I spy: Americans embrace surveillance gear

By Janet Kornblum
USA Today

The spy who shopped me Here's a sampling of personal surveillance products available from such sites as spyzone.com:

CVS 3500 sunglasses contain a miniature camera. Images can be recorded directly to a standard video recorder or fed into a video transmitter. The wireless version costs $2,800, and the wired version is $2,200.

The Stuffed Animal Nanny Cam contains a miniature camera for covert surveillance. Images can be recorded to a standard VCR. The wired version costs $500, and the wireless one goes for $795.

A growing number of Americans are installing them, as well as using secret "nanny cams" in their homes and even carrying tiny cameras in cell phones and other devices.

It once was just Big Brother that privacy-minded people had to worry about. Now "it's Little Brother," says Howard Rheingold, a technology watcher and author of "Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution."

"It used to be that you thought only the state had the power and technology to do surveillance. But now that's democratized. It could be your neighbor, your relative."

These days, miniature spycams are so small and inexpensive that they could be anywhere: someone pointing a cell phone or a pen at you might have one; the devices can even be hidden in sunglasses. Tiny cameras can be purchased in stores or over the Internet for as little as $100.

Cell-phone cameras, still somewhat of a novelty in the United States, have become so popular elsewhere that gyms in Australia and Hong Kong are reportedly banning them from pools and locker rooms for fear of secret pictures being taken and transmitted to anyone on the planet.

While privacy experts are still more concerned about government surveillance, personal surveillance poses some challenges. Though law enforcement officials have to safeguard the public's constitutional rights, private companies and individuals can focus their cameras in public spaces without the same worries, says David Sobel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Whether you can use legal means to stop somebody from taking pictures of you depends on the circumstances. But "when you're in public and in plain view — particularly when the person taking the picture is a private person — there's not a lot of recourse," he says.

Rheingold says: "You can't assume any place you go is private, because the means of surveillance are becoming so affordable and so invisible."

It is the classic trade-off: security vs. privacy, says James Katz, a professor of communications at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. Right now, security is winning.

"The good that comes from safety and security outweighs the losses to freedom of speech and freedom of association that tend to be dampened when people are monitored," Katz says.

Ever since British au pair Louise Woodward was convicted in 1997 of killing her 8-month-old charge, parents have been snapping up nanny cams.

Many systems are simply there to catch a thief. Even churches have security cameras, says Rich Maurer of New York security firm Kroll Inc.

Kent, Wash.,-based X10 Wireless says more than 1 million of its cameras are in circulation. (Intended for home security use, the cameras also can be used to spy.)

Not everybody says this will necessarily make society safer.

"Rather than make us more secure, this is going to pander to our security obsession," says Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, Calif.

Like it or not, cameras will stay. Maurer estimates that in a 10-mile stretch in any major city, your image will be captured on 30 to 40 private security cameras, not including those in homes.

"We're being spied on all the time," Saffo says. "Not only are we spying on each other, we're spying on ourselves. And we're all going to discover that we've all become unwitting stars of our own really boring reality TV program."