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Technology

Wal-Mart Sells Home Spy Gear 144

Posted by Roblimo from the imagine-the-possibilities dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "Always wanted to play with the toys James Bond, the CIA and Dateline get to use every day? Now you can surf over to your friendly neighborhood Wal-Mart Online and pick up a spy-cam (complete with audio) disguised as a Smoke Detector at everyday low prices. Or pick from a variety of pinhole and infrared CCD cameras. Walton, Sam Walton... " Amazing! Wal-Mart seems to have a wide selection of video security gear. I think I'll get one of these for my limousine. Hmmm...
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Wal-Mart Sells Home Spy Gear More

Wal-Mart Sells Home Spy Gear

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  • Ah, but they did have this in Revenge of the Nerds, and that made it that much funnier...

    ...now I need to get one of these for my own *ahem* recreational use... :)
  • That was Fats Domino (the singer of the subject song, not the pervert).
  • All electronics [allcorp.com] has something like this for a bunch cheaper (the sony camera) . . .
  • I have been working steadily for the last several years, covering my body with an extra several layers of fat and hair. This is my camo; it hides what I don't want seen. If anything embarrassing ever DID come to light, I have the advantage of being able to run away, either hibernating or floating somewhere.

    Hair recession roundabouts the top of my head distorts and scatters light rays, further confounding any video devices.

    Keep your newfangled electro-magneto whiz-bang gizmo's -- give me Cookies & Cream ice cream.

    Pardon me, I must go comb my ears.



  • A friend has a fisher-price child monitor w/an IR camera so he can see his daughter in her dark bedroom ... it cost him ~$200 U.S. It works real well, and it also works in the daytime ... Although i also know that the US-CDN exchange rate is pretty high ... ;-)
  • umm "Contents" not recorded. Meaning you can't record the surveillance. In other words if you have camera going to a bunch of tv's with some guy watching them, but those signals are not recorded its perfectly legal (which makes sense as such would only be a space shifting device so that the guards don't have to be everywhere). So no we don't need to assume we are being recorded unless stated in friendly letters on the door that for our safty and security we are being watched!
  • I worked there last summer and yep, it's true. Actually, we're supposedta be devious about confronting shoplifters. You try to sneak something by, by say, putting it in those opaque storage bins? We just open it up and start ringing everything up. : ^)


    Forget what orange is though...
    Blue is bomb scare, brown is hostage situation, red is fire, Adam is missing child, green was injury, and black was severe weather. Actually, come to think of it, I don't think there was an orange.


    And god forbid you tried to steal something and run. Sure we smile, wear the smiley pins, and greet ya at the door, but we'll also break your legs. =)



    --Your former friendly neighborhood Wal-Mart employee, now your friendly neighborhood MIS Manager.
    -------------------------------------------------- ------------------------
    50 carraiges at 40 pounds each up a 5 degree grade. F sub N equals that of a compact car. Push, boy!
  • *grin* I like this place. More things on the list to buy.
  • Usually those places have stickers somewhere near the entrance saying "Smile! You're on hidden camera", or a legal warning saying the same thing.

    I do know that video survellance is inadmissable as evidence in any federal court unless the subject knew of it beforehand.

    --
  • db wonders why daveo always refers to himself in the third person in all his posts...

    --
    Dave Brooks (db@amorphous.org)
    http://www.amorphous.org
  • I've seen these little buggers [x10.com] advertised all over the place recently. $150 for a wireless color camera... interesting.
  • Heh, they could change their add up a bit:

    *ad music*
    ...Spying on you everyday
    That's the WalMart way!
  • db wonders why daveo always refers to himself in the third person in all his posts...

    Perhaps he has been looking at himself through a pinhole camera all this time?
  • I had a friend who worked at WalMart who told me
    that the most of the ceiling cameras in the
    store are fake (complete with blinking LED and
    occaional movement) and occasionally floor
    personal will call for a security gaurd over the
    PA system "Security: code orange, section 3"
    for no reason other than to keep potential
    shoplifters paranoid.
  • Take a small solar cell, add a Wal-Mart(tm) pinhole camera. Connect a TCP/IP stack the size of a dime, do a little custom soldering with some PROMs, get yourself a case (the size of a tennis ball, you reckon?), run a little cable to a home router... Whee!

    You'd have a self-contained webcam. With a little ingenuity, and some more power, maybe a wireless solution could be cooked up? Like a car-top webcam. Wouldn't that be nice. (My car is parked at 42nd and Vine. My car keys are on the roof in plain view of the camera)

  • I wonder if they also tell their would-be spies that using such equipment in some states is illegal (without telling the party being spied on).



    --
  • With duct tape?

    And do you have to carry around a 12v power supply?

    Oh well, at least the video output's female.

    George
  • They should have more choice. I'd definitely go for some plastic explosive inside toothpaste tubes, or small rocket launchers!!
  • smarthome.com [smarthome.com] has had a wide selection of covert video cameras [smarthome.com] for a while - they have ones built into clocks, telephones, picture frames, et cetera.

  • I have heard of technology (military) that allows a person to fire a electromagnetic pulse to knock out all electronic devices within a given area could that be applied to this type of spying.

  • nifty (Score:1)

    by Pierre ( 6251 )
    So I can start to tie one of these in with the X10 stuff I just recieved. Hmmm that infrared camera might make a nice security sensor.

    I can see it now. Neighbors dog in trash - fire the water cannon.

    I've never used any CCD stuff before. I wonder if this stuff is straight forward? I guess I'll go a searching....
  • Smallest webserver [stanford.edu]
  • Lots of stores do. I don't know if they do it in the US, but at the nearest Wal-Mart, they'll tape your other shopping bags, purses even, with their green Wal-Mart stickers. I'm surprised people haven't stood up to this - I mean, god, treat me like a F*n criminal or what? I haven't been there in a year. I'm not that desperate to save a few cents. My dad worked there once as a dock loader. It was the most hellish job he ever had.
  • You forgot to mention keeping all employees under 40 hours so they don't have to pay 'em any benefits (or so I've heard... I could be completely wrong.)

    I can't stand those damn ads with the happy smiling face knocking down numbers. I always envision that happy smiling face shutting down local stores and cracking the whip in a sweatshop.
  • This is absolutely true, 3 years ago I was a cashier at a walmart, I dunno if the cameras were fake, but I never found the security room in the building, and coulden't think of a place they could stick one. I was told by my superviser that if we see someone we think is shoplifting, we should get on the PA and say some crap like "Security, camera scan cosmetics" or some BS like that. Pretty funny stuff.

    So yeah, i guess if yer gunna shoplift, do it at a walmart, just obey the eternal law of capitalistic justice, "Don't get caught!".
  • I just might publish the top 100 most interesting posts (anonymized) to slashdot sometime. I get such interesting ideas from this site. *Insane laughter*
  • Depends. If someone calls you, you can tape them without their consent (catching harrasing calls?). If you call someone, you have to get consent to record something.
  • All you need is a video capture card ($40 from eBay), a composite video camera, a cable modem or DSL connection, a web server, a device driver, and a few lines of code. Program the driver to take a snapshot every second, and dump the image to a JPG on the web server. Write an HTML page that does an auto-refresh on the JPG, and Presto! instant remote monitoring of your home. Then, if you have the time, you can write an image processing app that compares two successive frames. If there's enough of a difference, it saves the frame to disk. So if someone actually does break into your house, it will record it.
    Timur Tabi
    Remove "nospam_" from email address
  • I used to be a support mgr at a smaller WM. The security room was in the same room that the accounting people were in (and the safe).

    I put a few of the cameras in the store.

    The problem areas usually have them installed. Also, almost every cash register overhead is real. But for the most part, many are fake.

    The store tended to play it safe rather than risk being sued.
  • I really don't like the thought of never having a private moment to do anything in my life with cameras like these
  • I sincerely hope your joking? Are you? Well I had a rather insane thought. Get a movie any/every movie you can find and then grab the frames with bttv use the support for aalib or just dump them to files and convert them to ascii and presto you have an entire version of say the original star wars in ascii.
  • Anybody know if these infrared cameras actually work? Last time I priced true infrared cameras they were about $80,000 CDN.

    Still pretty neat gadgets though.

  • The cameras and microphonese are here and won't go away so easy.

    As defence against this intrusion into privacy is at least very expensive, if not impossible, I am quite sure that we all will develop a kind of exhibitionistic don't-care-if-you-tape attitude. That's the cheapes solution for some aspects.

    And I wouldn't be surprised if rooms with granted privacy become the exception instead of the normal in the future.

    A great occasion for companies or unused temples by the way. Who knows what crazy offerings will result. Take the oxygene bar as a response to air pollution. Maybe one has to shell out some bucks in the future to have a nice private talk.

  • I wonder how many Slashdot posters are AIs..?

    Could the creator of this SlashBot please step forward?

    Is the record Slashdot lowest score below -21?

    Visit http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=preview&bid=bottom 10comments [slashdot.org] for a recent listing of state-of-the-low comments.

  • Re:Redneck Spy Supplies (Score:3)

    by dattaway ( 3088 ) on Wednesday July 21, 1999 @02:17PM (#1791395) Homepage Journal
    Hey, I'm gonna run out and buy two of them thangs. One to monitor the bug zapper, and the other to watch...

    Beat you to it. The Redneck Bugzappercam [attaway.org], so grab a six pack, sit back, and watch bugs die a spectacular death in a shocking display. Should I provide a streaming mp3 of them getting nuked?

    I need a switch from my parallel port and a perl script so the pinhole cam [attaway.org] I was showing off earlier in the day can be seen.
  • I thought that strong EM fields had been linked to cancer... (You know all the power line stories) I guess you could die a slow agonizing death in peace with the knowledge that no one is watching you.

    And since we're not dealing with reality: you should try making yourself invisible. Then you don't have to worry about any one spying on you and you can spy on all the girls lockerrooms that you want.
    -----
  • Due to the problem of determining consent given, taped phone conversations are nearly useless in court.

    This has no bearing on wheather or not recording is permitted at all. Remember the Pamela whatever sex video. She tried to prevent its dissemmination and failed. Nor could Laura Schleischenger(sp? aka Dr. Laura) block the dissemination of nude pictures over the web.

    So if you tape an insurance company telling you lies and illegal stuff, don't threaten to go to court... threaten to release it to the web! Bad word of mouth is far more harmful than bad court decisions to big companies.
  • err..theres always a difference between 2 frames. they arent exactly alike due to variances in light, cars passing and throwing shadows, dust settling, random static from the camera itself (its not perfect, yknow)..thats why most ppl attach a motion detector (PIR usually) to the camera..if it detects motion, start recording at full speed + capture 1 frame every minute for safety..
  • Me Tarzan, you daveo! (ugh, ugh :)
  • I do know that video survellance is inadmissable as evidence in any federal court unless the subject knew of it beforehand.


    Also known as "the sleazy politician law"!

    Pres: I did not have sex with that woman!
    Starr: But we have your encounter on video tape!
    Pres: Nope, doesn't count
    Starr: What?!?!
    Pres: Yup. Thanks to my fellow sleazy politicians, your tapes are inadmissable, because i didn't know you were taping me!
    Star: But thats ludicris! if you had known you were being taped, you wouldn't have done it, or at least not where the camera could see it!
    Pres: I know, thats the point.

    Stupid law, if they can make that law,, they should also let you know when you are close to a police speed trap, so you can slow down, otherwise the radar reading should be inadmissable in court...

  • most infrared cams are not *true* infrared..they cant do much in terms of differentiating thermal spots and give temperature readings..They use the property of CCDs to see in the near infrared range (most CCDs can do this anyway) and record that (its roughly a simulation of night vision goggles)...true infrared cams cost $$$ (well over $10,000 in some cases)
  • Hey, I'm gonna run out and buy two of them thangs.

    One to monitor the bug zapper, and the other to watch for any varmits tryin' to steal the wheels off my house.
  • This is basically the kind of script Randy wrote in Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson).

    This would work if you have a kind of image encoding where the magnitude of the difference (from subtraction) accurately reflects the magnitude of the difference we would percieve by looking at the two shots. For instance, if each image is encoded as a big long number, and the two numbers subtracted, you would get a very big result if the only pixel changed is the one in the upper left. This is an example of a scheme that wouldn't work.

    With a good encoding scheme, this would work very well.
  • these arent true infrared. they use the CCD property of being able to see in the near infrared range...hence their cheap cost.

  • I was researching this a little and, so far, the clearest thing I have found is at Fairfield and Woods, P.C. [fwlaw.com] where they say that video surveillance is probably legal without notifying the observed so long as the "contents" of any communication are not recorded. This is talked about in a section called Video surveillance about half way down the page.

    This is quite an interesting subject. I suspect that in the near future (20 minutes from now?) people will have to assume that they are being recorded most of the time.

  • Most modern black and white cameras are very sensitive to the red/infra red range. A lit cigarette looks like a spotlight at the camera in the dark. If your company has a no smoking policy and you have cameras, watch out.

    Color cameras do not seem to benefit from infrared. I have a ccd b/w and it responds in a most excellent way from infrared led's. The b/w also does a pretty good job under moon light. The color does not see this spectrum and is miserable for night viewing.

    I also have a image multiplier (got this one at walmart in the hunting department!) that multiplies light 15,000 times. Its great for scoping wildlife out in the woods and other telephoto lenses will fit it. Just don't use it to try finding your way out of the woods in the dark. I tried and discovered the field of vision was narrow and I tripped over every damn thing in the way!
  • I have what you describe, though not wireless. It's a Connectix QuickCam, it's about the size of a tennis ball, connects to my serial port, and is dirt easy to set up. The original, black and white, 320x240 version cost me $26 including shipping.
  • every major retail outlet uses tactics such as this to try to deter the a$$hole shoplifters.
    having spent all my pre-tech job years in retail i saw the lengths that establishments went to to halt what some think of as a victimless crime, and at least some of them were just as concerned with internal theft as theft from "customers"
    just my piece of life-experience

  • Note to Self (Score:3)

    by alkali ( 28338 ) on Wednesday July 21, 1999 @04:36PM (#1791415)
    Remember to suggest to CmdrTaco that he add a "Too Much Information" moderation category. Also, buy milk.
  • I remember seeing a site a few months ago where someone was using an older quickcam (the B&W model) with the infared filter taken out of it. That camera coupled with an ordinary remote control for lighting gives surprising results. The remote actually throws an IR beam similar to a flashlight when viewed through the camera.
  • Any electronics surplus catalog will have a wide selection of video camera parts. You can get 'em cheap and mount 'em in any housing you want.
  • Not on your own property. You can record anything you want within the bounds of your personal domain(home). The only exception is recording phone conversations simply because this can violate wiretap laws as the person that is being recorded is not within the bounds of the persons property and it uses "public" lines.
  • Walmart: Where Echelon does its shopping.

    ---
    Put Hemos through English 101!
  • What you use is up to you. You can hook up a VCR to record, or buy an ATI TV Wonder to caputure to your hard disk. Anything that can be used to capture and store video (analog that is).
  • Note that state law may vary. I believe it is illegal in Maryland to tape a convesation without both party's knowledge. (Remember Linda Tripp?)
  • I've always been given to believe that it was legal to tape a phone conversation as long as one involved party was aware of that fact.
    ---
    Put Hemos through English 101!
  • Lets hope Wal-Mart will sell counter survellance gear real soon. Damn, I'm gonna have to check everything in my hotel room from now on. hehehe
  • I say head back to Wall Mount for more!

  • Re:Counter Measures (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    With a spark gap radio disruptor, sure. EZ to build too. *VERY* illegal if it is too strong (It'll ruin ALL radio/TV signals for MILES). You _WILL_ be fined for using one, and you could go to jail (in very extreme cases). Buuuut, if you're serious, talk to any (older) war vet. with electronics experience. They used to use these devices to ruin enemy radio transmissions. [Note: I might not be 100% correct about this. I read about it in Pop. Electronics a while ago... Although I do know ruining people's TV/radio will get the FCC after you.].

    Anyways, if the signal is going through a good quality cable, and not being broadcast through the air, you probably don't have much chance.

    I'm not sure about this, but I think the only thing a magnet is going to do is ruin any TVs nearby (I don't think they affect CCDs. After all, AFAIK they are just LED/LDR combos...).
  • I heard they have some sort of routine that all the employees go through before work everyday, it includes all singing some sort of song... Not sure if it's true but I wouldn't be surprised. Can you imagine them asking some gen-Xer to sing a song before work? I'd slap that silly smile off my boss' face and go get a different job. I don't recall seeing any young people helping consumers select a cart at the door either, are they agist or something?
  • Your -excuse me being explicit- idiotic CVS post has already been moderated down to an amazing -21:

    Moderation Totals:Offtopic=2, Flamebait=7, Troll=12, Total=21.

    Are you for real or a failed attempt to create an AI?

  • There are places selling infrared cameras. I have seen some in industrial catalogs starting at $5000 that will show electrical lines behind walls in computer enhanced color. They also require big batteries, so I'm sure they have some kind of cooling on the imaging sensor. They are useful for finding bad joints in overhead wiring, substations, electrical boxes, and places where the voltages are undesirable to trace by hand. Most industrial engineering supply catalogs should have them.
  • The wires can be concealed by mounting the "smoke detector" to an electrical box in the ceiling, like you would with a smoke detector that runs off of line voltage. You then run the wire above the ceiling to your monitor.
  • Order em through Radio Shack.
    Small cameras start at $79.
  • theres always a difference between 2 frames. they arent exactly alike due to variances in light ...

    Story time.

    About 8 years ago I was doing some lab work with a frame grapper. We used it to find if, at a given voltage, the sample had undergone a phase change or not. As you approach the critical voltage, the time to phase change takes longer and longer.

    So we automated it by comparing frames over time with the intial frame. Problem was, the grabber would get one of the two interleaves, so we had to take three snapshots and use the smallest of the differences |2-1|, |3-1| and |3-2|.

    In other words, even if the scene doesn't change you could still get some differences between the images.

  • I've seen some bare CCD's cameras mounted on circuit boards that also have an array of infra-red LED's (same as the ones in tv remote controles) mounted around them. This provides enough illumination so that the camera can see in what you perceive as darkness. If you want to see this work yourself, if you have any kind of digicam, take a photo of a remote control with a button pressed in the dark.
  • sorry to be off topic BUT preven prevents ovulation preventing pregnency (note the name) unlike RU486 witch kills the fetus
  • where i work (at a grocery store) we have a bunch of fake cameras but then there is atleast one real pinhole camera that we have found that is constantly watching one of he drawers
  • Wal-Mart has been selling these for quite some time now. I noticed them probably about a year ago when I bought my 35" TV on-line with satellite speakers and subwoofer for ...$450!!!!!!

  • It's called an Electromagnetic Pulse, or EMP.
    It's most commonly produced by detonating nuclear weapons in the atmosphere... I'm sure there are other ways to do so but I don't know of any.

    Kintanon
  • I can almost hear Chuck Berry singing now. If you'll remember, he installed hidden cameras in the womens bathrooms of some restaurant he owned (incidentally, he owns a nice one here in my home town of St. Louis, but I'm always afraid to go in the bathroom). He may be an old pervert, but he's (still) one talented man.
  • I can see it now. Neighbors dog in trash - fire the water cannon.
    You can buy a system to do this ready-made. See http://smarthome.com/6120.html [smarthome.com].

    Smarthome's catalog is full of neat stuff like this. I've never actually bought any of it, but it makes for nifty browsing.

  • You get to pay $200 for a smoke alarm case. (Score:3)

    by Restil ( 31903 ) on Wednesday July 21, 1999 @11:05AM (#1791452) Homepage
    Black and white pinhole cameras sell for about $50 apiece. All you need to supply then is an RCA cable, a microphone, and a power supply, then take ANY smoke alarm (they're not very expensive), remove the cover, then secure the camera inside of it and VOILA, instant spy camera. Now, if you want to get more fancy, for an extra $100, I can integrate a video/audio transmitter into the case as well, then have a reciever anywhere within 300 meters. So for about $180 this could be assembled by anyone with enough electronics knowledge to successfully hook up your average stereo system.

    Of course, this is Walmart we're talking about. This is a CONSUMER product, and of course, there is a high consumer demand for surveillence equipment in the home. After all, this is about the extent that it could be used legally. Nobody will likely use these in a commercial environment when there are better choices available and its illegal to use them in almost any other circumstance. So if you're going to break the law anyways, why rely on a consumer product that would probably be easy to identify.

    -Restil

  • It would have made the movie less funny. There are certain things you can do with a hole in the girls' shower wall that just don't work with cameras.

  • Depends on the state. Federal law says that at least one party must be aware - some states add the restriction that both people must be aware.

    This became an issue recently as Linda Tripp was taping those phone conversations with a certain white house intern while she (Tripp) was in Maryland, which is one of those states that requires both parties to be aware of the recording. Maryland prosecuters went after her for that, but in Maryland it is a valid defense (for this law) to claim ignorance of the fact that both people have to know. Of course, they had the Radio Shack salesperson who had sold Tripp the recording device testify that he had read her the standard "these are the laws in Maryland..." disclaimer that they're required to read to each customer who buys one of these, and I don't know what happened after that.
  • I'm not sure of current prices, but I looked around and got a Panasonic egg cam kit with the Brooktree chip set (works great with Linux!) for $75 from 10 refurbished models in stock. Pricewatch has similar deals. Anyhow, without the case, this camera makes a fine minature pinhole unit that can hide behind a speck in the wall (see my webcam.) Its video output is the usual ntsc through a RCA jack that can also fit a video recorder. The Brooktree video card will do full motion video up to 30fps in both overlay and screengrab to a file. The driver is built into the recent Linux kernels.
  • "Today in the news : 20 people killed in a Bed & Breakfast fire"
    ... apparently was equipped with fake smoke detectors. The owner's charred remains were found sitting in a la-z-boy where he was apparently wanking off in front of surveilance monitors ...

    - - -
  • EMPs can be created by using a tesla coil. Basically just step the voltage up to the desired level, and then put an RF component (ie: a coil) into the circuit, and you have yourself a portable EMP.

    In short, just ionize the shit out of an area, and then zap it with about 50mA and a few thousand volts, and you'll kill anything with an IC on it.

    Try microwaving your walkman to get a good idea of how this works.

    --
  • Naah. No pay. A reader sent in the item, and I posted it, because the idea of super-staid Wal-Mart selling "spy stuff" is kind of funny. And note that a whole bunch of people immediately posted URLs for places that sell similar items for less.

    I wouldn't let any Andover sales person *ever* plant a story in Slashdot. In fact, part of my job is here to keep them from even thinking about it. I'll play around, sure, but when it comes to maintaining editorial integrity, I do not joke. Ever.
  • How does this apply to monitoring private property tho'? Of course you could be using this as some sleazy spy thing, but what if you suspect someone's routinely going into your office/house/whatever, and you want proof?

    You catch them on video, but they get off, cuz they didn't know they were being taped?
  • Great, now we can look forward to webcams and hidden cam sites dedicated to women who have exceeded the tensile strength of their spandex.
  • Take a few LED's, amplify changes in voltages they produce (LED's will make voltage from light). Significant change implies movement in the area.

    My friend used this setup to make an auto-cat-squirter for his garden. It was cool... anything tried to go in the garden and the sprinkler turned on...

  • Why was this marked OffTopic? Seems like a pretty linear conversation, and privacy law seems pretty in-line with spy equipment.
  • I was thinking of using the "webserver-on-a-chip" (that was slashdotted a week or so ago) to make a webcam with its own webserver included! No computer required! It could look a helluva lot like the old tennis-ball-webcams, though.
  • Isn't she the one that made
    interstate telephone recordings?

    Or was that Nixon?
  • Unfortunately, they can hurt you thru that hole, which is one of the reasons hidden cameras are used instead. Of course you remember the part when the girls see that thing sticking out of the hole... :p
  • Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangst:

    Tripp nearly ran afoul of the law because it was telephone conversations that she taped.

    I think that it would have been legal if they had been in Tripp's house or car.

    Also it is one of the FEW cases where ignorance of the law is a VALID excuse.

    Wierd stuff anyway.

    LK
  • You forgot the dental floss garrat wire :)

    You gotta love Austin Powers.

  • I wonder how such laws apply to "conventional" security monitoring? Very often those cameras are positioned so as to not be obtrusive and as a result, the observed might claim to be unaware.

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