Teddy bear camera recorder
"I bought infrared filters for the headlights on my car," the investigator said, explaining that he used the filters while staking out errant spouses for divorce clients. "All we do is introduce a small infrared light source - we can hide it anywhere in the room - and it will bounce around and illuminate the room like it was daylight."Ī regular customer of the Spy Mart, a Middlesex County private investigator who declined to give his name, described yet another product that makes use of infrared light. The image on the video monitor dimmed slightly but remained clear and distinct. Bandler said, switching off the office lights. On the screen was an image of a confused reporter looking at himself looking at a video monitor. He instructed his visitor to look at a video monitor just underneath the clock. Bandler pointed to what looked like a clock hung on a wall. The teddy bear was set on a high shelf in the child's room and connected to a video recorder locked in the parents' room. In fact, he said, the teddy bear was designed for clients who wanted to be able to keep track of how a child's nanny was treating the child when the parents weren't home. It's illegal to record audio unless you're participating in the conversation."īut if that's the case, who might use the teddy bear with a video camera for a brain? Bandler said, "these are for law enforcement, not for public use. Others, which use tiny batteries for power and are about the size of sugar cubes, transmit for less distance but are handy for surreptitious placement in vases, behind picture frames and attached under tables and other furniture. Some of the wireless transmitters, like one that replaces an ordinary electrical wall socket, can transmit up to half a mile away, drawing power from house current. Bandler's clandestine eavesdropping devices fall into two general categories: hard-wired, like the shirt button microphone, which plugs into a microcassette recorder, and wireless, like the calculator that transmits to an FM receiver some distance away. Even upon close inspection, nothing about the pen appeared unusual. He then showed a pen that, he said, has a tiny microphone inside. "It's battery powered, and you can change the actual button so it matches the buttons on your shirt." "You can put it on the sleeve of your shirt and attach it to any tape recorder," he said. "This is a microphone in a button," he said, holding out for inspection what appeared to be, well, a button with a wire attached to it. Bandler designed himself and then built out of components available in any well-stocked electronics store. Many of the devices in the Spy Mart showroom, including the phone that goes dead, are items Mr. "This will detect just about everything." He intends to market the new telephone to other spy shops around the country. "What happened was, if I'm talking and somebody gets on the line with a listening device or comes in the room with a transmitter, the light goes on and the phone automatically disconnects the conversation."
Bandler said, holding the receiver out for a visitor to verify that the phone was quite dead.
He instructed the secretary to call him on a telephone atop one of the glass display cases that line the walls of the showroom.
Bandler "sir" in terse, formal exchanges. The atmosphere is decisively paramilitary, with a secretary and an assistant calling Mr. Bandler, a tall, burly man with a penchant for 10-gallon hats, also runs his private investigator business from the location. Bandler opened about two years ago, is on the second floor of an office building in Morganville. "But we also have a lot of private-sector people and businessmen who come in because they want to record their own telephone conversations or because they're afraid their businesses are being bugged." Paramilitary Atmosphere Bandler said, referring to the police, private detectives and prosecutors' investigators who come to avail themselves of the latest in clandestine surveillance technology. "Most of my customers are law-enforcement types," Mr. Bandler's business is an answer to a challenge: how do you find out what someone is up to without his finding out what you are up to first?