Used covertly, sold openly: How a legal blindspot allows the unregulated sale of spy cams

Imagine checking into a hotel or Airbnb with your family, or stepping into a public washroom. You take a quick look around, perhaps even check for hidden cameras. Most likely, you won't find anything.

Days later, a private video of you surfaces in a Telegram group or a WhatsApp thread.

These are no longer just hypothetical scenarios.

In January this year, intern doctor Raihan Kabir Emon was arrested at Tangail Medical College Hospital after fellow students identified him as the person who had installed a hidden camera inside a washroom used exclusively by female doctors. The discovery triggered outrage across the hospital. Angry intern doctors confined both the accused and the hospital director inside the premises until police, an executive magistrate and army personnel arrived. A court later granted a five-day remand for the accused.

In 2023, police raided a beauty parlour on Satmasjid Road in Dhanmondi after a woman filed a complaint. Eight cameras and a recording device were recovered. Three people were jailed.

Most recently, a resort in Sreemangal came under scrutiny this week after tourists alleged they had been secretly filmed on the premises and threatened with blackmail. 

Devices designed for covert surveillance are being sold openly across Dhaka and online, promoted through Facebook and YouTube, with little visible oversight over who can buy them or how they might be used.

An open market for covert cameras

To understand how accessible these devices are, The Business Standard visited several sellers in the capital.

One of the stores was located at Alpona Plaza on Elephant Road.

At first glance, the shop looks like any other gadget store: a cramped corner outlet selling chargers, power banks, CCTV cameras, and electronic accessories. When this correspondent asked whether they stocked hidden cameras, the salesmen exchanged suspicious glances. Busy answering phone calls from online customers, they initially denied selling them.

That is when two men seated nearby intervened, "Yes, they have what you're looking for," one of them said. "Do you want one hidden inside a power bank or a wristwatch?"

A pen fitted with a concealed camera; the device costs around Tk1,800, making it one of the cheapest spy cameras available for sale.

The cheapest device was a pen with a concealed camera, priced at around Tk1,800. Prices of wristwatches fitted with cameras ranged from Tk4,000 to Tk8,000. The most powerful were the power banks — costing Tk5,000 to Tk8,000 — with cameras concealed behind a cap beside the charging port, indistinguishable from the casing.

In the wristwatches, the lens sits inside the dial. Footage is transferred via an OTG cable after removing the dial. Light bulb cameras were also on offer, offering a 360-degree panoramic view, connected through a mobile app via QR code with a built-in two-way audio function.

The two people who intervened turned out to be journalists themselves. Both worked for broadcast television. They were not there to investigate. They were there to buy.

When asked who typically purchase these devices, the salesmen were candid. Mostly husbands or wives, they said, suspecting their partners of infidelity. Some are businessmen installing them in offices. And some, like the two men in the shop that afternoon, are journalists using them for undercover reporting.

It is, by their account, a routine transaction.

When asked who typically purchase these devices, the salesmen were candid. Mostly husbands or wives, they said, suspecting their partners of infidelity. Some are businessmen installing them in offices. And some, like the two men in the shop that afternoon, are journalists using them for undercover reporting.

When pressed on whether they worried about selling to the wrong people — to someone who might film a stranger in a washroom, or a woman in a changing room — the response was brief. "Every device has pros and cons," one salesman said. "That doesn't mean you stop selling it."

This shop is but one of many selling such products. Similar products are available at Eastern Plaza in Hatirpool, Motalib Plaza, and Gulistan, as well as other electronics markets across the capital. 

Most of these shops primarily operate online, where customers do not have to answer to anyone about the purpose of their purchase. They are also listed openly on Facebook pages and YouTube channels, some with paid promotions, marketed plainly as spy cameras or hidden recording devices.

A regulatory grey zone

Bangladesh currently has no specific legal framework governing the sale of covert surveillance devices. Neither the Cyber Security Act 2023, the Personal Data Protection Act 2026, nor any BTRC regulation addresses their commercial sale or import.

There are laws that protect victims after the harm is done. The Cyber Safety Ordinance 2025 criminalises blackmailing, revenge pornography and sextortion. The Pornography Control Act 2012 was used to prosecute the Dhanmondi beauty parlour case. But none of these laws reaches back to the point of sale.

Wristwatches containing cameras hidden inside their dials, and the devices can transfer recorded footage through an OTG cable.

Azaher Uddin Anik, former policy analyst at the Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology Ministry and member of the interim government's whitepaper taskforce on the sector, describes the situation plainly, "This is a complete jurisdictional vacuum."

Anik was part of the team that drafted Bangladesh's post-July-Uprising cyber legislation. The open sale of covert surveillance devices, he says, never entered the conversation.

The gap is not easily closed through import regulation either. Most of these devices enter Bangladesh from China disguised as ordinary consumer electronics — a power bank is a power bank at customs, regardless of what is hidden inside the casing. "You cannot regulate what you cannot identify at the border," Anik said.

China is the primary manufacturer of these devices, but it criminalises their domestic sale under Article 283 of its Criminal Law. Bangladesh imports what China prohibits from being sold at home.

What can realistically be done, according to Anik, operates on three fronts. 

First, visible policing: periodic raids on markets openly selling these products. 

Second, platform accountability: Facebook and YouTube are currently hosting paid promotional campaigns for spy cameras with no apparent moderation. 

Third, cultural pressure on sellers themselves.

"Completely stopping this is not possible," Anik said. "And there are far more pressing matters still unresolved. But allowing open, boosted marketing of these devices normalises their use. That is where intervention is most achievable."

TBS also reached out to the Officer in Charge of Newmarket Police Station, as most of these shops operate within the area. According to him, no formal complaint regarding covert surveillance devices has been filed in the locality. And since no law currently instructs police to crack down on businesses selling hidden cameras, he said they are not considering taking any action.

BTRC did not respond to phone calls. Daraz Bangladesh did not respond to emailed queries seeking comment on its policies regarding the listing and sale of covert surveillance devices on its platform.