An expensive problem, a cheap solution

I saw this while watching the news yesterday (CP24 in case anyone's wondering)

Vaughan mayor's counter surveillance-measures cost taxpayers nearly $3,000

Linda Jackson, the besieged mayor of the city of Vaughan, is coming under scrutiny again after it was found that she spent nearly $3,000 to sweep her office for spying devices, a published report says.

Gino and Mary Ruffolo -- two Vaughan residents -- discovered that the mayor's office paid Protech Consult Services $2,730 for "manual and electronic counter surveillance," the Toronto Star reports.

The Ruffolos uncovered the information through a Freedom of Information request. The newspaper also reports that having the mayor's office swept for bugs was a practice used by Jackson's predecessor, Michael Di Biase, as well.

But it appears Vaughan is on its own when it comes to having the mayor's office checked for bugs. The mayors of Toronto, Brampton and Mississauga, among others, told the Star that they have not had similar checks, and they didn't even think about it.

Reports also say the company that performed the security check has links to a company cited for a possible conflict of interest due to links to a city staffer.

Mayor Jackson sent an email to the Star where she acknowledged that her office was checked for bugs, but she wouldn't say why.

Well, While I was flipping through The Star this morning, I came across this article....

$50 solves Vaughan mayor's 'bug' worry

Ursula Lebana has a $50 solution to Vaughan Mayor Linda Jackson's political problems – and 2 cents worth of advice.

"People never believe it, but 90 per cent of the time, it's the person you trust the most," says Lebana, who opened Canada's first "spy shop" back in 1991 and can attest to the fact that Cold Wars are still being waged in offices, marriages and even babies' bedrooms around the world.

And for $50, the embattled Jackson, who spent $3,000 in taxpayers' money last year to have her office swept for listening devices, could have rented one of Lebana's do-it-yourself bug detectors.

Lebana has armed everyone from entrepreneurs to parents with electronic surveillance gadgets since she hung a few Bond posters on the walls of her Yonge St. Spy Tech store and created the first Teddy cam to help parents keep an eye on their child's nanny.

But she's never been asked to sweep for bugs in a mayor's office.

"That's strange, now that I think about it," says Lebana, her thick German accent dropping to a perplexed whisper. "Maybe it's because they're only around for four years and then they're gone."


The revelation about Jackson is bound to be good for business at Lebana's shop, where stories of stalkings, break-ins or bad caregivers always seem to fuel paranoia that translates into the sales of more spy paraphernalia.

In fact, one of her most popular items – next to the $59 CheckMate Infidelity Test Kit – are DIY bug detectors, ideal for almost any office, which sell for $500 or rent for $50 a day.

Even in bad times, business is booming in the surveillance business, as a steady stream of customers line Spy Tech's two glass-enclosed display cases, trying out everything from pen recorders ($99 plus taxes) to baseball caps with hidden cameras ($295 plus the cost of a tiny video recorder).

Surprisingly, only one guy is wearing a trench coat. (let's hope that's not all he's wearing?.. just saying it all...don't tell me you weren't just thinking that!)

Lebana takes the business of spying seriously – well, seriously enough that the door of her cluttered office features two-way glass. Her son Hans, who manages the Ottawa store, walks in wearing Men in Black sunglasses, even on a grey day.

On the other side of the office door, things get decidedly more high-tech, with steady demands for the latest digital devices from business owners looking to crack down on employee theft or spouses launching sting operations against husbands or wives they suspect of cheating.

There's also a fairly constant stream of people seeking hidden cameras that let them keep an eye, right from their office computers, on how their children or elderly parents are being cared for when they aren't around.

When the big boys call – i.e. the banks – Lebana has a secret weapon, retired RCMP security expert Doug Ralph, a good-natured guy with more than $250,000 worth of counter surveillance equipment. The latest is a $38,000 gadget that can sweep a bookshelf-lined room in under 20 minutes and detect a bug hidden in a binding. He admits he's made that rare find just "a few times."

Ralph has seen both sides of bugs, having planted them for the RCMP as part of organized-crime cases, and now hunting for them when corporations suspect competitors of trying to crack into their phone lines or computers.

"I try to stay away from the domestic issues. They can get pretty messy."

But sometimes trouble just finds him, like when he was driving downtown recently. His monitoring devices picked up voices coming from a Bay Street bank.

"It was a financial planner talking to clients, discussing their assets and where to direct (investments), their names, phone numbers and all this other information. I made sure that what I overheard got back to the director of security so that he would know that one of his employees was using a wireless (headset) so he wouldn't have to stay saddled to his desk – and I was hearing it a block away with my equipment."

(Note: When you use a wireless headset, the base keeps transmitting even when you're not using the phone. Ralph drove by City Hall late one night and could hear a cleaner vacuuming an office.)

Lebana considers what she does "regular things for regular people," and laughs that her German accent – she was born in East Germany but grew up near Frankfurt – is always a big hit with first-time visitors to the shop.

"A lot of them joke that I'm KGB or Mossad, because of the accent."

About 50 per cent of the time, when people think they are being spied on, they really are, Lebana contends. And almost always it's by the person they least suspect.

She's got lots of stories to prove her point, the most telling about a women who was terrified after months of stalking and scratching at her apartment door that escalated into death threats. The frightened woman took her brother-in-law to Spy Tech and he helped her install a peephole camera that turned up no suspects, although the harassment continued.

It was only when Lebana's staff installed a tiny surveillance camera in an exit sign down the hallway that the culprit was outed.

It was the brother-in-law. Seemed he quite liked getting her panicked calls for help and rushing in like a white knight.

in case any of you were curious or wondering, Spy Tech is located at:

Spy Tech
2005 Yonge St
Toronto, ON M4S 1Z8
(416) 482-8588
Get Directions from where you are

Filmmaker to use eye camera for documentary

Big Brother is watching you - and so is Little Brother.

Toronto filmmaker Rob Spence says he is getting a tiny video camera put inside a prosthetic eye to allow him to secretly film his subjects.

Spence says his goal is twofold: to raise awareness of constant surveillance in society and to get people talking unself-consciously.

"When you bring a camera, people change," said Spence, who lost his right eye as a young teen in a shooting accident on his grandfather's farm. "I wouldn't be disarming at all. I would just be some dude. It's a much truer conversation."

He hopes to have a prototype eye cam by February.

"As opposed to Big Brother watching from above, there (will be) Little Brother checking things out from below," he said of his project.

Spence, who has been writing about it on his blog "Eyeborg," plans to use the device for a documentary that will touch on his concerns about surveillance. His subjects won't know they will be on camera.

"People won't be aware of it at all. There's ethical issues with that, but I am a filmmaker," he said. "If you're averse to it, that's fine, don't sign the release form. I won't put you in the documentary."

Spence, 36, likens the idea to HBO's TV show "Taxicab Confessions," where participants can sign a release to have their cab conversations - recorded by hidden cameras - made public.

He's getting help with the project from the University of Toronto's Steve Mann, an expert on wearable computing and cyborgs (organisms that have artificial and natural systems). Mann also has expressed concerns about surveillance in society and how it needs to be counterbalanced by ordinary citizens.

Spence said he believes the tech-savvy will be the modern keepers of civil liberties.

"The more techno-geek you become, probably the safer we will all be."

Spence starred in the 2007 documentary "Let's All Hate Toronto," which aired on CBC-TV. His work has also appeared on Discovery, Vision and Space TV.

He's not alone in his quest for an eye camera. San Francisco artist Tanya Vlach wants a camera implant in her prosthetic eye and has put out a call on her blog for engineers to build her an eye cam, which could let her shoot video from her perspective or "lifecast" events.

Spence said he isn't going to focus on "lifecasting," or broadcasting his life 24-7 on the Internet.

He also isn't going to swap the eye cam, which won't restore vision, for his regular prosthetic eye on a permanent basis.

The video camera will be embedded in a prosthetic eye shell being made by Toronto ocularist Phil Bowen, who said he's not looking at the project from the "whole Big Brother thing."

"I am looking at it as the first step in taking a prosthetic eye that people might be able to see out of," Bowen said, adding that he is hoping a doctor will be able to take the research forward.

He described the camera as about the size of a pea and said people shouldn't notice Spence's camera eye. "It would look slightly lazy, but you shouldn't be able to tell."

The eye cam could be similar to a tiny medical camera used in such procedures as colonoscopies.

Digital commentator Carmi Levy said Spence's eye camera documentary should make people think about how they can move from convenience store to gas station to office to bank and home under the view of surveillance cameras.

Levy said Spence is taking back control.

"It's a Little Brother to the Big Brother presence," said Levy of Toronto's AR Communications Inc. "You are pointing the camera at the world instead of the other way around."

What do you guys think of this idea? would you be open to being recorded by the camera? would you be willing to appear in the documentary? or does the idea of being recorded by someone you don't even know sort of freak you out? post your thoughts...