Art Imitates Life at AB Surveillance Solutions, LLC... well, maybe not your life.

"This House Has People In It" showcases the CCTV products of AB Surveillance Solutions, LLC in a very bizarre way...


Some things can't wait until the month ends. ~Kevin

Police Training Eagles to Intercept Drones

UK - The Metropolitan Police has confirmed it is considering using eagles to capture unauthorised remote controlled drones following a successful trial by Dutch police... 

A 2014 inquiry led by Sir David Omand, the former head of intelligence agency GCHQ, highlighted the serious risks posed by the devices. "Crowds at sporting events or rallies could be vulnerable if a future terrorist group were to look for means of dispersing chemical or biological agents," the report said.

Dutch police teamed up with Guard From Above, a raptor-training security firm, to teach the birds how to hunt and intercept drones. "It's a low-tech solution to a high-tech problem," Dennis Janus, a spokesman for the Netherlands' national police, said. more

Spys with Balls - "Life's Good"

LG just unveiled its new G5 smartphone, 
and with it a bunch of accessories, including this: the LG Rolling Bot, a ("drunken headless") BB-8-type device that can come equipped with a camera and can be controlled (via the LG G5, of course) from anywhere.

So, basically, a thing for spying, right? Is there anything else that this could be for?

If you are in the market for a smartphone accessory that will make it a lot easier for you to spy on people, check out this spherical robot... but also maybe don't. more

Slow News Day in Spiesville

Disorder Convinced This Guy His Cat Was a Spy
You may have heard of Capgras syndrome, an eerie delusion that convinces people their loved ones have been replaced with nefarious clones. This is like that, only eerier: Due to what appeared to be a version of that syndrome, a 71-year-old man became “obsessed” with the idea that his cat had recently been replaced with an impostor cat, sent by the FBI to spy on him. The man’s ordeal was recently reported by the Discover blog Neuroskeptic, drawing from the case study in the journal Neurocase.

The Patient: This man, who is not named, had a history of heavy drinking and head injuries from his ice-hockey days; he had also been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. About six years before the cat-related delusion began, he stopped taking his anti-psychotics and soon became “acutely paranoid." The case-report authors write that he would pass his wife "written notes stating that their house was being monitored, and often mistook persons in parking lots for Federal Bureau of Investigation agents.” more

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Edward Snowden inspires spy video game

A new video game aiming to expose “suffocating privacy invasions” carried out by intelligence agencies has drawn some of its inspiration from controversial National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The game, called “Need to Know,” requires players to climb the ranks of the fictional “Department of Liberty,” a government agency seemingly based on the NSA, whose mass surveillance programs Mr. Snowden exposed through leaks in 2013, Newsweek reported.

Players must decide whether to spy on citizens to gain information or leak intel from the department to underground media groups.

The game was developed by Australia-based Monomyth Games. The company hopes to raise $29,000 through crowdfunding to complete the game.

“Electronic surveillance is a huge issue for everyone today, and will only grow more pressing,” the game’s Kickstarter page reads. “Need to Know lets you spy on citizens’ texts, emails, geodata, and much more. How you’ll use this information is where the real excitement (and moral conflict) begins.” more

Spies Accused of Winging It, or A Very Sordid Sortie

Israel Nature and Parks Authority officials are pleading for the release of a vulture after residents of a southern Lebanese town captured the bird, claiming it was being used for spying. 

Lebanese media reported that the bird – allegedly carrying Israeli spy equipment -- was caught Tuesday to prevent it from attacking citizens in the town of Bint Jbail, according to the Jerusalem Post...

Israeli officials said the bird was released in the Gamla Nature Reserve about a month ago after arriving from Spain in 2015. The bird, outfitted with a transmitter, was brought to Israel in hopes to increase its local population, the officials added. more

P.S. They came to their senses and released the vulture.

From those wonderful people who like back doors...

US - A hacker appears to have broken into personal accounts of the nation’s top spy chief.

The reported teenager is part of the group that hacked into CIA Director John Brennan’s personal emails last year and is using the new access for pro-Palestinian activism. According to Vice Motherboard, which broke the news on Tuesday, the hacker claimed to have broken into a personal email and phone account of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and his wife. more

Buy Banksy Spy Art - Get a free House

Consider yourself a bargain hunter with a penchant for modern art? Well why not buy a Banksy mural for just £210,000 ($304,900 UDS) and to sweeten the deal the owner will throw in a three-bedroom house.

A property in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, featuring the artist's Spy Booth piece is on the market after its stressed owner said he was sick of the circus caused by the mural.

Spy Booth shows three 1950s-style agents, wearing brown trench coats and trilby hats, using devices to tap into conversations at a telephone box. more - with video

click to enlarge

Surveillance Cameras Get Twittered

There is an air of mystery when you first notice @FFD8FFDB...

The Twitter bot tweets a grainy, context-free picture escorted by a line of peculiarly formatted gibberish every few minutes.

Only after you begin digging into the actual working of the bot that it becomes clear that the project is developed on a profoundly disquieting foundation that throws light on one of the major privacy escapes in the modern telecommunication set-up.

Basically, the software behind @FFD8FFDB browses the Internet for webcams whose operators have left them unsafe, taking screenshots from the feeds, and then tweets them. more

Time to check your surveillance cameras for password protection. ~Kevin

Irony Alert: Video Voyeur Sentenced - He Was Caught Spying by Spying

Former Border Patrol agent Armando Gonzalez was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison for planting a hidden camera in the women’s restroom at a Chula Vista Border Patrol facility. 

The camera, which Gonzalez used to violate the privacy of female employees who used the restroom, was discovered when he made reference to it in an email sent from his personal account to a friend and fellow voyeur-cam enthusiast...

Back Stories...

• Department of Homeland Security’s surveillance of private emails credited with discovery of Border Patrol agent’s hidden camera voyeurism...
• Further, drone footage taken through Mr. Gonzalez’s bedroom window clearly shows him viewing the camera’s digital feed on this personal computer. more

Spy for Art's Sake

Spy vs. Spy: Tech-Savvy Swiss Duo Bitnik Refines the Art of Espionage

‘I’ve hijacked your surveillance camera. How about a game of chess?” The words filled a closed-circuit television screen that only seconds before had shown commuters in London’s Charing Cross station.

Whichever security guard read the message soon saw it replaced by a chessboard and the words: “You are white. I am black. Call me or text me to make your move. This is my phone number: 075 8246 0851.”

In the heart of the world’s most surveilled city, two artists were registering their polite protest with the help of a laptop and an interfering transmitter. Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoj Smoljo, a Swiss team known as !Mediengruppe Bitnik, have been co-opting the spy’s arsenal to practice their own, artistic style of counter-espionage...

 

Artists and spies are loners, operating on the margins. They observe, gather intelligence, surgically intervene, and detect and disseminate artifice. They try to stay ahead of everyone else. more

Vintage Spy Camera Auction in Hong Kong

An incredible archive of rare vintage spy cameras that would rival James Bond's own collection has emerged for sale for £400,000.

Among the rarities is one of only two existing examples of the Lucky Strike Spy Camera developed for the US Signal Corps between 1949 and 1950. The camera, made by the Mast Development Corp, was built to fit inside the outer wrapper from a packet of Lucky Strike cigarettes. Despite its size it was capable of taking 18 x 16mm still photographs with varying shutter speeds, but ultimately it was rejected. It is worth around £43,000. more

The Newest Anti-Espionage Agents... Monks & Nuns!?!?

China is training Buddhist monks and nuns in Tibet to carry out anti-espionage operations

along the remote Sino-Indian border to prevent attempts to create "conflict" by "ethnic separatists", in a veiled reference to the Dalai Lama and his supporters.

"Twenty-two monks and nuns from three temples in Nyingchi, a city in southeastern Tibet, close to the Sino-Indian border, received the three-hour lecture at Lamaling Temple on the counter-espionage law by local and national security officials," state-run news portal Tibet.Cn reported.

The lecture conducted in the Himalayan region along the border with India was about how to abide by the counter-espionage law and the legal consequences of violating the law, it said. more 

Slurpee Sound Cups - Now Imagine a Cup Made with Wiretaps

By now, you probably know all about 7 Eleven's Bring Your Own Cup Day, the minimart's annual event during which anyone can bring practically any sort of container into the store and fill it up with Slurpee, all for the same low price.
Well, earlier this fall during BYO Cup Day in Australia, 7 Eleven, along with its agency Leo Burnett Melbourne, took the cup idea up a notch by allowing consumers to fill up radio ads with Slurpee.

Come again? Yes, radio ads became drink containers in the inventive campaign "Slurpee Sound Cup" campaign. 7 Eleven took the sound waves of three radio spots, themed around Viking opera, Brazilian soccer fans and randy whales, and transformed them into a series of distinctive 3D-printed vessels that were given away to Slurpee fans for the big day. Consumers could also download the 3D files and make the cups themselves. video

Police vs Spy Blimp in PA - Shotguns Preveil

PA - State police used shotguns Thursday to deflate a wayward military surveillance blimp that broke loose in Maryland and floated for hours before coming down into trees in the Pennsylvania countryside.

Curious residents trickled into a staging area as the military began gathering up some 6,000 feet of tether, the blimp’s huge hull and a smaller tail piece, a process expected to take at least through Friday.

The white behemoth still had helium in its nose when it went down in a steep ravine on Wednesday afternoon, and the easiest way to drain the gas was to shoot it, U.S. Army Captain Matthew Villa said. State police troopers peppered the blimp with about 100 shots. more How it all started.

Spycam Ejection

Australia - A Brisbane landlord has been slammed for installing CCTV cameras inside his rental property and spying on his tenants, who he evicted once they complained.

Renters Ben and Lila - who withheld their surnames - told Channel Nine's A Current Affair they noticed they were being recorded on the first day they moved into their new apartment.

The security camera was set up in the lounge room, switched on and recording.

According to the program, the furious flatmates immediate flicked the switch on the camera, before they were contacted by the landlord who said they had to turn it back on.  more video

The 'Spy in a Bag' Case Continues

Gareth Williams was blackmailed with 'staged photos in Las Vegas hotel room' by Russian spies, claims former KGB agent...

A former KGB major says he believes Gareth Williams was murdered by Russian hit men as the MI6 spy refused to become a double agent, even after they blackmailed him by taking compromising, staged photographs.

The former major and intelligence officer Boris Karpichkov, who was exiled from Russia and now lives in the UK with a new identity, told his version of events to The Daily Mail. He claims to have a source high up in Russian intelligence services.

Mr William’s dead body was found locked in a bag in his Pimlico flat in 2010. He has been a codebreaker at GCHQ but at the time was on secondment to MI6 at their offices in Vauxhall, London. more

Baseball Eavesdropping - Apparatus for Transmitting Sound from a Baseball Field - US Patent #3045064

Filed June 1, 1959 by James S. Sellers, and granted July 17, 1962, this patent was for a system of hidden microphones, concealed within the bases on a baseball diamond. Apparently, the transmission of foul language was not a consideration.

Click to enlarge.

from the patent...
"It is highly desirable for the spectators at a baseball game to hear what is transpiring on the playing field, such as arguments at the bases between opposing players, and discussions between the umpires and players. By transmitting the sounds from the playing field to the grandstand, the spectators feel that they are taking part in the game. Also, it enables the spectators to judge a play better as they can hear the baseball strike the glove or mitt of a player.

Click to enlarge.

It is an object of my invention to provide apparatus for transmitting sound from a baseball field which is positioned beneath a base on a baseball field and does not interfere in any manner with the playing of the game.

It is a further object of my invention to provide apparatus for transmitting sound from a baseball field in which a resilient pad or support for the base is formed of a greater surface area than the base and has perforations or apertures in the area adjacent the base whereby sound may be transmitted through the perforations to a microphone there beneath.

An additional object of my invention is to provide a rigid support for the resilient pad to which the pad and the base may be secured to retain them in position, and with the rigid support having openings to permit the passage of sound there through to a microphone positioned there beneath." more

NEW Cyber-Flashing - Thus proving there is a first time for everything.

Police are investigating a "new" crime of cyber-flashing after a commuter received an indecent image on her phone as she traveled to work. The victim received two pictures of an unknown man's (you know what) on her phone via Apple's Airdrop sharing function.

Lorraine Crighton-Smith, 34, said she felt "violated" and reported it to the British Transport Police (BTP). Supt Gill Murray said this particular crime was new to her force and urged people to report any other incidents. more

Four Things You Didn’t Know Could Be Hacked

At two big hacking conferences in Las Vegas over the past week, security pros revealed new vulnerabilities in daily items we never considered security risks. These events serve as annual displays of the latest hacking tricks.

Rifles 
The Austin, Texas-based company TrackingPoint makes auto-aiming rifles that increase a shooter’s accuracy and have Wi-Fi connectivity. Within the 100- to 150-feet range of the Wi-Fi and using a mobile phone, a hacker can compromise the weapon and change the target of the shooter, says Runa Sandvik, one of the researchers who presented at the annual hacker gathering Def Con last week.

In a demonstration for Wired, Sandvik and a research partner finagled with a rifle’s software to shift aim 2.5 feet to the left, hitting a different target...

Electronic skateboards 
Electric skateboards can make your ride smoother — until the board no longer listens to your controls and throws you off. Two researchers developed a hack they dubbed “FacePlant,” which gave them total control over digital skateboards by manipulating the Bluetooth connection.

An attacker could force the skateboard to connect to a laptop and then stop the board, alter its direction or disable its brakes.

Death records 
It’s pretty simple to kill someone off — at least on paper — Chris Rock, chief executive officer and founder of the security company Kustodian, showed in a presentation at Def Con. Using information found online, anyone can complete state electronic death records, Rock found, and then register to become a funeral director online to complete a certificate of death.

Why kill someone off officially, but not physically? For revenge against an ex-partner or a jerk boss, according to Rock’s presentation, or to enjoy the insurance benefits or access elderly parents’ estates.

Teslas
We already know that the modern car is like a smartphone on wheels in that it’s susceptible to hack attacks like any other connected device... What they found: Teslas are, in fact, built with more security in mind than the average vehicle. But they also found several vulnerabilities, and were able to remotely open and close trunks, lock and unlock doors and stop a Tesla, depending on what speed it was being driven at.

The researchers worked with Tesla, and Tesla automatically pushed an update to all the cars so drivers could patch the vulnerabilities within one to two weeks — unlike other car companies, which have had to issue recalls on vehicles with security flaws.  more

Bad Year for Former Spy Chiefs ... and it's only August

Chile - Gen. Manuel Contreras, who headed the feared spy agency that kidnapped, tortured and killed thousands during Chile's military dictatorship, died late Friday at a military hospital while serving a combined sentence of more than 500 years for crimes against humanity. He was 86. more 2013... former spy chief, Gen. Odladier Mena, commits suicide before transfer from luxury jail. more

Bulgaria - Former head of Bulgaria's National Intelligence Service Kircho Kirov was sentenced on Friday to 10 years in prison on corruption charges. The court said on Friday that Kirov received the minimum sentence possible under Bulgarian law, adding that half of his assets would be confiscated. more

South Korea - South Korea’s Supreme Court has ordered the retrial of the country’s former spy chief, who was jailed in February, in a development likely to ease political pressure on President Park Geun-hye. more

Burundi - The Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma has expressed shock at the assassination of Burundi’s General Adolphe Nshimirimana, a former army Chief of Staff and head of Burundi’s intelligence service. more

Libya - A Libyan court has sentenced to death former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi and deposed dictator Muammar Gaddafi's last prime minister, Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi, for "genocide" during the 2011 revolt against his rule, the Lana news agency said on Tuesday. more

UK - Former MI5 chief warned of political embarrassment risk over child abuse claims more

Argentina - Carlos Menem, the flamboyant former president of Argentina, has gone on trial for orchestrating a cover-up of his country's worst ever terrorist attack. ... Hugo Anzorreguy, former spy chief, was not in court either – but was following the proceedings by video conference from his hospital bed. more

US - Barack Obama's former spy chief has admitted that drones are causing "more damage than good" and that US prisons in Iraq "absolutely" helped in radicalising young Iraqis who later joined al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn also called the US invasion of Iraq a "strategic mistake," according to reports. more

China - China's former security chief has been given a life sentence for corruption charges following a secret trial, seen as a victory for President Xi Jinping's anti-graft campaign. more

Syria - Rustom Ghazali, Syria's last chief of intelligence in Lebanon who was a suspect in the killing of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, has died in Damascus, Lebanese media reported. A Lebanese source with ties to Damascus also said that Ghazali had died on Friday. The cause and circumstances of his death were not immediately clear. There was no mention of his death on state media and the Syrian government made no statement. more

Colombia - The former head of Colombia's intelligence service was sentenced to 14 years in prison on Thursday for spying on opposition lawmakers, judges and journalists in one of the biggest scandals to mar the government of ex-President Alvaro Uribe. more

Turkey - Turkey's powerful former intelligence chief was on Monday reappointed head of the secret service after dropping a bid to run for parliament in upcoming elections (smell a rat?), a government spokesman said... more

Rwanda - Rwanda has angrily condemned the arrest of the country’s intelligence chief, Karenzi Karake, by British authorities acting on a Spanish indictment... Metropolitan police say Karenzi Karake is wanted in Spain in connection with alleged massacres in wake of 1994 Rwandan genocide more (last year...) I wish we had murdered former spy chief, says Rwandan President Paul Kagame... his country’s former spy chief's body was found in Johannesburg... more

The exception seems to be... Kazakhstan's former spy chief and a presidential family guard were acquitted by an Austrian jury on Friday of double murder in a trial whose main suspect, the president's former son-in-law, was found hanged in jail. more

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