Extortionography: Executives Recorded Bragging of Cozy Government Relationships

Top executives hoping to blast open North America's largest gold and copper mine were secretly recorded describing in detail their cozy influence over US lawmakers and regulators. 

They also revealed their intentions to go far beyond what they were saying on applications for federal permits to work near the headwaters of Bristol Bay, Alaska -- one of the last great wild salmon habitats left on Earth.

"I mean we can talk to the chief of staff of the White House any time we want, but you want to be careful with all this because it's all recorded," said Ron Thiessen, CEO of Northern Dynasty Minerals, of official communications to the White House, as he himself was recorded unknowingly. "You don't want to be seen to be trying to exercise undue influence." more

What is Extortionography? You need to know. 

Women Snooping on Boyfriends Help Topple Dictator Instead

It all started in 2015 with a frantic message from a woman in Sudan who was having cold feet ten days before her wedding. The woman had a nagging feeling her husband-to-be was cheating on her, and she was desperate to find out the truth before she went through with the marriage.

She decided to reach out to her friend Rania Omer, who had won a lottery visa to become a U.S. citizen five years earlier.

Now Omer was 24 and studying at a college in Nebraska, but she still fancied herself an anti-matchmaker among her close-knit community back home in Khartoum. The friend wanted Omer’s help. Would she mind posting a photo of the potential husband to Facebook to see if other women could dig up information on him?

A few hours later, Omer had her answer: one commenter posted to say she was his wife. more

Workplace Covert Recording on the Rise

Voice activated recorder. Easy to hide.

South Korean workers fed up with bullying are being increasingly emboldened by a new tougher labor law to secretly record alleged abuse or harassment by their bosses, boosting sales of high-tech audio and video devices.

Gadgets disguised as leather belts, eyeglasses, pens and USB sticks are all proving popular with employees in a country where abusive behavior by people in power is so pervasive that there is a word for it - “gabjil”...

Auto Jungbo Co.’s sales of voice recorders so far this year have doubled to 80 devices per day, Jang said as he forecast sales to also double this calendar year to 1.4 billion won. more

Kevin's Tips for Management

• Assume your discussions are being recorded.
• Before proceeding, ask if they are recording.
• Be professional. If you would not say it in a courtroom, don’t say it.
• Red Flag – When an employee tries to recreate a previous conversation with you.
• Have an independent sweep team conduct periodic due diligence debugging inspections.

Create a Workplace Recording Policy

Spycam Brings Down Austrian Leader - A Cautionary Tale

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz called Saturday for an early election after his vice chancellor resigned over a covertly shot video that showed him apparently promising government contracts to a prospective Russian investor.

Two German publications, the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and the weekly Der Spiegel, published extracts Friday of a covert video purportedly showing Strache during an alcohol-fueled evening on the Spanish resort island of Ibiza offering Austrian government contracts to a Russian woman, purportedly the niece of a Russian oligarch and interested in investing large amounts of money in Austria.

In his resignation statement Saturday, Strache apologized but said he was set up in a “political assassination” that illegally used surveillance equipment. more

Hey Politicos. Better learn how to detect spycams.

“Son, go for it...I will kick your (expletive) (expletive).” An Extortionogrphy Win

FL - The president of Wichita’s teacher union has lost his defamation lawsuit against the makers of hidden-camera videos that captured him admitting to threatening a student with physical violence. 

A federal judge in Florida ruled against Steve Wentz, president of United Teachers of Wichita, and in favor of Project Veritas in connection to videos that were secretly recorded at a Florida hotel bar and a Panera restaurant in Kansas. Project Veritas describes its work as non-profit journalism that investigates and exposes corruption.

In the video, Wentz describes an episode with a former student in which he asked the student to stay after class, locked the door and pulled the shades down.

“You want to kick my (expletive)? You really think I’m a (expletive)?” Wentz says in the video. “Son, go for it. I’ll give you the first shot. But be sure to finish what you start because if you don’t, I guarantee you, I will kick your (expletive) (expletive).” more 

Corporate Security Alert:
Extortionography can be as devastating as audio eavesdropping, especially when targeted against private sector businesses. 

Tip: Conduct searches for electronic surveillance devices (Technical Surveillance Countermeasures, aka TSCM) on a regular basis. At the very least, have a written Recording in the Workplace Policy in effect.

Extortionography: Hilton Facing $100 Million Lawsuit Over Spycam Incident

A Chicago woman says she's traumatized for life because of what happened to her inside an Albany hotel room. That woman is suing the hotel chain for $100 million. 

The alleged incident happened in July 2015, but the alleged victim didn't find out about it until about two months ago. Now, she's scared for her life.

The woman had just graduated from Albany Law School. She was staying in town so that she could take the New York State Bar Exam.

Inside her hotel room, someone allegedly placed a hidden camera in her bathroom that recorded her taking a shower. The video was then posted on numerous X-rated websites.

Later there were blackmail attempts. The emailer wanted thousands of dollars to remove the video from the internet. more

Note to Hilton: A proactive due diligence defense costs about $25.00 per hotel, a price Hilton cannot afford... to pass up.

A Spycam Backlash in South Korea

South Korea - Thousands of women wearing red shirts endured the suffocating heat... to protest against the illegal filming of women...

According to South Korean police, a total of 5,363 hidden camera crimes occurred last year*, and similar crimes are still occurring.

Last month, a high school boy was caught filming in a girl’s restroom. Separately, a man in his 30s who sold 2,845 videos illegally filmed in public restrooms was caught as well...

Hidden camera cases coming up over and over again has forced women to become more cautious about using public restrooms. They have come up with ways to spot hidden cameras, such as filling in any holes they find in restrooms and turning off all the lights in bathrooms to check for camera lights.

The organizers, who asked reporters not to ask demonstrators any questions, let their chants and pickets do the talking.
The first protest of the "Inconvenient Courage" kicked off in May, drawing more than 10,000 protestors. And the second and third protests drew another 15,000 and 18,000, respectively.

Saturday's protests, according to the organizers, nearly quadrupled those numbers. more

* This is only the discovered and reported incidents. Most are never discovered.

Social Meddling on Social Media

The massive trove of Facebook ads House Intelligence Committee Democrats released Tuesday provides a stunning look into the true sophistication of the Russian government’s digital operations during the presidential election. 

...a swath of empirical and visual evidence of Russia’s disinformation campaign, in the form of more than 3,000 incredibly specific and inflammatory ads purchased by an Internet troll farm sponsored by the Kremlin.

The ads clearly show how Russia weaponized social media, the senior Democrat on the panel investigating Moscow’s interference in the presidential election said. more

Extortionography: Group Planted an Intern to Take Covert Video

The American Phoenix Foundation — a now-defunct conservative activist group known for attempting undercover stings of lawmakers and lobbyists — planted an intern in a Texas state lawmaker’s office during the 2013 legislative session in an effort to expose misdeeds, testimony in federal court revealed Thursday.

Shaughn Adeleye, testifying in Houston in the federal fraud case against former U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, said in court Thursday that he was planted in the office of state Rep. James White to obtain footage of the Hillister Republican engaged in “fraud and abuse” and also in more mundane activities like cursing or failing to tidy his messy car... more

What is Extortionography?

Extortionography and the Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens Felony Indictment

Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, who was once considered a rising star in the Republican Party, has been under siege since January, when accusations emerged that he threatened to use a nude photo to blackmail his former hairstylist, with whom he was having an extramarital affair.

Greitens had allegedly threatened the woman by saying he would distribute a nude photo he had secretly taken of her if she exposed their relationship.

The accusations stemmed from a covert recording by the woman’s ex-husband published by KMOV in St. Louis, in which the woman is heard describing how Greitens invited her to his home in 2015 and, with her consent, taped her hands to exercise rings and blindfolded her. He then allegedly took a photo of her naked. more

What is extortionography?

A Win for Whistleblowers - Ag-Gag Law Gagged

The U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho struck down Idaho’s “ag-gag” law, which criminalized undercover investigations in which animal cruelty was filmed and publicized.

A coalition of animal right groups and activists challenged the law, and the Reporters Committee led a coalition of sixteen news organizations in filing an amicus brief in December, arguing that the law infringed on constitutionally protected newsgathering rights.

The law, Idaho Code § 18-7042, created the new criminal felony offense of “interference with agricultural production,” which occurs when a person, among other things, entered an agricultural production facility by misrepresentation and made audio or video recordings of the facility’s operations. It was enacted in early 2014 after animal rights activists aired videos of workers using a tractor to drag cows with chains around their necks, while also beating and kicking them.

Chief Judge B. Lynn Winmill condemned the law as an unconstitutional ban on valuable political speech on food and worker safety, which are matters of public concern.

“§18-7042 seeks to limit and punish those who speak out on topics relating to the agricultural industry, striking at the heart of important First Amendment values,” the opinion states. “The effect of the statute will be to suppress speech by undercover investigators and whistleblowers concerning topics of great public importance: the safety of the public food supply, the safety of agricultural workers, the treatment and health of farm animals, and the impact of business activities on the environment.” more

Covert Video Leaves Business Running Around Like a Chicken with its...

TN - Koch Foods on Wednesday denied its Chattanooga processing plant is inhumanely treating chickens by scalding the birds alive and shackling them upside-down before slicing open their throats, wings and chests while still conscious.

The allegations by animal protection group Mercy for Animals...
 

The Los Angeles-based group released covert video that it said was taken inside the Koch Chattanooga plant and another operation in Mississippi, complaining that workers are also cruelly throwing chickens and hiding cockroaches from federal inspectors.

The video, narrated by The Simpsons co-creator Sam Simon, demanded that Illinois-based Koch adopt new animal welfare standards to prevent future abuse. (more) 

P.S. Last year, Tennessee legislators enacted what critics dubbed an “ag-gag” bill they charged was intended to prevent investigations similar to the Mercy for Animals undercover operations as well as one that targeted Tennessee Walking Horse industry abuse.

Republican Gov. Bill Haslam vetoed the bill after getting deluged with complaints, including a plea from country music star Carrie Underwood.

Capital One Bank Settles in $3 Million Wiretp Law Suit (Now we know what's in cardholder's wallets.)

A putative class of Capital One Bank NA cardholders in five states have secured a $3 million settlement of claims that the bank covertly recorded outbound customer service calls, according to documents filed Monday in California federal court.

 The pact puts to rest a suit over the bank’s alleged violations of California’s Invasion of Privacy Act and the similar two-party consent laws of Florida, Maryland, Nevada and New Hampshire. (more)

Is your organization doing any recording? What's in your policy?

Turkish Watergate - First Audio Eavesdropping Tapes - Now Video

Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose government has been ensnared by a series of anonymously leaked audio tapes of purported corruption, said his administration may face a new threat from covertly recorded video recordings.

“In these incidents, there is not just wiretapping, there is also filming,” Erdogan said in Ankara yesterday, according to state-run Anatolia news agency. “It’s even been stretched to the extreme of filming extramarital affairs, invading a family’s privacy and totally ignoring moral values.”

Speaking to local reporters after the release of audio tapes that the opposition said placed Erdogan at the center of a bribery scheme, the premier lashed out at the tactics. (more)

Covert Animal Cruelty Videos Induced Gags - Result... Ag Gag Bill No Gag

ID - Milk producers convinced state senators Tuesday to back a bill aiming to halt spying on their operations, a measure prompted by animal activists who captured cruelty at a southern Idaho dairy on film in July 2012.

The Agricultural Affairs Committee voted to back what proponents called an "agricultural security measure" — and what foes branded a heavy-handed and punitive response to groups seeking to expose horrendous abuses.

The industry-backed bill now goes to the full Senate for a vote. A Democrat, Sen. Janie Ward-Engelking of Boise, opposed the measure.

The legislation would put people who surreptitiously enter and record agricultural operations in jail for up to a year and slap them with a $5,000 fine. It would criminalize obtaining records from dairies or other agricultural operations by force or misrepresentation, as well as lying on a farm's employment application. (more)

Muckracking used to prompt decent laws...
Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968), was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle (1906). It exposed conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.[1] (more)

State Dept. caught on tape saying ‘F*** the E.U.’; Russian bugging suspected

Two senior American diplomats, thinking their conversation about the Ukraine was secure and private, were caught disparaging the European Union in a phone call that was apparently bugged, and U.S. officials say they strongly suspect Russia of leaking the conversation.

The suspicions were aired Thursday after audio of the call was posted to the Internet...

The White House and State Department stopped just short of directly accusing Russia of surreptitiously recording the call between the top US diplomat for Europe, Victoria Nuland, and the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt. But both took pains to point out that a Russian government official was the first or among the first to call attention to the audio of the conversation that was posted on YouTube. (more)

...in other not so surprising news...

A Russian government aide who was among the first to post a video online containing a bugged phone call between two U.S. diplomats denied Friday that he or the government played a role in leaking the recording.

Dmitry Loskutov said he was surfing a social networking website on Thursday when he came across the video, in which the top U.S. diplomat for Europe, Victoria Nuland, disparages the European Union. (more)

UPDATE: Ukraine's state security service on Saturday said it was not investigating the bugging of a phone call between U.S. diplomats... (no more)

Fingerprint Security Appears Risky on iPhone, and Elsewhere

Reason 1. - iPhone's fingerprint biometrics defeated, hackers claim.
Just one day after the new fingerprint-scanning Apple iPhone-5s was released to the public, hackers claimed to have defeated the new security mechanism. After their announcement on Saturday night, the Chaos Computer Club posted a video on YouTube which appears to show a user defeating Apple’s new TouchID security by using a replicated fingerprint. Apple has not yet commented on this matter, and, as far as I can tell, no third-party agency has publicly validated the video or the hacker group’s claim. In theory, the techniques used should not have defeated the sub-dermal analysis (analyzing three dimensional unique aspects of fingerprints rather than just two-dimensional surface images) that Apple was supposed to have used in its fingerprint scanner. (more)

Reason 2. - Mythbusters.



Reason 3. - When You're Busted.
Police can't compel you to spill your password, but they can compel you to give up your fingerprint.

"Take this hypothetical example coined by the Supreme Court: If the police demand that you give them the key to a lockbox that happens to contain incriminating evidence, turning over the key wouldn’t be testimonial if it’s just a physical act that doesn’t reveal anything you know.

However, if the police try to force you to divulge the combination to a wall safe, your response would reveal the contents of your mind — and so would implicate the Fifth Amendment. (If you’ve written down the combination on a piece of paper and the police demand that you give it to them, that may be a different story.)" (more)

IKEA Store Union's Covert Video Allowed

Canada - Two different panels of the BC Labor Relations Board have made findings in favor of a union’s covert video surveillance at the IKEA store in Richmond, BC. The store has operated behind a picket line since May 13.

With over 300 unionized employees on the outside looking in, and only 27 who have decided to cross the picket line, most store operations have continued. The kids’ ballroom is closed, and the 600 seat cafeteria isn’t serving up Swedish meatballs (or anything else), but otherwise the store is open and sales are being made. That has made the union suspicious that IKEA is getting work done in violation of the law against using replacement workers: - section 68 of the Labor Relations Code.

The union hired private investigators to covertly videotape activity inside the store. It then sought to rely on still pictures taken from the video of certain individuals alleged to be working in violation of section 68.

Both panels rejected IKEA’s argument that the covert video surveillance was in violation of the Privacy Act and the Personal Information Protection Act (“PIPA“) and therefore should not be admitted into evidence. The panels, deciding the cases before them independently, reached similar conclusions for similar reasons. (more)

Secret Recording of Rupert Murdoch's Staff Meeting Published

A recording from March earlier this year, obtained by investigative website Exaro, shows the 82-year-old... raging against the police and claiming that the inquiry into corrupt payments to public officials has been blown out of proportion.

Throughout the recording, which lasts about 45 minutes, the News Corp boss repeatedly accuses the police of incompetence - of being "unbelievably slow" he says at one point.

He belittles the corrupt payments issue. And for anyone convicted over it... (more)

Isn't it time to sweep your boardroom?

Undercover Video Checks Government Waste

Undercover video shot in May by a conservative activist shows two corporate distributors of free cell phones handing out the mobile devices to people who have promised to sell them for drug money, to buy shoes and handbags, to pay off their bills, or just for extra spending cash.

The 'Obama phone,' which made its ignominious YouTube debut outside a Cleveland, Ohio presidential campaign event last September, is a project of the Federal Communications Commission's 'Lifeline' program, which makes land line and mobile phones available to Americans who meet low-income requirements. Lifeline was a $2.19 billion program in 2012. (more)