By Maria Chiorando for Mailonline
09:25 June 16, 2024, updated 17:02 June 16, 2024
A former MI6 agent has revealed the best and worst spy devices available on Amazon, including a bag of chips.
Ex-spy Harry Ferguson reviewed a series of items in a video created by Strong Watch Studios for his new YouTube channel DEEP.
The channel, created by ex-LADbible directors Thom Gulseven and Ben Powell-Jones, publishes two videos a week, each offering a glimpse into an extraordinary life.
In this clip, ex-spy Harry assessed a range of items including a ‘lie detector test’, a stash can disguised as a Heinz spaghetti can and a secret camera detector.
According to the former intelligence officer, his intention was to tell viewers which of these easily available items are “actually useful if you want to be a spy.”
He first looked at the storage tin and said, ‘Loose the bottom so you can hide your secret documents in it. Now I know what you’re thinking, “It’s pretty crap,” and you’re right, but I’ve come across another spy who actually used one of these.
“He was an Iranian spy and we were trying to catch him because he was trying to get parts for airplanes, and we were looking for the papers for his purchases, and he had them hidden in one of these.”
However, Harry noted that the spy’s supply can was slightly better than Amazon’s. He explained: ‘He had made sure he could make them himself from an ordinary tin. And the reason we found it is because… he had been pretty smart.
“He’d even kind of crushed it and hidden it in the trash, and we almost missed it. I emptied his trash and almost left it there. It wasn’t until I checked that I found it.’
The next item he looked at was a secret camera detector that plugs into your phone’s charging port. It emits red light that is reflected when pointed at a lens, helping you find hidden cameras.
“This really works,” Harry said. ‘The problem is that you have to get very close to it to really make it work. And if someone has a secret camera in your room, they’ll see you walking around inch by inch, peering at the wallpaper.”
His third item was a pair of sunglasses with side mirrors, which should help you see what’s going on behind you.
‘And they work, when you put them on…[and] you turn your head a little, [you can] look what lies behind you. So again, it seems like an ac*** idea, but these are actually based on a device that the CIA used, and they make an important point about counter-surveillance.
‘That [is that] When you’re trying to discover people following you, the idea is to act normally, but do something that will make them notice them. That could be a maneuver. You can use a window display to get a reflection, or even if you’ve done it on a select basis, use a device like this just to get a glimpse, where they wouldn’t expect you to sees.’
Moving on to his fourth item, a lock pick, Harry said it looks like a handy spy device, and people might imagine that spies spend a lot of their time picking locks.
But, he added, that is not the case, and the main reason is that if you are found abroad with a lockpick, authorities are “more likely to think you are a burglar than a spy, but that they are’. it is certainly likely that he will arrest you or take more interest in you’.
Plus, Harry said, you actually have to spend a lot of time practicing with modern locks, and opening them isn’t as easy as many instructional videos on YouTube make it seem.
“And besides, most of the places you need to access as a spy have electronic locks and other types of locks,” Harry said. “So the way spies do it can be done one of two ways.
‘Either they have a technical employee come and look at the lock and make a key for you, or… [you use] a skeleton key that works on that lock so you don’t have to do any of this lock-picking stuff, or you find a way to actually get a real key from one of your agents and use it that way.”
The next device he assessed was a cloak – something spies can use to hide stolen information. The one he was looking at looked like a regular electrical outlet, but had a secret compartment on the back that would fit into the wall, so to a casual observer it would just look like a normal electrical outlet.
But Harry noted: ‘Good search teams will test it to see if it works, because they’re wondering if there’s a camera in there too, or an audio bug – you can get sockets that do that too. ‘
Hidden cameras were next, and the specific one he was looking at was in a chain, but, as Harry said, you can get hidden cameras in all kinds of devices, including hats and pens.
Discussing how useful they are, he said, “The problem with all these devices, and I think I’ve used most of them, is that you use them most of the time, rather than capturing the person who’s doing that. do. talk, because you could just use an audio device for that.
‘They do it to make good television, but that’s not what spies do. We are not interested in good television. We are interested in data.’
He added that the kinds of data spies he’s interested in — for example, the numbers on a keyboard that someone is typing — are difficult to film with one of these devices because “it can be incredibly difficult to actually get the right angle.”
This means that while these devices seem useful, they usually are not, he concluded.
Lie detector tests were next on the list. Harry said: ‘Their real name is polygraph tests because all of these tests monitor certain signals from the body, such as blood pressure, breathing rate and so on.’
He continued: “The truth is that spies know they are not working. There is currently no machine that can tell if you are lying. None of them work reliably.”
Harry looked at more recording equipment, then showed small spy cameras that could be built into objects to hide them – books, cans or stuffed animals, he suggested.
But, he said, there’s always one big problem with these devices: power.
“The battery in this one lasts about four hours,” he said. ‘So if you want to film activities at a location for a longer period of time, this is not sufficient.
‘A solution to this is to use something like this that is actually connected to the mains. Now there is no video, but audio.’
The problems, he explained, are that people will move the items you’ve hidden recording devices in, and because, when they’re plugged in, they’re on the floor, the sound will be terrible.
“You can’t just plug them into a room and expect to hear everything, because with all these devices, planning and imagination are what really count,” he concluded.
The last device Harry assessed was a laser trap. These can be used to detect ‘if someone has entered your room, your office, your hotel room or any other premises you want to protect’.
How do spies protect those rooms?
Harry said, ‘Well, one way…is with a laser trap, like this. Now these are so common that these are actually used by children for a game.
‘The idea is… that they shine an invisible laser light that is picked up by a receiver. If you break the beams, an alarm will sound or a camera will activate, or whatever that trap is.”
Again, there are downsides to using these items.
“The problem is that if you arrive in Tehran with these in your luggage, chances are they’re going to ask some questions,” Harry said.
So what do real spies do? The answer is surprisingly low-tech: they use chips.
“Crisps are probably the best intrusion detection system ever invented, I don’t care,” Harry said.
‘Why are they good? Because you take a chip, any chip, and you put it under a rug in the room, or under the doormat, or somewhere where there is a good chance that someone will enter.
“If they step on it, they’ll break it. As you can see, these chips have a very distinctive shape. Once they break it, there’s no way they can hide the fact that they’re broken – even if they run out and buy another pack of chips, you’re not going to find chips like that.
‘If I’m stopped from entering a country, no one will question the fact that I have something like chips – and best of all, it doesn’t just work to see if someone has entered your room, while you ‘are out, but you can eat the chips too.’
You can watch the full video and find out more about Harry’s thoughts on these devices, and his hands-on experience using them at in the full video on YouTube.