A dispute over audio recordings made by a high-tech security system at UC Irvine has made its way to a local federal court.

A class-action lawsuit from the Federated University Police Officers Association contends that an "illegal and surreptitious network of advanced audio/video recording devices" was installed around December 2013 in and around the UC Irvine Police Department on East Peltason Drive.

The federal suit claims the recording system was able to pick up noise through walls, and may have picked up confidential or personal conversations by employees and students.

The lawsuit names the university system regents, the UC Irvine police department and its leadership as defendants.

UCI officials, however, said the campus plans to "vigorously defend itself against the inaccurate and misleading allegations" in the lawsuit.

According to a statement from UCI spokeswoman Cathy Lawhon, existing security cameras and card readers were replaced in December 2013 with new equipment that had "audio capability" that wasn’t disabled during the installation process.

As a result, campus officials said, "inadvertent audio recordings were made for less than one week."

The audio then was disabled, the recordings deleted and the chief notified employees of what had happened, Lawhon said.

The lawsuit was filed last year in Northern California, where the University of California regents are located.

This week, the case was transferred to the U.S. District Court in Santa Ana.