FutureWatch: New Mobile App Fends off Espionage Attacks

Innovative technology from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the FZI Research Center for Computer Science can put an end to espionage on our cell phones.....

For example, it is possible to give apps wrapped in AVARE access to the contacts in the address book, but not to all of the stored information...

In addition, AVARE can extend the location information to a radius of several kilometers and disguise the exact location. Thus, a weather app can continue to provide reliable forecasts without knowing the exact location of the user...

The AVARE code is available as open source software on the AVARE website and the scientists hope that their program will be taken up by other developers who will help to extend the current beta version to a version 1.0. more  video (cartoon)

Cell Phone Problems Predicted in 1919

Click to enlarge.

W. K. Haselden’s 

The Pocket Telephone: When Will it Ring?

Published in The Daily Mirror Mar. 5, 1919

Well, Some Young Spies Still Learn From TV

Bart purchases a mini spy camera and manages to take a picture of Homer dancing next to stripper named Princess Kashmir at a co-worker's strip club party.

He gives copies of the picture to his friends, and eventually the picture starts to circulate around until eventually Marge sees it. She kicks Homer out of the house, but the next day explains that she is not upset about him dancing next to a woman, but rather that Bart saw it.

She demands that he take Bart and go apologize to Princess Kashmir. Homer agrees and says that he is ready to start respecting women.

PokemonGo - A data-gathering opportunity for spies.

A retired senior Russian intelligence official is warning his colleagues in the spying game to stay away from PokemonGo.

Alexander Mikhailov, a former Major-General in Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB (the successor to the Soviet KGB), says the game poses a serious national security threat in the hands of oblivious government officials or military personnel.

“Imagine, that these ‘animals,’ appear not in a park but in a secret location where the user who is a soldier or a security official takes a photo of it,” he tells RIA Novosti... “It is unlikely that intelligence agencies will pass up the chance to exploit this data-gathering opportunity,” he said...

So far at least four New York City police officers have been filmed catching Pokemon, around the city. more

Survey: Corporate Espionage Rated as a Top Risk - Assessments Become Common

A large number of companies feel the existing security standards, legal, regulatory and compliance frameworks in the industry were not adequate to support corporate security requirements, a survey by PwC India and American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS) said.

The survey revealed that cybercrime and corporate espionage have been rated as two of the most serious threats to organizations in the coming years.

More than half the respondents felt precautionary and preventive measures taken is still not adequate...

The survey also highlighted that about 73 per cent of the respondents felt that the number of security incidents had increased in the past two years and would continue over the next two years.

While five years back physical security assessment was rare and uncommon, today almost 46 per cent of the organizations surveyed conduct a physical security risk assessment once a year, whereas 17 per cent do it monthly. more

Every Goverment Has These Spy Warnings... but love is blind.

via boingboing...
In this Chinese government comic book, women are warned that mysterious foreign strangers who pitch woo at them are secretly Western spies trying to get at their government secrets.

The reader is warned that they could go to jail for 10 years if they are foolish enough to let these Lotharios trick them into revealing state secrets.

It's a charmingly sexist and xenophobic piece of work, with shades of Jack Chick. More interesting is the parallels to the materials that the US Government has produced for their own employees to warn them about the spies who might use breached data from the Office of Personnel Management to chat them up at conferences and trick them out of America's state secrets. more

You can see the full comic here. ~Kevin

The Ultimate Spy vs Spy

via Mark Frauenfelder, Boing Boing
It was a wordless one-page comic about two oddly pointy faced spies, one dressed in black and the other dressed in white. Other than their different colored outfits, they behaved identically. They hated each other and created elaborate Rube Goldberg type machines to try to kill each other. Sometimes their machines worked, often, they’d backfire. They were tricky but usually too clever for their own good.

This anthology colorizes 150 “Spy vs Spy” comics drawn by Antonio Prohías from 1961 until his death in 1987. The book also includes a collection of “Spy vs Spy” comics by the talented cartoonist Peter Kuper, who took over the strip when Prohías died. The anthology features a section of wonderful “Spy vs Spy” tribute drawings by noted cartoonists such as Peter Bagge, Bob Staake, Darwyn Cooke, Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, and Bill Sienkiewicz. There’s also a biography of the Cuban-born Prohíasm and a new 4-page color strip by MAD luminary Sergio Aragones about his friendship with Prohías. With all the new material here, this book is a must for anyone who loves “Spy vs Spy.”

Spy Vs Spy: An Explosive Celebration
by Antonio Prohías and Peter Kuper
Liberty Street, 2015, 224 pages, 8.8 x 0.8 x 11.2 inches
$16.46 at Amazon

Giving Up Privacy in the Name of Security

How The Simpsons Predicted Major League Hacking

via uproxx.com
It appears as though The Simpsons knew the St. Louis Cardinals would get caught hacking all along. In this episode “Brother’s Little Helper,” Bart Simpson takes behavioral medicine after repeatedly acting out at school. As a result, he turns into a paranoid conspiracy theorist and believes Major League Baseball is spying on his town using satellites.



His theory turns out to be true, after he shoots down an MLB satellite towards the end of the episode. The Cardinals’ Mark McGwire appears and informs the town that Major League Baseball was spying on them “pretty much around the clock.”

Then, he socks a few dingers. People love dingers. more

Corporate Espionage Cartoon

Spy Cartoon - Smoke Screen Excuse for Smoke Signal Tapping

Spy Bits

ISM Bugging Out
The revelation this week that the International Spy Museum would be once again hitting the pavement in search of a new home got us thinking: Where else in the District might work for the popular museum? (more)

ISIS Changing Name

During the premiere episode of the sixth season of Archer, FX’s outrageously funny animated spy series, spy matriarch Malory Archer is seen speaking on the phone with her juvenile, coddled son. In the background, you can see two movers rolling out a large, circular blue ISIS sign... for the past five seasons, ISIS (International Secret Intelligence Service) has been the name for the underground, non-government approved, New York City-based spy organization at the heart of the show. In light of recent events, however, creator Adam Reed along with executive producers Matt Thompson and Casey Willis—made a decision to quietly eliminate the acronym from their show. (more)

HHSC Wants Blimpies
Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said Friday that he wants to redeploy U.S. military spy blimps in Afghanistan to America’s southern border. (more) Poop on them if they don't know about this. (more)

Former NSA Head Said 
“Our data’s in there (NSA databases), my data’s in there. If I talk to an Al Qaeda operative, the chances of my data being looked at is really good, so I try not to do that. If you don’t want to you shouldn’t either,” he told MIRcon delegates. (more)

Emboldened by Their Upcoming World Cup Victory this Sunday...

Germany expelled the CIA station chief in Berlin over alleged spying by the United States which has refused to break its silence over the escalating row between the Western allies.

The expulsion came after two suspected US spy cases were uncovered in less than a week in Germany, where anger still simmers over the NSA surveillance scandal...

“The representative of the US intelligence services at the embassy of the United States of America has been told to leave Germany,” German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said. The step was highly unusual among NATO allies and underlined Berlin’s anger. (more)

Jazzpunk: A Spy Game Full Of Jokes

Jazzpunk has been nominated for the grand prize at the 2014 Independent Games Festival, is to video games what movies like Airplane!, The Naked Gun and Hot Shots are to film...

The setup is charmingly basic and silly, like the rest of the game. After an upbeat and stylized Saul Bass-inspired intro, you are plopped into your role as Polyblank, a spy for an unnamed organization helmed by a bureau chief who makes his office in a subway car and sounds like the person that delivered Ethan Hunt his impossible missions, perhaps if he was talking through a fishbowl.

With the satisfying wheeze of an obviously placed whoopee cushion, the game wastes no time letting you know you are here for the gags, not the story. (more)

   
Jazzpunk is a first-person comedy adventure game set in an alternate-reality Cold War World, plagued with Corporate Espionage, CyberCrime™, and Sentient Martinis. Gameplay is inspired by spoof comedy films and cartoons of yester-year (eg: Naked Gun, Airplane!, Hot Shots, etc), with a focus on weird gadgets, exotic locales, and open-world style exploration.

How Does Santa Know?

Last Week on Halloween

Wizard of Id... More True than They Know

And, the winner of Who's Got the Biggest Electronic Ear is...

"According to the Max Planck Institute, you're 100 times more likely to be surveilled by your own government if you live in the Netherlands or you live in Italy," Baker said. 

"You're 30 to 50 times more likely to be surveilled if you're a French or a German national than in the United States." (more)

Surveillance Humor

Eavesdropping... scanning... watching... 
Friday July 5, 2013 5:52 PM By Walt Handelsman

(Newsday) 

Obama: 'Nobody Is Listening to Your Telephone Calls'

President Barack Obama on Friday defended his administration's vast collection of emails and telephone records, saying the programs help prevent terrorist attacks while imposing only "modest encroachments" on people's privacy...

"When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls," the president said. 

 Mr. Obama made clear that his own views of such intelligence-gathering efforts have evolved since he was a candidate for the presidency in 2008. He suggested he is now more comfortable with the "trade-offs" involved in guarding against terrorism. (more)