An Auckland private investigation firm has been caught out after it attached a sophisticated tracking device to a political campaigner's car – but left the device visible from outside the vehicle.
The GPS tracking device, which used a mobile phone connection to report the car's position to private investigators, had been attached with magnets.
It is the third time in three years the Sunday Star-Times has caught Thompson & Clark Investigations doing covert surveillance on political groups for corporate clients.
On April 22 this year, animal rights campaigners Jasmine Gillespie-Gray and Rochelle Rees were in Levin, where Gillespie-Gray was in court for filming inside a chicken-processing farm.
The judge dismissed the case and later that day the pair noticed a black box under Rees' car. When they removed it, they found the tracking device, a cross between a GPS receiver and mobile phone.
The Star-Times traced the device to Thompson & Clark Investigations, which had obtained the device from Auckland firm Argus Tracking Ltd, which advertises tracking services for companies to monitor their own fleets.
Thompson & Clark co-director Gavin Clark declined to comment on "anything we might do operationally".
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