Meanwhile, back in Washington...

A proposed plan to reorganize the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST's) IT Laboratory would close the Computer Security Division and distribute its resources and functions throughout the lab, despite objections from former officials and warnings that the move would be a backwards step for security. (more)

SpyCam Story #549 - The Boyfriend

MI - A man accused of using hidden cameras to videotape a teen in her bedroom could avoid a prison term.

Brain J. Nowak on Monday pleaded no contest to knowingly possessing child sexually abusive material and installing an eavesdropping device. In return, Bay County prosecutors agreed not to pursue charges of using a computer to create child sexually abusive material and manufacturing an eavesdropping device.

Investigators claim from January through March, Nowak spied on his then-girlfriend's 15-year-old daughter. He installed hidden cameras on a toilet tank in the bathroom and in an air duct in the girl's bedroom. The mother found the tapes stored in a file on her computer. (more)

Business Espionage - Bugging at Feed the Children

Oklahoma City police have begun an investigation at Feed The Children after a private investigator found evidence three offices had been illegally bugged.

The investigator "found remnants of wiretapping devices above the ceilings” during an almost six-hour sweep Wednesday evening of the charity’s Oklahoma City headquarters, according to a police report.

Officials with the charity would not identify what three offices were bugged. The Christian relief organization is widely known because of its heart-wrenching televised appeals for funds to feed starving children. It claims to raise more than $1 billion in donations a year. The charity has been in turmoil for months because of a lawsuit over who was in charge there. (more)

Pimp My Pipe ...or... Who's Stringing Who Along?

Scientists have perfected a new technology that can transform a fibre optic cable into a highly sensitive microphone capable of detecting a single footstep from up to 40km away.

Guards at listening posts protecting remote sensitive sites from attackers such as terrorists or environmental saboteurs can eavesdrop across huge tracts of territory using the new system which has been created to beef up security around national borders, railway networks, airports and vital oil and gas pipelines.

Devised by QinetiQ, the privatised Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA), the technology piggybacks on the existing fibre optic communication cable network, millions of miles of which have been laid across.

At present, the microphones are not able to pick up the sound of human speech. right:] (more)

Mason & Hanger and two other companies had similar products about 15 years ago. It had a switchable filter (10 Hz to 1 kHz / no filtering) and a headphone jack.

French Spy Escapes from Dubai

Herve Jaubert, a former French spy, dressed in scuba diving gear and covered up like an Arab woman to flee from threatened torture... As befits a former French naval officer and spy, he had made immaculate preparations for his escape from the United Arab Emirates.

The night before, he claims he had donned wetsuit and scuba diving gear, which had smuggled to him from France in pieces. He dressed himself in women's clothes, and covered himself with a black abaya, the all-enveloping burka-like robe worn to preserve modesty in the Gulf.

Not a small man, he shuffled awkwardly out of the hotel where he was staying under an assumed name, made his way to the seafront and slipped in.

From there, he swam underwater to the nearby coastguard station, on a remote outpost of the emirate of Fujairah, where he cut the fuel lines on a police patrol boat. He knew it was the only one in the area, and the coast would now be clear.

On his dinghy the next day... (more) Yes, the story gets better.

Possession of Wiretap Gear by Attorney

via The New York Post & The New York Daily News...
NY - The former lawyer for "Goodfellas" turncoat Henry Hill was convicted yesterday on a slew of witness-tampering charges.

Robert Simels, 62, glowered as the jury handed down its guilty verdict on 12 counts of conspiring to threaten and bribe witnesses and possessing illegal wiretapping equipment. Simels had done his dirty work on behalf of a powerful Guyanese drug lord.

Once a legal commentator on FOX News and CNN, Simels was done in by his big mouth. An informant taped him discussing plans to "neutralize" a witness. He faces disbarment and between 12 and 15½ years in jail. (more) (more)

The Cove - a covert op to tell the story.

To reveal a gruesome dolphin slaughter to the world, the makers of the documentary The Cove used spy drones, cameras disguised as rocks and a lot of daring... Military-grade heat-sensing cameras were used to track the movements of guards.

The cameras were so cutting-edge that manufacturer Sony hadn’t yet released the software necessary to pull data off the hard drives and edit it. The team hid the drives in a hotel air conditioning duct, and within a day of retrieving each one had runners take them to Tokyo or Osaka and send them out of the country.

The movie depicts a hunt in the waters off Taiji, Japan, where at least 2,000 dolphins are killed every year, with a few caught and sold to aquariums. The meat, containing toxic levels of mercury is sold to people, often passed off as whale meat...

The next dolphin hunting season will begin in Japan in September. (more)

"The Cove" tells the amazing true story of how an elite team of activists, filmmakers and freedivers embarked on a covert mission to penetrate a hidden cove in Japan, shining light on a dark and deadly secret. The shocking discoveries they uncovered were only the tip of the iceberg...

Britney Peeper Offers Equally Dumb Defense

Peeping into Britney Spears’ home in California has landed a woman three years’ probation, and a court order do 240 hours of community service.

Miranda Tozier-Robbins, 26, was arrested in April after being spotted by Britney’s security guards in the grounds of the singer’s Calabasas property. Miranda, claimed that she was filming a documentary. (more)

Business Espionage - "Has anyone told the Pope?"

A campaign group calling for Switzerland to give up its army has accused the weapons industry of planting a spy within its organisation. The Group for Switzerland without an Army says the Farner communications firm, acting on behalf of the armaments industry, sent a spy to observe them in the lead up to a vote on weapons exports. The group is demanding to know who exactly the sensitive information was passed on to and are threatening to sue both the spy and the communications company. (more)

FREE Concert - Music to Spy By

FREE AND SEATING IS LIMITED.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2009

PA - The acclaimed 15-piece City Rhythm Orchestra concert features music from the soundtracks of your favorite spy movies and television shows. The scores from these classics are as memorable as the characters themselves, and City Rhythm's "arresting" arrangements will bring them to life on stage.

The band will perform works by Henry Mancini, Lalo Schifrin, and Billy May, including the themes from Mission Impossible, Pink Panther, James Bond, Peter Gunn, Live and Let Die, and much more. Free admission. Seating is limited. (more)

Doors Open 2:00pm
2:30pm, Sutherland Auditorium PENN STATE ABINGTON / OGONTZ CAMPUS

You don't know her, but she could be...

...anybody sitting right near you.

This time, she is: Alicia DeLeon-Torres, a Commissioner for the City of San Diego’s Commission on Gang Prevention and Intervention, and the National Director for National Asian Pacific American Families Against Substance Abuse.

We thank her for sharing her story with the San Diego News Network.

"I’m on the Los Angeles to San Diego Amtrak afternoon commuter train. The guy across from me is looking at his laptop screen. As he scrolls through his documents, I easily see the pretty graphics, staff assignments and other information I’m sure that I - and others on the train - are not meant to see. If you think I’m spying, I’m not. I’m annoyed!" (more)

Summary - Don't blab your sensitive business in public. You never know who may be listening... or what they will do with what they hear.

Do you have what it takes to be a spy?
Better yet do you even have a clue what it takes to be a spy photographer and what it takes to be on the leading edge?

Last Night ABC News showcased probably the most prolific of the professional photographers in the business, the legendary Brenda Priddy. (more) (ABC News video)

Positively 4th Street

A former US government informant, who hacked into retail networks to steal 130 million debit and credit card numbers, has been charged over the country's largest financial data theft.

Albert Gonzalez, 28, of Florida, is accused of stealing 130 million accounts, on top of 40 million he himself stole previously, according to prosecutors.

He was an ex-informant for the US Secret Service, which he helped hunt hackers, authorities say. (more) (sing-a-long)

SpyCam Story #548 - Sick Hospital Cam

Canada - A Grande Prairie man has pleaded guilty to voyeurism, in connection with a bathroom video-taping scandal. The Grande Prairie Herald-Tribune reports 30 year-old Blair Stouffer made the plea Wednesday in provincial court.

A ten-year employee at the Q.E.II hospital, Stouffer is the second person to be picked up by police in the scandal, but the first to face formal charges.

The Herald-Tribune says he admits that he is the man seen in some of the footage, setting up the camera, in a bathroom at the Q.E.II hospital. Before its discovery, the camera captured 70 videos of three different victims. (more)

New BlackBerry OS Leaked

News is spreading quickly within the underground BlackBerry community of a leak within Research in Motion, the company that makes the phone, of the latest BlackBerry operating system. Designed for the Curve, the new OS (which has been rumored for some time) could easily be the upcoming release for other models such as the popular Bold. (more)