Forbidden spy toys

>> P.I. wants to democratize secret tools of surveillance

by GEORGE MADDUX

In a 1940s-style apartment befitting a film noir gumshoe, a Montreal private eye shows off a collection of futuristic gizmos spread over his kitchen table. He picks up a disposable pen and points to two tiny pinpricks. "This is actually a microphone. A store owner, for example, could leave this lying around," he says, "and finally find out which employee has been stealing from him."

He leans forward without wrinkling his impeccably ironed white shirt. "A scumbag was trying to shake down one of my clients through extortion. We sent our client in with one of these. When the other guy found out his threats were on tape he backed off."

A phone plug and an electrical plug, also secret audio recording devices, are more nuggets in his high-tech cornucopia. These are items that Remy Kaladjian hopes will one day give ordinary Canadians the same powers of surveillance now held exclusively by legal authorities.

But the head of Old-Montreal-based VIP Investigation Inc. is hardly poised to become the Toys R Us of electronic surveillance. Although he owns the exclusive rights to sell the line of surveillance products in Canada, he can't peddle any of it here. Under Section 191 of the Criminal Code, ordinary citizens can be jailed for up to two years for selling such gadgets.

Fed excesses

Yet the same government, he points out, uses sophisticated equipment to spy on citizens. He cites the claim--asserted separately by ex-CSIS agents Mike Frost and Fred Stock--that federal agents routinely scan private communications bounced off satellites for potentially subversive terminology. One such tale alleges that the feds opened a file on a mother who described her child's school play as a "bomb."

Kaladjian figures that in light of such official behaviour, Canadian citizens should at least have the right to own some relatively rudimentary tools for their own information gathering.

He opens a small black box and punches its keypad. Phone conversations from nearby analog cellular phones users fill his kitchen. An ordinary citizen could get up to five years in prison under Section 184 of the Criminal Code for such a stunt. But federal intelligence agents, according to the same former spies, once used similar equipment to snoop on a U.S. trade commissioner, allowing Canada to undercut the Americans and win a major wheat contract with China.

It remains a discussion of principle for Kaladjian who, as chief of a thriving P.I. firm, doesn't need to sell the items anyway. He even acknowledges that high-tech snooping paraphernalia could end up in the wrong hands... or feet, as he refers to a case of a man caught taking "up-skirt" videos of women's panties using of a tiny camera embedded in his shoe.

Bylaws and spy laws

In Canada, capturing visual images is generally safer than recording sounds. "Videotaping in a public place is legal. There is no expectation of privacy if you're walking down the street," says Christian Desrosiers, a lawyer specializing in electronic surveillance. Audiotaping requires the knowledge of at least one party. "You can't tape the conversation between me and my neighbour without the knowledge of one of us."

Not all gadgets fulfill their promise anyway. Few investigators lay faith in a high-powered directional microphone that promises to hear through concrete, a device with a great potential for illegal use. Yet the same investigators burble with delight over a tiny, unseen camera hidden within a pair of glasses, a gadget that can be used legally to videotape people unknowingly in public.

And legalities are important. The local P.I. community is small enough to worry about its reputation. A few years ago, for example, a local detective employed a high-powered zoom lens to illegally videotape a CSST disability claimant having sex in his house. It's an episode that still prompts head shaking among our private dicks. "I'd love to get my hands on the guy who did that," says one investigator.

Lights, camera, adultery

Low-tech legwork remains the better part of a P.I.'s day. "Some of the equipment is just fantastic," says Ronald Myles, a veteran West-End private investigator. "But it's often very finicky and Murphy's Law prevails when using small, delicate electronic devices."

Rod Jazra of Check-Mate, an agency that specializes in verifying suspicions of spousal infidelity, won't discuss the equipment his firm employs. But he enthusiastically explains that electronic beacons can now locate vehicles, a tactic that can sometimes replace costly tailing operations.

Jazra adds that tiny, imperceptible shirt-button cameras offer impressive business applications. Unseen cameras allow his agents to shoot close-up proof of adultery in 80-85 per cent of the cases he handles. "When we show our clients a tape of their mate touching hands, rubbing elbows with somebody else--it's like unbelievable live-action." :

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