Italy police warn of Skype threat

Criminals in Italy are increasingly making phone calls over the internet in order to avoid getting caught through mobile phone intercepts, police say... The police say Skype's encryption system is a secret which the company refuses to share with the authorities. (more)

Psssst! Wanna make a few billion dollars?

London - An industry source disclosed that America's supersecret National Security Agency (NSA) is offering "billions" to any firm which can offer reliable eavesdropping on Skype IM and voice traffic.

The spybiz exec, who preferred to remain anonymous, confirmed that Skype continues to be a major problem for government listening agencies, spooks and police. This was already thought to be the case, following requests from German authorities for special intercept/bugging powers to help them deal with Skype-loving malefactors. Britain's GCHQ has also stated that it has severe problems intercepting VoIP and internet communication in general. (more)

Silvio Strikes Back

Italy - Investigators have become increasingly reliant on wiretaps in recent years... Use of wiretaps by prosecutors in Italy has grown exponentially in recent years.

Investigators say intercepts of telephone calls have become an essential tool of the police, who spend millions of dollars each year tracking down crime through wiretaps of landlines and mobile phones.

But the law may be about to change.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing government has drawn up a bill which would restrict police wiretaps to only the most serious crimes.

Much crime reporting in the Italian media is based on leaks of wiretaps and leading politicians, including Mr Berlusconi himself, have found to their embarrassment that details of their private telephone conversations have sometimes been leaked to newspapers.

Under the new law reporting of details of criminal investigations obtained through wiretaps would become illegal until a final verdict has been delivered.

Given the extreme slowness of Italian justice, this would mean that details of cases now before the courts might be reported by the press only in 15 years time. (more) (background)

FutureWatch - GPS trackers & Cellular Forensics

Civil liberties groups are watching a New York court case that should decide whether a police officer, acting on his own, can attach a global positioning system to a vehicle to track someone's movements. The case will be argued next month in the New York Court of Appeals.

Last week, for example, area school administrators (Pennsylvania) were wrestling with the question of how far they can go under the wiretapping law in examining cell phones they confiscate from students. (more)

How low will they go in The Land of Limbo?

Trinidad and Tobago - Claims and counter claims of phone tapping and even spying by a government agency.

In the parliament yesterday during debate on the date protection bill, Prime Minister Patrick Manning and Chief Whip Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj threw allegations at each other, saying that people’s privacy has been and are being infringed.

Mr. Maharaj claimed he had solid information that the government was spying on people.

The Prime Minister would later fire another salvo, saying under the United National Congress Government (UNC) there was an agency set up to tap people’s phones and spy on them. (more)

Spy Planes Grounded. No Pilots.

UK - A new billion-pound fleet of spy planes able to spot the roadside bombs that kill troops in Afghanistan will be out of action... because the RAF has failed to train enough crew...

Each aircraft is operated by a five-man team of two pilots, a mission commander and two imagery analysts. The planes, converted Bombardier passenger jets, have been built by the American firm Raytheon at sites in Texas and near Chester...

An air force spokesman said: “You’ve got to have all five aircraft and all 10 crews ready before you have full operating capability. It could be 2011 but everybody is busting a gut to bring that date forward.” (more)

Where is Paul Garrett when we need him?

TN - Davidson County Dist. Atty. Gen. Victor S. "Torry" Johnson decided against prosecuting state Rep. Jim Cobb for hiding a voice-activated tape recorder under the desk of his legislative assistant last September. Johnson says Cobb apparently did break wiretapping and surveillance statutes, but he won't be prosecuted because he did such a lousy job of it. (more) (background)

PS - In the original report, Cobb described his actions as "just a prank." Now, it is reported, "Cobb claims he did it because he suspected his aide was treating constituents rudely, and he wanted to catch him in the act."

"In other news from the desk of Torry Johnson, it's also OK for a state representative to send a text message to try to extort a committee chairmanship out of the House speaker."
(sing-a-long) (Paul Garrett)

Securing VoIP... "Give up?"

There are too many sources of vulnerability for VoIP to ever be completely secure, says Patrick Park, author of VoIP Security. Here he describes the VoIP threat landscape and offers best practices for making VoIP reasonably secure... (more)

SpyCam Story #518 - Student vs Teacher

via The Smoking Gun...
"Meet Curtis Pickard. The Georgia student was arrested this week after he allegedly used his cell phone to take "upskirt" photos of Greenbrier High School teacher Ellen Hotchkiss, which he then showed to fellow high schoolers... Pickard was charged with unlawful eavesdropping or surveillance and booked into the Columbia County Detention Center..." (more) (Teacher vs Student)

UPDATE - Curtis Jamar Pickard, 17, of the 4200 block of Waterston Courtyard in Evans, was charged with unlawful eavesdropping or surveillance. He was released from the Columbia County Detention Center later that day after posting a $2,600 bond, according to jail records. (more)

"And then, we'll outlaw Uummarmiutun."

Canada - The Conservative government is preparing sweeping new eavesdropping legislation that will force Internet service providers to let police tap exchanges on their systems - but will likely reignite fear that Big Brother will be monitoring the private conversations of Canadians.

The goal of the move, which would require police to obtain court approval, is to close what has been described as digital "safe havens" for criminals, pedophiles and terrorists because current eavesdropping laws were written in a time before text messages, Facebook and voice-over-Internet phone lines. (more)

"The village called. They want their idiot back."

Taliban and al Qaeda fighters are now so aware every phone conversation may be monitored that they actually get on the line to taunt NSA interpreters who sit in relay centers to translate and distribute transcripts as quickly as possible. "They love to get on our bands and taunt us and especially our interpreters," said the intelligence source. (more)

"So, uh, what happened to the ones you did use?"

Tanzania - Police in Dar es Salaam has distanced itself from recording devices found in two hotel rooms rented out to two parliamentarians in Dodoma.

The Director of Criminal Investigations, Mr Robert Manumba, told reporters in Dar es Salaam yesterday that Government intelligence unit, no longer uses such devices because they are of obsolete technology...

Dodoma police commander Omar Mganga, said in a statement on Saturday that preliminary investigation by experts on information technology identified the devices as EDIC-Mini Tiny, with a capacity to record for 10 hours. (more)

So, let's have a peek at this "obsolete technology."
EDIC-Mini Tiny - Miniature Edic-Mini Tiny digital voice recorder (DVR) is intended for professional recording voice messages into flash memory. The DVR features an extremely small size and weight, long record time (varying with the model – from 18 to 300 hours at the sample rate of 8 kHz, and 2 bit ADPCM compression), very low power consumption, wide frequency range (100- 10000Hz), wide dynamic range and a highly sensitive built-in microphone. A built-in real time clock and a calendar are provided, as well as the mode of start-up by timer. Due to the absence of moving parts, the DVR functions in a wide temperature range, under vibration and dusty conditions.

The model records high quality stereo audio signal from two external microphones on built-in flash memory. It is powered by the rechargeable battery (with 120 mAh capacity), which can be charged from USB port of a PC.

The DVR has a Voice Activating System (VAS) which effectively compresses pauses in messages, therefore increasing the actual record time. Using this system saves memory during pauses, but the time intervals remain. When downloading records to PC, the pause length can be either restored (as silence) or passed depending on the settings made.

One might think, being "obsolete technology," one would have a difficult time finding one for sale. (click here)

Privacy Compromiser's Privacy Compromised

Germany - Lax password security allowed hackers to bust into the German interior minister’s website, it has emerged.

Hacktivists pwned the website of Wolfgang Schäuble on Tuesday in protest against new wiretapping and data retention laws. They posted links inviting visitors to a protest website "Vorratsdatenspeicherung". (more)
Divine Internet farfegnugen.

SpyCam Story #517 - Teacher vs Student

KY - Police in Mayfield have arrested a middle school teacher after he was seen under some bleachers allegedly photographing beneath cheerleaders’ skirts.

The Paducah Sun reported 51-year-old Steve L. McCuiston of Murray was charged with voyeurism, eavesdropping, disorderly conduct and evidence tampering.

McCuiston is on paid leave from his job as a science teacher at Livingston County Middle School. (more)

SpyCam Story #516 - They're everywhere, they're...

IA - An admitted peeping Tom is accused of spying on "at least" 100 unsuspecting naked women through holes in the bathroom vents at a Sioux City hotel.

According to court documents, former hotel maintenance worker Robert Ray Campbell, 51, told detectives he had spied on "at least" 100 female guests at the Rodeway Inn and Conference Center, then known as Quality Inn.

Police discovered holes in bathroom vent filters while inspecting a maintenance hallway. Court documents filed Tuesday say holes were cut or torn into the filter of every bathroom vent in the building. The hotel has 153 rooms, according to its Web site. (more)