Senior Manager AT Comcast Arrested For Bugging Wife’s Telephone
The State Police have arrested a suburban Pittsburgh man for illegally recording more than 1000 telephone calls to and from his estranged wife’s home.
State police have accused Gary Heimstead, a Senior Comcast Manager in Engineering, of illegally affixing a $2,000 recording device to a telephone, computer and electrical outlet in the family home. The device reportedly recorded calls, and then made them available for access through computers on the same network.
According to court records, Heimstead and his wife Penny Heimstead had already begun divorce proceedings when the wife began to wonder how Heimstead kept confronting her with details of conversations she'd held when he was not around.
Laws on recording devices differ from state to state. In Pennsylvania, it is not legal to possess such a device except under very specific and limited business and law enforcement circumstances, said state police Sgt. Theodore Swartzlander. Heimstead did not meet any of these legal requirements. Heimstead is employed by Comcast Cable Corporation, which offers telephone services.
Comcast claims that the recording device is not a service offered through Comcast. Over the years, Comcast has had their own problems with respecting people’s privacy.
Comcast tracked subscribers’ use of the Internet until legal action forced them to suspend the practice. More recently several communities have raised objections to Comcast’s privacy policy, which allows Comcast to share the personal information of their customers with anyone Comcast chooses.
