MI5 Persecution: Surveillance methods 5/8/95 (6007)

From: Pamela Willoughby <pjw31_at_willouby.demon.co.uk> Newsgroups: uk.misc
Date: Sat, 05 Aug 1995 18:08:32 GMT
Organization: Myorganisation
Lines: 15
Message-ID: <142297143wnr_at_willouby.demon.co.uk>

>Hmmm, strange eh.
>I mentioned all this goings on to my boyfriend, who works for the
>British intelligence service, and he assures me this sort of thing
>never goes on.. not ever...honest.
>Though he said the name was familiar...

it does go on, although it's an open question who does it.

Some time ago there were press reports of an Army intelligence person called Jones who claimed Diana and Hewitt had been photographed in a compromising position... he said he'd been doing this as part of an Army unit which had previously operated in Northern Ireland.

Then Hewitt said he'd been told the same thing by some Army people, and that they were threatening to release the tapes unless they curtailed their liaison... as per usual everyone denied everything, painted Jones as the "Jones twins" - not very original in how they deal with their perceived enemies, are they?

You have to wonder how they manage to achieve this sort of surveillance though. Audio you can understand, it's possible to put a microphone through the wall, and apparently there exist devices which will retrieve sound from a laser beam bounced off a window - sounds sci-fi, but there's a well known surveillance electronics company in London which sells these things.

But how would you get video out of a room, unless you had actual physical access in order to plant a device for pickup? We're not talking about looking in from afar, but an actual device within the room. You could either drill through the wall and shove a pickup through; or you could supply a trojan device with a hidden pickup inside; but most likely, you would have to physically break into your target room to plant a camera. That's not an infeasible option; all it means is having your target(s) watched to make sure they're not in the vicinity, then you negotiate any locks on the property and find a suitable receptacle for your device.

The next question is how they defeat the usual methods of countersurveillance.  We had private detectives carry out a "sweep" of every room and the telephone line. They found nothing. That indicates at least four possibilities that I can think of; (this is all guesswork BTW, and probably fanciful guesswork at that!)

1. no bugs (pull the other one)
2. radio-transmitting devices which can be controlled from an external source, ie you can instruct them to switch off when you detect a counter-surveillance sweep taking place
3. hard-wired devices; probe microphones or whatever they're called, things you poke through the wall
4. passive surveillance devices; so you bounce laser or radio waves off a suitable reflecting surface (again, sounds far-fetched but such things may apparently exist).
5. there is a fifth possibility, that the PI's didn't detect an actual transmitting device; there are technologies specifically designed to avoid detection, eg frequency hopping and suchlike. But how much sophistication could you build in to a device which would have to be small enough to be physically concealable?

I guess the real question is to find out who is ultimately behind these "goings on". And if the "great and good" (or the better known, at any rate) can't protect themselves, what hope is there for the rest of us?

6007

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