Over the past several years, federal law enforcement agencies have gotten increasingly creative in their surveillance techniques, hiding cameras in, among other things, streetlights, traffic cones, toolboxes and vacuum cleaners.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has been especially forward-thinking in its placement of high-tech but unseen monitoring devices. In 2018, the DEA quietly installed automatic license plate readers in an unknown number of the ubiquitous radar speed signs that show approaching drivers how fast they’re going. It has only grown in the years since.

Now, according to federal procurement data reviewed by The Independent, the DEA – which has recently diverted agents from their usual drug-fighting mandate to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement in carrying out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts – is outfitting agents, presumably undercover, with audio-video recorders camouflaged to look like everyday credit cards.