Sometimes it works, as in The Conversation.
Sometimes it doesn't, as in...
"Here's how bad "License to Wed" is:
Even the outtakes at the end are lame.
And so Ben and Sadie can't have sex before the wedding, which Frank (Robin Williams) monitors by bugging their apartment, then eavesdropping on them in the back of a van with the choir boy in tow, which is just wrong." (more)
Spears delivered (a poem and audio CD) along with legal papers, to her mother on June 28 on the set of kid sister, Jamie Lynn’s television show, “Zoey 101.” The two are reportedly also battling over the affections of Jamie Lynn.
The CD reportedly contained recordings of phone conversations between Lynne Spears and Britney's estranged husband, Kevin Federline, in which the two are apparently working in cahoots.Spears is forbidding her mother from seeing her two sons, and in one conversation, Lynne is said to be arranging to meet K-Fed and the boys, and says, “I have to be careful that Britney doesn’t find out!” The recordings were made by a private investigator, according to the tab(loid, Star Magazine).In another call, Federline assured Spears’ mother that his court battle with the singer was going well. (more)
GPS JammersComing to a car near you.
(more)
...from kungfurodeo.com
"Did anyone out there ever actually buy this pen or the glasses?What was their gimmick?"
(Ripping off impressionable kids who turned into spybusters?)
(more)
Israel spy (spying for)
found dead in Egyptian cell
An Egyptian engineer sentenced to 15 years hard labour for spying for Israel has been found dead in his prison cell, a security source said on Monday. (more)
Israel spy (spying against)
gets six months in prison
A Jerusalem Magistrate's Court judge sentenced a nuclear spy to six months in prison for violating conditions of his release. (more)
Pakistan's supreme court judges have ordered a sweep of their homes and courtrooms for spying devices after the government presented "scandalous" evidence in its case against the suspended chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. The supreme court rejected a dossier containing surveillance photos of Mr Chaudhry's home and transcripts of apparently bugged conversations, marked "secret", that was presented to the court yesterday. The 13-judge bench reprimanded the government for producing "vexatious and scandalous" material, suspended the legal license of one of the government's lawyers , and banned intelligence agents from all future hearings of the superior courts. The court ordered the Intelligence Bureau, Pakistan's main civilian spy agency, to ensure all bugging or other surveillance devices were removed from the homes and offices of supreme court judges within one week. (more)
A son's desire to finally unload the secrets he's been carrying for decades triggers Schirman's documentary, "The Champagne Spy."
Outline -- Mossad undercover agent keeps his real family in the dark while carrying on a lavish lifestyle. Perspectives on the personal costs paid for a life of espionage and the dark side of Israel's spy wars are bracing and dramatic, assuring strong film festival and distribution interest. (more)
On 9 March 2005, a 38-year-old Greek electrical engineer named Costas Tsalikidis was found hanged in his Athens loft apartment, an apparent suicide. It would prove to be merely the first public news of a scandal that would roil Greece for months.The next day, the prime minister of Greece was told that his cellphone was being bugged, as were those of the mayor of Athens and at least 100 other high-ranking dignitaries, including an employee of the U.S. embassy.
Even before Tsalikidis's death, investigators had found rogue software installed on the Vodafone Greece phone network by parties unknown. ...the Athens affair stands out because it may have involved state secrets, and it targeted individuals—a combination that, if it had ever occurred before, was not disclosed publicly.
Given the ease with which the conversations could have been recorded, it is generally believed that they were. But no one has found any recordings, and we don't know how many of the calls were recorded, or even listened to, by the perpetrators. ... We still don't know who committed this crime. (much more)
Hillary Rodham Clinton's chief strategist (Mark Penn) is accused of illegal eavesdropping in a civil lawsuit that alleges he and his polling firm monitored the personal e-mails of a former associate who started a rival company.Mitchell Markel claims the firm monitored messages sent from his personal BlackBerry after he had resigned.Lawyers for the firm and founder Mark Penn, Clinton's strategist, denied the claim. (more)
Wales - Security guards working at the National Assembly in Wales have been reprimanded after being caught using high-powered CCTV cameras to spy on local residents and hotel guests, it emerged today. (more)
Lawsuit Over School Spying in Third Week.
Several years ago a team visiting Livingston Middle School noticed cameras in a dressing room. Those cameras allegedly recorded images that were stored on a computer hard drive and could be accessed over the Internet.
The suit states that the images of the children were viewed by at least seven adults without the consent of the children or their parents.
The defendants also say that every successful remote access to the security system's software traces back to the computer in LMS Assistant Principal Robert Jolley's office. ("Hold the jokes, mister.")
(more)
McLaren have suspended a "senior member" of its technical staff after it was revealed to the team that someone had unlawfully obtained information belonging to rival Ferrari.
McLaren have not named the person in question but autosport.com reports it is chief designer Mike Coughlan. A search by British police at Coughlan's house on Tuesday turned up documents which allegedly belong to Ferrari. (more)
(the Ferrari/Toyota espionage story)
Radio Chick Video Trick
New York - Former WFNY afternoon host Leslie Gold, the "Radio Chick," has set up a spycam in her home to record the doings of her boyfriend, Carmine Appice. (more)
Ron Rosenbaum - the man who jump-started my career with his Esquire article "Secrets of the Little Blue Box" - has an interesting observation..."My fellow espionage obsessive Gil Roth sent me a link to the National Security Archive’s release on the CIA “Family Jewels” document dump which contained what has got to be the Greatest Euphemism ever coined...What I found interesting and unremarked in the coverage of the memos was a remarkable passage in memo (#2 in the National Security Archive link) is that it’s very specific about many instances of illicit surveillance and telephone tapping, naming a handful of specific individuals as targets. And then there is one final paragraph that suddenly drops all pretense to transparency. Becomes astonishingly vague and opaque. Hence the potentially explosive euphemism.According to this paragraph “the CIA occasionally tests experimental equipment on American telephone circuits. The CIA apparently has established guidelines for these tests which provide, among other things that no records may be kept, not tape and so forth.”
Tests experimental eavesdropping devices on American telephone equipment? And just how widespread are these tests” and how long to they go on. Do they test whether they can listen into to every conversation a given subject has. Wording like that would give them latitude. Wording like that seems designed to cover up more than it reveals.
There is a scandal here, I suspect, one that may turn out to have foreshadowed the NSA warrantless wireptapping scandal." (more)
The pocket-sized guide covers twenty-four countries, each with a specific overview and history of the particular national laws. Designed to serve as a valuable reference point for anybody connected with the surveillance industry, the guide includes legislation from countries as diverse as the U.S., U.K., Romania and the Philippines.60 pages of legislation from 24 different countries. (more)
