Laser Beam Eavesdropping - 2010

It is time to update our views on laser beam eavesdropping. While not entirely practical yet as an everyday amateur/business spy tool, advancements are being made which have us concerned.

Last year, researchers from Bar-Ilan University (Ramat-Gan, Israel) and the Universitat de València (Burjassot, Spain) developed a new way to sense sound remotely using a laser beam. Their paper is called: "Simultaneous remote extraction of multiple speech sources and heart beats from secondary speckles pattern" by Zeev Zalevsky, Yevgeny Beiderman, Israel Margalit, Shimshon Gingold, Mina Teicher, Vicente Mico, and Javier Garcia.

Unlike classic laser beam eavesdropping, the new method does not rely on interferometer or a reflecting diaphram, like a window. A single laser beam is aimed at the object to be monitored (a person and a cell phone were used in their tests). The speckles that appear in an out-of-focus image of the object are then tracked. This produces data from which a spectrogram or sound signal can be constructed.

The setup is basic. The laser illuminates a small area on the object and an ordinary digital camera captures the scene. The camera's lens is defocused. This produces a pattern that does not randomly change when the object moves. The camera image is processed, calculating the shift of the pattern from frame to frame. (more) 

Laser beam audio samples...

• Cell phone at 60m.

• Neck of person at 30m.

• Face at 100m.

• Heartbeat at 60m.
Note: Audio is labeled as they were in the paper. However, it sounds like the neck and face audio clips may have been reversed.

SpyCam Story #569 - Thumb Trips Taper

GA - An Alpharetta man was charged with unlawful eavesdropping and child molestation.

Police said Matthew Andrzejak used a video camera inside a ball point pen to secretly record gym members at Lifetime Fitness in Alpharetta.

Andrzejak was charged with 22 counts of unlawful eavesdropping and applicable felony child molestation charges.

An investigation was launched when a patron of the gym found a computer thumb drive which had been dropped on the floor of the facility. After discovering illegal surveillance images of children and acts of child molestation occurring at a place of residence that were stored on the thumb drive, the patron contacted Alpharetta authorities. (more with video)

Allegations police chief secretly recorded conversations

LA - Reaction to Monroe Police Chief Ron Schleuter’s use of a digital recorder to secretly record conversations with Mayor Jamie Mayo and other local officials is one of disbelief.

“I’d be pretty upset if that happened to me,” said West Monroe Mayor Dave Norris. “I find it very disappointing.”

It has been reported that Schleuter recorded West Monroe Police Chief Chris Elg...

 

The media reported last week that Schleuter, who could not be reached, made possibly 100 recordings, including meetings with Mayo, city attorney Nanci Summersgill, city councilmen and Elg. (more)

Cop Out Your Car with a Black Box Recorder

If you have security responsibility for your company's limos, vans or truck fleet, this SeCube USA Vehicle Security DVR may interest you...

Records the front view and the interior view. Documents locations on google maps with the GPS feature. G-force sensors record shock, accelerations and decelerations.

Time to Review Your Computer Usage Policies

Companies should spend the time to review computer usage policies. There have been a few impactful court decisions that should address expectations of privacy and permissible access.

Examples:

• Quon v. Arch Wireless Operating Co. Inc.,
529 F.3d 892 (9th Cir. 2008), 2009 WL 1146443 (2009)

• Stengart v. Loving Care Agency Inc.,
408 NJ Super. 54 (NJ App. Div. 2009) 

• LVRC Holdings LLC v. Brekka,
581 F.3d 1127 (9th Cir. 2009)

...via Rob Kleeger - The Intelligence Group

Students + Keystroke Logger...

...What could possibly go wrong?

MD - Students at a Potomac high school hacked into the school's computer system and changed class grades, according to sources briefed by the school's principal, and officials are investigating how widespread the damage might be... The students involved used a computer program to capture passwords from at least one teacher, according to school sources familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. (more)

Business Espionage - Wall Street's Spy Games

Eamon Javers, author of Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy, says spying is pervasive in corporate America and especially on Wall Street as firms try to get a competitive advantage against each other. View the interview, then hire a good counterespionage consultant.

...thus creating future Wall Street's Spy Games

NYC - The American International Toy Fair began today. This is the annual event where toy makers show off new offerings that will make their way into next year's stockings. Previews from toymakers and interviews with analysts make clear that the focus is on innovation and price....

Jakks Pacific is offering some high-tech spying gear for kids in its Spy Net line, including a video spy watch for $54.99 and a Pen Audio Bug for $24.99. Yes, they're just what they sound like — miniature video and audio recorders. (more)

"Serial Bugger" or "Dude, shut up!"

Australia - A Gold Coast man who installed hidden cameras to try to spy on his flatmates now claims he felt pressured to plead guilty to the offence by his lawyer, and he has a secret recording of their conversation that he says proves it. (more)

How to Spy on a Fashion Show?

Bury a spycam in your hair!

(video)

From the Art imitates life file: "Eavesdropping is...

"Eavesdropping is the easiest form of investigation in Assassin's Creed." - via Assassin's Creed wiki

Business Espionage - Goldman Sachs

NY - A former Goldman Sachs Group computer programmer was indicted Thursday on charges he stole computer codes used for proprietary high-frequency trading program. 

Sergey Aleynikov, 40 years old, was charged in a three-count indictment with theft of trade secrets, transportation of stolen property in interstate and foreign commerce and unauthorized computer access.(more)

Internet Steganography - Data Under the Radar

7:00 p.m., Shanghai

An employee of an electronic equipment factory uploads a music file to an online file-sharing site. Hidden in the MP3 file (Michael Jackson's album Thriller) are schematics of a new mobile phone that will carry the brand of a large American company. Once the employee's Taiwanese collaborators download the file, they start manufacturing counterfeit mobile phones essentially identical to the original—even before the American company can get its version into stores.

3:30 p.m., somewhere in Afghanistan

A terrorist hunted by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation posts an excerpt from the motion picture High School Musical Three: Senior Year on Facebook. Inside are hidden instructions for a bomb attack on a commuter rail line in southern Europe. Later that day, terrorists based in Athens follow the instructions to plan a rush hour attack that kills hundreds of people.

4:00 a.m., Malibu, Calif.

A very famous actor (VFA) has a brief conversation with a well-known director (WKD) over Skype, an application that lets them make free voice calls over the Internet. They discuss the medical problems of VFA's cat in great detail. When the conversation is over, WKD's computer has a sleazy new addition—in a folder on his desktop, there is a picture of a nude teenager, along with her mobile number and the date and time at which WKD will meet her at VFA's pool party for a photo session.

What all these scenarios have in common is an information-smuggling technique called steganography—the communication of secret messages inside a perfectly innocent carrier... (more)

Roll Your Own Drone

via David Schneider...

This new branch of the [model airplane flying] hobby goes by the name first-person view, or FPV for short...

Having read up about this activity at such sites at DIYDrones.com and FPVPilot.com, I was eager to give it a try. I purchased a tiny SN555 video camera for US $129 from Hobby Wireless, an online seller of FPV gear. While there, for another $95 I also bought a diminutive 0.5-watt video transmitter and a matching receiver tuned to 910 megahertz, which is well separated from the frequencies used for radio-controlled model aircraft in the United States (72 MHz and 2.4 gigahertz).

The big question was what model to use. I ended up with a plane called the Twin Star II, which is manufactured by Multiplex Modellsport of Bretten-Gölshausen, Germany. It normally retails for $150, but I picked up a kit for this model at the bargain price of $86 from BP Hobbies of Piscataway, N. J. (more with video) (another high roller)

Conviction in First U.S. Economic Espionage Trial

A Chinese-born engineer convicted in the United States' first economic espionage trial was sentenced Monday to more than 15 years in prison for stealing sensitive information on the U.S. space program with the intent of passing it to China.

Dongfan "Greg" Chung, a Boeing stress analyst with high-level security clearance, was convicted in July of six counts of economic espionage and other federal charges for storing 300,000 pages of sensitive papers in his Southern California home. Prosecutors alleged the papers included information about the U.S. space shuttle, a booster rocket and military troop transports. (more)