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Here's the Story Behind Kellyanne Conway's Claim that We're Being Spied on Through Our Microwaves

There's a pretty clear breadcrumb trail to Conway's paranoid assertion that there are cameras hidden in microwaves.

On Sunday night, Mike Kelly, a columnist for the Bergen County Record, sat down with Kellyanne Conway at her New Jersey home for an in-depth interview that went off the rails before you could even count the number of throw pillows on her neutral-colored sofa. Kelly asked Conway—Counselor, strategist, and former campaign manager to President Donald Trump—whether he would be able to provide proof for his claim that former President Barack Obama had put a "tapp"—Trump's spelling—on the phones at Trump Tower.

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"There are many ways to surveil each other now," Conway said, with a facial expression of concern. "There was an article this week that talked about how you could surveil someone through their phones, certainly through their television sets, any number of different ways, microwaves that turn into cameras. We know that that is just a fact of modern life."

Whoa. WHOA. Hang on while I collapse onto Kellyanne's "You Are My Sunshine"-embroidered pillow. You mean that the CIA (or the FBI or the NSA or the Spy Kids) could be watching us when we're hungover and trying to figure out how to arrange leftover pizza on a plate? Or listening while we're sounding out the directions for a particularly challenging Lean Cuisine? Remind me to wear full makeup before heating my Soup for One, because it's apparently Soup for A ROOM FULL OF SPIES.

But is there any credible evidence behind her claims? Um, we're going with a resounding "No," and I'd be willing to bet the listening antenna in my Instant Pot that Conway got her information from Fox News. On Thursday night, during an appearance on the network's Special Report show, Judge Andrew Napolitano made a similar claim. "We're one step away from totalitarianism when I'm in front of the microwave in my kitchen and they can hear what I'm talking about," he said.

Photo via Flickr user Chris Kelly

That was just a couple of days before Conway's head-spinning sit-down, and since Trump and his administration are known to directly funnel many of their claims from Fox News like a slightly more sanitary human centipede, it's not hard to believe that she's just spitting out what the network fed her.

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Oddly enough, two days before that, Michael Hayden, the former director of the NSA and the CIA, was on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, fielding similar questions from the host. "Is the CIA listening to me through my microwave oven and through my TV and through my cellphone?" Colbert asked.

"No," Hayden said. (Colbert said he didn't believe it).

If it wasn't so easy to pinpoint the sources of these tinfoil hat conspiracy theories (and—safety tip—don't ever microwave those hats), one might think that Conway had just misconstrued the concept of microwave cameras, as in cameras that use microwaves—the electromagnetic frequencies, not the Kenmore kind—to create 3D images.

"A microwave camera is sort of like a cross between a visible light camera and a radar imaging system, incorporating some of the advantages of each," IEEE Spectrum explains. "By taking a more camera-like approach to radio frequency imaging, essentially treating microwaves like waves of light and using a passive reflector like a lens, MIT has been able to leverage computational-imaging techniques to develop a low cost, high-resolution imaging system."

But that's a camera that uses microwaves, not a microwave that has a camera in it, hidden between the Popcorn and Baked Potato shortcut buttons.

"I'm not Inspector Gadget. I don't believe people are using their microwaves to spy on the Trump campaign," Conway told CNN on Monday morning. "However, I'm not in the job of having evidence. That's what investigations are for."

Well, it looks like I'll immediately be investigating what happens when I etch "Are you listening? Y/N" on the crust of this Hot Pocket.

MUNCHIES has reached out to several major microwave manufacturers for clarification on whether their products are known to feature any surveillance capabilities.