Since US Customs started seizing shipments of our most popular spy cameras, specifically the Business Portable Recorder Video Spy Pen, and the Upgraded Spy Pen Digital Video Recorder that record video and audio, we pretty much stopped ordering anything from China after they took a 3rd shipment, since we plan on staying in business for quite a while & we can’t if we keep having such losses.

Seems that 12-16 states have problems with you recording audio without both parties consent, and they are using the old wired tap and audio bug laws to toss this subject into and harass people like us, and the guy who filmed a whacked out cop with his gun drawn, and they tried to use the wiretap laws against him, and the case was dismissed.

Is this America? Where cops are allowed to violate your Fourth Amendment rights – not to mention your First Amendment right to film them – on the approval of some secretive judge? Well maybe not all judges agree. “The judge who released me looked at the paperwork and said she didn’t see where I violated the wiretapping law.” Ah yes, the wiretapping charge. That old standby that cops use when you happen to videotape them in public while they are on duty when they have absolutely no expectation of privacy. Sure, the First Amendment supposedly allows us to photograph police in public. Numerous court rulings have determined that. But now cops have turned to irrelevant wire-tapping charges to crack down against those who video them in public. Those laws are designed to protect people whose voices are recorded in telephone calls. You know, when you actually have an expectation of privacy. Fortunately, most judges end up throwing these charges out of court when the cops don’t have an expectation of privacy.

So that means that 34-38 states do allow only one party to know audio is being recorded, yet that does not matter. And this gives me hope we might be able to fight this.

Either way, if they want to take the shipments, who am I to stop them, even if they want to stretch the law of surreptitious interception to include direct audio recording. Now surreptitious means to snatch secretly, or acting in a stealthy way.

Check, they are hidden cameras. It’s the interception part that I have a problem. Ask any knuckle dragging Neanderthal what an interception is, and he will say when a properly thrown football is caught by the opposing team member. It’s intercepted. It’s grabbed out of thin air.

Just like an AM/FM audio bug, it intercepts the audio from a conversation and broadcasts it over the radio. Remember the movie with Gregory Peck called Boys From Brazil? In one scene, they have an early radio bug planted in the room, and some little Mexican kid is playing with a radio in another location, flipping the channels, and comes across the conversation with the Germans who were plotting something nasty.

Or a phone tap, it’s intercepting the conversation. Though to say a hidden camera that also records audio is intercepting the conversation is really stretching it. What about digital audio recorders? They record audio and are available in every electronics store on earth.

What about Flip cameras? They record video with audio and they are pretty small. They sell millions of them, why isn’t the government going after them? What about any camcorder or even digital camera, they all record movies with audio. What about pretty much any smart phone? They record or can run an app to record video with audio. My old iPhone has such an app, though the new ones do now. What about the new little iPod nano that also has a video camera with audio? That’s a hidden camera in side an iPod, and apple is selling trillions of them.

US Customs, why are you not going after the big suppliers of these cameras with wiretap laws???

Though they got a lot more guns then me, so I have to waive the white flag, and pick up the pen, which is mightier than the sword, though not very often.

However, we found a way to work around it. While we can still get the old ones here in the USA, for now, at a higher price tag, we worked it out to only offer them to only Law Enforcement Agency, or US, State, County, or City government, Police, Sheriff, etc. We will take the order and ship direct to you from our Chinese supplier. This has worked so far, as we just filled a 50 pen order to a Sheriffs Department here in the USA, and it sailed right through Customs.

These are out gold trimmed pens, which I have not seen anywhere else. You can get the chrome trim ones that have been around for a few year, and everyone will know its a spy camera. The gold trimmed ones on the Business Portable Recorder that records in .AVI format, and can record video with audio, photos, or just audio, & the Upgraded Spy Pen, which records video in the more compressed 3GP format, and takes photos that rival a digital camera, are thinner and more covert.

For everyone else, we can try to ship to you, though if US Customs seizes it, we can’t be held responsible.

Something will change real soon on this, as these products are now commodities, due to the Chinese mass producing them and flooding the market. There will have to be some ruling on this by some court, or at least an opinion letter from DHS, or something.

Comments???

Later,

Wendell the Chameleon

Spy Camera and Surveillance Products Expert
1-877-3-EYE-SPY
EyeSpyPro.com/SpyCameras

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 24th, 2010 at 4:10 pm and is filed under Big Brother, Body Worn Camera, Spy Camera, Spy Pen, Video Recording, Video Surveillance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.