Spy Review

The MP3 Telephone Recorder (Logitec site is in Japanese, translate using Babelfish) can record up to 50 hours of conversation on the internal 128MB flash memory. The recording device fits between the handset and the actual telephone, and you can set up manual or automatic voice-activated recording.

The device uses a non-standard audio format to prevent the conversations being played back by any unauthorised individual. Once connected to a PC using the USB socket, you use a password to access the memory device. The software on the PC then converts the non-standard format into MP3 using the password to decrypt the audio stream. For extra security, you can use a high security cable and lock to ensure the mp3 recorder cannot be removed.

The telephone recorder can use a variety of encoding quality settings, giving up to 56 hours at 5.2kbps, or 9 hours at 32Kbps. The lowest setting is probably close to being unusable, but you can use external SD cards to give you longer recording times. SD memory cards up to 2GB are supported. Even if the SD card is removed and accessed, a password is needed to decrypt the audio stream into a usable MP3 format.

It’s quite clear that the recorder is not usable as a covert phone recording device, because it needs to fit between the handset and the phone itself. This would make it very obvious that telephone conversations were being recorded. The technology could easily be exploited to connect to the phone line directly, and then using digital storage to record any conversations made using the device.

However, the LIC-TRA056SD only appears to be available in Japan, and I can’t seem them producing an audio surveillance variation. Given how many people use mobile phones these days, any such device would be limited in usefulness anyway. The LIC-TRA056SD telephone recorder is most definitely targeted at individuals recording conversations for business needs and personal reference, not spying!

Found via Trendy Gadget.