This essay is reproduced here as it appeared in the print edition of the original Science for the People magazine. These web-formatted archives are preserved complete with typographical errors and available for reference and educational and activist use. Scanned PDFs of the back issues can be browsed by headline at the website for the 2014 SftP conference held at UMass-Amherst. For more information or to support the project, email sftp.publishing@gmail.com
Counterspy Committee an Opportunity for Peoples Science
By Liberation News Service
‘Science for the People’ Vol. 3, No. 2, May 1971, p. 18
There is no law prohibiting the detection and removal of phone taps, regardless of their so-called legality. “The vast majority of phone taps are planted without court approval anyhow,” according to the Counter-Spy Committee, a group of electronic technicians and lawyers in Washington, D.C. who provide free detection and removal service to people and groups being tapped but unable to pay for professional detection services.
The committee has a display of devices recently uncovered in and near the homes and offices of several Washington area government employees, students and political activists. The counterspies found one elaborate device plugged into regular phone company equipment near the home of a woman school teacher who had participated in a few marches. The device was a near duplicate of the equipment which should have been there, except that it also served as a powerful radio transmitter.
The Counter-Spy Committee is looking in other major cities for people with some knowledge of electronics who would like to be trained and given equipment to detect taps by the D.C. committee. The D.C. committee will send fully equipped teams of technicians to remove devices when. local sleuths discover them. Money is urgently needed for travel expenses and equipment upkeep.
Contributors, volunteers and persons wanting further information should write to: The Counter-Spy Committee 1402 New York Ave., Washington, D.C. 20005.