools of trade

By

ANTHONY GOODMAN

Reuter. New York

Microphones the size of a small nail and miniature television "eyes" that can monitor private gatherings are some of the latest snooping devices the United Nations fears are a potential threat to human rights.

They are described in detail iii a recently published United Nations booklet summarising the dangers, as well as the benefits, of recent scientific developments.

These include advances in biology, medicine, and biochemistry, with their effects in such fields as artificial insemination, genetics, and behaviour-modifying drugs.

Another area is the development of computer sciences, with the attendant risk of misuse of information about an individual's private life.

The booklet. "Human Rights and Scientific and Technological Developments,” summarises studies prepared by the United Nations in the 19705, based on information received from member states, specialised agencies, non-govern-mental organisations, and individual experts.

An introduction to the 92page publication, issued by the United Nations’ Department of Public Information, states: “There has been a growing realisation that, whereas scientific knowledge by itself may well be neutral, much of it can be applied in ways that are harmful to humanity.” One of its most intriguing chapters, which almost reads like a James Bond handbook, deals with unauthorised snooping on individuals and nations.

For monitoring conversations not carried over telephone lines, which can be easily tapped, there is a variety of microphones. These include “small devices

which can be worn on the person, such as magnetic microphones weighing about five grams which may be hidden behind the lapels of a suit jacket."

There are also directional microphones that can "pick up sounds from the outside through any openings in a room, such as open windows, and may also be used to listen to conversations held outdoors, for example on park benches or in fields, hundreds of metres away." Some are even able’ to monitor sounds through closed windows, it adds. Contact microphones may be attached to the outside of the wall of a room, but when the walls are too thick, a "spike-mike" may be used. Sound vibrations are transmitted through these spikes, which are the size of a small nail, to contact microphones and then recorded. Another device for recording speech from a closed room uses a reflector made of a thin diaphragm and a microwave antenna, which has a range of several hundred metres.

"Microphone bullets may be shot at windows by a special rifle, to catch the sound of speech from outside the window," the booklet continues.

Dealing with visual surveillance, it expounds on the possibilities of miniature still and movie cameras, and oneway windows. “Telescopic lenses make it possible to photograph small objects from great distances. Thus, for instance, small telescope devices, measuring 20cm, are able to photograph a type-written page at a distance of 100 metres.” And some television cameras are small enough to fit into a waistcoat pocket and have an eye the width of a cigarette.