Tech Corner - If you WEPed then LEAPed...

...you may be in for a fall.

"Cisco LEAP authentication is a huge security risk in enterprise wireless LANs. So much attention in wireless LAN security or security in general is given to the encryption component of security that the authentication component is often neglected. If your wireless LAN is running LEAP and this document doesn't scare the living day lights out of you, it should." (more)

"Fire the retrojustification rockets, Sulu."

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Friday accused his nation's main telecommunications company of spying on him and suggested it was at the bidding of the United States. Chavez, addressing 10 South American leaders at a summit of the Mercosur trade bloc, gave no additional details.

The accusation came less than two weeks after Chavez announced he would nationalize CA Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela, known as CANTV. (more)

Man Sues Over Sperm Bank Hidden Camera

Claiming that he found a video camera hidden in the ceiling of a sperm bank's "donation room," a Los Angeles man is suing the firm for negligence and emotional distress. Ken Rigberg, 27, charges that he discovered the pinhole camera during a June 2005 visit to Pasadena's Pacific Reproductive Services. According to Rigberg's Los Angeles Superior Court complaint, a copy of which you'll find... (more)

The Street Sweeper, or...

Your Surveillance Dollars at work.

Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) automatically reads license plate numbers on stationary or moving vehicles. Using advanced camera, recognition, and database technology ALPR systems automatically capture images of vehicle license plate numbers and instantly checks those numbers against a variety of vehicle “hot lists” held in target vehicle databases. Alarms can be triggered when a “hit” (match) is detected on any given database giving the ALPR operator the opportunity to take immediate action. (more) (video)

Apple's Secret Keeping = Competitive Advantage

One of the most astonishing things about the new Apple iPhone is how Apple managed to keep it a secret for nearly two-and-a-half years of development...

Apple does make it clear to employees and business partners that they will be dismissed and possibly prosecuted for leaking company secrets. Apple has also played the bully role, suing bloggers and other independent journalists for posting purported advance information about unannounced Apple products.

Secrets - along with patents - protect Apple against competitive threats from foreign companies that have become expert at instant cloning of Apple's products and designs. (more)

Millionaire jailed for hiring crooked PI

(A story of massive illegal electronic surveillance.)
A multimillionaire (one of Britain's richest men) was jailed yesterday after hiring corrupt private detectives to tap telephone conversations and hack into computers. Adrian Kirby used the detectives to spy on environmental investigators and residents opposed to the activities of his waste disposal company.

The agency he used, which employed private investigators, serving police officers and retired detectives, operated illegally over five years until 2004.

Hundreds of telephone lines were compromised by an array of illegal snooping equipment used to reroute and record conversations. Personal banking information and “targeted” computer hacking were available to customers willing to pay thousands of pounds a time. Confidential medical notes were also obtained.

Kirby, who is on The Sunday Times Rich List, paid the agency £47,000 to monitor opponents of his company’s plans to dispose of toxic waste. (more)

Others involved as well...
Another job taken on by the London-based agency, which cannot be named for legal reasons, was an acrimonious divorce case.

Prestige bathroom company boss Anthony Waters paid them £50,000 to "spy" on his estranged wife with the help of special software to monitor everything she typed onto her laptop about the divorce proceedings and her finances.

In a third example, a Strathclyde woman asked the agency to monitor the phone calls of someone she believed had killed one of her elderly relatives to pocket a large inheritance.

Also before the court are the detective agency's "telephone interception specialists" Michael Hall, 35, of Battersea, London, and Stuart Dowling, 30, from Sittingbourne, Kent, who made some of the telephone monitoring devices, and two more of the company's clients, Adam Share, 35, of Corby Glen, Lincolnshire...

They variously admitted intercepting illegal communications and making unauthorised modifications to a computer. (more)

Ghana: VP's Office Dismisses Bugging Rumor

Ghana - The alleged bugging of the vice president’s office is generating controversy. Aides to Vice President Aliu Mahama have dismissed the surveillance reports as false. But an article published in an independent newspaper claims the discovery of sophisticated bugging gadgets in the vice president’s office at the castle in Osu, a suburb of the capital Accra. (more)

Espionage or Coincidence?

You decide...

LG said on Thursday it will start selling next month a new mobile phone that incorporates a buttonless touch-screen resembling the much-hyped iPhone from Apple. (more)

PI Agency and Clients Convicted of Wiretapping

UK - 38 months jail time was handed down to employees and clients of a London private detective agency which illegally hacked into telephone lines.

Eight people connected with the agency, which cannot be named for legal reasons, variously admitted charges of conspiring to intercept communications unlawfully...

...authorities were first made aware of the agency when it was discovered that a serving police officer, who was on sick leave citing depression, was effectively working as a full-time private investigator...

...Green roadside junction boxes had been broken into and hundreds of private lines were compromised. The agency also hacked computer systems to order to access private banking and medical information... (more)

U.S. ceases warrantless spy operation

In a surprising reversal, the White House said it would end the National Security Agency's controversial practice of domestic wiretapping without warrants – one year after the secret program was disclosed -- and agreed to give an independent court jurisdiction over such surveillance measures in the future. (more)

Cell Phone Operators Warned Against Eavesdropping

Thailand - The permanent secretary for Information and Communications Technology will Thursday summon all mobile phone service operators to warn them against eavesdropping.

ICT Minister Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom said the warning would be given after Gen Sonthi Boonyaratglin, chairman of the Council for National Security, said his phone conversation was tapped and leaked to Singapore.

Sitthichai said the permanent secretary would warn the operators that their license could be terminated if they are found to have conducted electronic eavesdropping.

Sitthichai said he would also order an investigation to find out which agencies have phone tapping equipment in possession. (more)

Wiretap Mix

Take a break.

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An Interspousal Wiretapping Conundrum

The Glazner's divorce was pending in the late 1990s, but they were still living in the same house. James put a recording device on a telephone in their home, and it recorded a number of conversations between Elizabeth and third parties. She filed a lawsuit against her (soon-to-be-ex-) husband in federal court for violating a federal law that made wiretapping illegal.

The problem, as she discovered, was that a 1974 case, Simpson v. Simpson (no . . . not those Simpsons) that was still binding in the Eleventh Circuit, had created an "implied exception" to the federal law for "interspousal wiretapping." (The judges apparently thought that married folks might have good reasons to bug their spouses, so that they couldn't sue each other when the other party - like Elizabeth - found out.) The first three judges who heard the case in 2002 agreed and upheld the dismissal of Elizabeth's case.

But then a larger panel of the Eleventh Circuit took up the case again, , and decided to revisit that 1974 decision to decide whether it had been correct. This time, in 2003, a majority of the judges who heard the case decided that the 1974 case was wrong - the wiretapping law had no explicit exception for spouses, and they not only overruled that case, but also made their decision retroactive. This meant that even though what James had done hadn't been illegal (for a damages lawsuit) when he did the wiretapping, Elizabeth's case against him could go forward.

Three judges dissented... (more)

The Tap Dance Continues

CA - Days after persuading a judge to let him represent himself at trial, indicted private investigator Anthony Pellicano is again poised to use private lawyers in his defense against federal charges of racketeering and wiretapping. (more)

And... there are rumors that in addition to re-hiring the attorney's, he is re-marrying his wife! (more)