At 04:56 AM 11/11/00 -0500, Bill Stewart wrote: [snip]

On the other hand, cameras keep getting cheap, and you can hide radio-equipped web-quality cameras for nearly no money anywhere you've got electricity, so getting all (or enough) of them can be harder.

OTOOH, if you've a little money to invest, the optical reflection DSP techniques developed to detect sniper rifle scopes could be used to find cameras in large areas. (Laser reflected off spinning scanning mirror into target area, digitize reflected light and process to detect internal reflections of lens assemblies. Done right it can identify scope by make and model, mirror gives relative bearing to points of interest.) This technique should apply to everything but pinhole lenses, which aren't very useful for staring-eye type field surveillance. A simple commercial version of this is already available to sweep for hidden cameras in a small room type environment, scaling for large field use should be relatively simple with better optics and detectors. Its likely a few of the spooks on this list have used such equipment, its probably been deployed for a number of years now by the US.