There’s an answer. Patrol your property, Ar-15 in hand. Play some scary music. Invite some biker types over for a loud BBQ. Give that neighbor a show he won’t soon forget. Maybe he will move, saying; " Man this neighborhood has gone to shit".
I can easily see why someone would have video recording of what is happening on his property. Things happen, and even if you are there, people lie about what happens. For example, over the Christmas holidays, a delivery truck decided that it was too difficult to drive down our driveway and tried to just go straight throughthe yard. The big ruts are still there. They obviously got stuck. It appears they eventually went down the driveway and then decided to make their own way to leave, resulting in getting stuck, again. Yes, those ruts are still there, too. I suspect that UPS/FedEx hired third-party delivery help for the holidays and even if I had called to complain, they would have either blamed them or told me that it must have been the other guy as their people denied it. If I had video of how it happened, I would have had my yard repaired.
Things happen. Having video of it doesn’t make it not happen, but it can go a long way towards figuring out what happened when it does. Most businesses have surveillance video and I don’t think many people think that is weird or “stalking.” It seems to me that audio is much less intrusive than video. While someone may have a reasonable expectation of privacy from police recording either video or audio when they are in their home, I don’t believe that they have that expectation from neighbors on actions or sounds that the neighbor can clearly observe while staying on their own property.
Condo with concrete walls, so normally can’t hear anything. Exception is in the morning, can hear someone sneeze loudly through bathroom vents. And bass practice guy on weekends, though he was inoffensive and might’ve moved out. Other exception is fucking white trash child abuser neighbors when outside because their doors aren’t concrete, but they’ve been evicted and I really hope their kids are okay.
AR-10
Impossible.
I have my shit cranked to 11 pretty much always. Nobody hears anything except for what I want them to hear. (right now, it’s Garbage Run, Run, Baby Run )
Well, that and we’re acres apart.
My sister neighbor worked in his shop all the time and played the radio 24/7. There was maybe a football field length between them. It drove me crazy. Crappy country music between a saw cuts. They had heard it so long it didn’t bother them at all. Plus her husband could play his guitar and have band practice and no one ever complained. So you know, to each his own.
I get weirded out if I hear a new bird at my feeder. That’s the reason I live in the middle of nowhere.
There is no expectation of privacy in public. That’s why you don’t need to ask somebody’s permission to take their picture.
http://carterlawaz.com/2013/06/no-expectation-of-privacy-in-public/
Idk, I expect privacy in my own home and yard. If you are filming and recording for your own property to watch out for criminal behaviour and because I am in the line of the cameras view, I am filmed. That’s one thing. If you purposely aim your camera and voice recorder my way, just to eavesdrop, that’s another. And it’s wrong. IMO.
I have taken your advice and have disabled them until I can talk to a legal professional. As I said earlier, these are triggered by motion and can only hear fairly loud conversations nearby. They are certainly not directional (like the spy stuff) and are “pointed” only at my house/doors. The intent is to see/hear what’s happening on my own property. I’ve never paid attention (nor kept any recordings) of the occasional loud deck conversations I’ve heard in other yards.
While we’re on the subject, wouldn’t a “Ring” doorbell violate the same statutes when deliverymen are talking on my porch? It’s my understanding that they record to files (cloud, I think) as well. Just curious.
Let’s say a couple of your friends come to see if you’re home. While standing on your porch near your Ring doorbell, they happen to be recorded as they discuss how they are defrauding the company you work for. What now? Turn them in and their attorney is going to make a big deal out of the fact that they were recorded illegally. On the other hand, once they ring the doorbell and you answer, you become a party to their conversation and (in one-party States) you could record it.
The Feds hardly ever prosecute, but the fact that it is a criminal act can completely change civil and criminal actions. A divorce lawyer would be ecstatic to discover that his/her client’s spouse had eavesdropped on the communications of the client.
For more info on Federal law, Google “EPIC” or “ECPA.” State laws vary, but aren’t hard to find.
There are very good reasons that corporations, institutions, and agencies ONLY record audio with their security cameras when they have installed large and obvious signage warning that they are recording. If a camera in a parking garage happens to record a couple having sex in their car, no foul (usually). If an audio surveillance microphone records a couple TALKING about having sex when there was no warning that they might be recorded, it’s a big problem.
In public, yes, but setting up microphones and recording devices that are so invasive that they can pick up conversations in neighboring yards is, at minimum, borderline illegal in some jurisdictions. You don’t have reasonable expectation of privacy on a sidewalk or even in places that are in plain view of passersby on public streets. But depending on how sensitive the equipment is, recording a private conversation between two people who have a legitimate claim to expectations of privacy are a different matter. And it probably doesn’t matter if you’re recording from your own property.
The caveat is that the legality of it often depends on whether or not the conversation was recorded - just hearing the conversation may or may not be illegal. And intent probably has a lot to do with it as well. I doubt you’d be prosecuted for accidentally recording snippets of a conversation in someone’s backyard when you were just listening for birds or whatever. However, if you’re aiming powerful microphones into someone’s private space and recording, then that’s potentially illegal.
ECPA applies to the government, or employers spying on their employees, and EPIC is, I believe, covered under that.
They will need to establish that they had a reasonable expectation of privacy standing on my doorstep.
Regards,
Shodan
Some of the cases I’ve been involved in started out very low-key and then went nuclear.
For example, neighboring families A & B don’t get along due to some past grievances. Mr. A starts recording so he will have “proof” that he is being harassed by the B family. Along the way, Mr. A overhears Mr. and Mrs. B talking about Mr. B’s erectile dysfunction. Mr. A tells his wife about it and (somehow) word gets back to Mr. B. Now Mr. B has a good reason to get an attorney. The attorney seeks a TRO and then an injunction to stop the As from recording. He goes on to seek compensatory and punitive civil damages against the A family. All of a sudden, it’s a big mess, often complicated by perjury (e.g., “I never recorded anything I heard and never revealed it to a third-party!”)
There have also been many situations where people just assumed that it’s perfectly fine to record the conversations of anyone who is in their house. Not true. Record your nanny talking to her boyfriend on her cell phone while she is alone in your house and you can also be looking at some trouble.
In some cases, nobody would even have known that the conversations were being recorded, but the person doing the eavesdropping just couldn’t resist telling other people. “Did you know that Joe and Mary are getting divorced?” or “Did you know that John’s daughter has genital herpes?” It’s really unbelievable how people dig a hole with unnecessary gossip.
While this discussion is fascinating, I would like to steer it back to my original question (restated for clarity); Are there any easily available technologies that would enable my friend’s neighbor to listen to conversations inside my friend’s house?
It is a given that the yard is being observed and listened in on. There is no attempt to hide the cameras or disguise their purpose. It may well be illegal, but there appears to be no appetite for the local constabulary to do anything about it.
Could they sue?
Absolutely. Give me a budget and take away my ethics and you could hear everything you care to, including all conversations on landline telephones (or VOIP services).
Yes, ECPA provides for civil damages (both compensatory and punitive, plus legal fees). IANAL, but the usual process would be (1) TRO, (2) hearing for permanent injunction, then (3) civil lawsuit. I’ve seen applications for injunctions that make it sound like the person doing the eavesdropping is just short of being a child-molester.
Here is a laser eavesdropping system (if you have to ask the price, you probably can’t afford it), and here’s an article that says that such systems don’t exactly provide high quality recordings.
So if the neighbor really wanted to hear what’s going on inside the house, he’d probably have to find a way to get some kind of bug inside. Alternatively, if he somehow got access to the cell phone of one of the residents, it could be used for eavesdropping.
Absent that kind of access, I doubt that any ordinary person would have the means (even if he had the motivation) to hear indoor conversations that weren’t audible outside the house.
SDMB rules (wisely) prevent any detailed discussion of this topic, but I can assure you that there are at least a dozen ways to eavesdrop or wiretap without actually entering a structure. Most of these techniques are readily researched on-line and require virtually no technical knowledge. I’ve found a surprising number of devices/attempts and some of them show impressive imagination. (I’ve also found a court-authorized Federal surveillance, but that’s another story.)
One common facet of paranoia is believing others are spying on you, or aiming devices/harmful rays at your home.
Not saying that’s what affecting the OP’s friends however.
If their privacy is being invaded (I kind of doubt the eavesdropping part) and they don’t want to involve a lawyer, they can always get a couple of cheap security cameras (or for even less fuss, dummy cameras) and surveill the neighbor right back. Maybe he’ll give in and seek a truce, or things could escalate in entertaining fashion. Eventually all parties could wind up barricaded in their homes, like Gene Hackman in The Conversation.
Absolutely. In fact, your friend’s probably already got the technology in his house. All his neighbour needs to do is gain control of it. And that can often be done without physical access to the house or its contents, by exploiting vulnerabilities in Internet-connected devices and/or by social engineering. For example, the neighbour might leave a malware-laden USB drive lying near your friend’s house where he’s likely to notice it. If he’s gullible enough to connect it to his computer (and recent studies have shown that an alarmingly high proportion of people will do this without hesitation), it can install software allowing the neighbour to control the computer. This would allow the neighbour to activate the computer’s microphone or camera at will and retrieve the audio or video.
Even many very common, lower-tech devices are not built with security in mind—for example, baby monitors are often simple radios that broadcast in the clear. An eavesdropper need only get sufficiently close to the building and find the right channel.