TOPICS / SECURITY : The Store That Came in From the Cold
Worried about being car-jacked? Think your phone or office might be bugged? Need a personal body alarm when you go jogging that only you can turn off?
Gadgets that snoop and protect used to be the private domain of James Bond and Cold War spies, but now they’re being purchased by parents, teen-agers, store owners and anyone else with a hankering for security devices.
For $100, the Counter Spy Shop of Mayfair London sells a hand-held body alarm with an ear-piercing screech. About 20 of those go out the door with customers each week, said Lydia Harris, manager of the store at 9557 Wilshire Blvd .
About $30 will buy the Watchdog, an alarm that hangs from a hotel door and will go off if someone even touches the door.
For $250, the store sells a hand-held device, euphemistically called a Security Blanket, that looks like a flashlight but emits a high-intensity burst of light that will temporarily blind a would-be carjacker.
Bug alerts, which warn the owner if there is a listening device nearby, will set buyers back a bit more. The portable alerts, which start at about $900, are popular among Hollywood executives and bankers involved in top-secret discussions of a proprietary nature, Harris said.
Bug alerts come in all sizes and shapes. One looks like a pager and vibrates to alert the owner. Another is also pager-size, but features a light that switches on when it detects a bugging device.
What does the Counter Spy shop’s presence in Cairo, London, Mexico City, Miami, Milan, Moscow, New York, Paris, Prague--and now Beverly Hills--say about life in the 20th Century?
“It’s hard to say whether the level of industrial espionage has increased since the 1950s when the store opened,” said Hal Kassarjian, a UCLA professor of marketing. “Freewheeling behavior has been around in business a long time.”
Often, the strongest demand for personal protection devices comes from people who consider themselves important.
“If you’re important enough and get to be hotshot enough, you think the world is out to get you,” said Kassarjian. “Plus, it’s all kind of exciting. Part of it is the macho need to be James Bond.”
The first Counter Spy Shop was opened in London in 1959 by a group of former British security advisers who manufactured and sold security devices to their friends in and out of government, Harris said.
But as the Cold War wound down, the store has catered increasingly to corporations and private individuals, she said. The company opened its retail store on Wilshire in May after doing business for 14 years in Beverly Hills by appointment only, she said.
The privately held London company and CCS Communication Control of New York, an affiliated company that also retails under the Counter Spy Shop name, are part of a fast-growing $600-million-a-year surveillance and monitoring industry, according to Fortune magazine.
Indeed, many electronics stores and upscale department stores carry protection and surveillance devices. While some specialized “spy shops” in the Los Angeles area failed during the recession, stores such as The Sharper Image in Beverly Hills say the demand for security devices is making a comeback.
The Sharper Image sells a range of equipment including the night scope, which can peer through the darkness and has spy applications. But the popular sellers are personal body alarms and video units that allow the homeowner to see who is knocking at the front door.
Counter Spy, meanwhile, has sold hand-held metal detectors to schools, conducts sweeps of offices for bugging devices and advises businesses on security. Kids go for the wristwatches that double as cameras, and homeowners snap up the fake books and popcorn cans with hollow centers that can be used to hide jewelry.
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Although the retail store has given the Counter Spy Shop more visibility, corporations still make up 60% of the shop’s business, Harris said. Many of those clients come in the back door for consultations in private offices behind the storefront or receive professional advice at their offices, she said.
According to Harris, the shop’s success stories have included a sweep of an oil company executive’s office that turned up a bugging device in an aluminum cigar tube. The tube was the last in a box of cigars presented as a gift to the executive, she said.
A jeweler, Harris said, reported that a special briefcase did its magic when a thief attempted to steal it as the jeweler was checking in at an airport. The jeweler made use of a remote switch on a key chain that sets off a piercing siren in the briefcase and administers a strong electrical charge to anyone holding the case.
Will the over-the-counter availability of ingeniously cloaked cameras and sizzling briefcases dull the mystique of James Bond books and movies?
Hardly. John Gardner, who succeeded the late Ian Fleming as author of the James Bond books, gets a private preview in his home of the latest in spy and counterspy devices to keep him a step ahead of his readers, Harris said.
