Monday, Jul. 22, 1996

EYE SPY...THE BABY-SITTER!

With its button nose and tartan bow, it looks at first glance like a typical teddy bear. But this huggable toy does more than dress up a bed. It comes equipped with a hidden camera to watch the baby-sitter while the baby-sitter watches the kids.

A few examples of horrific treatment caught on camera and widely publicized have created a boom in the nanny-surveillance industry. Babywatch Corp., a company based in Spring Valley, New York, has sold $5,000 hidden-camera setups to entrepreneurs in 20 cities, who rent them out for about $200 a pop. Other anxious parents are buying their own devices. Quark International, a New York-based manufacturer, has seen its sales of nannycams triple during the past few years. The Counter Spy Shop in Manhattan sells about a dozen a month, including teddy bears at $649 each, as well as those in the form of clock radios, eyeglasses and gym bags. One customer spent $12,000 there to modify his home computer so he could observe the house from his office terminal.

Such surveillance rarely uncovers serious abuse or dereliction, says Richard Heilweil of Babywatch. Yet about 70% of parents who hire Babywatch wind up dismissing the care giver for some minor transgression, such as talking on the phone or watching TV. "It is troubling to see so many people treating their domestic employees in a way they would never tolerate being treated themselves," says Lewis Maltby, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who is working with outraged nanny groups to find "the right case" to challenge the surveillance. He will argue that federal laws prohibiting undisclosed audiotaping should apply to video as well--and that the spying invades privacy. "Hidden cameras," he says, "are a seductive gimmick that gives us the illusion of safety without the reality."