Yes. 20 years ago 99.9% of anyone fearing in-home surveillance was a paranoid. The percentage of folks with unfounded concern less now, but I won’t hazard a guess how much.
Certainly some landlords have installed monitoring equipment in some rentals for reasons both fair and foul. This stuff gets cheaper, smaller, and easier to install, connect, and operate every day.
As an example:
Back in the early 90s I worked for a guy who had bugs in the offices of his business. The devices looked like the ultrasonic alarm projectors you sometimes see installed in the corner where two walls meet a ceiling. But it was really a microphone and a miniature telephone. You’d connect it to a plain old phone line or an office extension. Then from elsewhere you’d dial that phone number or extension and the device would silently answer the call. You’d then be listening to whatever was being said in the room until you hung up. Fidelity and volume was pretty good.
He also had a very nice house and a never-ending string of skanky GFs, as befit his taste. I don’t know that his house was bugged, but I’d lay odds.
That was 25 years ago now. Back to today …
We all know how small the camera on the back of our phone is. There are a lot of places to put something like that in an apartment that would not be easy to find by manual search.
Nowadays most of us are under video, audio, and computer surveillance almost whenever we’re out in public. We’ve just gotten used to the idea. And lots of separate systems operated by lots of different entities don’t all connect together into a single all-knowing oracle. Yet.
Sure, many landlords have been caught surreptitiously filming tenants. However, the tone of the OP doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. It reminds me of a zombie thread I saw recently about a tenant from the floor above “following” someone around their apartment.
Unless it’s a furnished apartment, there are limited places where a filming device could be hidden. I would check bathroom vents, smoke alarms, HVAC equipment. This would probably be much more effective than a “bug sweeping” device.
Finally, while landlords may be caught spying on their tenants, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of one using an audio-only recorder, which the OP seems to be convinced is a possibility.
There did exist about 10 years ago a web site where someone rented a room to a nice looking red headed female and streamed her activities to the world.
They did brag the cameras where hidden in the wall clock, the air vent, and behind the front plate of the DVD player. So those would be some places to check.
Result of a Google, then chosen at random: http://thespystore.com/ has a nice selection of surveillance goodies. Each of which could give the OP (or anyone else) some ideas of where and what to look for.
If you decide to hire a professional, first, buy and install your own bugging device. If they find that, and no others, maybe you can trust that the house is clear. maybe.
If they don’t find yours, don’t pay. And write a sternly worded review on yelp.
If you are being professionally “surveilled” by the powers that be they have access to very sophisticated, hard to detect equipment. Your best scenario would be (frankly) to move.
If this is more ex-wife, creepy stalker, perverted landlord type stuff a thorough inspection of vents, light fixtures and spaces in the wall where pipes penetrate especially in bathrooms and bedrooms would catch most cameras.
There are also fibre optic pin-hole size cameras on wires down to 1mm or 2mm thick.
Connect wirelessly or by USB to a mini-computer and one has permanently recorded spying. Or there are micro-drones with cameras which can hover and stream HD to a computer or phone. The Harvard Robofly weighs 60 milligrams and is 3 centimetres wingspan; but they’re slimming this down considerably. The options for spying on one’s neighbours are improving all the time.
Yes, I think it’d be cheaper in the long run to hire a pro who knows what to look for, where the most likely locations are, and already has any equipment needed for such a search.
If the OP wasn’t living in rental property I’d agree 100% with point 2. I gree with a big part of your point 2: the FBI, CIA, FSB, MI6, and MiB are not watching him, 100% for sure. Ditto the Mob or the Martians.
But landlords installing monitors in rental property for essentially defensive purposes is far from unknown. Any renter could be subjected to that unwittingly and unwillingly. Regardless of whether the renter is middle class or a lowlife or a nutter.
What the OP has not yet provided to us is any info about *why *he believes he’s being surveiled. If/when we hear that part of the story we can pretty well decide whether the OP has an actual factual reason to be worried.
A number of you are making fun of the OP and maybe he’s off his meds and going super paranoid … Dopers do have our fair share of mental issues, but stop and consider that if someone really * wanted* to observe you in your rented house (that they had access to at some point) there is no easier, cheaper and more effective time in history for a private individual to accomplish this task than today. Here’s a 12 dollar pinhole camera.
Your cell phone conversations are routinely monitored by "Stingray"hardware that local police and the feds use. Cameras are everywhere now. CAR GPS trackers are minute and sold by Amazon these days. If the OP is involved in a legal tussle or just being harassed by a crazy person being bugged is not an impossible concept.
