- WHITTIER, Ca - Student newspaper
staff members at Whittier College uncovered what may turn out to be the
story of the year ... in their very own office.
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- A routine maintenance service call last week turned up
an electronic surveillance device imbedded in the office walls of the Quaker
Campus. It is not known how long the bug, which was not functioning when
pulled from the wall, was hidden. The device was capable of transmitting
a radio signal to any receiver, tuned to the correct frequency, within
a three-mile radius, editor Amy Stice said.
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- The discovery prompted a shared sense of disbelief and
concern among the newspaper staff and the university's administration.
As this article was posted, it was not clear which university offices,
if any, were investigating the matter. Whittier Police Department officials
contacted by the SPLC could not find a report of the incident in their
database.
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- The episode began last Thursday when a maintenance worker,
in the newspaper office to fix a broken light table, found a problem with
the electrical socket. Upon taking it apart, he discovered a two-inch surveillance
device soldered to the back of the socket, Stice said.
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- The paper alerted campus security and on Monday an electrician
checked all of the other sockets in the office. No more bugs were found,
but campus security called the Whittier Police Department later that day.
Stice said the officers, however, were reluctant to take action.
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- "The Whittier Police Department came in, apparently
looked at the bug and said, 'Well there's nothing we can do about it; yeah
there's a bug but we don't have any evidence for this,' " Stice said.
The officers said they did not want to file a report, she added, and that
such a measure would necessitate taking custody of the device, which would
probably be thrown away at a later time.
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- The paper decided to keep possession of the bug. Student
government president Jess Craven, whose office is located in the same building
as the publications room, was worried that more bugs might be hidden in
the walls so he contacted a local private investigator, Thomas Barnes.
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- Barnes, a retired police detective and former military
officer, decided to help the staff pro bono, "because they didn't
have any money," he said.
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- Barnes loaned the newspaper a scanner to check the office
for additional surveillance tools and he urged former Whittier mayor and
current councilman Bob Alexander to "light a fire under" the
local police.
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- "Most municipal police departments aren't really
on the learning curve when it comes to bugs, electronic surveillance, computer
crime," Barnes said. "You're lucky, [for] the older policemen,
if they can even run a computer. And if they can't even write their own
reports or run a computer, then they're surely not going to be able to
understand the implications of a bug."
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- "It's pretty serious when you start hard-wiring
in because it means you have to have the opportunity to do it," he
continued. "This is not for a short-term problem, it's (for) somebody
that wants to monitor somebody for a long period of time."
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- The school seems to share his concern.
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- "Student journalism and the free exchange of ideas
is something that the institution has supported since its inception,"
university spokesperson Caye Brundage said. "So we're very concerned
about anything that would inhibit the ability of our students to exchange
ideas freely or that would create an atmosphere where they felt they were
being inhibited."
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- Barnes said he considers the school's administration
a suspect in the surveillance.
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- "Who would want to monitor [the newspaper] on a
long-term basis?" Barnes asked rhetorically. "You start to come
up with a short list of people and one of the people that usually comes
up at the very top of the list is administration. It's like a murder case;
one of the first people you look at is somebody related to the murder victim."
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- Brundage disagreed, "I can't think of why I as an
administrator would want to bug the office," she said. "We are
interested in knowing what the [Quaker Campus] is doing but usually we're
pretty aware of what stories are being [investigated anyway]."
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- Barnes and Brundage both said that the bug appeared to
have been in the wall for "a long time." Sweeps of the rest of
the building turned up no additional surveillance devices.
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- In California, electronic eavesdropping in situations
where there is an expectation of privacy and individuals are unaware of
the surveillance is a felony, Barnes said.
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- Whittier College is the alma mater of former President
Richard Nixon, who was forced to resign from office as a result of the
Watergate scandal that was triggered by the bugging of Democratic National
Committee headquarters in Washington.
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- For More Information: Read the Quaker Campus' coverage
at http://web.whittier.edu/qc/bug.htm http://www.splc.org/newsflash.asp?id=376
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