Eye Spies

Hidden cameras have caught chilling images of terrorists and terrorism: the deadly train station explosions in Madrid (above left, © Handout/Reuters/Corbis); a 9/11 hijacker at an ATM in Maine (middle, © Corbis Sygma); and the Columbine killers in the high school cafeteria (right, © Reuters/Corbis).

STEVE MAMBER PULLS OVER A CHAIR and fires up a laptop computer in the abandoned editing space in Melnitz Hall that passes for his Center for Hidden Camera Research. A few moments later, visions from unseen electronic eyes flicker in grainy images across the screen. Three women, gaily oblivious to the fact they are being surreptitiously taped by their employer, puff away in the ladies’ room in obvious violation of the company’s strict smoking ban. At an apartment within earshot of LAX, a nanny cheerfully goes about her daily routine of caring for a young child while a camera concealed somewhere in the living room records her uneventful movements along with the nonstop rumbles from the nearby airport. Cameras mounted in trees and on light poles intended to deter drug dealing in a Beverly Hills park capture footage of a businessman handing an envelope filled with cash to a hit man he has contracted to kill his wife.

Mamber's interest in surveillance imagery is purely cinematic. He views what he calls "hidden camera" as a democratized form of cinema vérité that captures slices of life as it unfolds in real time. In other areas of inquiry, some ethicists, sociologists and other examiners of the life populi are wary of the potential for misuse of hidden cameras, by anybody.

"We are slowly, step by step, in an incremental and decentralized way, nudging ourselves into a place where everything we do will be recorded and known. If we are like birds being stared at by birdwatchers, then we change our behavior accordingly,” predicts Jerry Kang, UCLA professor of law. “So the possibility for personal experimentation, for creativity, for dissent politics — all of those things, I think, are threatened as we move step by step into essentially a nonstop surveillance state.”

One of the reasons there isn't more of an outcry about government watching may be that we all love to watch. According to a study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, one out of six American adult Internet users have gone online to view another person or a place via a Webcam. On any given day, about 2 million Internet users are checking out remote places or people by using Webcams.

Moreover, we all have the technology to watch. Tiny, concealable cameras — the kind you can hide inside that Winnie-the-Pooh toy, or in a clock or a smoke detector — are easy to find (Google "hidden camera" and you'll be presented with thousands of online retail outlets) and cheap to buy, some starting at $35 or $40. Mamber reports getting a "surprising" amount of e-mail from people looking for consumer help on buying equipment and people who think they've been victimized by hidden cameras.

NOT SURPRISINGLY, law enforcement rigorously defends hidden cameras, albeit with the expected caveats about not going too far. (Many police departments post signs in areas where cameras are located to notify people that they could be monitored, and businesses, likewise, often post notices that their premises are under camera surveillance.)

Published Jul 1, 2006 12:00 AM