A man and his daughter thought something was up when their terminally ill grandmother was losing money from her house, so they wrote down the serial numbers of the money in her purse and set up a DIY camera inside a teddy bear. It only took one day for the grandmother's caregiver to go and take 40 pounds out of the old lady's purse, which were easily identified by the serials and the evidence from the teddycam. In compensation, the thief will pay 60 pounds and was fired from the place that hired her out. This falls in line with our motto: always have a hidden camera detector when you go into old people's homes. You'll thank us later. [BBC via BBG]

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If you're in Beijing for the Olympics kick starting this weekend, don't be spilling any beans (state secrets or otherwise) in your cab back to the hotel, because you're being listened to. As the WSJ is reporting, on your taxi's dash is a microphone that can be activated remotely, at any time and without the driver's knowledge, for a live listen into any one of Beijing's estimated 70,000 cabs. And then, if the folks on the other end don't like what they hear, they can take things even further.

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What's better than stealing highly guarded secrets through your special digital camera glasses? How about stealing said secrets to AC/DC's Night Prowler? An otherwise gaudy but inconspicuous set of Oakley Thump knockoffs, these Spy Camera+MP3 Sunglasses capture shots through a wireless shutter control--1.3MP photos saved in 2GB of storage--and they play your favourite MP3s for up to 6 hours through the rechargeable lithium ion battery. If only these were around when we were ten, oh the parliament buildings we could have pretended to infiltrate. US$165. [brando]

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We told you the tiny DelFly II robotic dragonfly spy cam was just the beginning, and we were right. The same Dutch roboticist is now unveiling the DelFly Micro--with a wingspan of just 10cm and a weight of 3.07 grams, it's the first to be smaller than an actual real-life dragonfly. Granted, the dragonfly being used for comparison is Borneo's Tetracanthagyna plagiata, which has a frankly horrifying 20cm wingspan--the largest in the world, no less. But still, now you're even less likely to realise those annoying bugs whizzing around during your protest march are actually just autonomous insectoid ornithopters keeping an eye on you--nothing to worry about. See it take to the air, complete with live eye-in-the-sky video feed, below.

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Meet STARMAC, the Stanford Testbed of Autonomous Rotorcraft for Multi-Agent Control. Possibly the cleverest remote control mini-helicopter you've ever seen, packed with GPS, sensors and computer power. It's a research quad-rotor that the Stanford team is using to develop algorithms for future aircraft like it.

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A spy camera hidden in a black back beside a notorious UK "fly-tipping" (or illegal waste dumping in the King's English) hot spot was recently thrown out by local workers with the other garbage. Apparently, this operation was so top secret that the workers in question did not need to know the details before being sent off to pick up the trash. To make matters worse, the camera has been valued at somewhere between US$14 and US$20,000. Basically, its just a hilarious waste of taxpayer money illustrated using equally hilarious British terminology. [Telegraph via Digg]

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This helicopter mini-drone has been developed by the Navy to help it counter water-borne threats, despite its provocatively lurid name. Made by Lite Machines, the battery-powered Voyeur weighs just 1.8kg, stands 70cm high and is actually designed to be suicidal. It's meant to hop out of sonobuoy tubes, patrol for threats for a while and then sink itself. Much more economical than helicopters or jets wasting fuel by attempting to ID surface targets (has the Navy's gas bill gone up at the moment too?) Plus it looks waaay more creepily sci-fi. [Danger Room]

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I know how it is with you man--you see that "Take-a-Penny, Leave-a-Penny" tray and it is all "take, take, take!" Well your days of penny pinching are over now that SteathVue has developed their Pennycam. What they have done is to embed a security camera inside the tray that relays upward angled video to a DVR using a standard BNC cable. Obviously, Pennycam is intended to capture clearer (500 x 582 resolution) images of thieves that try and obscure their face from overhead cameras--and it seems to work pretty well based on the footage in the following demo video.

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While most of us aren't important/good looking enough for anyone to spy on, the Laser Surveillance Defeater allows us to at least pretend for a moment or two. While much of audio surveillance functions by picking up voices through windows, the US$70 Surveillance Defeater can jam these signals. Sticking to your window of choice via suction cup, it sends out a cacophony of human frequencies to confound long-distance microphones. Pick yours up today and no one will ever discover that...well...you really don't do anything exciting behind closed doors. [Shomer-tec via inventorspot]

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Advanced video surveillance cameras that discreetly examine each face or vehicle that comes into frame are becoming more commonplace in big cities and large corporations. These cameras are equipped with intelligence algorithms that can distinguish the face, vehicle or licence plate of a wanted criminal and alert the proper authorities when necessary. However, innocent people often get involved in these recordings simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. A video analysis company named 3VR is now attempting to change all that.

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