An 8-Figure CEO's Guide to Winning Government Contracts

Sean Weisbrot: Welcome back to another episode of the We Live To Build podcast. Today's guest is Barry Levine, the founder and CEO of Sperry West, a 30-year-old manufacturer of body temperature warning cameras, covert cameras to assist in recording criminal activity. Barry is a very charming guy who has tons of really interesting stories about the kinds of people caught on covert cameras.

Sean Weisbrot: From clients of his, we talk about how he was able to convince the government to purchase his products, how he was able to convince large companies to purchase his products and certain ethics around products he makes, and how privacy is dead.

Sean Weisbrot: So why don't you tell us about what got you into business in the first place? And what your business is, and then we'll move forward from there.

Barry: I was actually working for a small company way long ago, and my boss came to me because I'd been selling communications equipment. He said, how would you like to sell closed circuit television?

Barry: And I said, closed circuit television. What? What is that different between that and television camera? I mean, what do you mean? And he actually had to explain it to me. It was that new. And we called in a company to show us these new cameras. Company was called Filko. I. Very old radio company, I think outta Philadelphia, which is where their name comes from.

Barry: And they showed us a camera that it's actually wider than I could show you on the screen. It was almost two feet in length and it was full of tubes, but it worked. And I did end up selling a few of those cameras, and that was way long ago, but that was my introduction to closed circuit tv. Many years later, I founded a business and that business was selling.

Barry: Communications equipment with some cameras. It was not easy to sell a lot of cameras back then, but I do recall some of the cameras that we sold, some of the customers, and I had to learn what they were using it for. Why did they actually want those cameras? We didn't think about theft prevention at that time.

Barry: It was more a matter of an owner of a business, just seeing his process, seeing what was going on, and that was what most of the cameras were doing. Now, in those days, every camera you put in had to have its own individual monitor. So if you put in 15 cameras, you had 15 television sets. That's basically how it worked.

Barry: And then one day I thought of something and I said, well, what if we could make a switch that could actually rotate around and show one camera at a time? Uh, and then you could select a particular one. So we came up with the idea, or I did actually, but. The geniuses who worked for me were able to actually build something that was based on relays, and it would go around and be able to pick up one camera at a time and to stop at a particular camera.

Barry: That was the origins of what became known as Sequential Switcher. Later, a company called Vicon. And another company called Pelco made those products. Uh, many years after that and being in this business and being a factored, my company morphed into a company that was doing integration, mostly video camera systems for.

Barry: Usually large companies and access control. So we were doing this for places like the World Trade Center, the old one, original one, obviously we, we did all of their access control and some of their cameras, big chemical companies like Dow Chemical and you know, many large entities. So that was my, uh, long Island company and that company was.

Barry: Very successful. We did very well After being in that company for quite a while, we did very well when I disposed of that company selling it, so my wife and I thought about where we wanna live, what we want to do next. We chose San Diego for a location. Moved set up. A company expected it to do something different.

Barry: Something different was making covert camera kits and covert cameras, uh, selling them initially to just the government. Uh, we were able to get on what's called GSA. That's a general services administration schedule that would allow anyone in, at that time only the federal government, but that would allow people in the federal government to buy our products at predetermined pricing.

Barry: And that's how we started really just making cameras for the government and making what we call video commander kits. There are complete surveillance kits to make it easier for a security director to have someone set up a surveillance as needed and then take it down when they caught the person committing whatever crime it may have been.

Barry: Now, I can tell you that for instance, in those days, I remember a corporate entity putting in a system system where they wanted to particularly watch a file cabinet. It seems that they thought that they had someone getting into a file cabinet that was locked. And should not have had access, and the system did prove that they were correct and they did catch that person that they needed to.

Barry: What went on in terms of prosecution and in terms of the government that you're facing with them? I have no idea, but they kept that system and kept using it. Of course, for other things that would come up to several years after these things. We started selling to corporations. So more and more we were selling direct to companies.

Barry: And then after a while, as the business started to expand, we decided to concentrate on selling through distribution. And today we sell just about everything through distributors.

Sean Weisbrot: Thank you for the introduction of. Your career. I, so what I'm really curious about is you decided to start this company in California and you're selling to the government, but how did you get on the government's radar?

Sean Weisbrot: How did they know you existed so that you could do business with them?

Barry: Sure. And that's probably the most difficult aspect of dealing with the government. The first thing we did is we were aware of that general services administration, and at that time. We were able to work with a wonderful contractor at the government who actually was a big help to us in being able to get on that schedule, and we were able to do it ourselves with the help of a couple of employees, but we're able to do it ourselves, which is unusual today.

Barry: Most of the time. You need the expertise of companies that specialize in helping you get on A GSA schedule. It takes usually more than a year. Today, it took us probably about four to six months to get on that schedule when we did it the first time. Once you're on the schedule, that does not automatically bring business to you.

Barry: You still have to seek out the departments in the government that you think you could work with, get to the right people who would be interested in your product. In our case, because my New York company had done some work with the Veterans Administration. That was my initial target, so I went after the VAs.

Barry: There were just about 105 when we started to do it, veterans Administration, medical centers, so the larger facilities, and we were able to contact the security directors, which today, unfortunately. They're very hidden and they don't have a lot of time. But at that time, we were able to contact them. We were able to start by selling to them.

Barry: And then after a while, we were fortunate enough to be invited to a conference in Las Vegas where the Veterans Administration's security directors would meet. And we would explain the technical aspects of our video commander kits. We still make those systems, but upgraded today, of course, by a lot, and we were not allowed to sell during those conferences.

Barry: It was strictly technical and they were very careful to make sure that all we did was. Describe the technicalities of the system and it was a particular help to those who were, uh, already using our system. So we did that, went back to California after the conference, and of course tried to contact any more VAs that we were able to, and that's how we really got started selling the government.

Barry: And then our reputation increased. We got invited to, uh. Technical conference that the government puts on once a year, and we went to the technical conference showing what we did. The technical conference was able to show us more areas of the government that were using surveillance and were good possibilities for us.

Barry: The downside is that some of those people were very technical 'cause it was a technical conference and they were able to look at what we were doing and to say, oh. We have techs in the government, we can build things like that. So it didn't always work for us. In some instances it helped in others. No, it did not.

Barry: They were able to copy and make some of the things very similar to what we were doing.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. I think that happens all the time. I think there was a, I. Company I heard about that was in Talks to be acquired by Microsoft. And Microsoft strung them along for like a year and then eventually a few months after that they said, sorry, we're not gonna work with you.

Sean Weisbrot: But then, oh, we happen to just release a competitor to To what you were doing

Barry: it. It is interesting what you're saying. It's very much like that. And I can think of something that happened, which it's relative to what you just said, and it may be. Somewhat interesting because all of your, uh, business owners who ideally will be watching your program, yes, they can experience this.

Barry: Now in New York, when we were doing systems, that was the older business. One of the accounts that we worked with was called BuyRight Liquor. We did a lot of their stores. There were, I think well over a hundred or so called Buy right, and most of them were in the New York metropolitan area, New York, New Jersey.

Barry: So we were doing them, they were upstate New York also, although we were not doing those, but we were putting video systems into their stores. And I got to meet the owner who owned the whole, let's say, BuyRight system, not necessarily the the individual stores. And when I got to know him well enough, he explained to me, let's question somewhat similar that you would ask Sean, how did you get in this business?

Barry: And he explained to me that there was a company in Chicago, and I think I recall their name was Foremost, and they had a similar operation and he was going to join their system and do in New York what was happening in Chicago. So he went to Chicago several times. He learned what they were doing and he was supposed to work with him.

Barry: Well, he came back to New York and decided he doesn't need foremost, he understands the system. And he set it up himself, so exactly what you're talking about. So sometimes business owners do that, and sometimes large entities do that to the small businesses. So yes, a lot of that piracy of ideas does go on.

Sean Weisbrot: I'm not a fan of that kind of stuff. I try to, I. Be honorable in that regard. I was working with the designer and I knew that, and the designer knew that he was going to develop a design system for us, and this is all for the user's interface and experience for our web application. So he set up the system for us and then I took it over as the designer.

Sean Weisbrot: He did a lot of work. I paid him a lot of money. He did a good job, but of course, what he gave me wasn't all of the work we'd ever need. It was just what we needed at the moment. And so I like to. Work with people in that way where they know there's gonna be an end. It's obvious we're gonna work with you, we're gonna pay you, but eventually we're gonna bring it in house.

Sean Weisbrot: And I think when you do that, it's, it's a lot nicer of a way to work with people.

Barry: You know? I think that that's very intelligent of you. And we do have an experience similar to what you're talking about, because we had some. Expansion ideas going in a whole different direction. But it took a huge amount of IT experience.

Barry: And I had met someone who, I have to say he was a genius, truly a genius, and he understood all of the workings of, uh, it, computer analysis, everything. And he came up with a system that he thought that we could work together on. And I felt that we really could not work with him, nor could we really do the system ourselves because it entailed a lot more than we were really prepared for, both financially and with the expertise.

Barry: So while we understood that he was a genius. And he had very good ideas. We knew that this couldn't happen, and when I told him that this isn't going to occur, we can't do it. He got very upset. And I can tell you that I know that he tried to hack our computer systems at one time because of how upset he was that we weren't gonna do it.

Barry: We didn't do it at all. So it wasn't that we pirated. What was his ideas? But people get upset sometimes and those things do happen. You have be very careful who you work with.

Sean Weisbrot: So one of the things that companies do these days is they have a lot of different software they pay for, for different employees, and a lot of the software is in the cloud, and so I.

Sean Weisbrot: If we know that we're gonna have to terminate someone, we have a list of all of the software that they have access to. And so we can pull their permissions from all of the software before we actually let them go. But we do it like minutes before, so they don't have any sense to go, wait a minute, why did I lose my permission?

Sean Weisbrot: And that way you prevent them from doing anything bad to your system. But you know, we also try to make sure that we don't have to fire people. If it's not necessary, and we try to treat them well when we do,

Barry: it's a great attitude. We wish everyone was like that, of course. And the cloud is very interesting because you envision that things are up there in the sky, but unfortunately, sometimes your critical information is where it can be picked off by others, and that does happen today.

Barry: We were hacked during this past year. The particular purpose of the people are hacking us had to do with trying to get into our bank, trying to work between our bank and act as though they were our company in the bank. What we found out, which was kind of interesting, is that the people doing this, and it shocked me, we're actually in Germany.

Barry: We're thinking, okay, we're a little company, we're a small company. We're not a big company. How did this German hacker. Find us and we'll never know. And of course there's no way to prosecute these people when I say there's no way. I mean, maybe there is a way, if it were a large enough thing that our FBI would've to be involved and all that, uh, or even other agencies.

Barry: But, uh, in our case, of course, it was not that big and we were able to stop it. And without a loss, by the way, they weren't able to succeed our bank. Suspected something and contacted us and then we talked with them. They actually wanted to speak with us so they were sure who they were speaking with. Kind of interesting how they were pretty good with the security on it.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. You're definitely lucky that they were sharp about the whole thing. I'm curious, you mentioned the cloud. I mentioned the cloud first, and you mentioned the cloud. Does your current generation of. Software and hardware solutions. Do you store that information in the cloud? The, um, recordings of everything, and if you do, is it on like a Google Cloud or is it a cloud that's private that you own and maintain for them

Barry: maybe being old fashioned about all of this?

Barry: I don't trust the cloud, therefore we do not store information on the cloud and we do store it on our own backups.

Sean Weisbrot: So your clients have their video recordings and audio recordings and all of that on your servers that you have like a, a landed data server, physical servers?

Barry: No. Uh, we're only storing our own information.

Barry: Uh, we are not providing a service to clients. We are just providing hardware.

Sean Weisbrot: So your clients are responsible for managing their own storage.

Barry: Correct.

Sean Weisbrot: Have you ever thought of offering a service for them?

Barry: Thought about, yes. Decided to do it? No. And one of the major reasons to that really, Sean, is not because we're adverse to doing it, but because it would be a conflict with our distributors.

Barry: See, the distributors we deal with, they are selling to the integrators. The dealers, the integrators, and occasionally an end user who doesn't need an installation. If we would start trying to pirate their customers, we'd be in conflict with them, and we don't do that.

Sean Weisbrot: That is an interesting conundrum.

Barry: I mean, if you came to me, Sean, and you said, you know Barry, we know you make these exit signs.

Barry: That they can actually be real exit signs, but they have cameras in them to see people walking out of doorways. Uh, that sounds like a good product for us. That and maybe a few smoke detectors. I'd like to get those. The conundrum simply is that I cannot tell you directly, nor will the distributor sell you directly.

Barry: In most cases, they will need you to go through a dealer or an integrator to buy our products. So it does complicate the process somewhat.

Sean Weisbrot: Fair enough. So I want to go back to. Uh, when you were talking to the, uh, veterans Affairs security directors, so you said in the very beginning you were able to start calling them and you pitched them, and this was before you got into the conference where you were able to talk to a lot of them at one time.

Sean Weisbrot: Did you successfully sell any of them before you went to the conference that first time? And how did you sell them if you did?

Barry: Yes, we were successfully selling some of them. Um, what I was doing or we were doing is making mailings. That was how we initially contacted them. We were making interesting kind of mailings.

Barry: At that time, there were greeting cards. Company, I think was called Slim Gym, and they were doing a card that was kind of long instead of the usual shape. I picked up on that idea and I was able to contract. Someone who could design the cards and do drawings on the cards as I wanted them. And we were doing what looked like a greeting card when it arrived in the mail, but inside it, we didn't fool them into, let's say, a straight pitch.

Barry: What we did was we did an amusing pitch. We did something that made sense for what would be a greeting card. So it was funny, uh, sometimes, most of the time it dealt with. Theft and it just had something amusing except for one. There was one that a few people objected to only one of those cards. It had to do with the holiday stealing season because there is such a thing.

Barry: We know that October, November, uh, and especially December. Thefts increase considerably, uh, where the people need more money for the holidays and they're stealing more, uh, whatever the reasons. So I did, one of the cards that did involve the holiday stealing season showed someone kind of like this holding onto the bars of his prison sale.

Barry: Somebody didn't like that, but most of the cards went over very well. They were very amusing. That's how we picked up some of those VAs. Although initially, I know in New York. We had done a few of the VAs, so they knew me, which was good because I came up with this concept of what's called the Video commander kit.

Barry: That idea was that you could have a camera now multi cameras, but you could have a camera that you could hide yourself, and it would be easy to bring it back into a recorder. Now, in those days, recorders. We're VHS based, et cetera, but it was the, let's say, the embryonic idea of what we have today where we do multi cameras.

Barry: They could be wireless, they could be ip, they, it's all changed, obviously, but those first ones that we were doing were very successful. For instance, there was a department store that we did one, and then we did. 12 more. So we did 13 of their stores that they had that they were having problems with. They were able to set up a surveillance themselves instead of needing to call in a dealer, for instance, to put in a permanent system.

Barry: Or even if they had a permanent system, you could see those cameras. You can't see our cameras technically when you do see them, you don't know their cameras. And that's the concept. So for instance, if we knew that somebody was stealing out of a loading zone. We suspected it because we could tell things were missing or we heard a rumor or whatever it was.

Barry: When I say we, I meaning the security director within his company. So what he would do is he would take this video commander kit and go in at night when no one is there 24 hour operations. Like hospitals were more difficult. But the VA and all that, were able to do this also, but we're able to take an area where no one was for the time being, put a camera in that didn't look like a camera, and then be able to record only activity middle of the night, nothing going on, nothing is being recorded.

Barry: So it was motion sensitive and they would record what was going on, and most of the time they would end up catching a thief. Now, the most amusing thing. To me that I can think of right now that occurred, happened in a well-known freight company and they put in, uh, several of these covert cameras and the security director was involved in it, and they caught some people, but they decided they would just leave the cameras up.

Barry: It was a vulnerable area. They wanted to be sure that they were okay and they just left them. Well, it seems that one day in playing back, they happened to catch one of the purity managers taking packages out through a loading zone door. He forgot all about the fact that they had covert cameras at all, and he had known about it originally.

Barry: So that was kind of interesting. Rare but interesting.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. My dad encountered one of his employees stealing cash. He didn't have any cameras in his office. He's a dentist, and he knew that someone was taking money. He didn't know who it was. He couldn't prove it other than the fact that he noticed he.

Sean Weisbrot: That a lot of cash was coming in where they used to do mostly credit cards, and it seemed like there was a, this prevalence of cash starting to be paid. And so it seems like, uh, one of the women he had hired to work up front was convincing patients to pay in cash so that she could take some of it. She would go into the software and write that the charge was lower so that my dad wouldn't notice.

Sean Weisbrot: That there was actually this amount of cash missing. So let's say the charge was two 50. She'd write that it was like 200, and there'd only be 200 in cash. So he couldn't see that it was missing. But over time he started to realize like, someone's taking ca like he, he figured it out somehow. And when he did, he fired her.

Sean Weisbrot: The funny thing is, her husband's a cop. He was starting to threaten my dad when my dad fired her. And, and my dad was like, look, leave me alone, or I'm gonna make this a big deal. I'm gonna have your wife arrested for theft. I don't know how much she's stolen, but it's gotta be at least a few thousand dollars.

Sean Weisbrot: You want her to go to jail? Fine. Keep coming after me. What do you wanna do? You want your five-year-old kid to have no mom. And the cop was like, all right, I'll leave you alone. Yeah. Sometimes the people you think you're, you're supposed to be able to trust are the ones that you can't, and it's really sad 'cause they, she was getting paid well, or husband was getting paid well and it wasn't enough.

Barry: It's a unique way that she was doing it. But that does happen. I do recall a few things that I do know what happened. Uh, and in what case? Covert cameras. There were a few of them put into, uh, an area that really only had accounting stuff going on because they knew that they were losing company was aware of it.

Barry: They couldn't figure it out. And initially they were very concerned because what they would see on the video from the covert cameras was that early in the morning before some people would come into work, the head of the bookkeeping area would come in and start going through desks, opening drawers, going through desks.

Barry: Looking at things and closing them up before others went to work. And that was of course, uh, something very suspicious. So having not figured out what was going on for a while, they brought that person in for an interview. Turns out that that person knew that there were thefts in the department and he was doing his own investigation, trying to find out what was going on, and that's why he was coming in early and looking in those.

Barry: Desks. They believed what he said, but of course, kept the cameras up and eventually were able to catch an employee who did work under this person. So yes, he was very diligent. He just hadn't brought it anywhere because he didn't have a solution.

Sean Weisbrot: That's awesome of him to take it upon himself. But he really should have informed.

Sean Weisbrot: Everyone else above him that he suspected something and was trying to find, you know, proof because it could have gone the opposite way. They could have said, well, we have this evidence that you're going through people's drawers. How do we know it's not you? We're gonna just can you and, and be done with it?

Sean Weisbrot: It could have ruined his career.

Barry: You're absolutely right. But of course, who do you go to? Uh, that's one of the problems. For instance, uh, he may have felt that maybe his boss was the one that was doing the stealing. It was very difficult sometimes to know where you can go with your information. But strange things do happen.

Barry: One that I'm thinking of now that I think was another kind of a weird but interesting story. There was a woman working in a major cosmetics company one day. Her mink coat was stolen from a closet within, uh, the office area. And the next thing they found out is that another coat. Or something was stolen out of there?

Barry: Well, they set up a surveillance and they found someone stealing a coat and they play back the video with what the next one was gone. And they found that the woman who had complained about her fur coat is the one who had stolen the next two coats out of. Closet. Well, they knew they had seen her wearing that fur coat.

Barry: They knew it was real, so they didn't quite understand what was going on. Brought her in for an interview. Turns out that she made sure that her fur coat was stolen because it was insured. She needed proof that it actually was stolen. So of course, if it was stolen from the company closet, it was easy to prove that it was gone.

Barry: It was stolen that time. There was no camera there yet. Watching her. But what she was doing with the other, the other two coats that she stole, was just trying to show that there was a pattern of theft in the company. That it wasn't just a one time incident, so it would look more real. And that's actually how they caught her.

Barry: It's really dumb. A lot of thefts are dumb, but they occur a lot of the times. What we have heard is when they interview people, uh, as to why they're stealing, they come up with a lot of rationale. Uh, some of it. Is that the company wasn't paying them what they deserve, that the company isn't treating them right, and that's a lot of what's in their heads, and they use that.

Barry: The other part of it is, of course, well, I needed money.

Sean Weisbrot: I think that's one of the reasons why I like distributed teams where there is no office. Because if my company doesn't have any computers or tools or chairs or desks or things that can be stolen. The chances of that theft are much lower. And you know, with the use of software, they can't really steal software.

Sean Weisbrot: You know, they could try to steal the code that they've written maybe, but it's really easy to prove that. I, I think people working remotely is good for businesses. Although it's not good for your business, it's good for us because we don't have to worry about a lot of this kind of stuff.

Barry: Actually, you're right. And in fact, I do know of, of more than one instance where they used cameras to prove that someone was coming in at night and doing computer work, that they should not be doing illegal stuff that they were doing. And yeah, they were caught on video, uh, that could even see the screen. So they were able to do a lot of different things.

Barry: And those things do happen. But yes, if you're working from home, there is nothing we could do about it. Not that I'm the one that does it, of course, it's, you know, let's say our products. You're right, and if you could have a company with 500 employees all working from home, we'd be in big trouble if everybody would do that.

Sean Weisbrot: There is actually a way to do that. There's time tracking software that people use because the biggest theft from remote workers is if they're hourly, proving that they've actually worked that hour. So it's not about, oh, I'm gonna take cash out of the drawer, or I'm gonna take this clock. It's. Are you taking my money by not working?

Sean Weisbrot: It's saying you are. And there are tools that companies force employees to download, which we don't do that. You can actually see their screen or you can see their face. You could see if they're actually in their seat and and what they're doing. So if they say, I'm clocked in now, and the timer starts, you can see they're actually not on YouTube, but they're actually writing their emails or planning their social posts or coding, whatever.

Sean Weisbrot: It's.

Barry: It's, uh, quandary doing those kind of things because while we don't have expectations of privacy, uh, in most parts of a company, for instance, you may, uh, if you're in a private office with your computer, you may have an expectation of privacy and you may be doing something illegal. By monitoring their computers to that extent.

Barry: So those are things that are concerning. Uh, you know, we know that 1984, uh, we never thought that would, no, that can't happen. No, that can't happen. That actually happened even before 1984. But today we've gone so far beyond that whole situation. Privacy, as far as I'm concerned, and I discussed this more with my family than others, but we believe privacy is kind of dead.

Barry: There just isn't any more privacy, but yet legally. We are supposed to have privacy and we have to be careful what we do involving privacy.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, I think we can thank nine 11 for that loss of privacy and then social media exacerbated it. I wanted to, I guess, reiterate, I have chosen not to use that kind of software with my team.

Sean Weisbrot: I also don't pay them hourly. We, we pay them salaries for the month, so we're able to use. The software. So like, let's say they're doing coding. What we do is in our sprint planning, we know how much they're committing to, we can see the progression of each of their tasks. And if they finish the work they've committed to, no problem.

Sean Weisbrot: If you can do all of that work in a day, which you, it's like two weeks worth of work. So like I. It's not gonna happen. But you know, if you do all of that work in a day, there's a problem. Right? Or if you don't finish all of the work in those two weeks, there's a problem. But generally, when we go on this honor system, we can trust that they're gonna get it done because you know, there's a manager working with them, making sure that they've got what they need.

Sean Weisbrot: There's a designers, like everyone's communicating with each other enough that we know if someone's falling behind or not. And we've discovered, you know, without this tracking software that. Some of our employees weren't performing at the same level as everyone else, or they were pretending to be unable to perform, you know, and just being lazy and trying to take advantage.

Sean Weisbrot: And you know, sometimes it takes like a month or two to figure out, but you can get rid of them pretty fast. And it is possible

Barry: what you were talking about earlier about people not working or not doing what they should be doing as a company, a night shift. Crew, half of the crew would go down to the bar across the street from where they were located, spend about an hour and then come back.

Barry: Then the other half of the crew would do the same thing, and eventually the company kind of felt like production is not working properly, something is wrong here. And they did put in covert cameras and they did catch the whole thing going on and, uh, find the crew walking out. But I've never heard of anything quite like this.

Barry: I mean, this was. Unbelievable how bad it was, but it was so pervasive. It was really going on, and the company was losing tremendous productivity. Everybody was clocked in, they were there. But yeah, these things have happened, do happen. It's just something that is part of society today. Unfortunately, we're not all honest and people are gonna take advantage of other.

Barry: People or other companies. And sometimes people are not happy with their working, they're gonna do bad things. And of course I'm emphasizing the working, you know, part of it because most of our products do end up being used in, uh, major facilities, whether it's companies or it's, um, government. But that's where most of our cameras end up.

Barry: People envision that. Oh yeah, they're, they're, they're in a house everywhere. I think there are very few covert cameras being used in a home environment, even if you're a homeowner.

Barry: There still are privacy expectations and there are concerns for these things. So it's not pervasive as people may think what goes on in private areas.

Sean Weisbrot: I would argue that Alexa maybe has a camera we don't know about it already has ears.

Barry: Yes. Uh, I love the original, uh, legacy commercials by the way. I found them very amusing with, uh, this gentleman who was, uh. Talking to Alexa, like of course, she's a real person in the room. And I think that the same goes on with Siri.

Barry: Uh, although I can't seem to get Siri when I want Siri. Yes. I, I think those are amusing. And is it possible that there could be a camera inside of devices? We don't know about it possible. Sure. Is it happening? It can't be. It could be so bad that it could end up putting these companies outta business if they were caught doing this.

Sean Weisbrot: Amazon was caught where people were being recorded all the time. They're like, oh, well there's a magic word to wake up Alexa, but how does Alexa know that it needs to be woken up? Unless it's always listening, they were caught. People are still buying Alexas. It didn't destroy the company. You're

Barry: right. I think that's amazing enough.

Barry: Uh, I don't know how the reaction would be if it would be a camera. I think it would be a much wider problem. But yes, that was pretty bad. And I don't know, I guess Alexa could still do it today. I have no idea.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, and I mean, we all know that our laptops and our webcams can be hacked and they can view our video without the light being on, so Sure.

Sean Weisbrot: It's probably not Microsoft doing it. It's probably not Facebook doing it, but it does happen. People still buy laptops with cameras in them?

Barry: Yes. When it's on, it could see me. And yes, maybe someone could hack and actually see me as I'm being seen right now by you. Uh, I believe that could happen. Would I be comfortable with that?

Barry: Nope. I would not be. But of course if I closed the cover, I know that's not occurring.