Rhode Island - Wiretap Update

RI - A federal appeals court has overturned a jury verdict that punished the city of Providence for illegally recording hundreds of thousands of phone calls at the city’s public safety complex.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston on Tuesday released the decision. It says the city and its officials are shielded from the lawsuit because of “qualified immunity,“ which means government officials can’t be sued for doing their jobs.

A federal jury in 2008 awarded about $525,000 to the more than 100 people who sued after having their calls recorded. (more)

Business Espionage: The Heat is on Starwood v. Hilton

HotelNewsNow.com reports U.S. Justice Department prosecutors are requesting that Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide's 10-month-old corporate espionage lawsuit against Hilton Worldwide be halted so as not to interfere with a criminal investigation into the matter. (more)

Rutgers Outsmarts the Smart Phones

Experiments by Rutgers University researchers show how your smart phones can be hacked. 

Using malware known as "rootkits," the researchers showed how a smart phone can be attacked. Rootkits attack a computer's operating system.

The researchers found the following:

• The phone's microphone can be turned to eavesdrop.
• A phone user's location can be tracked.
• A phone's battery-draining apps can be turned on to kill the battery.

All of these things can happen without the phone owner knowing about it. 

The Rutgers researchers say they conducted the experiments to raise a red flag. The next step will be to work on defenses. (more) (video)

Can't wait to see what they will do with the new iPad and other tablets.

Security Alert - Windows 7 Wi-Fi Vulnerability

Windows 7 contains a "SoftAP" feature, also called "virtual Wi-Fi," that allows a single PC to function simultaneously as a Wi-Fi client and as an AP to which other Wi-Fi-capable devices can connect. The capability is handy when users are wearing their consumer hats and want to share music and play interactive games during their off hours. But it also can allow on-site visitors and parking-lot hackers to piggyback onto the user's laptop and "ghost ride" into the corporate network unnoticed. (more)

Government Surveillance - How we got here.

The Watchers... a look at America’s covert intelligence systems. Harris, a reporter for National Journal, details the rise of a band of mavericks in national security and intelligence organizations that has erected an American surveillance state. (audio)

Business Espionage - Companies Spy on Each Other

James Bond, meet Fred Rustmann. A former CIA agent, Rustmann now runs a "corporate intelligence" firm that helps companies spy on each other. Like many veterans of the Central Intelligence Agency, Rustmann's spying tricks are in high demand by the private sector.

When one of Rustmann's clients wants to find out about, say, its competitors' upcoming product line-ups, it pays him to conduct undercover interviews with unsuspecting employees and dig through their garbage.

"You can find out all kinds of good stuff in the trash," says Rustmann, founder of CTC International, who spent 24 years in the CIA's clandestine service breaking into embassies and wiretapping foreign government officials. (more)

CIA, Inc.: Espionage and the Craft of Business Intelligence

By: F.W. Rustmann, Jr.

Every major government recognizes the value of intelligence and employs an intelligence service to collect it for them. Businesses should be no different. Knowing how to gather information on your competitors, being able to anticipate their next move, and preventing them from stealing your secrets are critical keys to success in the new economy. Executives, entrepreneurs, and others must realize their companies’ success partially depends on their knowledge and implementation of business intelligence. This book teaches the principles of intelligence and counterintelligence and uses the CIA's methods as a model for the business world.

SpyCam Story #570 - Cook in Bathroom

NC - A 62-year-old man faces multiple charges in connection with the videotaping of juvenile girls in a bathroom. The Alamance County Sheriff's Office said it seized computers and other items from 135 E. Shannon Drive on Feb. 11. ... Richard Graham Cook of that address was charged ... The sheriff's office said two girls were secretly videotaped in a bathroom. Authorities did not identify the victims or say when or where the offenses allegedly took place. (more)

Doh! Caught with wild game camera

SD - The Brandon man who secretly hid a camera in a 17-year-old girl's bedroom is going to jail for six months. Christopher Geringer, 37, pleaded guilty to burglary and installing an eavesdropping device. Prosecutors told the judge Geringer used a wild game camera with a motion sensor on it to take pictures of the girl as she undressed. Once Geringer gets out of jail, he'll be on probation for five years. (more)

"Your moment of Zen" Barbie

[Insert your snappy spycam caption here.]

Security Director Budget Booster - Perspective

My colleague, Ira Winkler, writes...

A few years ago, I was called in by the CSO of a Fortune 25 company. He hired 4 of the best known companies that do penetration testing to find problems with their corporate network. All 4 companies came back two weeks and $100,000 later, and told the CEO that they had full control of his network. The CSO went immediately to the CEO, who basically replied, "I don't care." 

The CSO then hired me to perform an espionage simulation. I came back within one week, and handed the CSO their mergers and acquisitions plans, their new technologies that were being released in three years, multi-billion dollar proposals, pictures showing how I bugged the CEO's office, and told him that I had full control of their entire network. The next week, the CEO raised the security budget by $10,000,000 and they hired security managers for all business units. (more)

Security Directors...

The ideas and strategies powering your organization to success are vulnerable long before they are ever distilled into data. A good counterespionage strategy addresses this, thus winning the admiration – and funding – of management. ~Kevin

The Big Picture... show

The GovSec/U.S. Law 2010 Conference & Expo comes to Washington, DC, March 23 & 24. Experience, first-hand, the newest systems, tools and surveillance technologies.

There are a Thousand Stories in SIM City

Yet another good reason to keep your cell phone from the grasp of others...

via the seller...

"Save, edit and delete your phone book and short messages (SMS) stored on your SIM card using the Recovery PRO software and SIM Card Spy Elite with your computer and ANY standard SIM card from a standard cell phone which supports removable SIM cards. Have you ever wished you can spy on your wife, husband, teens, or an employer who needs to see what someone is up to? Are they being suspicious when on their cell phone? This SIM card spy software and hardware solution can tap into all files on a cell phone SIM card for viewing, saving or editing. Simply place the SIM card into the USB reader, and with your computer, instantly save for later or view immediately. Backup your mobile phone numbers and SMS messages to your PC, another SIM card or any removable media." (video)

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)