Thanks to ever-improving technology that all but encourages snooping, people all over the country are making secret recordings, planting tracking devices, and peering into cellphones and personal computers of those whom they once claimed to love. Domestic surveillance may be a topic for civil libertarians and politicians when it comes to those three-letter federal agencies - CIA, FBI, NSA, DHS - but domestic spying is a low-dollar affair that has become an obsession for many of the emotionally aggrieved. Experts say it is much easier to prove a civil violation of invasion of privacy, which most people have at home or when engaged in private conversations. "People sometimes they get so blinded in these custody and divorce cases that they absolutely lose their minds," said Kinney, a lawyer in Omaha, Neb., who gained national publicity in 2009 when he brought a case against a woman who had placed a voice recorder inside her 4-year-old daughter's favorite teddy bear. "The uncontroverted evidence shows that the bugging of Little Bear accomplished much more than simply recording oral communications to which (the child) was a party," U.S. Magistrate Judge F.A. Gossett wrote in an opinion last year. Like any suspicious spouse, they may want all the information they can get, but they tend to be careful about the conduct that can be traced to them, knowing that information obtained in improper ways also is unlikely to be usable in court cases. Store manager Sidney May said GPS trackers and miniature audio and video recorders are in constant demand, mostly from spouses who suspect cheating or parents who want to see what is being said and done when their children are in the homes of their exes. "Trust is the foundation of a relationship," states the sales pitch for one website offering cellphone software, but of course the trustful would not be on the site in the first place. In which case you need the company's product to "monitor actions" on the spouse's cellphone, which it calls "a cheater's best friend." The latest cellphone spy software can silently pick up calls made by the snooper to the significant other's phone, which allows the caller to hear what is going on in the background. Five years ago, the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers reported that virtually every divorce case involved some sort of electronic evidence, even if it was only a posting on Facebook.
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