Are you bugging yourself?

I’ve been reading ‘The Siege’, the new book by Ben Macintyre. He wrote ‘Rogue Heroes’, the origin story of the SAS, the Special Air Services, which became ‘SAS: Rogue Heroes’ on BBC. Macintyre also wrote ‘The Spy and the Traitor’ about the extraordinary exfiltration of double-agent Oleg Gordievsky from Moscow. (When I was a teenager, Gordievsky, who my dad had befriended when he arrived in England, used to come over for dinner wearing a ridiculous ginger wig and beard to hide his identity).

‘The Siege’ covers the six-day occupation of the Iranian Embassy by anti-Ayatollah hostage-takers in 1980. I vividly remember watching the final moments of the siege live on television, when SAS teams blew out the windows and took the Embassy. They knew where the hostage-takers stood – physically and emotionally – because they had been listening.

The SAS prepares to storm the Iranian Embassy in London in 1980

The secret services sunk a hole into the foot-thick brick between the Embassy and the Montessori next door when ambient noise was loud enough to cover the sound of drilling. Microphones in the brickwork picked up more with every drilled inch, but it was never enough. Fortunately, the hostage-takers helped out.

Phone and telex lines had been cut early on to isolate the Embassy, and Metropolitan Police negotiators had passed an army field telephone through a window to serve as a direct line between the chief negotiators on both sides. It was a simple setup — one phone handset inside the Embassy, one outside, a single wire between them. But the police had tweaked the phone so that the Embassy end didn’t disengage when the handset was hung up. It was always on, and the police listened constantly to conversation inside. The terrorists had installed the bug themselves.

What kind of fool lets a listening device in? Ask your smart speaker or phone.

Voice assistants should only be listening for wake-up words, but in November 2015, prosecutors issued a warrant to Amazon. They wanted to know what James Bates’ Echo smart speaker had heard. An acquaintance had been found dead in the hot tub at Bates’ home in Bentonville, Arkansas, and a third person remembered Alexa playing music that night. Bates gave his consent to Amazon releasing audio recordings. The case against Bates was dropped in November 2017.⁠

There are at least 15 billion more microphones in the world than there were in 1980. Better mind what you say.