A microphone was found in a house.
An audio surveillance device was found in the Libertad anarchist library in Paris, France. The device was hidden inside the printer-copier of the library. It was composed of two microphones, an antenna, a transformer, a battery, a small box containing an electronic card, a 64 GB SD card and a SIM card from the cell phone provider Orange. According to the communique which announced the discovery of the device, it was a surveillance device of model RB800 marketed by the Italian company Innova.
Analysis of the SD card revealed that :
- The device was equipped with a 'voice activation' function, i.e. it only activated when its microphone picked up a sufficiently high sound level. In the month and a half prior to its discovery, it was activated 2,061 times, with a minimum activation duration of 58 seconds, a maximum duration of 12 hours and an average duration of 10 minutes.
- When the device was 'activated' by the sound level, it transmitted data over the telephone network (presumably the audio data captured by its microphone), generally at a rate of a few KB/s, with peaks of 100 KB/s.
- The temperature of the device varied between 14°C and 50°C, with an average of 22°C. Its temperature rose sharply when it was transmitting data.
- RB800-en.pdf: product description of the RB800 device (in English).
- RB800-fr.pdf: product description of the RB800 device (in French).
A camera was found in a residential building close to a social center, in a small locked room on the 12th floor, overlooking the center's main entrance through a window. The camera was mounted on a tripod and powered by a socket in another locked room, through a cable laid outside across the roof. The residential building was located about 260 meters from the social center.
Several cameras were found in the attic of a public school located in front of a recently evicted squat, overlooking the squat through the skylights.
Three surveillance cameras were found in a building, pointing towards the entrance of a wagenplatz (a leftist political community where people live in trailers). They were located in a locked room, on the sixth floor of a building close to the wagenplatz — the building in question was vacant, except for the first floor which was occupied by a leftist cultural project. One of the cameras was a “Sony ISO 409600 Extreme Sensitivety 4K” with a high-grade “Sony SEL 600mm F4 GM OSS E-mount” telephoto lens. The two other cameras were IP cameras of model “Panasonic WV-S6131”.
All three cameras were connected to a “G-ST 500+/8R Gscope055” video management device marketed by german company Geutebrück, which was equipped with a Telekom SIM card and a 2 TB SSD. The SSD contained video files dated from November and December 2022 in the GBF (Geutebrück Backup File) format, which can only be opened with the company's proprietary software. There were three files per day, each of which could be assigned to a camera. The file sizes indicated long-term and continuous video surveillance.
Another drive located in the room (of model “Samsung Portable SSD T5”) contained additional GBF video files dated from September and October 2022, as well as two images taken by the IP cameras dated from August 2022 and showing the entrance of the wagenplatz, people and vehicles.
The whole installation was powered from a wall socket using an “Antrax SwitchBox-GSM” device which contained another Telekom SIM card, allowing the installation to be powered on and off through the mobile phone network. The IP cameras were powered by the video management device through Ethernet (using a “Delock Gigabit PoE+ Splitter” device).
A microphone was found in a flat in Rome, Italy. It was hidden on the back of the kitchen oven. It was powered by the oven electrical supply, and was also equipped with a battery.
A microphone was found in an anarchist space. The device was hidden inside a power outlet. It was equipped with a microphone, two antennas, a SIM card, a memory card and a battery.
Four microphones were found in a house in Follonica. There was one in each room. They were connected to the electrical system of the house using a transformer and a battery. Each device was equipped with a SIM card and a memory card.
According to the source that reported the discovery of the microphones, they were supplied by the italian company Lutech.
Microphones were found in the Anarchist Garage in Pisa. They were connected to the electrical system of the building. The devices were installed as part of an investigation following an arson attack on a vivisection laboratory in Pisa.
According to the source that reported the discovery of the microphones, they were supplied by the italian company Lutech.
Microphones were found in a squatted house. They were located in the kitchen. Investigation files showed that the audio they recorded was used to prove that the defendants knew each other, often talked together, were preoccupied by the creation by the Italian State of a DNA database and the impossibility to refuse giving a DNA sample, that they discussed a text to publish or chatted about stuff.
Six microphones and a camera were found in a house. The microphones were located in power outlets and switch cases, one above the intercom in the corridor, two other in the living-room, and the three last ones in private bedrooms. The camera was located inside the intercom in the corridor and connected to the microphone above it. Each microphone was equipped with a battery, and, except for the one in the corridor, with a SIM card and a memory card. The camera lens could observe through a small hole already present in the intercom structure and slightly worked on to fit the device.
A microphone was found in the squat Awhanee. It was located in a multi-socket adapter. The device contains a printed circuit board and a battery. It seems that the device was installed during a house search by cops earlier in the month.
Two microphones were found at a comrades' house.
Several surveillance devices were installed from 2015 to April 2018 in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to surveil Julian Assange, founder of the news organization Wikileaks, which had taken refuge in the embassy since 2012. During this period of time:
- The interior cameras were replaced with higher resolution cameras equipped with hidden microphones.
- Microphones were hidden inside a fire extinguisher and above the storage cabinet in the bathroom used by Assange.
- Special stickers were attached on the exterior windows of the embassy to facilitate the use of a laser microphone (able to capture audio by detecting the sound vibrations of the windows) from a building nearby.
- A device capable of transmitting in real-time the information collected by the other devices was installed.
The microphone inside the fire extinguisher was equipped with an SD card and a battery which was changed every twelve hours, while the microphone in the bathroom was connected to the electrical system of the building. The devices were installed by the Spanish company Undercover Global, officially in charge of the security at the embassy. Their installation appeared to have been ordered by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
A listening device was found in the former home of an Irish republican, who had died ten years prior to the discovery of the device. The device consisted of a small microphone, hidden in the ceiling of a downstairs room, along with a number of battery packs found under the floorboards of an upstairs bedroom.
Two microphones were found in the documentation space Il Tribolo. They were hidden inside a power outlet and in the junction box next to it.
A micro-camera was found inside a house. The device was placed in the kitchen/dining room, inside a wall, covered up by mortar, revealing only the hold for the camera's lens.
A bug was found in an anarchist place inside an electric plug not connected to any network. On one of the edges was the acronym “ABG”.
A microphone was found at the Laboratorio Libertario Ligéra. The device was located inside a neon light attached to the ceiling. It consisted in three 9-volts batteries, joined together with insulating tape, with a microphone and antenna at each end.
Listening devices were found in the home of an activist. They were hidden in electric sockets.
A surveillance device was found in the “Plaisir d'enfance” Montessori school just in front of the anarchist library La Discordia, in a storage room on the first floor overlooking a window in front of the library. The device took the form of a “cardboard folder”. The device was in a rectangular casing about 40x25x25 cm in hard plastic, loud (because of fans), and plugged into the power supply (without batteries). The casing had a hole of about 4 cm in diameter for the camera, with three cables coming out at the end, two of which were tipped antennae (probably sound sensors) and a third a small square sensor. Inside the box advanced technological equipment was found: a wireless router with two SIM cards (from the “Bouygues” mobile operator), a GPS module, three cell inputs, one stereo input ; a processor ; a telephone device with an Orange SIM card; a camera with two zoom levels, remote controlled; and other types of materials that could not be identified. The device was in place at least since the second week of July 2015.
- paris-2015-09.zip: additional pictures of the devices.
A listening device was found in the home of an Irish republican. The device was built into a joist in a space between the ceiling and a bedroom floor. It contained several small listening devices that were attached to spotlights.
Two microphones were found at a comrades' home. The devices were inside two outlets. Each device consisted in a microphone linked to a transformer and a thingy containing a micro-SIM card.
A video surveillance device was found in the Plagwitz district of Leipzig. It was located on the second floor of a vacant house. It contained cameras mounted on tripods, which filmed the public space through windows.
Two microphones and portable scanners watching the Asilo Occupato were found. The microphones were inside the Asilo Occupato, connected to the electrical installation. The portable scanners are in a telecom booth very close to the squat.
A video surveillance device was found in the Connewitz district of Leipzig. It was located on the second floor of a vacant house. It contained a swiveling camera which was connected to a hard disk recorder and could be controlled via an LTE mobile phone connection, and a battery to power the device. Through a window, the camera had a view of the sidewalk, several building entrances and several apartment windows. The device could not be seen from the outside as luminous diodes had been specially masked off.
A police surveillance camera was found in a hospital, pointed towards the Kasa de la Muntanya squat.
Microphones were found in comrades' house.
Four microphones of the GSM type were found in two homes. In the first home, a microphone was placed next to the office where there was a computer (for some time, the loudspeakers connected to this computer were disrupted by an interference similar to the interference of a phone receiving a call), another in the outlet next to the kitchen table, the last one in the bedroom, in the outlet closest to the bed (the outlet cover had been pierced to direct the microphone towards the headboard). In the second home, a microphone was placed in the bedroom, in the outlet closest to the door, which gave onto the kitchen, so that it covered several places. The microphones of the first home were Vodafone mobile phones, with a transformer and antennas with a printed circuit board. The microphone of the second home was an older model, with two transformers and an antenna with a screw.
Two microphones were found in the anarchist space 76/A. The devices were placed in the air vents of the two rooms where gigs and initiatives were held. It consisted in three 9-volt batteries set up in parallel and stuck to a transmitter microphone with tape.
Four microphones and a camera were found in a house. A microphone was placed behind the fridge, another in the bedroom, another in a beam next to the ceiling light, another in the house entry. A graceful little camera filmed the entry stairs. All were connected through a transformer to the house electrical network.
A camera was found hidden in an air-conditioner inside a school. The camera served to control the entrance of the house of some anarchist comrades under investigation, and had been placed there by plain clothes officers a few weeks before the comrades' house was searched.
A camera was found at two anarchists' houses. The device was placed in the kitchen, behind a small air vent. It consisted in a camera, linked to a rather large battery made of 3 tubes of 4 batteries of 14.4 volts. The battery was behind the sink. Between the battery and the rest of the device was what seemed to be a switch, that could be manipulated remotely. The camera was connected to a small black box that served as an encoder. This encoder, type “Micro View Lock” (Ovations Systems), was in turn connected to what may have been an antenna to transmit images on 1.4 GHz. There was no SIM card. The camera was pointed towards the kitchen table. It was not known if it also contained a microphone. The camera was secured with magnetic elements. On almost all elements “CS” stickers were affixed. “CS” indeed matched the code of the Logistics Department of the Federal Police.
Microphones and cameras were found in the 400colpi space. A first device was placed in an electrical case, strangely too hot. It consisted, along with a microphone, of a surveillance micro-camera. A second device was placed in an industrial outlet.
A microphone was found in the Panetteria Occupata inside a closed and sealed electricity meter. It was a microphone with a 300 MHz shortwave transmitter.
Microphones and a micro-camera were found in multiple homes. The devices were found in an amplifier, in the kitchen hood and in a cathode-ray television. The devices had microphones and 300 MHz transmitters with 200-300 meters range. In one case, the device could be activated by remote control (at a distance of hundreds of meters) and in another case it came with a micro-camera linked to a UHF band transmitter of the same range.
A microphone was found in an anarchist documentation center inside an electrical outlet. It was a transmitter-receiver.
A microphone was found in the Doppiofondo documentation center inside an electrical outlet.
A microphone was found in the home of a comrade. The device was hidden inside an air inlet (ventilation system) of the house. It consisted in 12 cylindrical batteries and a microphone.
A listening device was found in the flat of a former political prisoner. It was located under the sofa. It was made of two meters of wiring with a microphone in the end. It was installed from the flat below, through a hole in the floor.
Two microphone receiver cases were found in the entry corridor of the building that hosted the Fuori Luogo space. Both devices were hidden above a fake ceiling in the entry corridor. They were directly connected to the phone line with telephone wires. They consisted in a main body, with a connector with external remote control, a digital receiver showing the strength of the received signal, and antennas. The presence of these two receivers probably meant that there were two emitting microphones in the space.
A listening device was found in the home of an Irish republican. It was located in a kitchen ceiling cavity. The device included two aerials, batteries and a microphone.
A listening device was found in offices used by Irish republicans. The device, disguised as a floor joist, was hidden under the floor of a first floor office with microphones pointing into the office and down into a conference room below. It included a large battery pack.
