From electronic wire taps to baby monitors and long-distance video and listening devices, startling changes occur everyday in how we gather, interpret, and transmit information. An extraordinary range of powerful new technologies has come into existence to meet the requirements of this expanding field.

Your search for a comprehensive resource for surveillance devices is over. Understanding Surveillance Technologies: Spy Devices, Their Origins and Applications serves as a provocative, broad-based, and visually appealing reference that introduces and describes the technologies rapidly moving into mainstream computer and consumer markets. It discusses information gathering and tracking devices from a variety of traditional and emerging technologies. It highlights common uses, possible abuses, countermeasures, and issues of legality and privacy.

The format of this book is modular. Each chapter starts with an introduction, then describes some of the devices within the category and the context in which they are used. This is followed by a history, common applications, and legal and ethical implications, and print and Web resourcs. With the exception of the introductory first chapter, each chapter stands on its own and they can be read in any order.

From handheld magnifying glasses to sophisticated magnetic resonance imaging machines, "spy" devices allow us to see beyond the basic senses that nature gave us in ways we wouldn't have imagined two hundred years ago. Understanding Surveillance Technologies: Spy Devices, Their Origins and Applications gives you the groundwork toward understanding more advanced technologies such as radar, sonar, video cameras, and genetic profiling.

Average Customer Review: ( 3 customer reviews )
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I can only say that I am impressed by the effort taken to collect all the information in this understandably thick volume.

5 of 6 found the following review helpful:

The target audience for the surveillance bookAug 01, 2002
By Amazon Reader "K. Peters"
In light of the previous review, I thought it would be useful to clarify the audience for people considering buying this book. Understanding Surveillance Technologies wasn't written for hands-on hobbyists or electronics buffs. There are some really good books out there with detailed schematics on designing cameras, audio devices, and more. Instead, this book was written to fill a glaring need for a comprehensive text introducing and explaining the scope of surveillance technologies and the many fields in which it is being used, including traffic and community safety, DNA testing, corporate and retail surveillance, and much more.
In a sense it is a "surveillance studies" text that describes the technologies and the ethical considerations concerning their use. This information is useful to newscasters, journalists, politicians making executive decisions about allocating public funds for surveillance technologies, corporations, legal assistants, post-secondary instructors, and students and beginning professionals in law enforcement, forensics, and military surveillance. If you need to know what surveillance encompasses, how it came about, how it's being used, and how and why we need to take a good hard look at how it's implemented, this book rounds out the picture more thoroughly than any other text on the subject at the present time.
4 of 7 found the following review helpful:

Practically uselessJul 18, 2002

To read this book is a complete waste of time, at least if you are interested in technical information.
Hundreds of pages dedicated to description of problems starting almost from the Creation, when there was, maybe, a vague similarity to what present technology can do, but no really good information for users or hobbysts.
Go to other books and save a lot of money!