Was Britney Spears watched all day long by her dad? (Photo Credit – Prime Video)
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According to the Hulu documentary, Britney Spears’s life under conservatorship didn’t just come with control, it came with bugs in her bedroom and an iPhone that wasn’t really hers.
Released just days before Netflix’s Britney vs. Spears, this doc dug even deeper. Directed by Samantha Stark and produced by Liz Day, Controlling Britney Spears amplified the pop star’s claims with jaw-dropping witness accounts. One, in particular, was hard to ignore.
Alex Vlasov, a former Black Box Security employee, worked on Britney’s security detail for nearly a decade. And his revelations painted a chilling picture of what went on behind the scenes. According to Vlasov, her father, Jamie Spears, took surveillance to a whole new level.
Vlasov said Jamie hired Black Box Security to keep tabs on everything: texts, emails, even phone calls. “Their reason for monitoring was looking for bad influences, looking for potential illegal activity that might happen, but they would also monitor conversations with her friends, with her mom, with her lawyer Sam Ingham,” he claimed in the documentary (reported by Cheat Sheet). “If there’s anybody that should be off-limits, it should be Britney’s lawyer.”
But it didn’t stop there. Vlasov alleged that a listening device had been planted in Britney’s bedroom. The device reportedly captured over 180 hours of audio. That included private conversations with her boyfriend. Her kids. Everything. “Her own phone and her own private conversations were used so often to control her,” Vlasov added.
Director Stark backed Vlasov’s credibility. She said Britney’s emotional courtroom speech earlier that year inspired witnesses to come forward. “She said she felt abused under the conservatorship and questioned whether the judge thought she was lying,” Stark revealed. “Britney’s speech motivated the people in this film to seek us out to share their stories—at great risk to themselves—because they felt compelled to back up what Britney was saying with evidence they had or moments they witnessed.”
For years, Jamie Spears ran the conservatorship that controlled nearly every aspect of Britney’s life. He publicly insisted she needed it, once calling her “mentally sick” in court documents. When the Hulu documentary made its claims, Jamie didn’t directly deny them. Instead, his attorney defended the surveillance by stating that it fell “well within the parameters of the authority conferred upon him by the court.”
Black Box Security also pushed back. In a statement, their lawyer said, “Mr. Yemini and Black Box have always conducted themselves within professional, ethical and legal bounds, and they are particularly proud of their work keeping Ms. Spears safe for many years.”
Still, Vlasov had seen enough.
Eventually, Jamie Spears agreed to step down from the conservatorship. Britney’s legal team pushed for its full termination, aiming for a future where the pop icon could live on her terms, bug-free.
