UK - Tiny CCTV cameras could soon be used by wardens or police on the streets of Norwich as the latest weapon in the war on yobs.The devices, which are discreetly placed on officers' headwear, have been trialled in other parts of the country... the cameras could be used to capture images of youths spraying graffiti or behaving in other anti-social ways and used, if needed, as evidence.“It means people can walk around recording what's going on and gathering evidence. ... an incredibly powerful tool because youngsters don't misbehave when they are being recorded. (more)
Canada's most recognized labour movement executive says he is shocked and "extremely troubled" by news that NHL Players' Association officials allegedly accessed and in some cases blocked the email accounts of players who have challenged the hiring of union executive director Ted Saskin."Unions are supposed to be about promoting democracy and responsibility and full disclosure," Buzz Hargrove, national president of the Canadian Auto Workers, said yesterday. "I've followed what's happened in the corporate world with things like this, but you don't expect it in a union. This is incredibly shocking if it's true." [snort] (more)
"I am reasonably sure that there is no Dr. Evil at work here. Instead, I believe that this incident is a case of human nature running amuck -- a legitimate investigation that got out of hand.Based on the stories I read, this seems to have two components: 1) monitoring and recording of phone calls between Wal-Mart’s PR department and a New York Times reporter; and 2) intercepting message traffic from portable devices. In my estimation, the initial monitoring of PR calls seems very targeted -- so that may have very well been part of an official internal investigation (though it may or may not have been authorized appropriately). Indiscriminate monitoring of wireless traffic for both employees and non-employees, however, seems to be clearly out-of-bounds. This is probably the result of the "systems technician" being over-zealous." (more)
Think again...Vanderbilt professor says Wal-Mart case calls attention to employer’s right to eavesdrop on employee calls. Wal-Mart officials have said the employee in the recently reported case was not authorized to make the recordings and added that company policy restricts monitoring of employee communications to instances in which fraud or criminal activity is suspected. However, that policy is not a requirement. "We know from recent surveys by groups such as the American Management Association and others that many firms do routinely monitor employee communications that employees might think is private, without cause of suspicion," says Bruce Barry, professor of management and sociology. (more)
Professor Barry is the author of , "Speechless: The Erosion of Free Expression in the American Workplace."
CNN - The verdict by an 11 member jury comes after a nearly two year ordeal. Libby resigned from Cheney's staff in 2005, after he was charged with lying to investigators about the leak about the identity of Valerie Plame....a CIA operative. Lawyers for Libby originally stated Libby learned about Plame from Cheney, then forgot, then learned about her again from NBC's Tim Russert. The defense said Libby had a bad memory -- blaming it on his busy schedule as a top White House aide. (more)
During the first week of this story, George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh tried their creative hands at predicting what had happened, on "K-Street."
"HBO's latest groundbreaking series is an experimental fusion of reality and fiction--an entertaining, fly-on-the-wall look at government, filmed in and around the corridors of power in Washington. Starring Beltway insiders James Carville, Mary Matalin, Michael Deaver--and a host of political celebrities." We were there.
See a brief video clip of our sweep for the Valerie Plame bugs here. The full episode occasionally airs on HBO OnDemand. Full series available on DVD.
At a laboratory in Germany, volunteers slide into a donut-shaped MRI machine and perform simple tasks, such as deciding whether to add or subtract two numbers, or choosing which of two buttons to press. They have no inkling that scientists in the next room are trying to read their minds - using a brain scan to figure out their intention before it is turned into action.In the past, scientists had been able to detect decisions about making physical movements before those movements appeared. But researchers at Berlin's Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience claim they have now, for the first time, identified people's decisions about how they would later do a high-level mental activity - in this case, adding versus subtracting.While still in its initial stages, the techniques may eventually have wide-ranging implications for everything from criminal interrogations to airline security checks. And that alarms some ethicists who fear the technology could one day be abused by authorities, marketers, or employers. (more)
Two of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s most vocal critics — the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which backs WakeUpWalmart.com, and Wal-Mart Watch — are putting pressure on the world’s largest retailer to disclose if it has monitored its workers’ communications.The moves come amid a federal investigation after Wal-Mart said a systems technician monitored text messages and phone calls of other employees and nonemployees, including a New York Times reporter. (more)
Sweden - A far-reaching wiretapping programme proposed by Sweden's government to defend against foreign threats, including monitoring emails and telephone calls, has stirred up a fiery debate in the past few weeks, with critics decrying the creation of a "big brother" state.The new legislation, to be presented to parliament on Thursday, would enable the National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA) to tap all Internet and telephone communication in and out of Sweden.Under current law, FRA, which cracked Nazi codes during World War II and was Sweden's ear on the Soviet Union during the Cold War, is only allowed to monitor military radio communications. (more)
Judge Limits Defendants In Civil Wiretapping SuitsRuling Breaks Logjam In Case Against Private Eye Who Spied On StarsLOS ANGELES - A judge has moved to break a legal logjam in the Hollywood wiretapping case by ruling that no new defendants can be added to the 13 civil lawsuits already filed against private eye Anthony Pellicano and others. ...Prosecutors contend in a 111-count criminal indictment that Pellicano illegally wiretapped the phones of Hollywood stars such as Sylvester Stallone and bribed police officers to run the names of more than 60 people, including comedians Garry Shandling and Kevin Nealon, through government databases. (more)
Federal investigators are looking into the actions of a computer systems technician at Wal-Mart Stores who, over a period of several months, intercepted pager and text messages and also secretly taped telephone conversations between Wal-Mart employees and a reporter for The New York Times, the company said yesterday. ...Wal-Mart said the technician was not authorized to monitor and tape the conversations between members of its media relations staff and Michael Barbaro, a retail reporter for The Times. ...The focus of any criminal investigation might be on the text messages and the pages transmitted near company headquarters by people who were not Wal-Mart employees; the technician made those interceptions using his own personal radio-frequency equipment.“He captured all of the text messages that were within a range of his equipment,” Ms. Williams (a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart) said. “Some of those messages had key words in them that he was watching for. Those were captured and put into a separate file or bucket from the others.” She declined to provide details of the messages or motives for those actions by the technician. (more)
What do you think would have possessed an employee to do this extra work?
Do you check for unauthorized eavesdropping at your workplace?
FL - No additional charges will be filed against a Merritt Island man charged with video voyeurism after his arrest Thursday at a Melbourne clothing store. Police said the man carried a digital video camera into a dressing room at a Beall's Outlet and had images of a woman trying on clothes.Teddy W. Underwood, 31, is charged with video voyeurism, a misdemeanor, police spokeswoman Jill Frederiksen said.If police technicians had discovered the woman was audiotaped as well, Frederiksen said, then Underwood could have been charged with a felony count of illegally taping a person without their permission. No audiotape was discovered. ...
Store clerks called police, who arrived while Underwood was still in the dressing room. They questioned him and found the camera. He claimed he found it and was going to turn it in, Frederiksen said.
An officer looked at the video, saw the images of the woman changing and arrested Underwood, she said. (more)
Our clients (especially the ones in big cities) have been warned about being eavesdropped on by people who can lip read. Unlikely, but possible. We handled only one case involving lip reading in over 30 years.This may change...
Researchers at the University of East Anglia (UK) are about to embark on an innovative new project to develop computer lip-reading systems that could be used for fighting crime.
The three-year project, which starts next month, will collect data for lip-reading and use it to create machines that automatically convert videos of lip-motions into text. It builds on work already carried out at UEA to develop state-of-the-art speech reading systems. (more)
MI - The child pornography and eavesdropping case against former Egelston Township Treasurer Brian Lee Hill is back on the local court schedule.Hill is set for a pretrial conference 9 a.m. March 8 before 14th Circuit Judge Timothy G. Hicks on five counts of making or producing child sexually abusive material and five counts of using a computer to commit a crime, plus three counts of eavesdropping by installing a video device.The eavesdropping charges, a two-year felony, are for allegedly snooping with a hidden camera on male teenage exchange students using the shower in his home at 1265 Drent. (more)
Estonia - Commander of Estonian Defense Forces, General-Major Ants Laaneots relieved on Tuesday the head of the military intelligence branch from his duties following allegations of spying on government officials.The General Staff of the Defense Forces said Monday that Major Riho Uhtegi has been transferred to cadre reserve "due to service demands," but experts believe his dismissal is directly related to recent reports in the media that the Estonian military intelligence had been involved in "illegal activities."Estonian newspaper Eesti Ekspress reported last week that military intelligence officers have been spying on defense ministry's staff and made attempts to recruit informers among officers, politicians and journalists. (more)
Acoustic Kitty was a CIA project launched in the 1960s attempting to use cats in spy missions. A battery and a microphone were implanted into a cat and an antenna into its tail. Due to problems with distraction, the cat's sense of hunger had to be removed in another operation. Surgical and training expenses are thought to have amounted to over 10 million British pounds.
The first cat mission was eavesdropping on two men in a park outside the Soviet compound on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington, D.C.. The cat was released nearby, but was hit and killed by a taxi almost immediately. Shortly thereafter the project was considered a failure and decided to be a total loss. (more)
UK - Tiny CCTV cameras could soon be used by wardens or police on the streets of Norwich as the latest weapon in the war on yobs.
