And thus began the long parade of frogmen...

United Arab Emirates

Police in Dubai Wednesday ordered spies to leave the Persian Gulf...

"Those spies that are currently present in the Gulf must leave the region within one week.

If not, then we will cross that bridge when we come to it," said a lieutenant general with the Dubai police. (more)

Insider-Trading Wires & Taps

NYC - Federal prosecutors in Manhattan equipped several cooperating witnesses with recording devices to try to obtain information about targets in the Galleon insider-trading probe, people familiar with the matter say... A total of 21 individuals have been charged in the Galleon case. At least eight individuals have pleaded guilty and are cooperating against other defendants... Criminal prosecutors also are using evidence obtained from wiretapped telephone calls. (more)

Cell Phone Spying (video)

Cell Phone Privacy
Everything you need to know about protecting your privacy while using mobile and cordless phones.

Quote of the Week - Corporate Spies

“In an increasingly fragmented geopolitical environment, the balance seems to be shifting away from governments and toward corporate and even private individuals, who have access to more intelligence and information-gathering abilities than many governments in history ever had.” (more)

Eamon Javers, author - Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy: The Secret World of Corporate Espionage

How Elvis Presley Got an "Ultra-Secure" Passport...

...a fascinating and unsettling story by Mark Nestmann.

Elvis died in 1977. But that didn’t prevent hackers from inserting his digital photo into a U.K. passport, and using it at a self-service passport machine at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport to gain clearance to board a plane.

This incident occurred in September 2008. But this security vulnerability persists, as proven by the recent assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas operative, in a Dubai hotel on January 20. (more)

I created the Elvis passport using Photoshop and images from the net to provide a sense of what can be done with digital manipulation. This amateur creation only took about 15 minutes to make. Professional artists at government spy agencies devote more time to their projects. Their creations are almost indistinguishable from authentic documents.

Supervisors order surveillance sweeps for 'bugs'

Although Eavesdropping Detection Audits are a generally accepted good business practice, they rarely make news. This report details the costs, frequency and rational behind the effort. 

CA - San Bernardino County supervisors spent $22,500 last month to sweep their offices and other parts of the government center for secret recording devices and other hidden surveillance equipment.
The first sweep of the fourth and fifth floors of the county building occurred Jan. 23, and the purchase order provides for four more sweeps at undisclosed future dates...

In all, David Wert, county spokesperson said, the county has spent $42,865 on sweeps in recent years but refused to disclose when previous sweeps occured...

In a brief statement, Board of Supervisors Chairman Gary Ovitt said that: "All surveillance measures taken by the County are to ensure integrity in the decision-making process as well as the safety of those who work at the county. We work hand-in-hand with public safety officials while developing these measures to ensure those objectives are met."

Wert said taxpayers are put at risk when sensitive information relating to official county business is leaked because it opens the doors for potential costly litigation.

"It puts the taxpayers at a disadvantage in the courtroom and at the negotiating table," he said. (more)

If you are not protecting your organization's operational integrity, please give me a call. I can help you develop a rational and effective eavesdropping detection program with a strong overall counterespionage component.

Chinese Take Out

FBI surveillance video made public reveals details of a Chinese espionage operation to obtain secrets from the Pentagon through a group of Americans who spied for China. 

The rare video footage was the high point of a multiyear investigation into Chinese espionage carried out by a ring of military intelligence agents operating from Guangzhou, China. 

The tape, made public by CBS' "60 Minutes," was recorded in 2007 with two cameras hidden in a rental car during the investigation of Pentagon analyst Gregg W. Bergersen. The video reveals Bergersen pocketing a wad of about $2,000 in cash from Kuo Tai-shen, a Taiwanese-born spy for the People's Republic of China. (more)

CBS News Video

"Give thy thoughts no tongue."

Whatever you do, whatever you see this season, do not miss Oregon Shakespeare Festival's production of "Hamlet."

 

Director Bill Rauch and Dan Donohue have dragged Shakespeare's venerated classic into the world of 2010 and given us an edgy, topical and intimate examination of those dastardly doings in Denmark...

It is Rauch's vision to put Hamlet into current time and place. ... Rauch's Denmark is a full-blown security state. Even the ancient castle walls come equipped with security cameras, guards with assault rifles. Claudius and Polonius don't have to eavesdrop on Hamlet and Ophelia — she wears a wire. In this milieu, Hamlet's irrational acts and speech throw everyone off balance, making them that much more vulnerable. (more)

SpyCam Story #572 - A Deranged Design

Indianapolis - Metro police are investigating an unusual case of voyeurism. Police arrested 40-year-old David Delagrange for spying on women with an elaborate camera system. Investigators say Delagrange, an engineer from Fort Wayne, rigged the sophisticated system in his right shoe and operated it through a cable in his pants. Monday, police showed the wiring they reportedly found inside his jeans. They say the wires connected to a tiny camera. "It was kind of sticking out, just in front of the cuff of the pants, over the tie of the shoe," said Sgt. Mount. (more)

SpyCam Story #571 - Act Naturally

Australia - Mark Robert Stratford, 49, was employed as director of drama at Lauriston Girls' School. The former drama teacher of a Melbourne girls' school has pleaded guilty to installing a spy camera to capture students undressing. (more)

Security Director News - See through their eyes

Awesome new technology with a major security impact. 

Yes, it has been tried before. But, never this slick, and with hardware you already own.

What if you were able to locate any member of your field staff — and see what they are seeing in real time? 

What if you could be in ten places at once?

Or 100, or even 1,000? 

That would be very powerful.

Now, what if anyone on your team could simultaneously view critical information appearing on a computer screen back at headquarters or at a remote location? 

That would open up a whole new world of possibilities. 

Reality Mobile has made it possible to share any kind of information with anyone in your organization at any time. 

Bonus... You can do all of this with equipment you probably already own. And it works virtually anywhere on the planet.
("How it works" video)

Attention uniform manufacturer!
Time to incorporate CCTV button cameras into your designs.

Remember when teachers only had extra eyes ...in the back of their heads?

UPDATES
• The lawsuit.
• Detailed technical insights on how this was accomplished.
• The Federal Bureau of Investigation is now investigating whether the school broke any federal wiretap laws when it remotely spied on a student at home, an anonymous official told the Associated Press.
• A federal grand jury has also subpoenaed the school for records related to the so-called "security" measures implemented on the laptops that allowed officials to activate the webcams to see people using them, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
• County DA - "We're going to be looking into the situation to see if a criminal investigation is warranted.
• A federal judge ordered the Pennsylvania school district to stop activating the cameras.

PA - A suburban Philadelphia school district remotely activates the cameras in school-provided laptops to spy on students in their homes, a lawsuit filed in federal court Tuesday (2/11/10) alleged...

Michael and Holly Robbins of Penn Valley, Pa., said they first found out about the alleged spying last November after their son Blake was accused by a Harriton High School official of "improper behavior in his home" and shown a photograph taken by his laptop.

An assistant principal at Harriton later confirmed that the district could remotely activate the webcam in students' laptops. (more) ("How Television Benefits Your Children")

Security Alert - Social networking could leave your home at risk

...to highlight just how many people are leaving themselves vulnerable through what they disclose on the internet, a Dutch website called Please Rob Me is posting live updates sent by users declaring when they are not at home - and thus at risk of burglary.

The ever-increasing amount of information we post on social networking sites is leaving us vulnerable to criminals.

Whether it's birthdates, home addresses or where we're planning to go on holiday, these details can be a goldmine to criminals. ...mentioning that you're stuck at work might seem innocent enough, you've actually just advertised to burglars that your home is going to be empty for some time. (more)

Newspaper's Royal Hack Attack

UK - A British Parliament investigation concludes that Murdoch-owned tabloid News of the World hacked phones " on industrial scale"—including those of police, military, and government officials—in pursuit of gossip on royals. NotW's owner, New International, tried to blame it all on one "rogue reporter," but the Parliament's report says it is "inconceivable" that one guy did this alone. (more)

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)