Hidden ‘anti-crime’ mics are proliferating on US public transit, recording riders’ conversations

‘New Jersey public transit was forced to remove the bugs it had installed on its light rail system after a public outcry, but Baltimore’s buses and subways remain resolutely under audio surveillance, while in Oakland, the cops hid mics around bus-shelters near the courthouses to capture audio of defendants and their lawyers discussing their cases.
The argument for these things goes, “No one is listening to them unless a crime is committed, and then they’re of forensic value — besides, you’re in a public place, where you have no expectation of privacy.”
We’ve seen that warehoused surveillance data is intrinsically leaky (anything you collect will probably leak, anything you retain will definitely leak); we’ve also seen that making the haystacks bigger doesn’t make it easier to find the needles hidden in them.’
Read more: Hidden ‘anti-crime’ mics are proliferating on US public transit, recording riders’ conversations