Detecting Hidden Cameras

Date: 23/05/2005
Source: 10 WBNS
Author: -

Hidden cameras are everywhere, so how can you tell if someone is watching you?

In Seneca County in 2004, a hidden camera was discovered in a tape deck inside a tanning booth. The salon owner used it to spy on more than 26 women while they undressed.

In Gahanna in 1997, a man set up a video camera behind a bathroom mirror with two-way glass. He recorded teenage girls urinating, changing clothes and talking on the phone.

Private investigator Jack Bastian says, "There are some places in this world that need to be private, and certainly the restroom is one of them."

Bastian is a private investigator in Piqua, just north of Dayton. He sells hidden cameras, uses them to bust cheaters and finds hidden cameras for those who think they're being watched. Bastian says, "You can put them in clock radios, you can put them in picture frames. They're so small, you can't find them."

Bastian says he got a hold of a new device, called a SpyFinder, which claims to find those hidden cameras.

When you look through the SpyFinder and press the button on the side, a red light flashes from six small bulbs on the SpyFinder. The light reflects off the lens of a hidden camera, allowing you to see a bright spot. That spot is a hidden camera.

Bastian says, "This is a camera with a camera and a microphone in it. And with a naked eye, like I said, you can not see that camera, but with this little the SpyFinder, you can see it up in the top left hand corner."

Bastian has already found two hidden cameras using the SpyFinder. One was in a woman's bedroom in her home. Her ex-husband was spying on her. The other camera was in the women's restroom at a large company here in Ohio.

Privacy expert Peter Swire says, "If those people are going to use the little tiny cameras, we have to have ways to find the little tiny cameras."

Swire is an Ohio State law professor and privacy expert, and he says the SpyFinder is a useful tool.

Swire says, "When it comes to the law, when it comes to what should be done, pretty much people should be able to protect their space. They should be able to stop the bug and stop the hidden cameras."

Most agree there are places the SpyFinder should not be allowed.

Swire says, "You might not want the SpyFinder to be used in secret government installations."

For Bastian, the SpyFinder is a blessing and curse.

Bastian says, "It was exciting in one way and not so exciting in the other because my living is made through providing hidden surveillance cameras, now those cameras aren't so hidden anymore."

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