An ingenious, yet simple, invention offers new advances in covert surveillance

Most of us are familiar with the ‘selfie lens’, the camera mounted above the screen of one’s smartphone which can be used for taking a self-portrait. MIB Electronic, exhibiting at this year’s UK Security Exhibition taking place in London on 28 November and 29 November, has developed the Spyphone. This clever invention takes a normal Samsung smart phone, but moves this camera lens away from the screen to the top side of the phone. The result is that the phone can be held at a horizontal angle as it would be when one is checking their email for example, or browsing the web, yet they can be collecting Imagery Intelligence (IMINT) with nobody in the locale being any the wiser. This IMINT can be streamed across the phone’s usual communications links, or recorded. Still photos can be taken, and the camera can continue recording when the screen is blank, or when another software application is being used. The firm even provides a surrogate Blackjack game as a software app so that anyone glancing at the phone will just assume the user is playing an online gambling game. MIB Electronic converts the phone on behalf of customers and supplies the necessary software. In effect, they offer a full turn-key service to the customer providing a full, smartphone-based covert surveillance system making the user appear as just another one of the millions of people routinely using their smartphone.