What are used to find hidden cameras and microphones in rooms and devices?

[unbuildpain]

What are used to find hidden cameras and microphones in rooms and devices?

I bought this Hohoprov CC308+ RF signal detector from Amazon and even on lowest sensitivity it buzzes everywhere. It could be faulty or gimmicky product.

How do professional counter espionage people scan a room or device for hidden cameras and microphones?

 

[Audioguru]

The spy detector is cheap and has no spec's. Why does it even detect a laser beam??
It picks up every radio or TV station and every cell phone in town. It probably also picks up UHF relay stations on every highest building.
Many spys use a video or audio recorder, not a radio system.

 

[unbuildpain]

The spy detector is cheap and has no spec's. Why does it even detect a laser beam??
It picks up every radio or TV station and every cell phone in town. It probably also picks up UHF relay stations on every highest building.
Many spys use a video or audio recorder, not a radio system.

It claims to cover a frequency range of 1MHz to 6.5GHz. (I got this information from different product listing from a different seller)

The red transparent dot is for detecting infrared cameras or hidden cameras, it has red LEDs on the other side and they flash, when seen through the red transparent dot, the lens of the camera or infrared light of the camera would be visible, at least that it what it claims.

 

[d123]

Hi,

How do professional counter espionage people scan a room or device for hidden cameras and microphones?

AFAIK, they are trained where to look, and besides which, they must spend upwards of $3,000 - and that is just 'professional' equipment available to the general public (which will be years out of date compared to actual technology in use) - and don't buy their equipment off Amazon. Don't believe the hype.

 

[Audioguru]

When you tried the cheapo detector from Amazon then it picked up every transmission in town and was probably overloaded by them.
When you buy an ordinary cheapo TV then it picks up only the TV stations you can receive but it ignors all the others.
The expensive detector probably does the opposite, first it scans for all transmissions and cancels them so they are not received when you use it to scan for a new spy transmission.

 

[unbuildpain]

I got suspicion that hidden bugs could be using rf because I was doing something in a room, and something happened, there was no one in the room at that time, and no one has access to the room except me, and all the objects in the room were brought into it by me and I couldn't notice anything suspicious on them.

Few days later, another person makes an indirect reference to what happened, if there is an audio bug, just by noise they couldn't have guessed what happened. During these days, no one could have come in and taken out any storage medium which would have any recording on them.

And I'm unable to find anything which might contain a hidden camera which would have provided a view of that area. Can there be a thin optical cable, which on the other end has a sensor?

--- Updated Aug 13, 2020 ---

Hi,

AFAIK, they are trained where to look, and besides which, they must spend upwards of $3,000 - and that is just 'professional' equipment available to the general public (which will be years out of date compared to actual technology in use) - and don't buy their equipment off Amazon. Don't believe the hype.

Why is there so much technological oppression on general public, how can they protect themselves if these things are expensive and not even available to be purchased.

 

[mrshell]

Any lens with an IR camera can be easily detected.

 

[betwixt]

RF Sniffers are nothing more than a small antenna 'probe', a high gain amplifier and a meter or other signal indicator. They have no concept of tuning so they pick all sources of RF, noise and other EM radiation up and show its level. As they are not selective they will indicate any source of signal, even ones that could be a considerable distance away so for locating individual transmissions they are almost useless. Note that these devices will show mobile phones, cell masts, WiFi and BluTooth that are all around us all the time.

The only satisfactory way to locate 'bugs' is with a spectrum analyzer and small directional antenna.

The types that claim to detect laser beams simply have an IR detector in them, you can make them for almost nothing but they do respond to remote controls, passing traffic with collision detection systems, IRDA devices and anything else that emits IR light.

Brian.

 

[andre_luis]

Along with the detection of sniffers, an equally useful measure is to admit the possibility of having undetectable devices, then we hinder their performance. A long time ago I was in a company where the meeting room was certified by a company that installed some devices placed at specific distance each others that generated an ambient noise inaudible to most people's ears, but somewhat noisy when recorded by electronic devices. Don't ask if this woked well, but at least the proposed approach seemed creative.

 

[Audioguru]

When I worked with boardroom conference systems that used wireless mics, a new bank came to town. They wanted encryption on the wireless mics so that other banks could not hear what they talked about. I designed and built a voice scrambler that completely scrambled what was being spoken and the unscrambler's output was perfect. They bought the system. Then the bank went bankrupt and their brand new building was sold before they even used the conference system because other banks found out about them cheating on their customers.

 

[unbuildpain]

When I worked with boardroom conference systems that used wireless mics, a new bank came to town. They wanted encryption on the wireless mics so that other banks could not hear what they talked about. I designed and built a voice scrambler that completely scrambled what was being spoken and the unscrambler's output was perfect. They bought the system. Then the bank went bankrupt and their brand new building was sold before they even used the conference system because other banks found out about them cheating on their customers.

Did the bank go out of business because they were cheating on their customers? And other banks made them go out of business? Or is it because they decided to use voice scrambler.

 

[Audioguru]

Did the bank go out of business because they were cheating on their customers? And other banks made them go out of business? Or is it because they decided to use voice scrambler.

The customers of the new bank complained about their cheating to other banks then the new bank lost all customers and went bankrupt, before using the voice scrambler I built.

 

[unbuildpain]

Can someone insert a thin optical cable in a small hole, and at the other end they attach a camera sensor to it, through this can anyone record the video? Is the record usable?

 

[betwixt]

In theory yes but one optical cable can only carry one pixel, you need a whole bundle of cables (thousands) to be able to carry a recognizable picture.

Brian.

 

[unbuildpain]

In theory yes but one optical cable can only carry one pixel, you need a whole bundle of cables (thousands) to be able to carry a recognizable picture.

Brian.

They could connect the optical cable to an aperture, these are of same diameter as the optical cable.

 

[Aussie Susan]

That is basically what an Endoscope is.
However they are about 10mm in diameter (although they can carry other channels in them that take up a good part of that area). The down-side is that you need to hide something of that diameter in the wall/ceiling/whatever while still allowing a clear enough image.
Susan

 

[unbuildpain]

That is basically what an Endoscope is.
However they are about 10mm in diameter (although they can carry other channels in them that take up a good part of that area). The down-side is that you need to hide something of that diameter in the wall/ceiling/whatever while still allowing a clear enough image.
Susan

Endoscope is used in medicine, it is called boroscope in construction and similar related to things.

What I'm suspecting is something like a toslink optical cable, their opening is similar to the aperture found on most cameras, if someone hid a toslink in the wall, somewhere in a corner or high up in the ceiling, it's opening would be so small, almost invisible to the naked eye, at the other end of it, they could connect a camera with the aperture size found on smartphones and they got themselves 24x7 view into people's lives. These types of spy cameras would be very difficult, if not impossible to detect.

 

[c_mitra]

Along with the detection of sniffers, an equally useful measure is to admit the possibility of having undetectable devices, then we hinder their performance. A long time ago I was in a company where the meeting room was certified by a company that installed some devices placed at specific distance each others that generated an ambient noise inaudible to most people's ears, but somewhat noisy when recorded by electronic devices. Don't ask if this woked well, but at least the proposed approach seemed creative.

These were old ideas but worked very well. I read somewhere that American diplomats were advised against discussing confidential items in a room, they were told to move in open space and carry that white noise generator (just outside the audible spectrum). I was told that dogs (and kids) could hear these sound and would get disoriented. They are not much in use because of the advanced digital band pass filtering tools that have become widely available today.

 

[betwixt]

Going back to what I stated in post #14, Toslink can only carry an amount of light and it's hue, it can't carry any spacial information.
The best you could achieve is telling the light level in the room, you need a device that can sequentially scan the image or alternatively carry many pixels on parallel cables.

Brian.

 

[unbuildpain]

These were old ideas but worked very well. I read somewhere that American diplomats were advised against discussing confidential items in a room, they were told to move in open space and carry that white noise generator (just outside the audible spectrum). I was told that dogs (and kids) could hear these sound and would get disoriented. They are not much in use because of the advanced digital band pass filtering tools that have become widely available today.

I think you mean ultrasonic generators, kids have hearing range of upto 20KHz and dogs have higher than that.

Going back to what I stated in post #14, Toslink can only carry an amount of light and it's hue, it can't carry any spacial information.
The best you could achieve is telling the light level in the room, you need a device that can sequentially scan the image or alternatively carry many pixels on parallel cables.

Brian.

Is it the same with optical cables found in Internet connections, those thin optical cables can only be used to carry brightness and hue information and nothing else? I think it would be cheaper and practical to build a cable like that to carry picture information than connect many of such cables to each pixel of the sensor.