Wiretap Victims Lash Out at PI

CA - Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano isn't the only person imprisoned as a result of his wiretaps of the rich and famous. His victims say they have never been able to free themselves from the emotional and financial fallout caused by his crimes.

A former reporter says she has nightmares about being hunted and raped. A mother copes with her daughter being mocked by other kids and their parents. An actress who once appeared in a popular television series says she has found little work since.

They are among the victims who submitted letters to the federal judge who is scheduled to sentence Pellicano on Monday. The former private eye is in custody after being convicted of a total of 78 counts, including wiretapping, racketeering and wire fraud, in two separate trials earlier this year. (more)

Business Espionage: World Cup Spying

Egyptian club Al Ahly's coach Friday angrily accused Mexican side Pachuca of spying on a team training session ahead of their crucial Club World Cup clash. "Three spies from Pachuka came to inspect our practice today. It's not fair. We didn't watch their practice. It's not fair," said coach Manuel Jose after their training session on Friday. (more)

FutureWatch - Eavesdropping's Future, Mindreading

Researchers at ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, say they've developed new analysis technology that can reconstruct the images inside a person's brain and display them on a computer screen, according to Pink Tentacle, an English-language blog that covers news from Japan. Pink Tentacle picked up the info from Japan's Chunichi Shimbun daily newspaper...

Although the technology is still in the early phases of development, it paves the way for applications that until now have only been the stuff of science fiction, such as reading minds for interrogation purposes, eavesdropping on dreams as people snooze... And researchers at the University of Sheffield in England believe that fMRI is more useful than polygraphs, which have been shown to have false positives and negatives, in determining whether someone is lying. (more)

SpyCam Story #501 - Button Your Lip

UK - Teenagers in Cheltenham and Tewkesbury are being fitted with James Bond-style spy cameras in a bid to catch out rogue shop keepers who sell alcohol to underage buyers.

Teenagers are fitted with the cameras, which match buttons on their clothes, by specialist police teams. They are then monitored as they enter off-licences and supermarkets and attempt to buy alcohol. Sounds and images are relayed back to police officers outside the premises who can then take action.

During the past three years Cheltenham and Tewkesbury Police have carried out more than 500 test purchase operations. (more)

SpyCam Story #500 - 500 Failures & Counting

Welcome to the SpyCam Story 500 milestone.
Here, we feature news stories about video spying.

This Scrapbook feature started when a security director asked me, "How can I show my boss electronic eavesdropping is real and I am not just being paranoid?" Interesting problem. There are no 'illegal eavesdropping statistics' to quote.

Keep in mind, the media only reports spying failures; the one's who got caught. Successful spying is totally invisible. Like commercial airline stories; you never read about the successful landings.

The solution to the security director's conundrum...
• Track sales of eavesdropping devices.
• Track eavesdropping failures as reported by the media.
• Factor in... Most spycam, bug and wiretap failures are handled privately. They never make it to the lawsuit level, and media attention.• Factor in... Not all media stories make it to my attention.
• Factor in... Many spycam stories are in such bad taste I exclude them.
Now, we see the tip of the spyberg.

Security directors use this proof to substantiate their Eavesdropping Detection Audit budgets.

And now (drum roll)...
SpyCam Story #500
Extortionography - From Winehouse to the Big HouseUK - The man who sold video footage to a London tabloid showing Amy Winehouse engaged in what appeared to be drug use was sentenced to jail on Friday... Johnny Blagrove, and his girlfriend, Cara Burton, had filmed Ms. Winehouse, without her knowledge and sold the footage to The Sun for about $75,000. Mr. Blagrove and Ms. Burton admitted that they had offered to supply drugs to Ms. Winehouse and other celebrities. The police said that the couple had kept a list of celebrities they planned to record taking drugs. A judge sentenced Mr. Blagrove to two years in prison; Ms. Burton was ordered to perform two years’ community service. (more) 

Putin's Mountain of Spies & Google's New Eyes

There were no tigers to catch, and it's not really the right season to be fishing shirtless, so Russian Prime Minister [ex-spymaster] Vladimir Putin renamed a mountain this week. There is a 10,788-foot peak in North Ossetia that had previously been without a name. Putin claimed naming rights, dubbing it the Peak of Russian Counterintelligence Agents, seriously, naming it after the country's spies. (more)

Meanwhile, Google ogles an eye that spies at 2,233,440 feet!
GeoEye 1, a satellite launched into polar orbit on September 6 that can "see" objects on Earth as small as 16 inches (0.41 meter) in size in black-and-white mode or 64.6 inches (1.64 meters) in color. Images from the GeoEye 1, which stands 20 feet (6.1 meters) high and weighs more than 4,300 pounds (1,950 kilograms), so impressed Google that the Internet search giant plans to add the satellite's high-resolution, digital color photos to Google Earth next month. (more) (sample photos)

Eavesdropping is Not Just an Electronic Crime

MI - A former Brighton father convicted of using a mirror under a bathroom door [at home] to peek at... In a pee plea agreement with prosecutors, [other] charges were dropped in exchange for him pleading guilty to eavesdropping... (more)

The Future of Eavesdropping – Mind Reading

A Japanese research team has revealed it had created a technology that could eventually display on a computer screen what people have on their minds, such as dreams.

Researchers at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories succeeded in processing and displaying images directly from the human brain, they said in a study unveiled ahead of publication in the US magazine Neuron.

While the team for now has managed to reproduce only simple images from the brain, they said the technology could eventually be used to figure out dreams and other secrets inside people's minds. (more)

Bad Economy = Watch Your Corporate Assets

Two stories today warn employee crime increases during tough times.
Businesses Say Theft by Their Workers Is Up
Companies Find That Trusted Employees Often Commit the Crimes, and They Believe the Recession Is to Blame (more)

Economic Woes May Bring out the Worst in IT Staff
IBM Corp.'s ISS X-Force research team reports that its Web-based monitors have picked up a 30 percent increase in network and Internet-related security events in the last 120 days. Worldwide, the total number of such events has risen from 1.8 billion to 2.5 billion. "With a little planning and forethought, a disgruntled employee can do a lot of damage with little fear of being caught and prosecuted," said IBM security expert Gunter Ollman... (more)

Biggest return for the lowest risk... your intellectual property and privacy. Keep alert. Conduct information security audits regularly.

The New Age of Wiretapping

The New Age of Wiretapping
Law enforcement is using new eavesdropping techniques
(video) ...many of the same audio/video eavesdropping tools are also available to people engaged in business espionage.

How Did Feds Listen In on Blagojevich?

Court records from the investigation into Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich are filled with recorded conversations of the governor allegedly offering to sell an appointment to President-elect Barack Obama's former U.S. Senate seat. How did the government find out what he was saying?

Federal investigators tapped Blagojevich's home phone and bugged his personal office and a conference room in the Friends of Blagojevich campaign headquarters. Officials began listening to conversations in late October, the court documents say.

Former law enforcement officials and security experts, who were not familiar with the details of the investigation, said it may be easier than one would think to listen in on private conversations, even those of a governor...

"It's amazing to me how easy it is to get into most places," said Kevin Murray, a security consultant. "Locks and alarms are not really good enough to deter espionage." [speaking about covert entry into commercial buildings]

Listening devices can be very small and easily concealed, with some so tiny they can "fit underneath your fingernail," said Murray. Bugs have been placed inside walls, in light fixtures, lamps, phones and coasters. (more)

Man fined for selling illegal 'spy bug' kits

UK - A businessman has been fined thousands of pounds for selling illegal spy equipment that could have interfered with aircraft – and even Ministry of Defence communications.

The "spy bugs" were sold by Umesh Bharakhada (43), of Millers Close, Syston.

The bugs used the same radio frequencies as the aviation industry and could disrupt communications with aircraft flying overhead.

Bharakhada made the illegal kit and sold it on to surveillance supply firms in Chesterfield and Coventry – who sold it on to anyone who asked, city magistrates were told...

He was fined £4,200 and ordered to pay £6,000 in legal costs... It is the second time he has been fined. In 2003, he was prosecuted for selling bugging devices to private investigation companies to eavesdrop on conversations. (more)

From the police blotter... eavesdropping arrest

GA - Terry McCrary, 40, 29 Woodland Circle, Columbus, was charged Friday with unlawful eavesdropping and surveillance. (source)

Another Political Hack in Illinois (not Blago)

Steinbach accuses mayor of spying
Former rival says Calderone hacked municipal e-mail accounts

IL - Using information gleaned from the hard drives of a dozen village-owned computers, former commissioner Theresa Steinbach has named Mayor Anthony Calderone, her next-door neighbor, as the culprit responsible for allegedly hacking into her municipal e-mail account.

The accusation was filed in federal court this month as an amendment to the 2006 suit in which Steinbach accused three unknown Forest Park officials of privacy violations. Supporting the accusation is a third-party report that concludes the mayor's laptop was used to access the e-mail accounts of five employees and public officials, including Steinbach's. (more)

"Hugh jump in surveillance equipment sales."

A UK internet retailer specialising in surveillance equipment is reporting a huge jump in sales. Spy Catcher Online is the internet retail outlet of the Spy Master Store located in Central London...

Director Julia Wing says the credit crunch is encouraging people to use their products to get concrete evidence of deals reached with other parties. 'People want to have, on record, what someone has agreed to,' she says. (more)