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by nwatson
3071 days ago
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Impeached Arizona governor Evan Mecham (shortened term 1987-1988) was probably very paranoid during his time in office, but nobody gave credence to his concern over the possibility of "reflected laser use" to surveil him. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Mecham) ... Throughout his administration, Mecham expressed concern about
possible eavesdropping on his private communications. A senior
member of Mecham's staff broke his leg after falling through a
false ceiling he had been crawling over, looking for covert
listening devices. A private investigator was hired to sweep
the governor's offices looking for bugs. The Governor was quoted
as saying, "Whenever I'm in my house or my office, I always have
a radio on. It keeps the lasers out." After this was reported,
a political cartoon by Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist
Steve Benson appeared in the Arizona Republic depicting the
governor leaving his house outfitted for laser tag. When asked
about this by reporters, Attorney General Bob Corbin replied in
amusement, "We don't have any ray gun pointed at him."
The guy was a tool but the guy had a point about surveillance technology, and nobody took him seriously. |
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i.e. there are certainly listening devices that operate based on bouncing a laser off of a window[1] (or some other object), but his use of a quasi-magical protective measure (radios allegedly protecting against lasers) - in addition to the other behaviour mentioned - strongly implies that he was in need of psychiatric care, as opposed to being under surveillance.
FWIW, I've met multiple people with paranoid psychoses of one sort or another, and all of them have incorporated elements of real-world technology into their delusions.
[1] e.g. http://www.lucidscience.com/pro-laser%20spy%20device-1.aspx