On August 5, 2007, President Bush signed the Protect America Act of 2007 into law. The law, an amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), extends the government's authority to wiretap without a warrant. In light of the new law, Science Friday (Ira Flatow) consulted wiretap experts Matt Blaze, a technologist and professor of computer and information science at University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia and Susan Landau, Distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems Laboratories about the science of wiretapping.
Matt Blaze explains old-style wiretapping
Susan Landau explains where NSA tapping might take place
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Cell Phone Activated DIY CCTV Camera Blinding Project - from c-h-a-o-s.com
"It’s no secret. A lot of my inspiration comes from movies and for quite some time I have become more and more annoyed by Hollywood's sometimes rather silly solutions for an agent to shut down security cameras in order to remain undetected: e.g. blowing up the nearby power-plant or rigging up gadgets in sewers, where they can be detected by renovation workers and the sorts. If you blow something up or otherwise break it, your counterpart will immediately know it is sabotage and rule out a simple technical malfunction.
Another thing that got me to write this article is the abundant usage of surveillance cameras everywhere which makes me want to burst the bubble about security of surveillance cameras by exposing their weakness. Switching point of view will also often lead to improvement…" (more)
Cut a couple of wires, insert a small, easy-to-make device between them, and you can walk right through all those supposedly card-protected locked office doors.At the Defcon security conference over the weekend, a hacker and Defcon staffer who goes by the name Zac Franken showed off how a small homemade device he calls Gecko can perform a classic man-in-the-middle attack on the type of access card readers used on office doors around the country. What's more, making a Gecko is easy and cheap. Franken says the hardware costs about $10.According to Franken, the hack subverts the Wiegand protocol, commonly used for communication between the card reader and the back-end access control system... (more)
- You can buy a Spy Ear for a dollar! (or less)- It can amplify sounds up to 60 dB or a factor of a 100.- It has a self limiting property and adjusts the gain so that the amplified signal volume is always just right.- It runs of two LR44 1.5 volt button cell alkaline battery, so it's perfect for portable projects.- Many of today's projects, such as in robotics, require analogue front end for sensing the environment and the Spy Ear circuit is just right to fill in as a multi-purpose front end amplifier.- It is simple enough to reverse engineer.So, the Spy Ear is a fantastic cheap, small and rugged circuit for modding and hacking! (more)
(Modern Canterbury Tales. On our way to 1984.)
At least 20,000 police surveillance cameras are being installed along streets here in southern China and will soon be guided by sophisticated computer software from an American-financed company to recognize automatically the faces of police suspects and detect unusual activity.Starting this month in a port neighborhood and then spreading across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people, residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips programmed by the same company will be issued to most citizens.Data on the chip will include not just the citizen’s name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord’s phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China’s controversial “one child” policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.Security experts describe China’s plans as the world’s largest effort to meld cutting-edge computer technology with police work to track the activities of a population and fight crime. But they say the technology can be used to violate civil rights.The Chinese government has ordered all large cities to apply technology to police work and to issue high-tech residency cards to 150 million people who have moved to a city but not yet acquired permanent residency. (more)
UK - CCTV operator Wayne Tomlin spends his working day helping to catch criminals on camera, but he was caught out driving at more than twice the speed limit by a spycam.
The 25-year-old computer technician, who works for Sunderland Council's surveillance team, was rushing to carry out urgent repairs when he was caught speeding.A mobile police camera clocked him doing 66mph in a 30mph zone on Springwell Road, Grindon.He has been banned from driving for 42 days and ordered to pay a £400 fine.Brian Chapman, defending, said "Mr. Tomlin had accidentally broken the speed limit while hurrying to repair a camera which protected council staff at a city centre office." (more)
Eavesdropping techniques have changed dramatically in recent years. So has society's perception that eavesdropping is an immoral and unacceptable business practice.
Old-school wiretapping was captured most perfectly in "The Lives of Others," last year's Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film, about surveillance by Stasi agents of the former East Germany: the long hours listening to conversations as a reel of tape wound round and round. Those were the days when "wiretap" meant using alligator clips to literally tap into a phone wire.
Watching wiretapping, Hollywood-style, has become so scintillating that some people fear we are being inured to the potentially sinister and abusive side of its uses. (more)
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe “signed into law the controversial Interception of Communications Bill, which gives his government the authority to eavesdrop on phone and Internet communications and read physical mail.” In order to defend the law, which has been called “the dictator’s tool kit,” Mugabe’s spokesperson pointed to President Bush’s wiretapping program:Communications Minister Christopher Mushowe said Zimbabwe is not unique in the world in passing such legislation, citing electronic eavesdropping programs in the United States, the United Kingdom and South Africa, among other countries. (more)
(Cautionary Tale - Spies need to protect their information. You should too.)
UK - A major security alert has been sparked after the theft of a computer database containing thousands of top secret telephone records from police investigations into terrorism and organised crime.
Worried police chiefs throughout the UK launched a massive inquiry into the removal of the sophisticated computer and other IT equipment from a private firm specialising in gathering evidence from mobile phone calls made by suspects. (more)
Mata Hari had a weakness for officers, and it didn't much matter which side they were on. In 1917 the exotic dancer who delighted audiences by wearing very little was convicted of espionage by the French government and brought before a firing squad at the age of 41.
Was she really the conniving femme fatale French authorities said handed over state secrets to the Germans, leading to the deaths of 50,000 Frenchmen? Pat Shipman sets out to answer that question in her engrossing "Femme Fatale: Love, Lies and the Unknown Life of Mata Hari." (more)
Deric Bownd pointed us to an excellent article on why spying is an innate urge in humans, and animals.
The power of a pair of eyes is strong. Eyes - even ones carved in wood or drawn on paper - can force subtle changes in behavior. This is why totem poles and Nazar Boncuk's work. Hiding eyes can also provide a feeling of protection; the primary purpose of masks and often the primary purpose of sunglasses. Fascinating, as eyes often are. (more)
"My name is Daniel Harrison. I’ve spent a number of years in the security and surveillance industry, as a consumer, surveillance gadget designer, and as a product supplier.My experience has shown me that it is very difficult for customers in the security and surveillance industry to find what they are looking for. Spy Review provides information, reviews and advice relating to the security industry. I hope you enjoy the site!" (more)
Dan runs a great site for keeping up on cool spy equipment available to everyone. This should scare you into checking for bugs periodically. Call us. We can help.
How can a man with no formal robotic education create funny and awesome robots out of electronic parts he finds in the junk heap? Mr. Woo found a way, and created so many robots his wife has threatened to leave him (partially because he burned the house down in doing so).
Among the more impressive ones are an actual working rickshaw robot that takes him and the wife to town (no idea how it's powered), along with a junior rickshaw robot that takes the kid to town as well. (more)
The most likely way to get eavesdropped on is in the last 100 feet whether that’s through a wire (through layer 2 hijacking) or wireless LAN connection. To enable Server to Client encryption, you simply check a simple option to enable SSL and... (more)
A December trial date has been set in the illegal-eavesdropping case against former Lafayette Police Chief Randy Hundley.Hundley and three other officers - all of whom have left the department - were indicted in June 2006 in an investigation of secretly recorded conversations at the desk of the chief’s secretary. (more)
On August 5, 2007, President Bush signed the Protect America Act of 2007 into law. The law, an amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), extends the government's authority to wiretap without a warrant. In light of the new law, Science Friday (Ira Flatow) consulted wiretap experts Matt Blaze, a technologist and professor of computer and information science at University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia and Susan Landau, Distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems Laboratories about the science of wiretapping.
