Quote of the Day - A New Yorker Ponders... Surveillance

"Oh, there’s also a poster in a window across the street that reads: If you can see this, you’re spying on me. It makes me think about how many people could be spying on me right now, what with my blinds open and desk light on, while I awkwardly blow my nose and type this entry. Then again, I’m sure I’d be watching my neighbors if I were staring out my window and someone’s light happened to be on. Voyeurism: every New Yorker’s favorite pastime - it’s like live reality TV!" ~ Nina Yiamsamatha (August 24, 2008)

NSA Wiretap Rooms Cartoons

Cartoon - what went on in the NSA's wiretapping room at AT&T
Frontier Foundation designer Hugh D'Andrade sez, "I did a 'live-painting' last Friday at a gallery -- a mural-sized cartoon depicting the goings-on inside the "secret room" at AT&T's Folsom Street facility. My EFF co-workers created a time-lapse video with an awesome ska soundtrack!"
If you like this, you'll LOVE this... >NSA<

Steganography - Look at secrets, but not see them.

Altered with the proper steganography algorithm, this innocuous picture of a cat could be a carrier for corporate espionage.

Earlier this year, someone at the United States Department of Justice smuggled sensitive financial data out of the agency by embedding the data in several image files. Defeating this exfiltration method, called steganography, has proved particularly tricky, but one engineering student has come up with a way to make espionage work against itself.

Keith Bertolino, founder of digital forensics start-up E.R. Forensics, based in West Nyack, N.Y., developed a new way of disrupting steganography last year while finishing his electrical engineering degree at Northeastern University, in Boston.

FutureWatch...
Steganography is a moving target. Now exfiltrators are beginning to make use of streaming data technologies like voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Disrupting or even detecting hidden transmissions inside real-time phone calls is the next hurdle for digital forensics companies, and Hosmer says it poses a significantly more challenging problem.
(more)

Anatomy of a Sports Spy

Tom Keegan writes...
"I know a guy who knows a guy who got his start in the college football coaching business as a spy. This is how the spy didn’t do his job: He didn’t wear a big red “S” on his forehead. He didn’t wear a Groucho Marx nose, glasses and mustache set. He didn’t carry a briefcase.

This is how the spy did his job: He peeled back a few bills from the huge wad of cash one of the coaches paid him, purchased a round-trip airline ticket, and arrived in town mid-week, late enough that if he were spotted, the enemy couldn’t redo its entire game plan. He immediately stopped at the bookstore to load up on gear, so that he could wear it around campus and blend in...

Spies don’t announce their arrivals and departures." (more)

SpyCam Story #461 - Fly Boy

NY - An airport employee, Jeremy Martin, apparently put a hidden camera in the women's bathroom. His female co-workers at Mattituck Airport are upset, not just about the camera, but how the company reacted when it was discovered.

Police say the airport employee confessed to setting up a camera in the bathroom, and he says he realizes he has issues to deal with...

Police say Martin hid the camera from July to mid August in a potted plant in the bathroom of the facility. They say anyone who used the bathroom could have been caught on camera.

Authorities discovered the bathroom spying when one of 32 employees at the airport saw a device sticking out of a plant. (more)

Watch Spy Watch You Watch Two

Spy Micro Camera Watch
Product Code: GGSPY004100
US$236.00
Features:
Built-in Camera, Rechargeable Battery and 2GB Memory
Resolutions: 352 x 288 pixels
Video Format: AVI
Battery Capacity: 270mhA
Charging Interface: USB cable with adaptor

The lens is in the two.

Girls Gone Lazy - The Surveillance Video

...and Men Gone Lazy, too!
A growing number of employers are hiring private investigators to spy on employees suspected of taking leave dishonestly under the Family Medical Leave Act.

Management-side attorneys claim that FMLA abuses have gotten out of hand, and employers need a tool -- in this case surveillance -- to catch malingerers using FMLA improperly. And it's been pretty successful, they said, noting that private investigators in recent years have helped catch employees bowling, doing yard work or holding second jobs when they're supposed to be out on sick leave.

Employee-rights attorneys, meanwhile, view surveillance as harassment, intimidation and an interference with a worker's right to take FMLA leave. It also has a chilling effect on other employees who may not take the leave for fear of being spied on.

Both sides, however, note that the courts appear to be siding with employers. (more)

SpyCam Story #460 - Proudly Viewed

New Zealand - A 25-year-old man has been charged with covertly filming unsuspecting Starbucks' customers with their pants down.

Two weeks ago a staff member of Rotorua's Starbucks cafe discovered an elaborate hidden camera operation in a toilet brush holder in a unisex toilet.

Detective Warwick Webber of Rotorua police said a 25-year-old Rotorua man had been arrested on Friday. He was facing five charges of making inappropriate visual recordings.

Police also seized the man's computer and storage devices during a search of his home on Friday. They did not believe any other toilets were involved.

Webber emphasised Starbucks was the victim and hoped people would not boycott the cafe franchise giant. (more)

UPDATE - 10/9/08 - Fei Yu Zhou, 25, has been sentenced to 200 hours community service and nine months supervision at the Rotorua District Court. (more)

Understanding CALEA, FISA - how we got this way

As telephone conversations have moved to the Internet, so have those who want to listen in...

• The advent of computer-based telephone switches and the Internet has made it more difficult for the government to monitor the communications of criminals, spies and terrorists.

• Federal agencies want Internet companies to comply with the same wiretapping requirements that apply to telecommunications carriers. This proposal, though, may stifle Internet innovation.

• Furthermore, the new surveillance facilities might be misused by overzealous government officials or hijacked by terrorists or spies interested in monitoring U.S. communications.

A Brief History of Wiretapping
To understand the current controversy over wiretapping, one must understand the history of communications technology. (more) (more) (more) (more)

"Onya, mate!"

The Australian Council for Civil Liberties has accused Gold Coast pubs and nightclubs of going too far by fingerprinting patrons. (more)

Technology's Toll On Privacy And Security

...in Scientific American...
Looking back at the surveillance all around us – from wiretapped phones to security cameras... over 30 articles with photos and slideshows. (more)

SpyCam Story #459 - Teddy Bears to the Rescue

If you go out in the woods today
You're sure of a big surprise.
sing-a-long

A carer suspected of stealing money from a terminally ill great-grandmother was caught by a secret camera hidden in a teddy bear.

Mrs Sampson’s family became suspicious after they noticed £40 had gone missing from her handbag after Allen visited her Walton home in July.

At the suggestion of his daughter Emma, a forensic science graduate, Mrs Sampson’s son Robert bought a small camera and hid it inside a teddy bear in his mother’s bedroom. (more) (video)

Beneath the trees, where nobody sees
They'll hide and seek as long as they please
Today's the day the teddy bears catch cleptomaaan-iac!

Someone finally asked, "Dude, you mean we weren't doing this?

The Defense Intelligence Agency's newly created Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center is going to have an office authorized for the first time to carry out "strategic offensive counterintelligence operations," according to Mike Pick, who will direct the program.

Such covert offensive operations are carried out at home and abroad against people known or suspected to be foreign intelligence officers or connected to foreign intelligence or international terrorist activities...

These sensitive, clandestine operations are "tightly controlled departmental activities run by a small group of specially selected people"...

In strategic offensive counterintelligence operations, a foreign intelligence officer is the target, and the main goals most often are "to gather information, to make something happen... (more)

Privacy Breacher's Privacy Breached

Britain's most senior police officer of Asian origin was illegally bugged and put under surveillance on the orders of the Metropolitan police chief, leaked Scotland Yard documents have revealed.

According to the papers, over 300 telephone calls of Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur were tapped in an elaborate operation overseen directly by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair. (more)

"Look at me when I'm talkin' to you!"

...from the seller's web site...
"Here’s a new undercover color camera designed to fit into the proliferation of personal devices (PDA’s, cell phones, MP3s, etc.) that seem to be everywhere these days.

The camera’s pinhole lens aims out of your ear, perpendicular (90°) to your target, allowing for high angle above the neck mobility. The camera has 350 lines of resolution and a super low 0.6 Lux for evening observations.

The 3.6mm lens gives you a sharp 78° field of view. Includes a hardened case, rechargeable battery pack and charger." (more)