Drone
Bird's-eye view: A remote-controlled drone helicopter that can record video and take photographs hovers above sunbathers. Photo: Jason South
Over a large flat white, ''no froth'', in a tall glass, John Raprager empties a black backpack of the tools of his trade. Out comes a wristwatch with a built-in video camera, the minuscule spy hole hidden above the six. ''It was a gift from my dad,'' he says. Laid across the cafe table are other surveillance devices disguised as a mobile phone, a car-key fob and a stick of chewing gum. He reaches for a packet of cigarettes. ''Is that also a camera?'' I ask. ''No, just cigarettes,'' he says.
The genial private investigator, from Lyonswood Investigation Services, has bags under his eyes and a ballpoint pen with a video camera in the pocket of his white shirt. He has been a private investigator for 21 years, spying on cheating spouses and light-fingered employees.
But the game has changed. Anyone with a mobile phone can now track what someone is doing, who they are meeting and what they are saying, he says. ''It is very easy to record a conversation. All you need is a good microphone and a high-quality recorder.''
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Such recordings are catching whispers and moans in the home and office. Private conversations once considered off limits are increasingly fair game. Family lawyers say many warring couples are hacking social media pages or email accounts, recording telephone calls or attaching GPS trackers to cars.
In February, Sydney radio broadcaster Ray Hadley's alleged bullying of a junior staff member was secretly recorded by the victim on his mobile phone. In Victoria, secret tapes of conversations between former police minister adviser Tristan Weston and Liberal Party heavyweights ultimately forced the resignation of former premier Ted Baillieu.
Beyond political machinations and workplace conversations, the spread of digital technology has enabled people to record conversations with their spouse or even their physician, often secretly. A Sydney cancer specialist recently recommended patients tape consultations with doctors. Separately, advocacy group Workcover Victims Victoria advises people to record certain private conversations to ''stop them lying about your claim details''.
''Most of us recognise that we feel we're constantly being either overheard or that spending our lives in digital media is leaving traces,'' says Gerard Goggin, professor of media and communication at the University of Sydney. ''We always feel we are now living and talking in a crowded room, even when we're doing potentially private things.''
In a crowded room anyone can listen to what we're saying. Sharing personal details on social media sites such as Facebook has also shifted the boundaries of what we consider private.
Raprager says many clients first try spying for themselves, donning a disguise or recording private conversations - often illegally.
''I think there is a growing acceptance of it,'' he says. ''I hear lots of times about people recording conversations on their mobile phone, probably because they don't see the harm in it. If they are suspicious of something or they want to catch them out, it's easy to record that conversation by turning their phone on.''
His ''workhorse'' is a digital video camera that can spy through windows or windscreens - ''if you want to see a couple smooching inside a car''. For night assignments he sometimes carries a mock gift box wrapped in lace ribbon to hide the lens of the video camera inside.
But recording conversations is no longer the stuff of PIs or spy fiction. Every smartphone is also a tracking device, camera and audio recorder.
''I don't lose sleep at night because technology has increased, but there are circumstances in which we should be bloody worried,'' says Australian Privacy Foundation chairman Roger Clarke.
What circumstances are they? ''When we've got something to hide, which is you, me and everybody else,'' he says. ''When we've got things going on in our lives which are intended to be for someone else's confidence and not others … I think it is entirely rational for everybody to be concerned.''
Privacy is "an issue of concern to the community", says Australian Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim, ahead of privacy awareness week, which starts on Monday. Complaints over alleged privacy breaches rose 11 per cent to 1357 between 2010-11 and 2011-12, according to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. The most common complaint was the use and disclosure of personal information by private organisations.
The increasingly habitual recording of private acts or conversations crosses from the mundane to the malicious. In January in Ohio, in the US, images and videos, tweets and texts of the rape of a 16-year-old girl were distributed by her alleged attackers. In Canberra, in 2011, a female army cadet was unknowingly recorded and broadcast having consensual sex with another cadet in the so-called ''Skype affair''.
At the Sydney Cancer Centre, some consultation rooms have been wired to record conversations between doctors and patients. Cancer specialist Dr Martin Tattersall, who has started taping his consultations, told Fairfax Media in April that such recordings are valuable for patients receiving confronting news and as a ''cost-effective'' means to hold doctors accountable.
We are ''willing accomplices'' in the shift away from what was considered private, says social media expert Ross Monaghan, of Deakin University.
''So much of our lives is now recorded: where we are down to a couple of metres every second of the day on our mobile phones; telecommunication companies keeping track of text messages; email data typically stored on the servers for a number of years,'' he says.
''I think the availability of technology that allows us to record this information has desensitised people. They just assume people are happy for their conversations and lives to be recorded.''
Monaghan cites cases of paramedics tweeting photographs of celebrity patients, along with research suggesting that when people encounter an emergency they take photos for Twitter rather than call triple-0.
Such recordings perhaps point to behavioural change: an increased willingness to record and broadcast private material. In 2010, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said the rise of social networking meant people no longer had an expectation of privacy. ''People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people,'' he says.
As chief executive of the world's most popular social network, he would say that. But many people have fallen into line.
''The culture of thoughtless and irresponsible sharing promoted by Facebook means people don't take this seriously or think about the consequences,'' says David Vaile, of the Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre, at the University of NSW. ''There is a strong commercial push for people to act like data hamsters that are being farmed and not worry about what is happening to them.''
Vaile says the present threat comes from companies collecting data from internet searches or purchases, which can reveal your age, race, sexual preferences or health status.
A study in February by AVG Technologies, an internet and mobile security firm, found 62 per cent of Australian adults believe social media has eroded their privacy in the workplace. One in 10 of those surveyed said they had embarrassing photos or videos of them taken at a work event and uploaded on to social media sites.
Surveillance laws in different states and territories prohibit the recording of private conversations to varying degrees. But such laws have not kept pace with new technology, says Hugh de Kretser, executive director of the Human Rights Law Centre. ''Victorian law says a party to a conversation can covertly record it. Whereas NSW says you can only record it to protect your lawful interests,'' he says. ''We really have piecemeal protection of privacy here in Australia.''
In 2008, the Australian Law Reform Commission recommended individuals should be able to seek compensation for serious invasions of privacy. Law-reform reports in NSW and Victoria have similarly recommended a broad statutory cause of action for serious breaches of privacy. Despite this, federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy recently referred this issue back to the Australian Law Reform Commission for yet another inquiry.
The commission, in 2008, found some people were willing to trade off a degree of privacy for the ease and convenience of email, mobile phones, digital photos and the internet.
Its report also identified an emerging generation gap, with younger people more comfortable sharing personal information on social networking sites. But even this generation held a ''strong desire'' to retain control over the access to and distribution of personal information, the commission found.
People are starting to push back against privacy threats. The AVG Technologies survey found many adults were turning away from social media. Of those who agreed social media had eroded their privacy at work, 23 per cent said they now avoided social networks.
''We're probably around about the low point in terms of consciousness of privacy,'' Vaile says.
But data security breaches and the commercial exploitation of Facebook users are slowly turning back the tide, he adds. ''I always ask people who say privacy is dead to give me your banking password and pin. Most people will baulk at that," he says.
''My feeling is people will become, over time, a bit more conscious about this. There's this gradual realisation that letting someone collect your whole life is not such a great thing.''