Mwandayi, Towards a new reading of the Bible in Africa – spy exegesiscrophones which send information to a recorder or to a listening spy
agent. While the perceived enemy would be busy thinking that he/she is
delivering sensitive information to his/her group of confidants he/she
may not be aware that the speech is being tapped or listened to.
Another form of device known to the spy world is the use of a wiretap.
One easiest thing a wiretapper does is to expose the red and green wires
of the line that runs into the house of the person he/she would be spy-
ing. He/she then plugs the other end of the wire into the phone and
attaches the exposed wires to an accessible, exposed point on the outside
phone line. By so doing he/she is thus able to hear all the communica-
tions of the spied target. Since, however, the spy should guard against
exposing himself/herself the tap’s microphone is removed so that it
simply remains a listening device. To avoid also the bother of having to
sit for twenty-four hours listening since he/she would not know when
the target would make calls, the spy may have to rely on a tape recorder
which too has its own limitations since it cannot run for twenty-four
hours without having to change the cassettes. These huddles are usually
solved by installing a more sophisticated technology called a bug. A bug
is a device that receives audio information and broadcasts it through the
air, usually via radio waves. Since people hardly have a tendency of look-
ing inside their phone receivers a spy, once he/she gets access to the
house as a phone technician at most, inserts the bug in that receiver and
sets up a nearby radio receiver that picks up this signal and sends it to a
speaker or encodes it on a tape.^9
Yet another form of technology used to get information from one’s
enemies is the use of radio frequency scanners. Since such scanners are
receivers that have extremely wide frequency ranges capable of capturing
all kinds of radio signals it means a spy can record and analyse an en-
emy’s radio. As with written documents of an enemy, since stealing
original documents could expose the spy, a wide assortment of minia-
ture cameras hidden in unsuspicious objects are used for the job. There
are other lots of gadgets used in the spy business, what I have just high-
lighted are just some of the common gadgets used in the spying field.
(^9) Cf. Grabianowski, How Spies Work.