Such simplicity is long gone. Today, Supercircuits sells a complete aerial system for hobbyists who want to soar visually with their toy planes.
Autographed photos of NBC's Stone Phillips, CBS's Dan Rather and ABC's Diane Sawyer line one wall of his showroom—thank-yous from their newsmagazines, which routinely use his wares for undercover reporting.
NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratories, the filmmakers of Titanic and nearly all of the federal "three-letter agencies" have bought his cameras and equipment.
Three of Supercircuits' coin-size products—a video camera, a wireless video camera and a transmitter—just made it into the 2002 Guinness Book of Records, for being the world's smallest.
And Popular Science and Popular Mechanics recently spotlighted Supercircuits' $500 floodlight camera that screws into a socket like an ordinary bulb and sends captured video over the power lines to a receiver.
All of this will bother many people worried about the ever-growing loss of privacy. And the current security clampdown undoubtedly will fuel an already heated debate about protecting coveted civil liberties in an increasingly uncivilized world.
Obviously, Klindworth prefers to think his equipment is used primarily for the common good: nabbing thieves, nailing drug dealers, curbing nursing home abuse and verifying workplace harassment.
Copyright 2001 Sunday Gazette-Mail
