29/12/97

Smile! You're On Candid Pen

    Agent X steps out of his armored Jag into the cool night. He adjusts his glasses. They are not ordinary glasses, unless everyone walks around with video-equipped specs.
    Thanks to his Global Positioning System, he is hot on the trail of a cheating husband / jewel thief / humous smuggler / terrorist (pick one), and with the help of his infrared binoculars, he's got the bad guy in his sights. Checking that he's brought along his left thumb (there's a super-sensitive microphone tucked under the fingernail), he sets off to get his man.
    That kind of stuff really happens -- not just in the movies, but in real life, right here in Jerusalem. The only fictional detail is that the Jag is really a nondescript white Subaru (and no one in real life goes by the name "X").
    James Bond lives, going by the name Amit Systems, a furtive Jerusalem company headquartered in a signless bunker-like building in Beit Hakerem (the perfect location for a covert operation like this: with all the no-entrys and twisting one-way streets of this neighborhood, it's nearly impossible to find the place).
    They rarely agree to media interviews, because they are uncompromising in their professional discretion; when I asked how they could be so sure I wouldn't reveal all, they assured me that, first of all, I'd been vouched for, and second, "We know where you live." (I think they were joking.)
    Ari Gottesmann, a soft-spoken, handsome young bachelor born in Oklahoma 27 years ago, is Amit's marketing and sales director. His office is crammed with gadgetry you wouldn't believe.
    "There are eight cameras trained on you at this very moment," he said, which for some reason I found unsettling, despite his genial, laid-back demeanor. There were also God-knows how many microphones, including one that was mine (I didn't have to tell Ari I was recording him: a little box strapped to his waist vibrated when we shook hands, alerting him that I was equipped.)
    Amit provides such services as surveillance, countersurveillance, sleuthing, detective work; it also sells and rents such wizardry as motion detectors, wireless transmitters, mikes that can hear through concrete walls up to 20 cm thick, magic-wand bug detectors, and if you really want one, and have money to burn, they could even get you a jet-pack. "But that's not something most Israelis need."
    Trying not to appear too impressed, I thought I'd ask a ridiculous question. "Could you sell a fully-loaded, authentic, just-like-in-the-movies Batmobile, with all the gizmos?"
    "No problem."
    No kidding! Even with the pole in the middle that can turn the car around?
    That, he had to admit, is a bit beyond them -- though, moving over to Superman, you can get x-ray equipment that sees through walls.
    Or how about a video recorder that can record up to 960 hours on one cassette? That's 40 days -- and you can watch the whole thing in only three hours. "There's no limit to what can be done, it's only a matter of if you can pay for it."
    Amit's brochure includes something called Spy Spray. "It detects drugs in a room. If you have a child, or a worker, who you suspect is taking drugs, you spray it around the room, and if there are traces of, say, cocaine, the spray will change color."
    There's also Ultra Violet Spray, which invisibly coats wayward fingers for several days; and Envelope Spray, which renders an envelope invisible, allowing you to see inside without opening it. After two minutes, the envelope returns to normal. No home should be without it.
    Ari showed me his computer. So what, I said, I've got one too. In a few seconds, four pictures appeared on his screen: real-time surveillance film, transmitted live from France. We watched the goings-on in two offices, a warehouse and a street scene. He could freeze a frame and zoom in close enough to read a license plate. He even manipulated the camera, turning it this way and that -- from thousands of kilometers away.
     It's almost surprising to hear that real people come to Amit with real-life problems.
    "A lot of yeshivas use our ultraviolet kit, to find out who's stealing money from their pushke boxes.
    "Electric-shock briefcases -- that's a big item. A diamond dealer transporting his goods might set his briefcase down, say, at the airport, to fill out a ticket. Someone grabs it and takes off. The dealer presses a little remote-control button and wham, 40,000 volts, the thief is nailed to the floor, and he's going to lie there unable to move for two minutes.
    "We do background checks on people, and check resumes. We work with hotels that want to examine their service. We'll go in there, acting like a difficult customer, to see how the reception clerk handles it. Does he call the supervisor, does he yell at the client, does he insult him, or does he try to calm him down?
    "Our cameras nabbed a factory worker stealing tons and tons of humous. We caught a guy dumping mud and concrete on his neighbor's car.
    "Wife-beating, cheating, child abuse; or a babysitter drugging a crying baby, with a sleeping pill, or maybe slipping vodka into its milk to stop the crying. Old-age homes: it could be something as simple as a man with a bladder problem, and no one is changing his diaper. With our cameras, you can see no one has come in for the whole day to take care of him. It's very common."
    They get a lot of business from the haredi sector, which likes to take care of things quietly, without going outside the community, especially to the police. "A wife wants to protect her kids, what can she do? She can't prove anything; she's going to go to the Beit Din? A woman's testimony is not valid in religious court. But if she comes in with a tape, showing what her husband is doing..."
    A company that had suddenly lost a lot of clients came to Amit for help to find out why. Turns out the owner's trusted secretary was having an affair with an executive from his competitor, and she was giving the boyfriend copies of secret documents. The solution? Simple. Amit instaled  cameras on the office photocopier, inside and above, to see who was photocopying what. Case solved.
    The security services bring in a lot of business, say, for antiterrorism devices. They'll ask Amit to develop specialized items like eyeglasses with a camera inside. "You saw ג€˜Mission: Impossibleג€™ with Tom Cruise? He's looking around the room and he's got a microphone in his glasses and an earphone in his ear. Everything he sees, everything he hears, is being transmitted to someone sitting in a car with a computer. For $6,000 I'll get you a pair of those glasses."
    Missing persons. Stolen cars. When Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef lost his wheels, it was reported that high-level contacts with the Palestinians got 'em back in no time. But in fact, it was low-level contacts. "I'm not saying we did it," Ari said cagily. "But this is how it's done. We have such contacts. We have agents who do this kind of thing.
    "Journalists are some of our biggest customers. Lapel cameras, surveillance equipment in pens, that sort of thing." (And I call myself a journalist.)
    Amit created the perfect product for the Israeli market: tiny video- and audio-recording equipment implanted in a cell phone. "It's our greatest toy. Everybody's got a cell phone, nobody would think to suspect it (until now)."
    Ari conceded that the bad guys can get a leg up with such techno-toys, but sometimes, if his salespeople are suspicious, they will decline to sell a product. "We like to give the weaker side, the vulnerable, an advantage."
    One can only conclude that Big Brother is watching. "Definitely. But you can have him on your side, protecting you."