text: Are anti-NSA pranksters invading people's privacy? 
   
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   Civil liberties groups in the US say the National Security Agency's surveillance program amounts to illegal spying on innocent citizens. And now, a group of anonymous anti-NSA pranksters is trying to make a point about the surveillance of ordinary people by doing it themselves. 
   
   Over the past year, they've hidden dozens of mini tape recorders under tables and benches around New York City, secretly taping people's conversations. This week, they launched a website where they've posted some of their recordings. They range from the mundane, like a woman at a gym talking about her plans for the evening, to the intimate, like a man at a restaurant talking about his lover's fetishes. 
   
   The people behind this project claim to be contractors working for the NSA, even though their website links to the ACLU's instructions on how to urge Congress to repeal part of the Homeland Security Act. They say they've launched a new "pro bono" pilot program on behalf of the agency - despite not having been asked by the NSA to do this. We talk to one of the project's creators about what they're trying to achieve, and ask how recording and posting unsuspecting people's conversations without their consent can be justified. We agreed to withhold his identity at his request. 
   
   This interview has been edited for clarity and length. 
   
   Why have you asked us not to reveal your identity? 
   
   Well, our operatives can really complete our mission with much greater efficiency if our identities are not known. 
   
   Are you worried about legal repercussions for yourself and for the project? 
   
   No. Our agents are not. 
   
   But to be clear, what you're doing is against the law New York State, because to record a conversation, one person needs to give their consent to being taped. So why are you doing this? 
   
   If people were really bothered by this type of surveillance, we imagine that they would be sending their their feelings towards their government representatives to respond to the NSA's tactics. And certainly what we've been hearing over and over again is, "I'm not saying or doing anything wrong, so it's really fine if I am listened in on." So since we've heard the overwhelming response to the NSA's actions, we figured that we would step in and help with the NSA's actions. These people aren't doing anything wrong. They really have nothing to be concerned about and there should be no element of being surprised or hurt by an invasion of privacy. 
   
   I think I understand the point you're trying to make about mass surveillance and about the NSA. But you're essentially trying to make that point by doing the same thing, which is violating people's privacy. 
   
   You're certainly welcome to process it that way. We look at it as we're trying to keep the country and the world at large safe. Part of the freedoms that we're trying to protect are not just the freedoms of people's physical wellbeing, but people's freedoms to show dissent and speak up to power. We've given people a place at the site to express their dissatisfaction with with this type of surveillance. So if this type of surveillance really bothers them, there's really a way for people en masse to let their voices be heard and have this type of surveillance and data mining be stopped. 
   
   And so as you go about conducting this "surveillance," what are you doing to protect people's identities? 
   
   We have not released anybody's first and last names on the recordings. Through our data collection, we have heard people give their bank account numbers to their customer service representatives at their banks. People talk about passwords to different services that they use online and we've deleted those and not made those public. We have not released anything that would compromise any particular individual. 
   
   But you list the exact location of where the recorder was hidden and you're posting pictures of the locations too. Couldn't someone figure out who that person was, at a location talking about a specific thing? 
   
   It's very interesting you say that, because the NSA can actually put together your whereabouts past, present and future with much less information than that. The NSA uses many, many, many third party contractors and we consider ourselves to be one of them, albeit in a freelance, pro bono non-official way. 
   
   A not asked way. 
   
   No, no one has asked us yet, but we feel pretty confident that the NSA would approve of our actions, since we're really trying to aid them in their efforts. 
   
   What if someone hears themselves on your website wants you to take the clip down? What are you going to do? 
   
   Well, there is an email address. So far, we haven't had that response. Our agents would have to really go over that and work on that on a case-by-case basis. So far, we haven't received any emails asking that to happen. And again, we have a place where people can vent their frustration to people much more powerful than us. We're a small organization. There's a big conversation happening and a debate and laws being changed on the Hill this week. So it would be a really good time for people to weigh in with their voices. 
   
   There has been a long debate over privacy and the N.S.A. and CSIS, our spy agency here in Canada. What are you hoping that it's adding to the conversation? 
   
   What we're hoping to add to the conversation is people to have an awareness of how even the most mundane conversation reveals quite a bit about your life, your patterns of behavior. But it seems that there are people who are aware of that, because they've said quite loudly, as I've said before, "As long as I'm not doing anything wrong, I don't see why people have a problem with governments and their third party vendors that they work with knowing who I speak to, how often I speak to them, where I speak to them." And in some cases, you don't even really need to know and hear the conversation to know what you're speaking about. If the NSA understands that you're calling a doctor's office and a particular type of doctor over and over again, they don't need to listen to the details in the granular piece of those conversations to figure out what's going on in your life. 
   
   What's most interesting thing that you've heard on these tapes? 
   
   I don't think you have the security clearance to hear the most interesting pieces. And what's interesting to one might not be to another. So, that's really a judgment call that I'm not in a position to make. 
   
   Okay you're helping the NS. do their job is what you're saying. 
   
   Oh, absolutely. And we consider it a really important mission. But If the tactics and them completing their mission were deemed illegal or unconstitutional, we would immediately stop. 
   
   Aren't you deceiving people? Your tape recorders actually say "Property of the NSA." 
   
   Well, we feel since we're working on behalf of the NSA, that we took the liberty to say that we're working for their mission, that this would be the best way to identify our devices. And if someone were to find one, we hope that they can just drop it in the mailbox somewhere and it would be delivered to the NSA and then that way, we can get our information even quicker to the NSA, rather than having to go to our website and listen to what we found they can get ahold of it that way. 
   
   How would you feel if you were on the other side of this and one of your private conversations ended up online? 
   
   I assume my private conversations are being listened to by many. That's an assumption that most people should make, that their private comings and goings are not are not completely between the people that they think they're having them with. ||||| A woman at a gym tells her friend she pays rent higher than $2,000 a month. An ex-Microsoft employee describes his work as an artist to a woman he's interviewing to be his assistant—he makes paintings and body casts, as well as something to do with infrared light that’s hard to discern from his foreign accent. Another man describes his gay lover’s unusual sexual fetish, which involves engaging in fake fistfights, “like we were doing a scene from Batman Returns." 
   
   These conversations—apparently real ones, whose participants had no knowledge an eavesdropper might be listening—were recorded and published by the NSA. Well, actually no, not the NSA, but an anonymous group of anti-NSA protestors claiming to be contractors of the intelligence agency and launching a new "pilot program" in New York City on its behalf. That spoof of a pilot program, as the prankster provocateurs describe and document in videos on their website, involves planting micro-cassette recorders under tables and benches around New York city, retrieving the tapes and embedding the resulting audio on their website: Wearealwayslistening.com. 
   
   A note, tape recorder and USB drive anonymously sent to WIRED's New York office. The USB drive contained a video showing one of the recorders being stealthily planted under a table. 
   
   "Eavesdropping on the population has revealed many saying 'I’m not doing anything wrong so who cares if the NSA tracks what I say and do?' Citizens don’t seem to mind this monitoring, so we’re hiding recorders in public places in hopes of gathering information to help win the war on terror," reads a message on the project's website. "We've started with NYC as a pilot program, but hope to roll the initiative out all across The Homeland." 
   
   Another page of the project's website embeds the audio from five of those surreptitious recordings of New Yorkers' conversations, including the ones described above. The group likely has many hours more of surveillance tape from the low-tech spy bugs they've scattered around the city. 
   
   The project’s creators have chosen to remain anonymous, no doubt in part to avoid the legal controversy surrounding secret recordings of private conversations under New York law. But they tipped off WIRED to their work in an encrypted email a day ahead of their project’s launch Wednesday. They say they've planted dozens of the microcassette recorders around New York over the last year. "The NSA employs many 3rd party contractors, [and] we consider ourselves to be contractors of this nature, albeit in a unpaid and unsanctioned capacity," reads the email. "We can attest to the fact all people recorded are NOT actors and are not knowingly involved in the project in any way." 
   
   That anonymous email was followed by an envelope sent to WIRED’s New York office containing a single page with the printed words “We’re listening as you read this,” along with the group's website url. Inside the envelope was also one of the group's tape recorders (without a tape) and a USB stick containing the video below, which shows one of the recorders being surreptitiously planted under a restaurant table, marked with the words "PROPERTY OF NSA." 
   
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxJgK0ND2DY&feature=youtu.be 
   
   A link on the We Are Always Listening site makes clear the project's larger political purpose: The word "Angry?" in the site's menu connects to a page on the ACLU's website that asks Americans to protest the renewal of Patriot Act, whose deadline looms on June 1. The ACLU page asks voters to petition Congress in particular to allow the 215 Section of the law to sunset, which would end the bulk collection of metadata about Americans' communications, revealed in the first published leak of classified material by NSA contractor Edward Snowden. 
   
   A spoofed NSA logo created by the group. Its latin translates to "We Are Always Listening." 
   
   Despite that link, ACLU spokesperson Stacy Sullivan tells WIRED that the group isn't affiliated with the people behind the eavesdropping prank, though the ACLU did grant them permission to link to the group's petition page. Sullivan wouldn't say whether she knew the creators' identities. The NSA didn't immediately respond to WIRED's request for comment. 
   
   The recordings posted to the site don't name any of the eavesdropped speakers. But they do include the locations where the recordings were made, which could provide just enough information to identify some of those speakers. And regardless of anonymity, the prank is likely illegal: Secretly recording a conversation in New York requires the consent of at least one of the people recorded—a tape recorder planted under a table and retrieved later certainly doesn't qualify. 
   
   Of the five recordings published on the project's website so far, three of the recorders used to get them remain in place, and an untold number of others could still be planted around the city. So, careful what you say in public, New Yorkers—unless, of course, you have nothing to hide.
target: – Spending time in New York City these days? You might peek under the table or bench you're using to see if there's a tape recorder marked "PROPERTY OF NSA"—which was placed there by anti-NSA activists trying to make a point, the Guardian reports. The activists won't identify themselves, but have posted recordings (which they claim are authentic) on WeAreAlwaysListening.com. Some are kinda embarrassing, too, like the students who brag about tricking a roommate into leaving, the Asian men who mock other Asians for speaking in an Asian manner, or the guy whose gay lover liked acting out fight scenes as part of sex. It was "like Batman Returns," he says. "Bam! Boom! Kazam. Ah you got me!” The point, of course, is political: Anyone upset by the tapes can send "their feelings towards their government representatives to respond to the NSA's tactics," one of the activists tells the CBC. Some NSA supporters have said they approve of domestic surveillance because they're not doing anything wrong, he notes, and suggests these recordings will put that to the test. Their website links the word "Angry?" to an ACLU page where people can oppose the renewal of the Patriot Act, which is due to end June 1, Wired reports. For the record: What the activists are doing violates state law, and the ACLU says it isn't affiliated with them, but did allow the link. Meanwhile, "careful what you say in public, New Yorkers—unless, of course, you have nothing to hide," says Wired.