Bug Thy Neighbor -- Those Electronic Spy Gadgets You See In Films And TV Can Be Yours, For A Price

Salesman Jim Dandy flies into town to meet clients. Though carrying confidential material in his bulletproof Courier Electronic Briefcase ($1,195), he's secure in the knowledge that anybody who tries to steal it will get a 4,000-volt jolt.

Dandy rents a car, and calls the office from his cellular phone. Somebody could be following and using a Frequency Counter ($400) to pick up his cellular frequency. However, Dandy has already plugged in his Scrambler ($585 a pair) to make his voice unintelligible.

Arriving at his hotel, he uses a handheld radio frequency detector locator ($795) to make sure his room isn't bugged. Then he calls his clients, using his ``Security Phone ($1,195). This phone foils any outsider using a Telephone Burglar Monitor System ($375). Normally they could dial Dandy's number, sound a tone, and in effect they would have turned Dandy's phone into a microphone transmitting all conversations in his room.

It's been a hard day, but now Dandy can set the trip device on his Seismic Intrusion Detection System ($725) and his Terminator Tear Gas Alarm ($299), and make sure his 60,000-volt Parali/azer stun gun ($69.95) is within easy reach before taking a well-earned sleep ready for the next day's meeting . . .

Given a few bucks and fewer scruples, anybody can play ``I spy.'' The proliferation of electronic gadgetry during the 1970s and 1980s has made snooping a snap.

That vulnerability was underlined last month when the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a ruling that police eavesdropping on cordless-phone conversations is legal without a warrant.

Such surveillance can be easy. Even your local electronics store might sell a handheld scanner that can be used, among other things, for such clandestine prying.

``Yet the public seems hardly aware that technology is inch by inch stealing the traditional right to privacy,'' says Kathleen Taylor, executive director of the Washington affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Frost & Sullivan Inc., a New York company that monitors the market, says security is a $14 billion industry. Though electronic surveillance gadgets are one of the smaller categories, it's still a multimillion-dollar business. And growing.

``Equipment available today is getting outlandish,'' says Fred Cox, an investigator whose 32 years of experience apparently makes him the dean of Seattle's private detectives.

Outlandish indeed, as we found by responding to a recent science magazine ad that touted a $10 book called ``How to Eavesdrop on Your Neighbor.''

The Atlanta publisher's mail-order offering of electronic goodies includes a ``voice changer'' device (for $399.95) that (it claims) alters your phone voice completely, even switching its sex so that if your office is a one-man operation, you can pretend to have a secretary.

Other temptations from the company's high-tech toy box:

-- A monitor phone, $349. Looks like a normal phone, but permits you to monitor what's happening in any room where it's installed - to check for burglars, for example. Or to make sure the kids are behaving. Or, as the book hints, to make sure the spouse is behaving.

-- Scanner, about $449. Compact handheld scanner permits you to listen in on aircraft, police, fire, ambulance - plus cordless phone calls and cellular phones.

-- ``Listenaider,'' $69.95. Compact sound booster looks like a Walkman, but brings distant sounds up close, and ``nobody will be able to tell that you're not just listening to a pocket radio.''

On the lower-tech side, the company offers ``Mail Inspector,'' at $49.95 per can. Just spray this compound onto an envelope or other paper wrapping and it makes the paper translucent so you can read what's inside.

Of course, some rascal might use the ``Mail Inspector'' to audit your mail! So you might prefer to visit an unobtrusive little gray shop in Kirkland's Rose Hill section and buy equipment directly from Security Analysts. (Company motto, ``Dedicated to protecting your privacy''.)

``We're about the only company in this area that does this,'' says co-owner John Jerman, 31, who along with partner Mike Small, 35, sells products under the label ``Spy vs. Spy.'' The store's stock includes vehicle tracking devices, night-vision equipment and countersurveillance instruments.

Jerman says he and Small sometimes custom-build equipment to assist, for example, a police department's undercover investigation. Also, the two licensed private detectives perform monitoring ``sweeps'' when a company suspects electronic spying on its premises.

Many of their customers are private eyes who rent equipment such as a $6,750 silver box of tricks called a Tracman vehicle-tracking system. After unobtrusively hooking a transmitter under his quarry's automobile, the surveillance operator tracks the target vehicle by watching the Tracman's dials.

Small says most merchandise in their shop is designed for countersurveillance only. In fact, whether buying mail order - from where most electronic surveillance equipment used privately in the state is apparently purchased - or across the counter, vendors urge you to use your equipment only in a legally ``appropriate'' manner.

How these devices are actually used in the working world is, of course, mostly secret.

Cox, the veteran private investigator, says his own work involves a lot of debugging, mostly for businesses, more rarely for private residences.

``Sometimes we get requests from homeowners who're dealing drugs,'' says Cox. ``They think the feds are doing electronic surveillance, which in many cases they are. We say no thanks.''

Debugging a huge office building can take a week of hard work, he says, and cost $5,000 or more. And as the bugs get smaller and more sophisticated, the job gets tougher.

Obviously, some bugging is done for financial gain, with companies stealing competitor's trade secrets. But Cox says that in his experience many snoops are just oddball individuals.

``Some people who buy and use bugging equipment feel that the world is out to get them,'' he says. ``Others just have insatiable curiosity. There are a lot out there like that. They just want to know for their own private information.''

Cox says phone bugging and tapping were common when he became a gumshoe in 1958. Private detectives used the technique routinely in gathering evidence for divorce cases. But it became illegal in Washington state, Cox says, after his partner bugged a state senator's brother. Outraged, the senator got Washington state to pass an anti-eavesdropping law tougher than the federal law that followed. ``So we all quit bugging,'' Cox says.

But the demand for such intrusion persists, according to Tacoma investigator William Ruddell, whose practice includes teaching some law-enforcement officials how to use sophisticated electronic equipment.

Ruddell, well known as a high-tech specialist, says he routinely gets calls from people asking him to tap phones. Often it's one spouse wanting to monitor the other. When Ruddell tells them that's illegal, they often say, `Why not? It's my phone, too.' ''

Who buys most surveillance equipment?

Government, says Cox. ``They're always concerned about internal security.'' But indications are that government interest doesn't necessarily end with internal security. The congressional Office of Technology Assessment reported in 1985 that the FBI and other government agencies frequently monitor some individual and corporate high-tech communications. Fred Wood, OTA official who directed the project, says that the growth in `` `Star Trek' electronics'' means that laws will have to be radically revamped within the next five or 10 years to protect privacy.

Even computer contents can be ``snooped'' from outside a building by tapping the phone lines or tuning in to electromagnetic waves emitted by computer cables and electronic equipment.

Laws governing electronic spying are intricate. In 1986 Congress passed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act making it illegal to snoop on messages sent via electronic mail systems, corporate computer networks and cellular telephones. This expanded existing law protecting regular postal and telephone communications. Now it's a felony to intercept electronic communications and a misdemeanor to break into electronic mail storage facilities.

The law also requires law-enforcement agencies to get a warrant before tapping electronic communications. But infractions are hard to trace, and few people are ever charged.

The ACLU's Taylor expresses concern that the Washington Legislature last year passed a bill that eliminates the judicial-approval requirement for secret police tapping of telephone conversations in drug investigations. Now Senate Bill 6264 seeks to extend this exemption to cover the monitoring of sex abusers. ``Law-enforcement interests generally prefer to be able to tape private conversations without judicial approval,'' Taylor says.

One widely publicized case involved a former telephone installer and a supervisor for Cincinnati Bell who admitted placing about 1,200 illegal wiretaps between 1972 and 1984, one of them on then-President Gerald Ford. The city's former police chief admitted ordering some taps. Cincinnati Bell denied complicity and the case was dismissed, but an appeal is expected.

Warns the ACLU's Taylor: ``I think the issue of privacy will grow in the 1990s. I think we'll see all kinds of electronic monitoring.''

Still, the Emerald City probably hasn't yet entered the big leagues of bugging and tapping. ``I think there's less here than in places such as California and New York,'' Cox says. ``I guess we aren't so sophisticated. If that's the right word.''

. . . Next day, Jim Dandy lost the battle to protect his privacy. A competitor had rented a hotel room across the street and listened into Dandy's conversation by pointing a laser microphone ($22,000) at Dandy's window and reading the vibrations. Too bad Dandy had forgotten to bring his Acoustic Noise Generator ($895).

What's in the picture?

On the table, from left: Stun guns, a radio-frequency counter for detecting cellular-phone frequencies, a scrambler to protect cellular or regular phones, a vehicle tracker (in the big aluminum box) and a sweep unit for detecting electronic bugs.

In his left hand: A parabolic microphone capable of hearing conversations about 500 yards away.

On his head: An Action Ear, capable of picking up sound at closer distances.

In his right hand: A Dark Invader, a night scope that sees in virtual darkness by amplifying existing light about 60,000 times. Over his eyes Small wears his ``Eye Spy'' surveillance spectacles that enable him to keep an eye on what's happening in back. As a slight nod to tradition, a shoulder holster completes the high-tech private-detective's ensemble. Mike Hammer and Sam Spade, eat your heart out!

Know the law

before you bug

If you have any doubt that electronic eavesdropping is illegal, take a close look at federal and state law books.

For example, state law RCW 9.73.080 says that intercepting, recording or divulging private communication is a gross misdemeanor. That's punishable by a jail term between three months and a year, and a fine of up to $1,000.

Even reading a letter without authority (RCW 9.73.020) is illegal, a misdemeanor punishable by up to three months jail and a fine of up to $5,000.

Additional expenses could include court costs and damages.