Flashback: Even Stevens’ Shia LaBeouf Discussed FBI Spying on Leno
June 14th, 2013
Mistrust of government has reached new heights of late in the US, particularly following revelations that the National Security Agency has been engaging in wide-net, unconstitutional search and seizure practices that involve stealing citizens’ private data from cell phones and online communications. Though some whistleblowers have mentioned that these practices go on in the past, few Americans believed in them until the allegations were proven by Edward Snowden.
Back in 2008, actor Shia LaBeouf, best known for his role on the TV series Even Stevens, conducted a little leak of his own on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno while promoting the film Eagle Eye. He claimed that an FBI consultant working on the film admitted that the agency spies on innocent Americans using a variety of techniques, including recording the contents of phone calls. Check out a clip from the interview below.
Shia LaBeouf’s Allegations
During the brief segment, LaBeouf laid out some serious charges. First of all, he claimed that the FBI consultant told him that microphones from home security systems could be tapped by agents to monitor conversations within the home. Also, he expressed his belief that the agents could use OnStar technology to shut down vehicles from afar.
Said LaBeouf, “He told me that one in five phone calls that you make are recorded and logged, and I laughed at him and then he played back a phone conversation I’d had two years prior to joining the picture.” He went further, “It was one of those phone calls that was like, you know, ‘what are you wearing’ type of things.”
The FBI Consultant Denies Making These Statements
Wired tracked down Thomas Knowles, the FBI consultant listed on the IMDB page for Eagle Eye. He disputed the claims using carefully-chosen language, “Put it this way… you couldn’t take that many conversations. You don’t want that many conversations. You want numbers. So the whole thing about conversations in Shia’s comment just doesn’t make sense if somebody looks at it closely.”
It’s interesting that he chose to focus on the number of calls, rather than whether or not calls are monitored without a warrant, almost as if to dispute only the frequency with which these privacy violations take place. Most Americans would likely be just as disturbed if they discovered that only one in every 5,000 phone calls were monitored, for example.
It’s hard to tell who is telling the truth, because the FBI has a history of engaging in covert operations against American political activists. Regardless of who is right in this case, it exposes another significant point: why do whistleblowers get punished for admitting things that consultants are paid to tell movie producers? Why can the government expose all types of classified info to make a propaganda film like Zero Dark Thirty, yet it turns against anyone who exposes legitimate crimes by public officials?
FBI movie consultants often give away information that is essentially the same type leaked by Edward Snowden. Was Shia LaBeouf lying or mistaken? Is the FBI agent trying to cover up his tracks now that public sentiment has turned against these techniques? It’s hard to tell until we know more about the scope and nature of the government’s efforts to spy on us.
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