"How To Bug Your Family This Christmas" as seen in The Magdalen

How to bug your family

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this Christmas Mila Georgieva As people, we’re obsessed with surveillance: phones listening in to what people talk about, data being gathered about our shopping habits, where we go to drink coffee, who we go with, and what we thought of the experience. Everything is monitored and recorded. And while intrusive, this still appears to be the best form of gathering opinion, even if that opinion is unanimously to stop being so nosy!

Governing bodies have been nosy for as long as anyone can remember, because gossiping on a political level is always more fun than eavesdropping on someone’s Saturday night. Being in journalism you feel you have to be that fly on the wall for whatever politics are going on in your area, whether it be the university, your town, or even your country.

'Could you easily bug your own house? Maybe'.

As residents of the Media Hub at the Union, myself and the other media managers soon realised how thin our deceptive stone-effect walls were when we could hear the booming voices of those in the offices around us and quickly realised “Gossip O’Clock” in the Hub had to stop.

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With every intention of getting the gossip from the Exec hallway first, we became the butt of our own joke when we were told off about discussing matters which we weren’t supposed to know about… Which raised the Execs’ eyebrows but also ours as we were certain we were whispering.

So could the Media Hub be bugged? Maybe.

Could you easily bug your own house? Maybe.

Over the years we’ve seen some spectacular examples of listening devices,created by individuals beyond their time. The Great Seal Bug was one of the first surveillance devices which did not require charging as it ran on electromagnetic energy. That being, it contained a capacitive membrane paired with an antenna, which meant it would be triggered when a certain radio frequency was detected by the device, thus causing it to activate. The Bug was hidden away in a wooden shield case, so whenever speech or other sounds passed through the case, it caused the membrane inside to vibrate, and in turn this was picked up by the antenna and re-transmitted.

Only caught due to someone tuning in to the wrong radio frequency at the right time, the Bug remained undetected for over six years. And it got us thinking: if this could be done years ago, what’s stopping people doing it now? You can buy these devices, or if you’re savvy enough could even make one at home, and after a bit of rewiring, you’d have your very own loitering device.

'As people we're obsessed with surveillance' Now, I’m in no way suggesting you should do this, but thinking back, if we started off with a rope and empty Pot Noodle container to create makeshift phones, then I think we can upgrade our ways of getting festive gossip this winter when all the family get together to celebrate the holidays.