Man Destroys Dental Clinic Claimed Dentist Implanted Eavesdropping Chip

... in wife's tooth.

A woman and her husband have justified their decision to damage a Brazilian dental clinic after they strangely claimed the dentist secretly placed a chip in her mouth three years ago to eavesdrop on their family's conversations.

The shocking incident was recorded from the Belo Horizonte office when 27-year-old Kenia Aparecida and her 31-year-old partner came and asked to see the dentist on Wednesday, the Telegraph reports.

"They pulled out two of my teeth and without my authorization, they put a chip in my mouth and listened to my conversations. But my husband saw that it was in (the mouth) and the dentist does not want to take it out". more with video

The Last Thing I Wanted to See...

In the parking lot,
after completing a TSCM bug sweep...

Spy History: Did Lucille Ball's Fillings Help Capture Japanese Spies?

Here is the comedienne relating this anecdote to talk show host Dick Cavett in 1974:

But is this story true? 

That assessment hinges on two elements: Did Lucille Ball really pick up some type of radio transmission through her dental fillings, and did that event lead to the discovery and capture of Japanese spies operating an underground radio station? Fact checked by Snopes

Russian Spy Parents Reveal Identity to Their Children

How would you react if you found out your parents were foreign spies from a country where you couldn’t even speak the language? 

The prisoner exchange that secured the freedom of journalists Evan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva, as well former Marine Paul Whelan and more than a dozen others from Russian captivity also generated one mind-boggling anecdote seemingly straight out of a Soviet-era spy novel.

Among those swapped were Anna Dultseva and Artyom Dultsev, Russian spies who had been posing as an Argentinian couple in Slovenia. Not even their school-age children, who spoke Spanish with their parents, knew their true origins — until the parents revealed their identities after their release on the plane to Russia. more

Security Cam Shoots Paintballs Like in 'Home Alone'

This Security Camera Shoots Paintballs at Intruders.

The track-and-shoot home security cam promises action, but we spot real-world problems after its hugely successful Kickstarter.*

What happens when you combine a paintball gun with a home security cam and smart tracking? All the potential chaos of the Eve PaintCam, an ambitious crowdsourced security camera equipped with smart detection -- and a paintball firing system to mark and scare away intruders.

From creator OZ-IT on Kickstarter and elsewhere, the Eve PaintCam wants people to live out their fantasies of total property control. It even promises face detection to avoid hitting friends (or specifically to hit friends, depending on your mood). more

* Be aware that some Kickstarter projects never materialize, and its use is probably illegal where you live.

Spycam in Aircraft Toilet - Who's to Blame?

A law firm tried to blame a 9-year-old girl for not noticing an iPhone camera a former American Airlines flight attendant secretly taped to a toilet seat.

American Airlines has replaced the law firm that told a judge a 9-year-old girl was negligent in not noticing there was a camera phone taped to the seat in an airplane lavatory.

The change in lawyers came after Wilson Elser said in a court document that any harm to the girl could be blamed on her “fault and negligence” for using the lavatory, “which she knew or should have known contained a visible and illuminated recording device.” 

An airline spokesperson confirmed Friday that the Wilson Elser law firm is no longer defending American in a lawsuit filed by the girl’s family.

A former American flight attendant is accused of luring girls to use the lavatory after taping his iPhone to the toilet seat and explaining that the seat was broken. Estes Carter Thompson III, who was fired by American, pleaded not guilty this week to attempted sexual exploitation of children and possession of images of child sexual abuse. more

Weird Spy News - MI6 Thanks Russian State Television for its “Help”

The head of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency has thanked Russian state television for its “help” encouraging Russians to spy for the U.K. after it translated and broadcast part of a speech he gave earlier this year in which he called on Russians to “join hands with us.”

Anchor Maria Butina — herself a former Russian spy — included the clip at the top of a program about Richard Moore, the head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6.

Moore gave the speech in July at the British Embassy in Prague where he openly encouraged Russians faced with “the venality, infighting and sheer callous incompetence of their leaders” to spy for Britain. more

FutureWatch: Ms. Butina mysteriously falls from a 13th Floor window.

Weirdest Spy Story of 2023?

NY Attorney Accuses Ben Affleck & Matt Damon of Stalking and Bugging Her Home

A New York attorney is suing actors Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, accusing the besties of stalking her and bugging her home to use private details of her life in their movies.

The attorney is hiding her identity as she moves forward with the bizarre case. The Daily Mail got a hold of court documents that claim the actors also hacked her devices and left the attorney in fear of being kidnapped and raped... She found a bug, saw an owl-shaped camera pointed at her home, woke to find a man in her bedroom and saw a man pointing a telescope at her after an alert that her emails had been hacked, according to the suit.

Also named in the suit are Affleck’s brother, Casey Affleck, his wife, singer/actress Jennifer Lopez, actor Kevin Smith, and disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. The suit is also targeting Dimension Films, Disney, Lionsgate, Warner Bros., and Paramount Pictures, who she is accusing of negligence for allowing harassment and plagiarism to take place. more

South Korean Spy Luck, or Pearls of Wisdom

For weeks, counterintelligence officials at South Korea's spy agency struggled to crack a tiny adversary — a locked USB stick that they believed was the key to proving that a South Korean labor activist followed orders from the North to foment unrest in the South...

The solution to this dilemma was randomly discovered by a NIS agent, who stumbled upon a string of gibberish written in the Latin alphabet that read, “rntmfdltjakfdlfkehRnpdjdiqhqoek,” in another data storage device owned by Seok. 

When the NIS agent typed out Korean letters in the same locations on a computer keyboard as these Latin letters in the same order, they spelled out, “Even three sacks of pearls only turn into treasure if you weave them together.”

The Korean proverb proved key to uncovering the cipher officials needed to crack the USB and the word document inside it. more

Fishy Spy News, or Flipper Flips Sides

Russia's navy is using trained dolphins to step up security at its Sevastopol Black Sea fleet base, according to UK intelligence. The mammals are intended to "detect and counter" enemy divers, British intelligence reported.

Last month, the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries advised beachgoers to "avoid contact" with a well-known beluga whale that's suspected of being used for Russian espionage. The warning came in response to the whale's travels to a densely populated area, putting him at far greater risk of injury or death. The whale, nicknamed Hvaldimir, became famous in 2019 after it was spotted wearing a specially made harness with mounts for a camera, leading to the "Russian spy" allegations. more

Alleged Russian 'Spy' Whale Spotted in Sweden

An alleged former Russian spy whale has been spotted off the coast of Sweden... 

Having spent years travelling slowly southwards from Norway's far north, the whale has sped up his movements out of Norwegian waters in recent months. 

OneWhale said the reason behind his sudden hastiness was unclear... 

He was discovered wearing a harness fitted with a GoPro camera mount and clips bearing the inscription "Equipment of St Petersburg". more

Top Harvard Scientist: Alien mothership might be spying on us from orbit...

Prof Avi Loeb claims we shouldn't dismiss the possibility that we have already been visited by extraterrestrial life.

It’s a conspiracy theory so prevalent it has entered the mainstream. Everyone, it seems, has heard of the idea that the US government is sitting on proof that extraterrestrials exist and have been visiting Earth for decades.

It’s easy to dismiss such stories, but seriously, could there be even a small amount of truth in it? Could extraterrestrial probes really be functioning near Earth? We don’t know. But Harvard astronomer Prof Avi Loeb’s Galileo Project aims to investigate... more

Non-Disclosure Agreements That End Up in the Toilet

The need for a Non-Disclosure Agreement used to be a hard pill to swallow. Not anymore. NDA is an edible confidentiality agreement that protects all information exchanged within 30 minutes of ingestion.

Contract Summary
NDA is an edible non-disclosure agreement that protects in perpetuity all information exchanged within 30 minutes of ingestion. Every NDA is comprised of a size 00 gelatin capsule imprinted with a QR code leading to this website and filled with powder made from copies of this agreement printed onto rice paper with ingestible ink. NDA can be executed by any number of people at once. Simply provide every party with their own capsule before executing the agreement. Parties can extend the duration of effect by consuming additional NDA. more

The Rest of the Story: US Government Has Been Dancing...

...Around UFOs for 75 Years

A legacy of hype, hysteria and fraud is undermining legitimate inquiry into those strange objects in the sky, whether you call them spy balloons, flying saucers or unidentified aerial phenomena...

...on June 24, 1947, when Kenneth Arnold, a businessman and pilot, spotted nine objects flying at unfathomable speed near Mount Rainier in Washington.

Arnold dutifully reported these to aviation officials. When pressed to describe the movement of the curious craft, he likened it to “a saucer skipping across the water.” This initial report went out across the news wires. Bored reporters eager to make something of the story ran with it, inventing details along the way.

In a few days, journalists had turned Arnold’s movement metaphor into something more material: a “flying saucer.” Arnold complained to veteran journalist Edward Murrow that newspapers had “misunderstood and misquoted me,” but to no avail. The idea of a flying saucer immediately captured the nation’s imagination, sparking a flood of alleged sightings. more  (Klaatu would not approve.)

Tin Foil Hats - When it is Not All in Your Mind

Tin Foil Hats - When it is Not All in Your Mind

"Well, shut my mouth!"

In the name of protecting your conversations...

Shiftall's Mutalk believes it can help.

The device looks like an eerie tech version of a mouth gag, but it's actually meant to help you talk more easily in the virtual and work worlds you may be interacting with. It calls itself a "soundproof Bluetooth microphone that makes it difficult for others to hear your voice and at the same time, makes it difficult for ambient noise to enter the microphone."

French startup Skyted created a similarly sound-absorbing mask to ensure privacy on calls while in crowded and noisy places. It looks more like a bulky version of the reusable masks we've all grown accustomed to during the pandemic, but Skyted says it absorbs 80% of voice vibration and directs it instead through a wireless Bluetooth connection to our phones or computers.

"My original concept was from a transportation perspective, as I focused on how we could keep the human voice from traveling to keep calls private, silent and confidential," Skyted CEO Stéphane Hersen said in a statement when announcing his device. more

EXTRA CREDIT

FutureWatch: More Progress on the Electronic Dog Nose - TSCM Potential

Recap #1: Device can detect distress signals from plants that are harmed, under attack It turns out the best way to hear a plant scream is to smell it. (10/17/2008) more

Recap #2: Specially trained dogs have been used to sniff out covert electronic items, like cell phones in prisons, for quite a while now. The secret to detection is the device's electronic circuit boards. They contain these compounds: triphenylphosphine oxide (TPPO) and hydroxycyclohexyl phenyl ketone (HPK). This second compound is also found on CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, the old tech floppy disks. (5/18/2021) more

The latest development:
Researchers use biomimicry to enhance particle detection 16-fold by sniffing like dogs. more

FutureWatch: Technical Surveillance Countermeasures (TSCM) professionals have many types of technologies at their disposal for detecting illegal electronic surveillance devices. To name a few... Non-Linear Junction Detection, Infrared Thermography, and Radio-frequency Spectrum Analysis. We are now well on our way to adding EDN to our kit.

Spy Christmas Present: George Orwell Lamp

Probably not a good gift for your paranoid Aunt. 

Seen recently on eBay.

Best Opening Line of a Scam Email Ever (off topic)

Dear Friend, 

I am enchanted using this tremendous opportunity to converse with you in this medium of communication....

From, Mr. James Mensa, the accounting manager in the Bank of Africa Ltd., Ghana... offering me "US$4.6million us dollars." I declined the money, however the opening sentence is priceless. I'm stealing that for my own use. ~Kevin

From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave Us...

"Gloworm" Eavesdropping and Air-Gaped Computer Hacks

After a long day at work, the modern goldfish no longer has to take public transportation home—it can drive via a fish-operated vehicle (FOV), according to new research published in Behavioural Brain Research.

Documented in a report published in the February 2022 issue of the peer-reviewed journal, researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, Israel, set out to unpack how well goldfish can navigate terrestrial environments when tasked with the right tools. They created a small camera-equipped fish tank on wheels, which they call an FOV, and put six goldfish in it, one at a time. 

The fish managed to avoid dead ends and correct inaccuracies... Goldfish navigate land very well, it turns out. more 

(Next up, Exocoetidaes in airplanes.)