Thursday, February 15, 2024
Spybusters Tip #725: How to Find an Apple AirTag Hidden in Your Car
Friday, January 5, 2024
Disney’s AI CCTV
Sunday, September 10, 2023
FutureWatch - What the Well-Dressed Spy Will be Wearing
...SMART e-PANTS
THE FUTURE OF wearable technology, beyond now-standard accessories like smartwatches and fitness tracking rings, is ePANTS, according to the intelligence community.
The federal government has shelled out at least $22 million in an effort to develop “smart” clothing that spies on the wearer and its surroundings. Similar to previous moonshot projects funded by military and intelligence agencies, the inspiration may have come from science fiction and superpowers, but the basic applications are on brand for the government: surveillance and data collection.
Billed as the “largest single investment to develop Active Smart Textiles,” the SMART ePANTS — Smart Electrically Powered and Networked Textile Systems — program aims to develop clothing capable of recording audio, video, and geolocation data, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced in an August 22 press release. Garments slated for production include shirts, pants, socks, and underwear, all of which are intended to be washable. more
Tuesday, August 15, 2023
Baby Monitors & Smart Speakers Enabling Abuse, say MPs
The MPs say the government must tackle the situation. (hear! hear!) more
"Wireman" by Pat Spatfore (book)
The former president and chief executive officer of Secure Communications Service Inc., has completed his new book, “Wireman”: a revealing memoir that gives readers an inside look into a career in law enforcement.
Author Pat Spatafore served in the U.S. Navy as a communications technician and has been a sworn member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Secret Service, and the Drug Enforcement Administration. His specialties include electronic surveillance, criminal investigations, and security administration.
Mr. Spatafore worked for a District Attorney’s Office located in New York State and served as a criminal investigator, a senior criminal investigator, and director of the district attorney’s Narcotics Initiative Task Force, retiring at the rank of deputy chief criminal investigator. He was responsible for electronic surveillance and criminal investigations. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master’s degree. more
Wednesday, March 15, 2023
Spy History: Evolution of Aerial Spying Over the Past 200 Years
The Pentagon said it was there gathering intelligence. China said it was doing civilian research. Regardless, it was nothing new.
Governments have been spying on each other for hundreds of years...Here's how surveillance from the sky has developed over the years...
The first record of aerial surveillance happened toward the end of the 18th century. During the Revolutionary War, the French successfully used hot air balloons to monitor combat during the Battle of Fleurus against Britain, Germany, and Holland. more
Thursday, February 16, 2023
NLRB vs. Employer Surveillance of Employees
This has caught the attention of the National Labor Relations Board’s General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, who recently issued a memorandum seeking to broaden of the National Labor Relations Act (the “Act”) and limit the electronic surveillance of employees...
Thursday, January 19, 2023
Workers Foil Bosses’ Surveillance Attempts
Lisa Crawford... is wary of her computer falling asleep when she gets up to throw in a load of laundry...Her solution? Sloth TV, a live-cam of a Costa Rican wildlife rescue ranch...Ms. Crawford pulls up the stream on a second monitor. Her computer stays awake...
Mr. Dewan had learned that his computer wouldn’t go to sleep or mark him as “idle” during a presentation...
Mr. Abbas wrapped the cord of his computer mouse around a rotating desk fan. Its motion kept the mouse moving and prevented his computer from shutting down. “I logged on, went to the gym,” he says.
For workers who aren’t as handy, mouse jigglers are for sale on Amazon. “Push the button when you’re getting up from your desk and the cursor travels randomly around the screen—for hours, if needed!” says one review. more
Sunday, December 18, 2022
Students Analyze, Hack, Remove Under-Desk Surveillance Devices
Early in October, Senior Vice Provost David Luzzi installed motion sensors under all the desks at the school's Interdisciplinary Science & Engineering Complex (ISEC), a facility used by graduate students and home to the "Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute" which studies surveillance. These sensors were installed at night—without student knowledge or consent—and when pressed for an explanation, students were told this was part of a study on “desk usage," according to a blog post by Max von Hippel, a Privacy Institute PhD candidate who wrote about the situation for the Tech Workers Coalition’s newsletter.
Wednesday, December 7, 2022
PI Surveillance of Hand Injury Plaintiff Becomes 30.1 Billion Lawsuit
$11M settlement sparks $13.1B suit against American Family Insurance
A new lawsuit seeking billions of dollars in punitive damages claims AmFam and other parties illegally surveilled the plaintiff and her family...
“The AmFam defendants’ directions to the Martinelli Investigations Defendants included the mandate to have the investigators do whatever they needed to do to get surveillance of the plaintiff,” it said. “This direction was passed on to the Martinelli Investigations defendants by the Baker Donelson defendants.”
The PI defendants “unlawfully entered” Mezquitals’ property and “placed various electronic devices” on her property and two vehicles “to unlawfully record the activities of Plaintiff and her minor children. The electronic devices included at least one hidden video camera and multiple GPS tracking devices.”
The complaint said the PI team strapped a Spypoint Link-Dark “trail cam” digital camera, which is to a tree positioned to “capture plaintiff’s house, vehicles, and a portion of Plaintiff’s driveway. “The view provided by the Spypoint Link-Dark camera is not possible to obtain from a public road or from any other public property, it said. The “unlawful recordings were made without the consent of all persons observed and included photographs, videos, and electronic recordings of the activities of plaintiff and her minor children in a private place that was out of public view.”
The complaint includes claims for invasion of privacy, trespass to realty, trespass to personality, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence and punitive damages and seeks joint and several liability for all the defendants. more (Spypoint camera sales video)
Wednesday, November 30, 2022
Tiny State Buys $60 Million Surveillance System
Monday, October 31, 2022
Retail Employee Says Company Installed Illegal Audio-Recording Cameras at Work
One of those states is New York, which has implemented anti-eavesdropping statutes that protect employees' conversations from being recorded while at work.
TikToker Ethan Carlson, who posts under the handle @therealethancarlson, recently uploaded a video about his workplace's audio-enabled cameras, prompting many viewers to urge him to report his employer.
In a now viral clip, Ethan says to the camera, "This is not a f--king drill, my place of work has installed these cameras."
He then points his camera lens and zooms in to show security devices installed up high in his store. more
Wednesday, October 19, 2022
Police Use New Tool to Track People Without a Warrant
The tool enables law enforcement officers to see “patterns of life” – where and when people work and live, with whom they associate and what places they visit. The tool’s maker, Fog Data Science, claims to have billions of data points from over 250 million U.S. mobile devices. more
Thursday, September 8, 2022
Greece Wiretap and Spyware
Tuesday, August 16, 2022
Surveillance Documentary: Theo Anthony on All Light, Everywhere
Back home in Baltimore, Anthony also attends to the efforts of Ross McNutt, president of Persistent Surveillance Systems, to sell citizens on his “God’s-eye view” plane-mounted live-feed spy cams – somewhat belatedly, since the tech had previously been deployed in 2016 without disclosure even to the mayor. Now he presents a genial face in community liaison meetings, offering blandishments about providing an “unbiased witness” in “troubled cities”. As Anthony’s voiceover says over an Axon promotional video, “It feels like watching a corporation dream out loud”: the claim is objectivity, the dream is omniscience, the end game is power. One thinks of Jeremy Bentham’s all-seeing panopticon, but also of Naomi Klein’s insights in No Logo into corporate aspirations of weightless, unburdened power. more
Thursday, May 26, 2022
Why Casinos Are Spying on Their Ultra-Rich Clients
Clients, for their part, accept this Orwellian scrutiny as necessary to enhance their experience. “It’s the expectation,” says Ryan Best, the surveillance and security manager at the casino who set up its facial-recognition system up in 2018.
Monday, March 21, 2022
A History of Wiretapping in the United States
Wiretapping is nearly as old as electronic communications. Telegraph operators intercepted enemy messages during the Civil War. Law enforcement agencies were listening to private telephone calls as early as 1895. Communications firms have assisted government eavesdropping programs since the early 20th century―and they have spied on their own customers, too. Such breaches of privacy once provoked outrage, but today most Americans have resigned themselves to constant electronic monitoring.
How did we get from there to here? Hochman explores the origins of wiretapping in military campaigns and criminal confidence games, and tracks the use of telephone taps in the U.S. government’s wars on alcohol, communism, terrorism, and crime... more
Monday, February 14, 2022
An Update on AirTag and Unwanted Tracking
Apple has been working closely with various safety groups and law enforcement agencies. Through our own evaluations and these discussions, we have identified even more ways we can update AirTag safety warnings and help guard against further unwanted tracking...
Advancements Coming to AirTag and the Find My Network
The following updates represent important steps Apple is taking... more
Saturday, February 12, 2022
Ford Wants to Hide Spy Drones in Autonomous Cars
Among the many challenges facing the autonomous car industry is how to keep an eye on the condition of the vehicles while they're out and about.
Ford, which co-owns the Argo AI autonomous car company that's planning to launch a ride-hailing service soon, has now patented a way to do just that. more
Monday, January 24, 2022
Former FBI Agent & PI Conclude Jamie Spears Recorded Britney Spears in Bedroom
Based on conversations with Vlasov, Ebadi allegedly found that "Black Box was initially responsible for suggesting that a secret listening device be planted in Ms. Spears bedroom, but Mr. Spears 'loved' the idea and approved and instructed that the installation move forward." more