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The machinery needed to tap phones, peer around corners and through closed curtains or listen to distant conversations with crystal clarity is the stuff of terrorist hunters, police, spies and… just about anybody with the money to buy the equipment. Want your own drone, one that can fly over your target’s property, mimic a cellphone tower and intercept phone call and WiFi signals, while using an infrared camera to spot movement behind drawn curtains? No problem. “Northern Virginia technology entrepreneur Jerry Lucas hosted his first trade show for makers of surveillance gear at the McLean Hilton in May 2002. Thirty-five people attended… Nine years later, Lucas holds five events annually across the world, drawing hundreds of vendors and thousands of potential buyers for an industry that he estimates sells $5 billion of the latest tracking, monitoring and eavesdropping technology each year. Along the way these events have earned an evocative nickname: The Wiretappers’ Ball.

“The products of what Lucas calls the ‘lawful intercept’ industry are developed mainly in Western nations such as the United States but are sold throughout the world with few restrictions. This burgeoning trade has alarmed human rights activists and privacy advocates, who call for greater regulation because the technology has ended up in the hands of repressive governments such as those of Syria, Iran and China.” Washington Post, December 1^st. Add paparazzi with electronics? Sure! News crews with drones? Why the hell not?! I guess all the sturm und drang over News Corps tabloids’ hacking into private phone calls suggests that this is nothing new.

Writing in his ConcurringOpinions.com blog (August 2008), Ryan Calo notes: “Although the media mostly covers drones for their capacity to carry out assassinations, their greatest use by far is surveillance. Industrial-grade drones can fly for miles searching for objects of interest or hover at a particular location and report any movement. Not only can they record high-resolution video, but some drones come equipped with thermal-imaging and other sensors capable of seeing what people cannot. There have even been reports of a drone capable of impersonating a cell tower so as to intercept phone conversations.

“Some of these activities are surely covered by privacy laws. A surprising number are not. Neither constitutional nor common law, for instance, recognizes a right to privacy in public or from a public vantage. In one famous Fourth Amendment case, the Supreme Court found no search where local police flew over the defendant’s backyard with a private plane. In another, the Court admitted evidence spotted by an officer in a helicopter looking through two missing roof panels in a greenhouse.”

We’re used to cops and gumshoes pasting wiretaps and hidden cameras to ferret out organized crime as well as infidelities and even industrial secrets. We’ve seen television programs showing people behaving badly through hidden cameras almost since television began. But now, literally, the sky’s the limit: “It was recently reported that a Linux powered flying spy drone had been developed which was able to crack WiFi passwords and access GSM networks by posing as a mobile phone mast. A drone with a camera on board – and a flight time of 30 minutes – can be purchased in the UK for less than £10,000 [about $16,000].” The Guardian (UK), September 5^th.

The complications from such surveillance technology, from the chilling effect on free speech and assembly particularly in nations with a strong history of repression to the erosion of the few vestiges of privacy we think we have left, invite regulation and protective legislation, including a ground up review of our assumptions of what is or is not legally “public.” How do you feel about the possibility of a drone hovering outside your window with all of this technology? At least be grateful it isn’t armed with a Hellfire missile pointed at your bedroom!

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is truly amazing what we think is safe and private these days…