Secretive Surveillance Company

[Michael Scally MD]

A surveillance vendor that works with U.S. government agencies, such as the FBI, DEA, and ICE, is marketing spying capabilities to local police departments, including cameras that are hidden inside a tombstone, a baby car seat, and a vacuum cleaner.

The brochure highlights some of the capabilities on offer to law enforcement agencies, from the novel to the sometimes straight-up bizarre.

"I think one of the biggest concerns I have is about the cost/size/capabilities of these devices. They keep getting cheaper, smaller and more capable all the time, and it’s unlikely that only law enforcement will be the only actors using them," Freddy Martinez, a policy analyst from government accountability group Open The Government who obtained the brochure through a public records request told Motherboard in an email. The public records request was filed with the Irvine Police Department in California. Beryl Lipton of the government transparency nonprofit MuckRock also obtained the documents using a FOIA request.

Special Services Group, the vendor behind the brochure, does not advertise its products publicly. Its logo is the floating-eye-in-pyramid logo seen on the back of the $1 bill, which conspiracy theorists associate with the Illuminati, and the company's slogan is "Constant Vigilance." The company is so secretive that, when asked for comment for this story, it threatened VICE with legal action if we published this article.

The brochure is available here, starting from page 93. https://cdn.muckrock.com/foia_files/2019/03/29/VOL001.pdf

 

[KL8209]

The whole secret "surveillance" stuff is actually pretty scary. I remember reading over the last few years about microphones being put in place at the manufacturer level into things like dvd players, smart tvs and a whole host of other standard every day devices.

Car seats and vacuums though are a whole other ballgame.

With China's social credit system in place and here we are seeing things like this over here in the west and have been over the last few years doesn't make me paranoid but does leave me being concerned about the direction we are headed.

And these are the things we DO know about - what about that which has not been discovered but already in our every day lives?