Technology: Everybody's Got the Bug

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Just like Tracy. Just as antimissiles led to the development of the antimissile missile, the bug detectors and scramblers have spawned a sort of anti-bug bug. Perhaps the most remarkable and virtually undetectable bug on the market is Continental's "infinity transmitter." No bigger than a pair of back-to-back matchbooks, the transmitter can be quickly hidden inside the base of any telephone. Once installed, it can be monitored from thousands of miles away. The properly equipped eavesdropper need only dial the number of the bugged phone from any direct-dialing phone anywhere in the world, and stand ready to send a single-frequency tone down the line before the distant phone rings. That tone, created by blowing a pretuned whistle into the phone's mouthpiece, not only turns on the transmitter, it also prevents the bugged phone from ringing. With its own built-in microphone, the infinity transmitter then picks up any sound in the room, amplifies it and sends it out on the phone lines.

Other incoming callers, trying to reach the bugged phone, receive a busy signal. And because it is making no radio-frequency transmission, the infinity transmitter can be detected only by physical search, not by an anti-bugger.

"None of these devices is really that remarkable," insists Continental President Ben Jamil. Indeed, Continental and its competitors are already working on even subtler devices that will use microscopically small integrated circuits and transmit sound on light beams. "The beauty of this business," says Jamil, "is that if you can imagine a device, it can probably be built." As if to prove his point last week, he put on sale a "Dick Tracy" wristwatch transmitter that can keep a private eye or a government agent in contact with an accomplice 200 ft. away. The transmitter is so sensitive that it even broadcasts the ticks of a built-in watch that actually tells time.

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