Be careful when you take a shower in an unknown place, there may be a spy camera at work! Concealed in an innocuous object, it is difficult to detect. However, there are dozens of them on Amazon!
It’s a sordid story and yet far from banal: in the United States, a student from Brazil discovered, while staying with an American host family, that she was being filmed when she used the bathroom using a towel hook. This integrated a small 1080p wide-angle camera with motion detection. Battery powered, so it recorded what happened every time a person entered the room. Worse still, its microphone allowed the voyeur to perceive all sounds in the environment. Its removable micro SD card allowed it to record up to 32 GB of content locally – or around 16 hours of recording. A seemingly undetectable way for the host to get an eyeful, and which is of course completely illegal. And the worst part is that this gadget
The young woman has since filed a complaint against the individual and, interestingly, the judge took the opportunity to raise the question of Amazon’s responsibility in this story, as the seller of this spy camera.
This is the problem that this case highlights: it is possible to obtain a spy camera that is difficult to detect very easily, and at affordable prices too! Just type “spy camera” into the Amazon or AliExpress search bar to find a whole bunch of James Bond-style gadgets: pen, clock radio, charger, car key, external battery, smoke detector , bulb, watch… Some models film in Full HD and are equipped with a video recorder, a microphone, a micro SD card, night vision, and even motion detection. The worst part is that this gadget is within everyone’s reach, given that it is available on platforms like Amazon for less than 40 euros!
Most of the time, sellers cite legitimate reasons to justify the use of spy cameras: monitoring the activity of their home (nanny, cleaning worker, thieves), an elderly or sick person, their children or even to prove adultery or domestic violence. In the case cited above, Amazon considers that it is not responsible for its customers’ use of its products, but the judge emphasizes that “the description regarding the use” of the products in question puts forward the hypothesis of a “recording private moments in a bathroom”. In other words: Amazon is perfectly aware of the possibilities of using this type of object.
In France, the law which regulates the use of cameras is the Data Protection Act of January 6, 1978, amended by the law of August 6, 2004. It turns out that sellers of spy cameras are only obliged to inform their buyers of the law. This requires the owners of the accommodation to warn the people they receive that they may be filmed. Suffice to say that this goes somewhat against the objective of the spy camera, which is to film without anyone knowing anything about it…
Also, when you arrive in a new home, remember to look around you carefully and examine objects that seem suspicious to you. You can use your smartphone’s camera in the dark to spot infrared diodes – if night vision is supported – in the form of green or red rays from the cameras. You can never be too careful!