Michael Balboni, former Homeland Security Advisor for New York and
President,
Redland Strategies.
So the the important thing to recognize is that if
it's a whether it's a
video recording or it's a microphone,
because they don't necessarily, they're not necessarily together.
So a camera would be placed
in the corner of the room high up to be
able to see the entire room.
So that that's one of the things to look like
and look at in terms of position.
A microphone would be in the center
of the room to to be able to pick up
ambient sound from throughout the corner of the the room
itself.
So what are the, what are some of the ways
to do it?
Well, First off, really easy.
You walk into your hotel room,
you turn off the lights
and you look around the room,
you see if there's any light that comes from
the
OR is emitted from an area that you wouldn't expect
them to be emitted from.
That's the first thing.
Second thing is you can take a flashlight
with the lights off and you can go around and
you can just see,
train the flashlight on parts of the wall or parts
of grading,
you know, the air conditioning units,
things like that. And and
the the goal is that you could find
if there's in fact a lens there,
you can see a glint
off the lens with your flashlight.
That's one of the the tricks that people use.
The other thing that people should do is they should
listen,
because cameras usually would. Some cameras
could make a buzzing noise
and actually there might even be if it's if it's
a a digital remote camera could actually
interfere with your your cell phone.
You could have a buzz or or when you're talking
on the phone.
So that's one of the things from electronics perspective.
The other thing that that you should use is if
there are decorations in the room that you didn't put
there when you show up.
So a vase of flowers,
a teddy bear, things like that.
There could be cameras inside those items.
And then the other thing is that,
you know, take a look at other devices,
so for example smoke detectors,
take down a smoke detector and look to see if
there's anything inside either.
Usually that would be more of a microphone but it
could be a camera as well
obviously and to place it back make sure it works.
And then the other thing that that last thing is
you could take a look at your mirrors
and what's important to note is is that if it's
a if it's a thin mirror you see behind it,
well then there's you know it's not a two way
mirror
but if it's a very thick mirror or if you
if you knock on it,
it sounds it it's it's very dense that there's a
possibility that it would be a two way mirror.
So those are those are typically the things that you
would do to to try to find out
if in fact somebody's put a
a camera or a microphone in your room reports that
typically it is in in hotel rooms,
obviously not high end hotels,
lower end hotels and you know there's there's especially with
all the spring break
issues that are going on,
you know Miami Beach is is very reluctant these days
to have everybody come down there because of of sometimes
you know the damage and the the parting goes out
gets out of hand. So some hotel owners down there,
motel owners, which cater to students,
'cause they don't cost a lot of money,
they'll put some of these things in there just to
either catch people as they're doing damage
or for more insidious reasons.