From the AEGIS e-Journal, Volume 8 Number 10, October 2005
SpyFinder® – Personal Hidden Camera Locator Apogen Technologies, Inc. $114.99 http://www.thespyfinder.com 1-800-903-3479 SpyFinder is the civilian version of the $2,500 laser-based camera detection system (http://store.yahoo.com/shop-seatech/spyfinder.html) developed by Apogen Technologies. The product is deceptively simple: You push a button which triggers a ring of six flashing LEDs, peer through the center of the ring and look for reflections. If you move your head slightly, reflections off shiny surfaces will move with you. Reflections from a lens system will not. We took the SpyFinder with us to a trade show for folks in the alarm business, sure that there would be a lot of hidden cameras among the vendors’ wares. There were, and we were able to find all of them. ÆGIS, October 2005 15 That said, it is important to remember that this device requires a significant amount of operator experience. A camera may well be hidden in a clock, behind smoked Plexiglass. This means that the reflection will be small – pinhole cameras use very small lenses – and not terribly bright. Thus, while some advertisements optimistically say “You can instantly locate any hidden cameras, wired or wireless,” they are very wrong. Just as with electronic bug sweeping, it takes a trained operator a surprisingly long time to do a sweep, and even then you will leave with some nagging doubts as to whether you have found everything. The instruction manual suggests that you scan at the rate of a foot per second at a distance of three to ten feet, which seems about right to us, at least on something like a blank wall at ten feet, where there should be no reflections. It will be slower when there are a lot of false positives to eliminate, and you have to move to the three foot range. This is assuming you know what you are looking for. How do you know what you are looking for? Get a pinhole camera and look at its reflection, so you know what a valid positive looks like. Then try hiding it behind various translucent barriers. Then go to one of the stores that sell James Bond-ish toys, and try to find the cameras they have hidden in clocks, teddy bears, and a host of other objects. Once you have gotten proficient at finding lenses that you know are there, you can have someone else start hiding them for you, with you trying to find them. Eventually you will gain a feeling of confidence, and be able to do a sweep with only the normal minimal nagging doubts as to whether you have found them all. This is a good device which has a very low price tag. With sufficient time, a diligent user with some experience should be able to do a good job of finding hidden cameras. 7. Subscription/Unsubscription/Copyright Information •• ÆGIS is supported and maintained by voluntary efforts. This publication is owned, published, and copyright © 2005 by The LUBRINCO Group Ltd, Inc. and Financial Examinations and Evaluations, Inc. It is edited jointly by Richard Isaacs (RBIsaacs@lubrinco.com) and L. Burke Files (LBFiles@feeinc.com). LUBRINCO provides services in three high-threat areas, too specialized to be dealt-with in-house, that can adversely affect domestic and international bottom lines. ÆGIS, October 2005 16 • Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 OPSEC compliance. 1. American businesses lose $300 billion annually to competitive intelligence, economic espionage, and information theft. 2. Sarbanes-Oxley requires internal controls tracking the costs, and impact on valuation, of competitive intelligence, economic espionage, and information theft. o LUBRINCO provides private sector access to OPSEC, the government-standard process for identification, valuation, and protection of intellectual property and critical information from competitive intelligence, economic espionage, and information theft. • International asset location and due diligence. o Location of concealed assets in fraud, theft, and divorce. o Due diligence to prevent fraud and loss in China, Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the offshore financial centers, Latin America, the Caribbean. o Financial fraud and anti-money laundering program development and training for compliance with the US International Money Laundering Abatement and Anti-Terrorist Financing Act of 2001 and the EU Revised Money Laundering Directive of 2001. • Protection of management, staff, and families. o In the high-threat environments of Latin America, Africa, the Mid- East, and Southeast Asia. o When traveling and living overseas. o When transporting items of substantial value. LUBRINCO identifies and quantifies threats and vulnerabilities, and their associated risk, then manages the vulnerabilities so you can transfer or live with the residual risk. We prevent disastrous financial loss to your company, and physical harm to you, your family, and your staff. For information on LUBRINCO and its services, or for the archive of all past issues of ÆGIS in PDF format, please go to http://www.lubrinco.com/. Subscription to ÆGIS is available for $15 per year in North America and $20 per year outside of North America. To sign up for a complimentary subscription to ÆGIS or the ÆGIS PDF notification list, go to http://lb.bcentral.com/ex/manage/subscriberprefs?customerid=7768 or send an email to aegis@lubrinco.com. ÆGIS, October 2005 17 To subscribe to our AvantGo channel, go to http://avantgo.com/channels/_add_channel.pl?cha_id=1773 To be removed from the subscription list, follow the instructions on the mailing you received, or send an e-mail to aegis@lubrinco.com. If you know of anyone else who should be receiving ÆGIS, please send their e-mail address to aegis@lubrinco.com. If there is a topic that you would like to know more about, send it to aegis@lubrinco.com and the editors will consider it as the topic for an article in an upcoming issue. If you would like to submit an article for publication in ÆGIS, send it as an attachment to an e-mail to aegis@lubrinco.com. Submission of an article certifies that (a) all information in the article is in the public record, or (b) that you are authorized to release any personal or corporate proprietary information contained in the article, and (c) that none of the article has previously been copyrighted. The submission of materials for publication in ÆGIS constitutes a license to LUBRINCO, and/or Financial Examinations and Evaluations, Inc, their assigns, associates, or affiliates, to abridge and/or edit said submission, and to copyright and publish/republish any submitted materials in whatever written and/or electronic form they may choose. If you would like to go beyond normal fair-use in reproducing articles from this issue of ÆGIS, you may do so freely as long as appropriate source, copyright, accreditation, and link to the LUBRINCO Web site is included. This should be in the form
Article Title, from the October 2005 ÆGIS (© 2005 LUBRINCO & FEE), to be found at http://www.lubrinco.com/. ÆGIS is a forum for the exchange of information, ideas, operating styles, theories, and related topics for corporate managers who make decisions about threats typically outside the expertise available in-house, yet which have the potential to affect their company’s domestic and international bottom lines. Nothing appearing in ÆGIS should be construed as legal advice. The information provided is “general information,” not “specific advice.” The solution to any problem is highly dependent upon the precise facts involved. Thus, before making any reliance upon anything said here, you should consult with an appropriately skilled professional. Opinions expressed by contributors are not necessarily endorsed by the publisher, and may be presented to encourage a dialogue among subscribers. The publisher ÆGIS, October 2005 18 and any re-publisher cannot be held responsible for any loss incurred as a result of the application of any information published in ÆGIS. Please be safe, and be smart.