The Knack

IT'S VIRTUALLY impossible for a lay person to detect professional bugging and phone tapping devices, so the best approach is prevention. An American organised-crime figure who has managed to stay out of jail for most of his life once said: "I don't have a telephone in my home or office. In fact, I had the phone wires ripped out." You don't necessarily have to go this far!

Use phone booths for sensitive calls. Don't establish a pattern, such as using a favourite booth, use a different one every time. When you talk on your home or work phone, don't discuss plans for outwitting the listen- ers - the tapper will just go ahead and tap and bug the person you are calling instead. One classic mistake is to make a call from your home or office (which is more than likely being monitored) to someone like me, asking me to come out and search the premises for bugs etc.

By then it's too late - the spy will probably have heard the request and removed the bugs or phone tap long before I arrive on the scene. (It was very rare for even the most intelligent lawyer, private investigator or other client to have the good sense to call me from a phone booth when requesting my services!)

If you think a room is being bugged, never conduct sensitive conversations - no matter how loud the radio or TVs are turned up. The professionals can filter out the music or television background chatter. However, leaving a radio or television on constantly, even when you are not there, means that the spy will be overloaded with hours of useless music and talk on their recording devices. Always use writing pads to communicate, making sure that you destroy both the top sheet and any that may be affected beneath it (someone could make a carbon etching of your message). Destroy them either by burning, or flushing down the toilet.

You could rent what's called a Spectrum Analyser, at great expense - a device which is designed to detect certain bugs. But even a professional using one of these can be fooled. Contrary to what you see in the movies you won't hear any noises on the phone that indicates you're being tapped, and some bugs are so small you'd have to turn a house or office into matchsticks to find them.

The only tell-tale sign that you're being bugged is that things you say in confidence, to people you really trust, come back to haunt you. Can you really trust the friend or relative, or was it a bug? You will probably never know...

Interview by

Fiona McClymont

Tom Larsen is the author of `The Layman's Guide to

Electronic Eavesdropping' (published by Paladin Press)