Peeping Tom - I sticking to my desktop computer

Peeping Tom – I sticking to my desktop computer

Jun 16, 2008 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

I am thinking about selling my old computer and buying a laptop. But I am afraid. I am scared somebody might believe that the laptop I am buying may be some sort of electronic listening device.

Years ago, in the midst of the crime wave following the prison break, Roger Khan was found with a laptop. The whole country went wild with speculation that this man’s computer was some sort of electronic listening device used to determine where telephone calls were coming from.

I never bought that story about the laptop. I have never believed that there is any such device available outside of the US military and its intelligence arm. I never accepted all the mumbo jumbo about Khan’s computer having triangulation features.

If indeed this so-called electronic listening device was indeed to intercept phone calls, it would have been useless to Khan because he would have been listening to hundreds of thousands of calls taking place at the same time, including Cousin Shirley talking about Sister Betty’s daughter-in-law who is carrying on with Uncle Sonny.

I never believed there was any laptop with such capabilities. If there was such a laptop, then it has to be somewhere. So where is it? After all, Khan’s laptop was seized by the army.

How come they have never produced any analysis that confirmed it was being used for clandestine purposes? No one has, however, produced such a laptop, and therefore I do not believe that there was any laptop capable of doing the things that the public was led to believe by a highly speculative media.

Surely, if Khan bought this equipment, somebody should be able to produce it. No one is going to ask me to believe that story about a high tech laptop that could triangulate and listen in on telephone calls.

Guyanese can spin a myth, and I know about the propensity to believe in the spectacular.
The situation at the time lent itself to Guyanese believing that there was such a device.

Guyanese wanted to believe that there was hope of getting the men who were spreading terror, and so they swallowed hook, line and sinker that version about a high-tech computer.

Such technologies are not going to be available across the counter. The American Government is not going to allow such technology to be in the hands of civilians, and certainly is not going to allow such technologies to be sold to foreign countries.

Do you really believe that the United States is going to allow restricted technology to be sold to any Tom, Dick and Harry who can produce some paper that says they have the permission of their government to buy such technology?

What is sold across the counter are a number of “spying” equipment, such as high-velocity cameras, phone tapping recorders, listening devices such as bugs that can be planted in rooms and which emit a signal to another source, tape recorders that can be concealed in various objects, and other forms of paraphernalia that is now widely and freely available all over the world, and which are used by private investigators.

What the army may have seized from Roger Khan was probably a laptop computer which can do the things that normal laptops can do.

The army seized the device which was in the possession of Khan, and if it could have done the things the press wanted the public to believe it could have done, this would already have been demonstrated to the public in the same way as the authorities like to display the hardware that they seize from armed gangs and bandits.

The PNCR should not allow itself to be sucked into this issue about the Government giving permission to Roger Khan to bring in some special laptop.

Any person wishing to have possession of such a device would not ask the Government permission; they would simply bring in the device, if any such device existed.

You can walk through our airports or bring in any laptop through any wharf without Customs having a clue that the laptop has some special features that are not permitted under the law.

Does anyone really, therefore, believe that Roger Khan would ask the Government for permission to bring in any laptop? By the time the Government is willing to process that application, the technology would become obsolete.

The PNCR, however, sees an opportunity to use something that Khan’s attorney has said to its own political advantage. Khan’s attorney is reported to have said that Khan received permission from the Government.

Well, Khan’s attorney also said that Khan was resisting a plot by the opposition to topple the Government. Is the PNCR going to believe that, too?