They may be digging for bugs.
They may be building a home.
But when they are whacking loudly on your roof or tin chimney cap (the louder, the better) we know...
...if a male bird is eavesdropping, the message they get is, "Don't mess with me, I'm the biggest, baddest woodpecker around!"If a female flicker hears the hammering, she just might think, "Wow, what a hunk," and come a little closer to check him out in person. (more)Not to be confused, of course, with the old Russian Woodpecker, who pecks peeked over the horizon. Why? To keep an eye on U.S.
Wall Street is laying off and the CIA has a full page recruitment ad in Forbes magazine. Seems oddly logical. When you need smart economic analysts, you go to Wall Street.
No wait...
That was last year. These are strange days.
Coming up next...
"Let's go to the movies. It's just down this rabbit hole."
A Dann Gire movie review...
After winning seven Oscar nominations for his excellent corporate drama "Michael Clayton," Tony Gilroy lightens up the cloak-and-dagger subculture of American business with "Duplicity," a witty, comic romance well-equipped with snappy dialogue, a time-twisted narrative and the closest character to James Bond that Clive Owen has ever handled...Gilroy's fascination with corporate intrigue pays off. He immerses us in an authentic world of obsessive corporate competitors who go so far as to buy entire landfills just so they can go through the garbage for useful information...
With a title like "Duplicity," you know there's got to be a payoff waiting in the wings. (more) (trailer)
Presenters at the CanSecWest security conference detailed on Thursday how they can sniff data by analyzing keystroke vibrations using a laser trained on a shiny laptop or through electrical signals coming from a PC connected to a PS/2 keyboard and plugged into a socket.
Using equipment costing about $80, researchers from Inverse Path were able to point a laser on the reflective surface of a laptop between 50 feet and 100 feet away and determine what letters were typed.
Chief Security Engineer Andrea Barisani and hardware hacker Daniele Bianco used a handmade laser microphone device and a photo diode to measure the vibrations, software for analyzing the spectrograms of frequencies from different keystrokes, as well as technology to apply the data to a dictionary to try to guess the words. They used a technique called dynamic time warping that's typically used for speech recognition applications, to measure the similarity of signals. (more)
TGIF! Have fun this weekend.
Make a cheap laser microphone yourself.
RI - Normally, churches invite the faithful in to unburden themselves to a priest in the privacy of a confessional for just a few minutes a week. But St. Joseph's will hear confessions for a seven-and-a-half hour stretch Saturday in its sixth annual “all-day confession” event... Gregorian chants reverberating in the background guarantee confessions will be eavesdrop-proof. (more)
A veteran Chinese intelligence officer, Li Fengzhi, who defected to the United States says that his country's civilian spy service spends most of its time trying to steal secrets overseas... China's spy agency is focused on sending spies to infiltrate the U.S. intelligence community, and also on collecting secrets and technology from the United States. "China spends a tremendous effort to send out spies to important countries like the U.S. to collect information," Mr. Li said. (more)
The federal appeals court in Atlanta has upheld an extraordinary ruling in favor of Eagle Hospital Physicians in its bitter dispute with a consultant who accessed Eagle’s confidential e-mails.The ruling Thursday by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals means Steven R. Gerst and his companies, SRG Consulting and Hospitalist Physicians, must pay Eagle $559,334 in legal fees and $44,000 in damages.When asked under oath how he did his electronic eavesdropping, Gerst invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.The 11th Circuit Thursday agreed Gerst’s misconduct deserved such sanctions. (more)Eavesdropping detection inspections are economical compared with the value of lost information - in this case, $44,000. Trying to recoup in court is the expensive part - in this case, $559,334. A win like this is unusual. Smarter... add eavesdropping detection audits to your security program to deter snoops in the first place.
Australia - New South Wales authorities are secretly combing through the phone records of more than 90,000 people a year, snooping on more people's communications than the rest of the country's officials combined...The director of the Communications Law Centre, Professor Michael Fraser, has told ABC1's Lateline program he is concerned about the possible abuse of power. "Law enforcement can authorise it themselves. We need to have some checks and balances in place," he said...No-one from the NSW Police or State Government was available to discuss the issue with Lateline... (more)
The UK government is considering a move that would have far-reaching privacy implications: storing all messages sent through web mail and social networking applications. (more)
SC - A Mount Pleasant resident called police because she thought her neighbor was eavesdropping on her from his backyard, reports say.She told police March 4, that she was on the phone in the backyard by her pool when her dog began to bark at the fence... after seeing the shadow of a man, she called to her dog and then crouched down to catch a better glimpse of the man. She saw him get up and start running to his own pool. She reportedly said her neighbor has done similar things in the past. (more)
UT - ...two boys, one a student at Midvale Middle School and another boy also younger than 18, had a plan to “kidnap, torture and kill” at least 3 people, including a fellow student and a school police officer at Midvale Middle School......the mother of the older boy called police on March 7th, after eavesdropping on a phone conversation between her son and the younger boy. The mother allegedly heard the boys talk about a plan to kidnap people after luring them to different locations. The court papers say the boys “…wanted to make sure to have cameras and camcorders so they could take pictures of what they were doing, because they wanted people to know who did it, so they could become famous.” (more with video)
MI - Two sergeants and three deputies are making a federal case out of their problems with Sheriff Michael Oltersdorf, Undersheriff Scott Wooters and the Leelanau County Sheriff’s Department.In a suit filed in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids last week, the sergeants and deputies are alleging that their civil rights were violated when the sheriff and undersheriff listened to “private” conversations recorded on a computerized phone system in the Leelanau County Law Enforcement Center last year.Many of the phone conversations were about grievances filed against the sheriff under a Police Officers Association of Michigan (POAM) union contract and issues related to former Deputy Bruce Beeker, who resigned last month. (more)
NY - Police are looking for a man who installed a spy camera in the unisex bathroom at the Starbucks Coffee Shop in New Paltz.
The device was discovered a short time later when an employee located it. It is believed the incident occurred on Tuesday, March 10 at about 7 p.m.
New Paltz Police have recovered video and said the suspect appears to be a white man with a build, 35 to 40 years of age and approximately six feet tall. 
He is bearded with a mustache and is wearing wire rimmed circular glasses. He has a pony tail that does down mid-way on his back.
The police are asking for public assistance it identifying this man. Anyone with information is asked to call the police at 845-255-1323. All calls will remain confidential and police will also take anonymous tips. (more) (more)
Happy St. Patrick's Day"Is someone listening to your private calls? Know the warning signs." Someone at VoIP-News has had a wee bit too much Guinness. The only thing they didn't mention were the buggin' leprechauns.
Seriously, there is a lot of misinformation on the Internet. If you are concerned about illegal bugging, wiretapping or electronic tracking, please contact a competent counterespionage specialist.
Resources...
Security Director News
Security Management
International Association of Professional Security Consultants
"I've never asked Dad if he killed Mum."
