VANCOUVER %26#151; Blair Kovacs recently sold a full suite of tiny video cameras embedded into shaving-cream canisters, bedside radio alarm clocks and other household items to a man who suspected his wife was having an extramarital affair.
The man told Mr. Kovacs he and his wife were taking a trip to their cottage, and he wanted to bug the entire place.
He was going to be there for the first few days and she would be left alone for the remainder of the week, so he wanted all these products, basically, to find out what was happening when he was not there, said Mr. Kovacs, who operates online spy gadget companies SpyCamMan.com and TrackStick.ca from his home in Barrie, Ont.
Mr. Kovacs never learned the outcome of the client’s mission, but it’s requests like his that are driving the sales of specialty cameras and high-tech tracking devices.
Enlarge Image
A popular item on Blair Kovacs�s spy gadget website is a miniature camera. Clients � often suspecting
their spouse of cheating � can easily hide the device and record goings on. (BILL SANDFORD FOR THE GLOBE AND MAIL)
Forget private investigators. Ever-developing technologies are allowing people to use increasingly sophisticated measures to catch their wayward partners, from the latest miniature cameras and telephone lie detectors to home semen-detection kits.
At the Spy vs. Spy store in Kelowna, B.C., manager Frank Caron said suspicious partners make up about 50 per cent of his retail sales.
A particularly hot new item, he said, is the $240 EAR-200, a little black box with an extremely sensitive microphone. When put up against a wall, it allows the user to hear precisely what’s happening on the other side.
If it’s a hotel room wall, you can listen in, Mr. Caron said. Other popular items include the CheckMate kit, which detects traces of semen in undergarments and bed sheets, and an invisible marking powder, which turns anything that touches it an incriminating bright yellow when exposed under a UV flashlight - including wandering hands, Mr. Caron said.
For Mr. Kovacs’s spouse-tracking clients (who are split almost equally between men and women), the TrackStick GPS device is in high demand, since it can be hidden in a partner’s vehicle, pocket or briefcase, he said.
The pocketknife-sized stick, which costs between $100 and $200, collects detailed travel data and, when plugged into a computer, maps out where it has been on programs such as Google Earth.
These types of infidelity-busting devices have become increasingly popular as the technology has become more user-friendly, Mr. Kovacs said.
New Jersey-based TelTech Systems offers computer voice-analysis services that can tell when a person is lying over the phone.
Users simply dial into the service’s toll-free number, punch in their account numbers, then call their partners. The automated program monitors the conversation and gives a voice-analysis report.
TelTech’s Joel Schwartz said the core technology behind the company’s services was invented about 10 years ago for government and interrogation purposes, but has only now been adapted for what he calls entertainment use.
Although the company doesn’t market the technology as a means of detecting infidelity, Mr. Schwartz said there’s no doubt it is often used for that purpose.
But not everyone using high-tech infidelity detectors is unhappy after confirming their suspicions are true.
Mr. Caron said one of his clients was ecstatic that he was able to renegotiate his divorce settlement after he caught his ex-wife cheating, using a series of radio bugs set up around his home.
He came back a few months later and said, %26#39;I want to shake your hand. … Turns out she was playing around on me and trying to take me for everything. You just saved me $100,000 in court.’
Mr. Caron noted, however, that users need to be careful not to violate privacy laws. While it is legal to record conversations if at least one participant is aware of the device, it’s against the law if none of the parties know they are being recorded.
And even when the technologies are able to confirm a hunch, the results often raise more questions and anguish.
We have people call in, sometimes a little sad, sometimes a little desperate. And they say, %26#39;I caught my other half cheating. What do I do?’ Mr. Schwartz said.
Unfortunately, we don’t have the answers at that point.
Tags: ada, anguish, barrie, cot, garments, google, household, rth, shak