Kellyanne Conway's Microwave Spying Gaffe

Kellyanne Conway's Microwave Spying Gaffe

Part of a series on Kellyanne Conway. [View Related Entries]

Updated Mar 14, 2017 at 05:47PM EDT by Don.

Added Mar 14, 2017 at 03:15PM EDT by Don.

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Overview

Kellyanne Conway's Microwave Spying Gaffe refers to a statement made by Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway, in which she claimed microwaves were being used as surveillance cameras during an interview in early March 2017.

Background

On March 4th, 2017, United States President Donald Trump posted a tweet claiming that Barack Obama issued wiretaps against Trump Tower prior to the November 2016 election (shown below). Within two weeks, the tweet gained over 145,000 likes and 50,800 retweets.[5]


Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump Follow Terriblel Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism! 6:35 AM 4 Mar 2017 わ £ 50,858 145,070

On March 7th, Wikileaks released the first part of their Vault 7 leak, which contained documents about a “Weeping Angel” program which captured audio from microphones on Samsung smart TVs after being placed in a “Fake-Off” mode. On March 12th, 2017, Conway was interviewed by the North Jersey[1] newspaper The Bergen Record, during which she described various surveillance technologies she had read about, including "microwaves that turn into cameras," when asked about Trump's wiretap claim (shown below).



Developments

Online Reaction

On March 13th, posts about the microwave gaffe reached the front page of the /r/politics[2] and /r/nottheonion[4] subreddits. Meanwhile, Redditor Danger_Peanut submitted a post asking "What is the 'microwave spying' stuff coming from?" to /r/OutOfTheLoop.[3] Also on March 13th, various Twitter and Instagram users mocked Conway's statements, posting photoshopped pictures of cameras in microwaves.


Kellyanne Conway taking a selfie. TheGladStork S YOURHOTIPOCKET DONE OR DID YOUR MICROWAVE JUST TAKE MY PICTURE?

That evening, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert aired a comedy sketch in which Colbert talks to Obama inside a microwave (shown below). In less than 24 hours, a YouTube upload of the segment received more than 590,000 views and 2,100 comments.



Conway's CNN Interview

On March 13th, Conway was interviewed on CNN, during which she clarified that she was speaking about surveillance "generally," adding "I’m not Inspector Gadget. I don’t believe people are using the microwave to spy" (shown below).



News Media Coverage

In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the online reaction to Conway's gaffe, including The Wrap,[6] Hollywood Life,[7] Esquire[8] and Inquisitr.[9]

Search Interest

External References

Recent Videos 2 total

Recent Images 10 total


Top Comments

Nedhitis
Nedhitis

in reply to AugustDay

Somehow thinking that a microwave can be efficiently hacked for spying purposes based on very vague analytics is the conspiracionist equivalent of Tumblr defending mayonnaise as a gender for similar reasons.

Which even Tumblr itself finds laughable.

This is not how burder of proof works. The stronger an accussation is, the more evidence you need to sustain it, and this is a very strong accussation. "It's not entirely impossible, so it's totally possible and not laughable, look at these semi-related events in the past" is not evidence. Not even circumstantial one.

Be honest: you would be calling bullshit on this like the rest of us if this was said by anyone else other than Trump or Trump's administration.

Also, most microwaves are far from being "smart" devices, even today. Having a poorly functioning clock that gets reset every time you unplug the damn thing is the opposite of smart. Not to mention none of them have any "userdata" on them, unless we make a second leap of logic and assume they can somehow read people's fingerprints from pushed buttons in a microwave… I know for a fact you are smart enough not to imply such a ridiculous thing.

…right..?

+31

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