In September of 1965, a new comedy series called Get Smart aired on television. Satirizing the spy movie genre then the rage — Secret Agent, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., etc. — Get Smart was the brainchild of Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, and starred Don Adams as a secret agent named Maxwell Smart.
As a running gag, whenever it was necessary for Smart to contact headquarters, he would enter a telephone booth and take off his shoe, the heel of which contained a telephone dial. He then used the dial to call the head of his secret agency. (He could have used the phone in the booth, but that wouldn’t have been as funny.)
The show was filled with any number of “gadgets” such as the shoe phone and other gags spoofing all of the electronic “toys” that were especially part of the early James Bond movies. Of course, these gadgets didn’t really exist. Not then.
Today, however, is a whole different story. These communications and listening devices and minuscule cameras do exist and are being used by industrial spies who want to get a leg up on corporate decision-making, or by thieves and sexual predators who want to enter
your house and endanger your family.
Recently, Risk Control Strategies (RCS), Chubb Corp.’s personal security consulting firm, held special “demonstrations” in New York to describe how the privacy of homes and commercial organizations can be breached and what RCS security experts can do about it. RCS executives described how their people can gather intelligence, design security architecture for estates, conduct a lifestyle diagnosis, protect clients from cybercrime and mitigate corporate and personal espionage.
These services, of course, are for Chubb’s upscale, well-to-do insureds who face particular exposures because of their financial positions. For VIP Chubb insureds the services are…