By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, Aug 25 2006 (IPS)

Every other person now seems a spy of sorts. Bugging devices, secret cameras and other surveillance equipment are no longer the exclusive tools of the police; more and more, ordinary people are beginning to use such devices.

Sale of surveillance equipment has doubled over the past three years. Some of the hot sellers are wireless headphones, wireless micro-cameras and all sorts of bugging devices, often designed to fit into buttons or pens.

“It’s definitely a new fashion,” Milan Kovacevic who has a bugs shop in the northern town of Novi Sad told IPS. He often runs short of imported wireless cameras, that he sells at 150 dollars. He also never has enough of those made in Serbia, that sell at less than 100 dollars.

Kovacevic says his goods end up in private homes. “Our best clients are women who want to know if their husbands are cheating on them while they take kids to holidays,” he says.

“They are very persistent in finding out whether their suspicions have grounds, and are willing to pay the highest price if necessary,” says Dragan Trivan from the detective firm Protecta.

Mini-cameras and wireless mikes, some only a few millimetres in diameter, find their ways into lamps, frames, beds and bathrooms. Devices that intercept text messages over cell phones are particularly popular with women.

“The imagination of our clients is endless,” Kovacevic says. “Nearly as much as their desire to know the truth.”

Another surveillance equipment vendor, Dragan Boskovic from Belgrade, says that often “it’s not spouses or partners who are targets.” Boskovic says bugging devices or mini-cameras are frequently bought to spy on neighbours or visitors.

“Some people want to know what their neighbours, friends or relatives have to say when they invite them to their homes, and deliberately leave them alone in (bugged) dining or living rooms,” Boskovic says. “In this too, most clients are women.”

“Times are changing and the era of surveillance of political opponents is definitely over,” sociologist Stjepan Gredelj told IPS. “In the decade of (former leader Slobodan) Milosevic’s rule in the 1990s, it was opposition leaders who lived among bugs.”

Following his removal from power in 2000, dozens of opposition leaders, including now Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic, discovered and dismantled many such devices with the help of newly uncovered documents.

A new law bans the police from phone tapping and other forms of electronic surveillance unless approved by the Supreme Court of Serbia.

“Now it’s people with suspected double lives under watch,” Gredelj says.

The accompanying business thriving with the sales is that of private detectives. The fees are high, but an owner said, “adapted to local circumstances.” Not forbiddingly high, that is.

“We are having the time of our lives,” Dragan Trivan says. “We deal with marital problems, abductions, drug abuse and cults.” And the first of these is as big as the other three, he says.

“It’s funny when papers write on how we trace love affairs. However, it was very serious when we find out that some successful businessmen had several families across Serbia,” he says. “That is dramatic – wives and children not knowing about each other for years, living only a few hundred kilometres apart.”

Abduction of children of rich people is a new phenomenon in Serbia. Trivan has solved the cases of the abduction of teenage sons of a rich folk music star and of a leading meat industry owner.

“The saddest thing is when parents engage us to follow their children to see if they’re in bad company, using drugs,” Trivan says. “Another sad story is when they want to know if their children have fallen victims of some cult, as they tend to act strange, spend time with suspicious people and shun all values learned at home.”

In one happy case Trivan helped a foreign national find a Serbian girl he had met abroad. “This one had a happy end,” Trivan says. “Sadly, many of our actions do not.”

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