Hidden Camera Surveillance
Hidden Camera Surveillance: Why the New Popularity and Availability of Gadgets May be Cause for Concern
The sunglasses are equipped with a fiber-optic video camera. The umbrella is bulletproof. The baseball cap repels bullets and knives. The shirt button is actually a surveillance microphone. The pen pulled from a breast pocket activates a tiny tape recorder.
So devices designed for espionage, such as night-vision goggles, are now toys for movie stars and moguls. Disguised cameras, hidden in teddy bears and plants, are available for parents who worry about their nanny. Tiny cameras, triggered by motion detectors, now tell wealthy Angelenos who's keying their car or stealing their newspaper.
In many states, including California, the law does not specifically address whether hidden cameras violate privacy rights. The California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that hidden camera surveillance equipment in the hands of journalists may be invasive. However, the ruling was focused strictly on the news-gathering process; it would not apply to hidden camera surveillance that an employer might use on an employee or in a home, legal experts said. While the law does prohibit civilians' tapping telephones, there are gray areas about other types of hidden camera surveillance.
The sunglasses are equipped with a fiber-optic video camera. The umbrella is bulletproof. The baseball cap repels bullets and knives. The shirt button is actually a surveillance microphone. The pen pulled from a breast pocket activates a tiny tape recorder.
It's all available at your local spy shop.
Technologically advanced hidden camera surveillance and anti-bugging gadgetry, once limited to military and law enforcement personnel, has gone civilian. Specialty shops in Los Angeles say business has never been better. One of the largest international chains, CCS International Ltd., says sales to private individuals rose 30% to 35% last year.
"It's the Linda Tripps of this world that everyone got nervous about," said Marsha Pearl, director of marketing for CCS, alluding to 1998 revelations that Tripp covertly tape-recorded telephone conversations with Monica Lewinsky. "It made people very much aware of their vulnerability. Half of America thought, 'What am I saying on the phone that's going to be damaging to me?' "
What we're seeing, some say, is the mainstream evolution of the paint-it-blue syndrome, named after the cycle in which military gear, usually manufactured in shades of green, was painted blue and marketed to law enforcement agencies.
So devices designed for espionage, such as night-vision goggles, are now toys for movie stars and moguls. Disguised hidden camera surveillance equipment, hidden in teddy bears and plants, are available for parents who worry about their nanny. Tiny hidden surveillance cameras , triggered by motion detectors, now tell wealthy Angelenos who's keying their car or stealing their newspaper.
In many states, including California, the law does not specifically address whether hidden surveillance cameras violate privacy rights. The California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that hidden surveillance cameras in the hands of journalists may be invasive. However, the ruling was focused strictly on the news-gathering process; it would not apply to hidden surveillance cameras that an employer might use on an employee or in a home, legal experts said. While the law does prohibit civilians' tapping telephones, there are gray areas about other types of surveillance.
Picking Up on Paranoia
In the pages of spy catalogs, on Web sites and on the shelves of specialty shops, the paranoia of popular high-tech movies like "Matrix" and "Enemy of the State" bleeds into everyday life.
You can purchase a microcamera built into a watch for $395 or a digital voice changer that makes your voice unrecognizable ($300 and up). There are theft-proof briefcases that will punish a would-be robber by triggering a shock of 100,000 volts in the case's handle. The $795 case lets you zap the thief from as far away as 200 feet.
"Budget and imagination are the only limits," said Erik Pliner, manager of Counter Spy Shop in Beverly Hills, which competes with three other stores in the Los Angeles area.
Many spy stores cater to businesses concerned about theft or industrial espionage. A Malibu restaurant, for instance, recently solved a problem of money disappearing from a safe by installing a hidden surveillance camera.
Much of the gear feeds off concerns--in the workplace and the home--that the people in your immediate environment are untrustworthy. A $900 desktop pen set, for instance, alerts its owner if a concealed bug is transmitting the conversation. (The average room, by one industry estimate, contains 115 possible locations for eavesdropping devices.)
Counter Spy Shop also carries the $2,900 "Truth Phone," a telephone, microcassette recorder and lie detector all rolled into one. It looks like a normal phone, but it's equipped with "voice stress analysis," which covertly analyses a person's voice for "sub-audible microtremors."
At Quark, a Manhattan-based spy store, a sign in one display reads: "They may be your employees, but who do they really work for?" (U.S. companies lose $200 billion a year to counterfeiting and more to thefts of merchandise and ideas, according to the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition.)
"In most cases, people don't know how vulnerable they are--I can intercept your fax or computer data and you'll never know," said Gregg Graison, vice president of Quark. "If I had five minutes in your computer, I could put in an intercept product and I'd receive everything. Or 30 feet from the monitor, I can get what's on the screen."
Spying is human, some experts note. The Bible, after all, tells of Moses sending spies into Canaan. And now, with technological progress, hidden camera surveillance gear has become cheaper, smaller and easier to use.
"We no longer have to peek through keyholes or listen from the kitchen," said psychologist Jeffrey Hutter, who teaches about social and cultural issues at UCLA Extension. "We can spy more efficiently and anonymously than ever before."
At Spy Tech Agency in West Hollywood, the phone system plays the James Bond theme song for customers on hold. For a woman being sexually harassed at work, salesman Jei Wheeler suggested a black halter top with a hidden tape recorder.
Wheeler, clad on this day in jeans and a yellow T-shirt, wears his brown hair pulled back in a Steven Seagal ponytail. Ask him what kind of hidden surveillance equipment he keeps at his own home and he deadpans: "I could tell you but I'd have to kill you."
"I was in government," he says enigmatically when you ask him about his background. Which part? "I can't disclose that." Shtick? Reality? Like the clocks disguising hidden surveillance cameras, it's difficult to tell.
Hidden surveillance cameras have become so prevalent in public places that billboards advertising fashions by Kenneth Cole caution: "You are on a video camera an average of 10 times a day. Are you dressed for it?"
Miniature hidden surveillance cameras, or "sneaky peakies," with lens openings no bigger than a lentil, are built into teddy bears, plants, ties, sprinkler heads, thermostats--virtually any object. Such cameras are readily available at places like Spy Tech, Counter Spy Shop and the Privacy Connection, which bills itself as a "one-stop spy shop" in Woodland Hills.
Concerned about a drop in his 15-year-old son's grades, Rick Hornwood, a co-owner of Privacy Connection, started taping his home phone. Eavesdropping on conversations, Hornwood found nothing nefarious. (He learned that his son had decided to ease up on his studies because he was about to change schools.) In California, it is illegal to record calls unless all those using the phone have been informed that they are being taped. But Hornwood said he had previously warned his son that he might one day resort to taping his phone.
"It's a parent's responsibility to monitor his kids and make sure they're going in the right direction," said Hornwood, a single father.
Most customers, however, worry more about their child's caregiver--a fear that became immortalized by the specter of British au pair Louise Woodward, who was convicted of manslaughter of the infant she had been tending in Boston. In that case, there was no videotape available. But parents have sought clandestine hidden surveillance cameras for assurance that their nanny is not mistreating their baby.
Abuse of Children Caught on Tape
Not surprisingly, customers are reluctant to be interviewed about their use of hidden camera surveillance and spy products. One who doesn't mind talking is Tony Hernandez of Woodland Hills, who last month started work as a salesman at the Counter Spy Shop.
The way Hernandez tells it, four years ago he hired a live-in nanny for his then-2-year-old daughter, Ariana. As an account executive, he was traveling extensively and his girlfriend had a long commute. The nanny was a religious woman with past experience.
After a year, Hernandez said, he suspected something was wrong. When the sister of his girlfriend dropped off her own son to be watched by Hernandez's nanny, the toddler screamed and cried.
Hernandez installed a small camera that monitored his townhouse. As soon as his car pulled away, the nanny whom he'd likened to Mother Teresa's helper was transformed into a shrew who yanked his daughter's hair, verbally abused both children, telling them they were ugly and bad, and left them unattended for hours, he said. The children were afraid to leave the couch, he said.
"I couldn't believe it was the same person," said Hernandez, who fired the nanny. His girlfriend's parents now tend his daughter.
Hernandez later became a sales manager involved with regional banking. Then he saw an ad for a job at the Counter Spy Shop and he was lured by his infatuation with hidden camera surveillance technology and a desire for a shorter commute.
It's cases like his, in which hidden camera surveillance is used in the home, that prompt a host of questions about privacy which are both legal and ethical, experts say.
Although the law is clear about taping phone calls, hidden camera surveillance poses more of a problem because most states have not passed laws explicitly addressing video surveillance, said Robert Ellis Smith, editor of the Privacy Journal, a monthly newsletter.
"It means we're really vulnerable," said Smith, who cited the growing number of abuses, including a case involving an Ohio school assistant principal who used a hidden surveillance camera to take pictures of cheerleaders changing their clothes. Other incidents include a landlord who installed a hidden surveillance camera in a couple's bedroom and an employer who put a hidden surveillance camera in a workplace bathroom, pointed toward the sinks, in an effort to film drug deals.
Michigan specifically prohibits hidden camera surveillance in places that individuals can reasonably expect to be private, like a locker room. Connecticut imposes restrictions on the workplace and Maryland has rules about hidden surveillance cameras in residences, Smith said.
California law affords citizens a general expectation of privacy but does not specifically address clandestine video surveillance, experts say. David Sobel, general counsel for the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, said he believes federal privacy law, updated more than a decade ago to cover e-mail and electronic communication, once again needs review. People should at least be required to inform others when a hidden surveillance camera is being used, he said.
"There's a notion that a man's home is his castle, {and that} if your neighbor doesn't like being surreptitiously monitored, that's too bad," Sobel said. "There's a lack of meaningful protection, legal protection, for people."
At Los Angeles-area spy equipment stores, employees and owners alike say they inform customers about laws, fully aware that that does not ensure the laws will be obeyed.
"What they do when they get home, I don't know," said Jason Allami of SPI in Thousand Oaks. "Do they honor the law? I suspect not."
Hidden Surveillance Cameras in the City
By his count, the number of hidden surveillance cameras in Manhattan has tripled during the last five years, driven by an increase in private hidden surveillance cameras. His method -- more art than science -- involves walking neighborhood streets and scrutinizing walls and doorways. In the five years since the New York Civil Liberties Union counted 2,397 hidden surveillance cameras in the first formal survey in New York, Mr. [Bill Brown] estimated that the number of hidden surveillance cameras jumped to 7,200.
Though he warns that Big Brother is watching, the network of hidden surveillance cameras in New York is by no means centralized. The police do maintain several clusters of hidden surveillance cameras, for example, in Washington Square Park and in some public housing developments, but the vast majority of hidden surveillance cameras on the city streets are privately owned, said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union in New York.
The police, however, say the hidden surveillance cameras work. A spokesman for the New York City Police Department said that since the department first installed hidden surveillance camera systems in several city housing developments in 1997, crime has fallen in those areas, in part because of the monitoring. Currently, 15 developments throughout the city are monitored. The areas are marked with signs that warn people about the hidden surveillance camera. The police have also used recordings from private hidden surveillance camera to investigate crimes.
To the list of must-see attractions in New York -- the skyscraper tour, the literary tour -- add one more. Because Bill Brown wants to take you on the Surveillance Camera Outdoor Walking Tour (Scowt for short).
On a frigid afternoon last Sunday, Mr. Brown gave out photocopies of hand-drawn maps to a small but dedicated audience, most of them New Yorkers. The maps marked the locations of surveillance cameras in the Washington Square Park area.
The cameras lurked on the perimeter of the park, disguised as street lamps, he told his followers. They dotted the walls of a new building on West Fourth Street, in the form of decorative bulbs. One even peeked out of the frame of a painting on the wall of a popular Greenwich Village cafe.
What is more, their numbers of hidden surveillance cameras are growing.
''Like mushrooms in a forest,'' Mr. Brown said, his eyes narrowing to a conspiratorial squint. Spying eyes, he warned, were everywhere.
As the cameras watch, Mr. Brown, a 44-year-old legal proofreader from Brooklyn, stares right back. Over the last five years he has made it his business to spot and map hidden surveillance cameras in New York City. The goal of his research is to help New Yorkers gain a sense of how much of their lives -- from a jog in the park to some secretive hand-holding -- is actually being recorded by somebody.
From an apartment in Flatbush that he shares with his partner, Susan Hull, and six cats, Mr. Brown has been refining his maps of 12 Manhattan neighborhoods.
By his count, the number of surveillance cameras in Manhattan has tripled during the last five years, driven by an increase in private cameras. His method -- more art than science -- involves walking neighborhood streets and scrutinizing walls and doorways. In the five years since the New York Civil Liberties Union counted 2,397 cameras in the first formal survey in New York, Mr. Brown estimated that the number of cameras jumped to 7,200.
Mr. Brown is a slight man with a big appetite for politics. At 13, he raised money for the presidential campaign of George McGovern. Later in life he went into academics, earning a doctorate in American literature. He gave up teaching, and since the mid-1990's he has been proofreading and performing.
For Mr. Brown, the presence of the cameras is a sign of creeping control by the authorities. He contends that they lull people into a sense of security that dulls vigilance among city residents and weakens communities.
''We don't worry for ourselves anymore,'' said Mr. Brown. ''There are specialists that do the worrying for us. This is warping human beings.''
But though he warns that Big Brother is watching, the network of cameras in New York is by no means centralized. The police do maintain several clusters of cameras, for example, in Washington Square Park and in some public housing developments, but the vast majority of cameras on the city streets are privately owned, said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union in New York.
''Surveillance is ubiquitous, but it's not all tied together,'' Mr. Steinhardt said. ''There are millions of private cameras'' in America, but their use by the authorities ''has not taken off.''
Civil libertarians like Mr. Brown are concerned that, in the not-too-distant future, the different camera systems could all be linked.
Mr. Brown first began watching the cameras in 1996. He decided that wry humor would be the best form of social protest. Two years later, while working at an anarchist bookstore called Blackout Books, since closed, he assembled a group of performance artists to act out silent plays in front of cameras around the city.
He abandoned early efforts at literary performances that became unwieldy and sometimes baffling to onlookers. Now, the group, known as the Surveillance Camera Players, performs shorter acts of Mr. Brown's creation. In one, called ''God's Eyes on Earth,'' actors perform in front of cameras at St. Patrick's Cathedral. In another, they tell the watcher ''something interesting is going to happen any minute now.''
In winter, when it is too cold for plays, Mr. Brown conducts the tours. They are free, held rain, snow or shine, and offer surveillance tourists a primer on how to spot cameras.
''Almost all cameras you see today do not look like cameras,'' Mr. Brown said last Sunday on the Washington Square Park tour. ''They're disguised to look like lamps or ornaments.''
As the number of cameras increase, there are virtually no laws that govern their use, said Robert Gellman, a privacy consultant whose clients include government agencies and private companies. He said difficult legal questions are being raised. For example, he said, how should the law treat families whose cameras watch nurses caring for elderly parents or nannies caring for babies?
''The general rule is what goes on in public has no reasonable expectation of privacy,'' Mr. Gellman said. ''I can walk in front of your house and take a picture. But suppose I put a surveillance camera in front of your house 24 hours a day? No one has addressed that in any particular way.''
Critics of the cameras say they are ineffective in reducing crime. Watchers quickly tire of staring at empty street corners, the argument goes, and begin peeping at people, such as attractive women. A camera at a foreign consulate was found to have been trained on a nearby apartment, Mr. Brown said.
''The watchers get bored after 20 minutes,'' he said. ''But they are working for seven hours, so they start amusing themselves.''
The police, however, say the hidden surveillance cameras work. A spokesman for the New York City Police Department said that since the department first installed camera systems in several city housing developments in 1997, crime has fallen in those areas, in part because of the monitoring. Currently, 15 developments throughout the city are monitored. The areas are marked with signs that warn people about the cameras. The police have also used recordings from private cameras to investigate crimes.
In the United States, hidden surveillance camera use by the authorities is not widespread. But in England, its use by the authorities has exploded since the early 1990's, after London's financial district was hit by terrorist bombs.
Jeffrey Rosen, an associate professor at George Washington University Law School, who has studied the English system, said an August 2002 government report found that the cameras reduced crime in parking lots but had little or no effect on public transportation or in other public areas in the center of the city. Even so, people liked the cameras, because they made them feel safer.
''The hidden surveillance cameras are extremely popular,'' said Mr. Rosen. ''Civil liberty objections have not been accepted by a majority of the public.''
Mr. Brown, on the other hand, has an instinctive distrust of authority. The sound of a helicopter during Sunday's tour caused him to look quickly skyward. He announced a Black Hawk helicopter sighting.
''Do they go so far as to try to pick up conversations?'' asked one man. (No, Mr. Brown replied. In most cases, the law strictly regulates the taping of talk.)
Mr. Brown's mapping has become widely known. He has been invited to map in England, Austria and Germany. He has plans for Zagreb, Croatia. In the United States, he has mapped parts of New Haven, Chicago, Providence, R.I., and Portland, Ore. This spring he will map cameras along the Freedom Trail in Boston, ahead of the Democratic National Convention to be held there in July.
Watchers sometimes emerge from buildings to respond, Mr. Brown said.
After a performance last summer in Times Square, in which the Surveillance Camera Players were walking counterclockwise around a camera, performing what Mr. Brown called a vanishing spell, the group was told that an alert had been raised among the National Guard. ''They've turned us all into performers,'' Mr. Brown said, smiling.
Hidden Surveillance Cameras in the home: The Infamous Nannycam
Prices for in-home hidden surveillance camera gear have dropped by as much as one-half in the past five years. Prices for a very basic hidden surveillance camera offering remote computer access start at $130, for the XCam2 by X10 Wireless Technology, Kent, Wash. SpyWorld.com, Carson City, Nev., sells a higher-resolution hidden surveillance camera in a clock or smoke detector for $360. The hidden surveillance cameras used by Ms. [Pamela Levine], a "Mommy Track" by Cenuco, Boca Raton, Fla., is $499 and transmits images that can be viewed over a cellphone, PDA or computer.
If it's too late for that and you suspect abuse, Mr. de [Gavin de Becker] says don't wait to get it on tape: "Get rid of the babysitter." There's a strong chance you'll fire the nanny anyway. Nannycam vendors have estimated between 40% and 70% of nannies are dismissed after hidden surveillance cameras are installed -- more often for relatively minor sins, such as loafing or benign neglect, than for outright abuse.
Secret monitoring has other perils: You could lose a good babysitter. Pat Cascio, president of the International Nanny Association, says she's seen several good nannies quit after discovering hidden surveillance cameras. One Houston nanny had a playful routine; she would turn on the radio "and dance around like a crazy person" while the baby clapped and laughed, says Ms. Cascio, owner of Morningside Nannies, Houston. The babysitter, who was shy and reserved around adults, couldn't face her employers after she learned they'd watched.
IF YOU'RE THINKING ABOUT planting a videocamera in your house to watch your nanny, Pamela Levine sets a good example.
Before she ever hired anyone to care for her toddler while she worked, Ms. Levine installed digital cameras in the family room and nursery of her Boca Raton, Fla., home. And the babysitter was aware she would be monitored. "I've heard too many terrible stories" about abusive nannies, Ms. Levine says.
She was able to spot relatively minor problems with her first sitter, who wasn't affectionate enough with her son, and replace her.
Interest in nannycams is rising; 14% of consumers surveyed this year by Parks Associates, a Dallas market-research firm, expressed interest in using in-home cameras for monitoring nannies and babies at home, up from 10% before the Sept. 11 attacks sparked a broad rise in electronic surveillance. At Counter Spy Shops, a retailer with shops in four U.S. cities, nannycam sales have risen 25% in the past five years, says a spokeswoman for CCS International, the New Rochelle, N.Y., parent company.
Prices for in-home surveillance gear have dropped by as much as one-half in the past five years. Prices for a very basic camera offering remote computer access start at $130, for the XCam2 by X10 Wireless Technology, Kent, Wash. SpyWorld.com, Carson City, Nev., sells a higher-resolution camera hidden in a clock or smoke detector for $360. The camera used by Ms. Levine, a "Mommy Track" by Cenuco, Boca Raton, Fla., is $499 and transmits images that can be viewed over a cellphone, PDA or computer.
Nannycams aren't for everyone. Though I've employed more than half-a-dozen nannies, I've never used one. Beyond my Luddite tendencies, planting a camera seemed too invasive of relationships I was trying to build on trust. Looking back, though, my kids might have benefited if I had -- particularly if I'd tuned in that nanny who kept banishing them to the backyard while she ate candy and watched TV.
If you're considering using a nannycam, there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. The wrong way is the strategy behind most of the horror stories you hear: Wait until you become suspicious of your caregiver, then secretly install hidden cameras to catch any abuse.
That's what happened in the case of a Sykesville, Md., couple. They noticed bruises on their toddler and concluded their 23-year-old babysitter must not be watching him closely enough, says Natasha Byus, the Carroll County, Md., prosecutor who handled the case. What they saw after installing a nannycam was much worse: She was shaking and slapping their little boy and throwing him against the wall. The nanny, Christine Anderson, pleaded guilty to attempted child abuse in November.
Of course it's better to investigate any suspicions about a nanny than do nothing. But you risk subjecting your child to more abuse or neglect while you do so.
"Imagine you obtain a tape of your child being abused. Do you think he will someday thank you?" asks Gavin de Becker, an author and security expert, in his book, "Protecting the Gift." Your child might say, "`I wish you'd just prevented the abuse,'" Mr. de Becker writes.
If you think there's any chance you will want to use a nannycam, a smarter approach is to install one before you hire anyone and inform candidates that they might be monitored. This should act as a deterrent to abuse. "Your goal shouldn't be to catch someone in the act, but to prevent it," says David Sobel, general counsel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Washington, D.C.
If it's too late for that and you suspect abuse, Mr. de Becker says don't wait to get it on tape: "Get rid of the babysitter." There's a strong chance you'll fire the nanny anyway. Nannycam vendors have estimated between 40% and 70% of nannies are dismissed after hidden cameras are installed -- more often for relatively minor sins, such as loafing or benign neglect, than for outright abuse.
Secret monitoring has other perils: You could lose a good babysitter. Pat Cascio, president of the International Nanny Association, says she's seen several good nannies quit after discovering secret cameras. One Houston nanny had a playful routine; she would turn on the radio "and dance around like a crazy person" while the baby clapped and laughed, says Ms. Cascio, owner of Morningside Nannies, Houston. The babysitter, who was shy and reserved around adults, couldn't face her employers after she learned they'd watched.
Another risk is high-tech eavesdropping by so-called war-drivers. These people cruise the streets with a receiver trying to intercept wireless signals. Their motives range from voyeurism to casing homes for burglary, and they've turned up in parts of San Francisco, New York and other cities, says Richard Hunter of research and advisory firm Gartner Inc., Stamford Conn., author of a book on surveillance and privacy issues. If you're worried about this risk, consider avoiding wireless gear.
Also, stick to monitoring video images only. Federal wiretapping law prohibits audiotaping personal conversations without at least one party's consent. And don't install cameras in private areas such as bathrooms or the sitter's bedroom.
At best, your nannycam will be a source of reassurance. Ms. Levine, who works part-time as a sales designer, has replaced that first nanny, and she's surprised at how much she enjoys watching her new caregiver provide her baby attentive, affectionate care. "It's really been so nice," she says.
