Spy Shops and Spy Stores in the News

Smile -- someone is watching - Even keystrokes are recorded
BY NICOLE GAUDIANO
GANNETT NEWS SERVICE

March 23, 2006

WASHINGTON -- It's not just the National Security Agency that's been spying on Americans.

It's husbands and wives looking to catch unfaithful spouses. It's businesses eager to discover a competitor's secret. It's bosses monitoring employee e-mails, and neighbors indulging a voyeuristic impulse.

In a country with more than 40,000 private investigators, more than 1,000 background screening companies and more than 100 spy stores, spying goes on every day all over the country. As a T-shirt sold at Washington's International Spy Museum says: "Deception is reality."

"People historically have loved the inside story," said Peter Earnest, a former CIA agent and executive director of the museum in the nation's capital. "It's about secrets. People love secrets."

That's as true for James Bond junkies as it is for corporate America.

On company time

Michael Green, of Cal Crim Inc. in Cincinnati, said companies have expanded background checks since Sept. 11, 2001. Where a simple records check once sufficed, some companies now check for false identities. "Even churches are wanting to do backgrounds now," he said.

Companies are seeking new ways to unearth workers' secrets, and technology is making it easier.

Verified Person, a New York firm, makes a product that automatically alerts employers every two weeks to criminal infractions committed by employees. The company said about 100 firms have purchased the software.

Some companies also use software that records every keystroke and Web site workers visit, sending detailed activity reports to bosses patrolling for slackers.

Parents use the product to monitor a child's computer use. "You have the right to know!" says an ad for eBlaster Spy Software made by SpectorSoft.

Not everyone exercises that right in a legal way.

Doug Fowler, SpectorSoft's president, said one customer tried to get step-by-step instructions from a sales clerk while breaking into her boyfriend's home to install one of the products. Her software was disabled.

Creepy cameras

Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego, a nonprofit group that advises consumers on how to protect their privacy, receives about one call a month from people sick of having their property videotaped by a neighbor, said director Beth Givens.

Police can't do anything about a camera recording things in plain view, she said, so the group tells callers to take civil action.

"But it's creepy for a family to be under the watchful eye of a neighbor," Givens said.

And even creepier, there are hidden cameras watching you.

Tamara Perez of Dawsonville, Ga., sued Toys 'R' Us in 2003 after she noticed a hidden camera in the ceiling over the women's restroom at a store in Alpharetta, Ga.

"I was embarrassed and horrified," she said.

Perez said she received some money from the company in a settlement last September but declined to provide details.

All about revelations

Video surveillance is a $5.7-billion industry, said David Cremer, owner of C&C Technology in New Mexico. The company created a device called Spyfinder to detect hidden cameras.

"We all want to feel secure with our privacy, but we're just not, anymore," he said.

At Jimmie Mesis' online store in Freehold, N.J. -- PI Gear -- the top-selling spy-related product for the consumer market is CheckMate, a chemical kit that traces invisible semen stains in undergarments within five minutes. Most buyers are women.

"When he goes to work, she becomes a little scientist," said Mesis, who also is a private investigator and editor of PI Magazine.

California private investigator Carmen Naimish started DateSmart.com, which specializes in background checks, in response to the uncertainties of seeking companionship over the Internet.

Her motto: "If you date ... investigate." Her motivation: a marriage that she says lasted 20 minutes.

Naimish said most of her clients have met someone online and have been involved with that person for about three months before they begin to suspect their new partner is hiding certain secrets.

About 80% of the time, their suspicions are correct, she said. She's even had multiple women call her about the same man.

No hiding

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Paranoid? Check out a SPY SHOP
Gadgets detect secrets for the suspicious.
Chicago Tribune, July 16 2005

If you're Bruce Wayne, you turn to Alfred for your hippest gadgets. If you're Sydney Bristow, you turn to the CIA for tools to alter your identity.

If you're you, you turn to a spy store.

Spy stores are not glamorous. They tend to be starkly lit, sparsely appointed storefronts with glass display cases holding innocent-looking gizmos that tickle the imagination.
The stores cater to law enforcement, nightclub bouncers, locksmiths and the occasional desperate housewife looking to catch a cheating husband. They are also the haunts of private investigators, snoopers, busybodies, Peeping Toms and your general, technically inclined paranoid person.

"We get all kinds of people here," says a smiling David Neuburger, manager of U-Spy Store (www.uspystore.com) in Chicago.

Take, for instance, if you want to track your car. Attach the $800 magnetized vehicle tracker to the underside of your car and point the antenna skyward between the car's bumper and body, and you can help police track down your car if it's stolen. Just tell the cops, "Hey, my car's been stolen. It's at North and LaSalle avenues, headed north. Would you be kind enough to get it for me?"

Or you could use the vehicle tracker to follow a suspicious spouse. The $399 model can be peeled off the car each night and attached to your computer, where it will reveal a map of that day's journey.

You might own a fleet of delivery trucks and you just want to make sure every rig gets to where it's going.

Or you might want to keep an eye on the kids at home while you're at work. A PC customized to accept four cameras and record what those cameras see to a 120-gigabyte hard drive will set you back $1,599 (monitor and cameras are extra). And, to turn the tables, if you're a nanny who believes an employer might be spying on you, a $40 camera detector can spot a peering lens hidden in a stuffed toy or a harmless-looking wall clock. (However, you've just been recorded using a camera detector. And who but a malicious and paranoid nanny would do that?)

Fashionable $32.99 sunglasses with mirrors in the lens allow you to keep an eye on what's going on behind you. Bullet-resistant body armor is available, as are pens that can detect radio signals so you have an idea whether a wireless microphone is nearby.

And then there's the stuff that Alfred the Butler might keep handy, like the caps and eyeglasses that record everything in sight, especially if you're wearing a battery-powered book-sized personal video recorder that holds hours of video. Military-style night vision goggles? Check. What about a less noticeable night vision monocle? Yup. Long-range listening device that resembles a bullhorn with earphones attached? Got 'em. Invisible powder that can be brushed on a door handle to reveal, with the aid of ultraviolet light, the opener's fingerprints? Of course.

Who buys this stuff? Like the man said, "We get all kinds of people here."

Even the kind who shell out $49.95 for a semen-detection kit?

"That," says Neuburger, "is one of our biggest sellers."

Also, if you're Bruce Wayne, you turn to Alfred for your hippest gadgets. If you're Sydney Bristow, you turn to the CIA for tools to alter your identity.

If you're you, you turn to a spy store.

The stores cater to law enforcement, nightclub bouncers, locksmiths and the occasional desperate housewife looking to catch a cheating husband.

"We get all kinds of people here," says a smiling David Neuburger, manager of U-Spy Store in Chicago.

Take, for instance, if you want to track your car. Attach an $800 magnetized vehicle tracker to the underside of your car and point the antenna skyward between the car's bumper and body, and you can help police track down your car if it's stolen. Just tell them, "Hey, my car's been stolen. It's at North and LaSalle avenues, headed north. Would you be kind enough to get it for me?"

Or, say you want to keep an eye on the kids at home while you're at work. A PC customized to accept four cameras and record what those cameras see to a 120-gigabyte hard drive will set you back $1,599 (monitor and cameras are extra).

There are other defensive weapons, such as hand-held metal detectors to wave at a passersby who may or may not be strapped with a gun.

Ready to buy and spy? First know the law

Spy stores have one thing in common: "We never sell any device with the intent of illegal use," says Saul Castellanos, manager at Spy Emporium in Arlington Heights.

That's true, but even legally sold products can be used illegally. For instance, it's OK to buy a telephone recorder, but it's against the law in Illinois to record your phone call without warning everybody else in the conversation.

Robert Loeb, a criminal-defense attorney in Chicago, has consulted people buying nanny cams who want to know if they should warn the nanny that he or she is being recorded.

"I tell them to go ahead and record, but turn off the audio," says Loeb, a former prosecutor. He says Illinois criminal laws are less strict for video than audio because the state legislature has not dealt with video recording in a comprehensive way.

If you have any questions about using your new gadget--purchased from a spy store or a department store--the Illinois state's attorney's office, store owners and lawyers all agree: Consult your lawyer or, if you don't have a lawyer, visit www.illinoisbar.org, the Illinois State Bar Association's Web site.

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The Liddle Effect: why three out of four women spy on their men
The Independent, May 8, 2005

It notoriously did for the marriage of journalist Rod Liddle (who's in trouble again, see below). Careless texts cost Becks dearly, too. Small wonder that more and more women are turning sleuth to test the fidelity of their men. Andrew Johnson reports

Men beware: your partner may be watching you. Armed with sophisticated bugging devices, women are becoming the latest recruits to the hi-tech world of espionage.

Not that they are travelling the world as undercover agents: their targets are closer to home. A survey published this week will reveal that nearly three out of four women are prepared to spy on their husband or boyfriend if they suspect them of infidelity.

Nearly three-quarters, 72 per cent, of the 10,000 cohabiting or married women surveyed said they would snoop on their partner's mobile phone text messages, and just over a third, 34 per cent, would secretly follow their partner.

They have seen David Beckham and broadcaster Rod Liddle get into trouble over text messages. But checking phones is not enough for many. Women are also flocking to courses to learn how to spy on their errant partners using a range of devices.

Gary Williams, director of a company which runs spy courses, and who commissioned the survey, said he was amazed at the number of women signing up. "Our course was aimed as a special day out for men, or for corporate sessions," he said. "But then we noticed that a lot of women were coming along. When we asked them why, they said they wanted to spy on their partners."

On the course, which is run by ex-special forces and police, women can learn to use covert cameras and UHF radios, bugs and lock-picking gadgets. They can also learn how to throw an axe and use a rifle, perhaps in case their suspicions are confirmed. About 100 people a week are taking the course in three centers across the country.

It is all part of the booming domestic spy industry - a result of technology such as text and email which makes it easier, yet more dangerous, to have affairs. Dave Allan, who owns the Spy Store in Leeds, the country's leading supplier of eavesdropping gadgetry, said he has at least one woman a day coming in wanting to spy on her husband.

"The increase in domestic spying has soared, especially with women," he said. "Our business used to be 60 per cent to business and 40 per cent domestic; now that figure is the other way round."

His best-selling device is an adapted Nokia 1100 mobile phone which can be secreted under a car seat or left in a bedroom. When it is phoned from anywhere in Europe it makes no noise but is activated as a listening device.

Another top seller is the Trojan, a working mobile phone to give to a partner as a present, but with a secret second number which allows the user to eavesdrop.

Technology may have helped the philanderer, but if he is careless the information revolution can be his undoing. The latest allegations that footballer David Beckham had an affair stem from text messages he purportedly sent to a Spanish model which were then seen by his nanny when he lent her his phone.

The broadcaster Rod Liddle, who had a public split from his journalist wife Rachel Royce last year, was also undone by ill-considered text messages.

And in September a disciplinary hearing of the General Medical Council was told how a doctor's surgery in West Sussex was bugged by a jealous lover with the help of the doctor's colleague.

If you suspect your partner of infidelity the best thing to do is talk, not spy, said Denise Knowles, a relationship counsellor at Relate. "If you get to the point where you have suspicions, it's important to say so," she said. "It is not a good idea to spy."

The survey, commissioned by Days to Amaze, a company which specializes in organizing unique days out, also found that only 15 per cent of women would definitely leave their partners if they did find they were unfaithful.

Phillip Hodson of the British Association of Counseling and Psychotherapy is not surprised by this. "We've got to the stage where we have a more 18th-century way of looking at infidelity as forgivable once or twice," he said. "That's a good thing. If you are suspicious you are really saying 'I'm miserable with you' and you have to talk to your partner about why that is."

Jacqueline Falconer was engaged when she began to suspect her partner of having an affair.

"I became suspicious because he was very cagey with his phone," said Ms Falconer, 38, who lives in Manchester. "He had his phone with him constantly. Sometimes when it rang he would go and stand outside the door."

Ms Falconer soon discovered that her fiancé was seeing another woman.

"His phone was broken so he borrowed a phone from our neighbor and put his SIM card in it. I later had a look at that phone and the text messages were left on it."

Her fiancé at first claimed that the message, which said "Sorry about before, really miss u" was from a woman who was pursuing him.

Ms Falconer, who now wants to be a voluntary carer, decided to believe him, but later he went missing for two days.

"So I phoned the number and a woman answered and said, 'How are you?' I said, 'I'm engaged to so and so.' And she said, 'No, I'm his girlfriend.'

"I was devastated and so angry. I kicked him out. I'm on my own now, but really happy. I'd definitely advise any woman with suspicions to check their partner's phone. If he's got nothing to hide, he won't mind."