The States, according to their role of repression of individuals and groups doing subversive actions, put in place ways of keeping those individuals and groups under surveillance. It seems that some of this surveillance is done through the hiding of surveillance devices in the spaces we live in.
These devices take different forms : microphones, cameras, geolocation devices. Targeted spaces can be all the spaces we go through : buildings, vehicles, public space. These practices are sometimes legal, authorized by a judge for example, and sometimes not, done illegally by intelligence agencies.
We noticed the lack of informations available around us concerning this kind of surveillance. What is the real use of these devices by intelligence agencies? Which kind of devices are used? In which contexts? How efficiently? What can we do to oppose this kind of surveillance?
Therefore we decided to gather informations about the subject, with the idea of writing and publishing a booklet in a few months. We want to focus in this booklet on surveillance carried out by intelligence agencies and political police in European States against individuals or groups doing subversive actions. Also, we limit ourselves to the study of physical surveillance devices hidden in the spaces inhabited by the suveilled individuals and groups (so we won’t talk about other kind of surveillance such as shadowing, phone-tapping and Internet surveillance).
It’s not always easy to find precise and reliable informations concerning this subject, given the relative secret that often surrounds cops’ practices, and even more the practices of intelligence agencies. To write this booklet, we want to use in the first place documented examples of found surveillance devices that were probably placed by cops.
So we started by establishing a list of all examples that we could find on the Internet. At the moment, this list contains 24 cases of surveillance devices found in buildings (often microphones and cameras), and 16 cases of devices found in vehicles (often GPS trackers, sometimes with microphones). Examples often come from Italy, but also from other european countries : France, Spain, Belgium. Most examples come with pictures of the devices.
The examples list and the devices pictures can be downloaded here :
This list would be included in the final booklet, along with summaries concerning the locations of devices, how they work, and possible ways of detecting them.
We write this call for contributions with the idea of continuing to gather informations to write the booklet. We are interested in other examples of found devices, in particular examples that would show precisely the devices models (but all examples are worth taking). We are of course also interested by any other kind of informations : technical informations about this kind of devices, feedbacks on detection attempts, criticism concerning this booklet project, etc.
We want to attack the ears and the eyes (and the GPS trackers) hidden by cops in the spaces we go through.
You can contact us by email on desoreillesetdesyeux ‘at’ riseup.net. We speak english and french. If you write to us in another language, we can try to find a way to translate. Our PGP key is available here :
PS : don’t hesitate to translate this call in other languages and spread it to other places if you want to