World Spy News Roundup

PA - A Pittsburgh police commander previously placed on leave while officials investigated allegations he spied on colleagues has retired. Matthew Lackner, who had previously overseen the police bureau’s Zone 2 station in the Hill District, retired Tuesday, according to spokeswoman Cara Cruz. Mr. Lackner was placed on paid administrative leave earlier this month. A police source familiar with the incident said the commander was accused of putting a body-worn camera in an officer’s patrol vehicle to spy on the officer. more

Australia - Robot vacuums don’t just collect dust — they can also collect data of their surroundings, sending it back to external servers, experts at The Australian Information Security Association (AISA) warned on Tuesday. more

China - China restricts foreign travel by bankers, state workers to curb spying... According to two analysts who spoke to the media, the moves reflect President Xi Jinping’s attention to national security in the midst of tense relations with the West. more

CA - The Five Eyes countries' intelligence chiefs came together on Tuesday to accuse China of intellectual property theft and using artificial intelligence for hacking and spying against the nations, in a rare joint statement by the allies. more

TX - It seems everything truly is bigger here in Texas, including the drama of partner snooping and infidelity! Recent data has exposed Texas as one of the leading states where the lines between privacy and suspicion are blurrier than ever. Relationship and sex expert Beth Darling joins the factor to talk about the data. more

USA - Ethical hacker helps prevent a potential espionage disaster for CIA. A glitch on X, formerly known as Twitter, could have opened a can of worms for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had an ethical hacker on the microblogging website not sprung to action. more

Donald Trump is suing a private investigations firm over "shocking and scandalous" claims that he engaged in "perverted sexual acts" in Russia. The former US president is taking legal action against Orbis Business Intelligence, a London-based company co-founded by ex-British spy Christopher Steele, over a dossier containing rumours about him that caused a storm before his 2017 presidential inauguration. more

Survey - 53% of employees in the Middle East, Turkiye, and Africa region fear spying from drones... Corporate spies and hackers use drones to get trade secrets, confidential information, and other sensitive data from corporations and data centers. A drone can carry a device for hacking into corporate networks – for instance, a smartphone, a compact computer (e.g., Raspberry Pi), or a signal interceptor (e.g., Wi-Fi Pineapple [1]), and hackers use these devices to access corporate data and disrupt communications. All wireless communication (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, RFID, etc.) is vulnerable to drone attacks. more

Finland - Dead man's estate and firm fined €5m in shipyard espionage case. A man who worked for the Meyer Turku shipyard copied files from the shipyard and a shipping company onto a hard drive and transferred them to his own consulting firm – but then died while the investigation was underway. more

VA - It could be years before Appian, a software company, sees a dollar of the $2 billion judgment it was awarded last year in a corporate espionage case against rival Pegasystems. more

IN - Parents Attack Little League Umpire after children say he was taking photos of them in bathroom. A Little League umpire is facing charges for allegedly taking photos of children in the bathroom... Deputies in Warrick County said they were called to an area baseball field because of reports that parents were fighting an umpire. Authorities said the parents told them the brawl started because their children came running out of the bathroom screaming that Custer had taken photos of them. more