NSA Spying
"We Are Always Listening" is a new project that hides tape recorders in sites across New York as a means to increase awareness of how the National Security Agency can invade our privacy. Reuters

You and your friends gather at a busy café in the East Village for Sunday brunch. You hear the bustle of the waiters, people chatting at other tables and friends catching up over drinks. Silverware clinks on plates, pauses punctuate your meal, and someone responds to your story about the absence of a thermostat in your apartment. You wonder suddenly whether you've said anything too private. Someone, it seems, may have eavesdropped on your conversations, and not just in the restaurant.

"We Are Always Listening" could be a prank, performance art or even illegal. The project is a new effort to raise awareness about the National Security Agency's spy program by making you feel completely uncomfortable in public. "Eavesdropping on the population has revealed many saying, 'I’m not doing anything wrong, so who cares if the NSA tracks what I say and do?' the project's homepage explains. Citizens don’t seem to mind this monitoring, so we’re hiding recorders in public places in hopes of gathering information to help win the war on terror. We've started with NYC as a pilot program, but hope to roll the initiative out all across The Homeland."

Edward Snowden broke open the dam on the NSA's massive surveillance program. Through the various documents he leaked, we learned the agency could access your phone, email, offline computers and the Internet itself by creating backdoors on secure websites. The Patriot Act gave the the agency the ability to tap into your life, and now there's a huge debate on renewing that controversial piece of legislation. On Wednesday, Kentucky Senator and presidential candidate Rand Paul took the Senate floor and began a 10-hour filibuster to protest the renewal of the Patriot Act and advocate the end of bulk collection of phone data by the NSA.

By placing tape recorders all around New York, We Are Always Listening is showing how invasive the collection of phone data can be. The recorders are labeled "Property of NSA." Six recordings are available online. Each includes the location, terrorism status and device status. The Brindle Room in the East Village, Crunch Gym at Union Square, Cafe Orlin, Angel's Share Lounge at Astor Place and Cafe Mogador in the East Village are all recording sites.

It's unclear whether these recordings are real or even legal. The individual or group behind We Are Always Listening tipped Wired magazine off about the project, saying they have hidden more than a dozen tape recorders in locations around New York. The project provides a link to the ACLU petition page to repeal Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Big Brother, it seems, is alive and well.