Thinking of taking a little "loan" from the office petty cash box? Perhaps you are feeling a bit light-fingered in the hardware store today. Or maybe you're just interested in catching a quick butt in the supply room marked "No Smoking." Think again. And you might want to examine that "No Smoking" sign more closely. If your employer is a customer of Visual Methods Inc., that sign may contain a miniature closed-circuit TV camera recording your every move. No wires? That's because it also contains a video transmitter broadcasting your sorry-assed guilt straight to a VCR at the security desk.
The Westwood, New Jersey-based company's catalogue offers a simulated fire sprinkler with a pan/tilt/zoom camera hidden inside (US$4,000), a nonworking smoke detector with a wireless transmitter-receiver ($1,999), as well as functional clocks and trash cans containing tiny video cameras. There is even a video monitor that contains a camera pointed at the viewer. ("Who's watching the guards?") Americans do love their cars, so mobile surveillance is important too. That Kleenex box on the rear window deck? How about the innocent looking CB antenna? All can be outfitted with microvideo.
Thanks to pinhole lenses and high-sensitivity micro-charge-coupled device arrays, the hidden cams are all but undetectable. Given a little ingenuity, these tiny spy-eyes can be incorporated into just about anything. Low light or total darkness is no problem with an infrared device.
For the field operative on your gift list, there is a nifty line of surveillance body gear. At the annual Surveillance Expo in McLean, Virginia, where spooks, private eyes, and technical wizards gather to network, company president Ted Sandin demonstrated his denim-jacket-cum- snooperscope. Embedded in one of the shiny metal buttons was a camera wired to an under-the-shoulder microvideo recorder. Denim clashes with your trench coat? Then get the pocket spiral notebook with pinhole lens or the tie clasp video camera. Want to catch up on the latest in video surveillance techniques? Visual Methods Inc. offers hands-on seminars in areas including lens selection, pinhole fiber optics, and covert surveillance cameras.
For the Visual Methods Inc. catalogue: +1 (201) 666 3950, fax +1 (201) 666 7931.
STREET CRED
Urotsukidoji: Legend of the OverfiendThe Magic Death
Your Own Port on the Net (Cheap)
Moving to the Rhythm of the Punch Press
Secrets of the Super Searchers
Law and Order on the Electronic Frontier
Eye Spy
