Tabloid's Royal Eavesdrop Keeps Making News

UK - In November 2005, three senior aides to Britain’s royal family noticed odd things happening on their mobile phones. Messages they had never listened to were somehow appearing in their mailboxes as if heard and saved. Equally peculiar were stories that began appearing about Prince William in one of the country’s biggest tabloids, News of the World.

The stories were banal enough (Prince William pulled a tendon in his knee, one revealed). But the royal aides were puzzled as to how News of the World had gotten the information, which was known among only a small, discreet circle. They began to suspect that someone was eavesdropping on their private conversations. 

Scotland Yard collected evidence in 2006 indicating that hundreds of celebrities, government officials, soccer stars – anyone whose personal secrets could be tabloid fodder – might have had their phone messages hacked by reporters at News of the World. Only now, more than four years later, are most of them beginning to find out. (more)

SpyCam Story #583 - Veal

A hidden-camera video that shows severe confinement and other abuses of calves has caused Bob Barker to ask consumers to stop buying veal and dairy products.

The Emmy Award-winning former host of The Price is Right and a longtime animal advocate, Barker narrated the Mercy for Animals (MFA) video and joins the group in asking Americans nationwide to boycott the products that he says sentence animals to “a life of extreme deprivation and suffering.” (more)

How to Kill Flash Zombies

Flash cookies can be used to track you across the Web without telling you. Advertisers are using it to track your movements across the Web.

Or so claims a lawsuit filed by privacy attorney Joseph Malley, one of three he's filed in the last two months against some of the biggest media heavyweights in the world -- Disney, ABC, NBC, MTV, and a host of others.

All use them employ Web ad companies like Quantcast, Specificmedia, and Clearspring to deliver Flash ads, and all of those ads store Flash cookies on your hard drive.

So what's wrong with that? For one thing, most people aren't aware Flash even stores cookies. These cookie files are ridiculously hard to find and manage: You can't get at them from your browser, and they're buried several layers deep inside your Application Data folder on Windows PCs. They can store up to 100K of data per cookie, or about 25 times what a browser cookie can store. And they can be used to recreate tracking cookies you've deleted.

In other words, if you've told an advertiser you don't want to be followed around the Web by deleting its tracking cookie, that advertiser can use Flash to 'respawn' that deleted cookie without telling you -- and continue to track you in secret. Thus Malley's lawsuits, which accuse all of those companies of breaking federal laws against computer intrusion and surveillance.

That respawning bit is why Flash cookies are also called "zombie" cookies. However, like real zombies, they can be stopped -- and you don't even have to cut off their heads (or use cricket bats and vinyl LPs, like in Shaun of the Dead ). You just need to use Adobe's Flash Player Settings Manager. (more)

Click the Adobe link above and set your preferences on the Global Settings Panel. It is easy to do and very worthwhile.

"Yes, you can record. Yes, you can decide not to."

Australia - Alliance Craton Explorer (a company involved in developing a uranium mine) told the Supreme Court it wanted to use recording devices in committee meetings with Quasar Resources. The companies have a joint venture agreement for the Four Mile uranium project.

Alliance claimed it wanted to protect its interests but Quasar countered that the confidentiality of the meetings could be put at risk. Quasar used its numbers at the meetings to vote against the recordings. It argued in court the use of such devices was in breach of listening and surveillance laws. 

So far, so good.

But Justice John Sulan disagreed, finding it was legitimate for Alliance to use recording devices.

However he also ruled it was acceptable for the committee to decide by a vote whether recording devices could be used. (more)

Security Scrapbook Exclusive

Possible secret recording from the meeting leaked:

"Uranium. Three Mile. Duh!" 

"No, no. Four Mile is a brilliant name. Like, mate... we go the extra mile." 

"Or, a disaster would be that much bigger, you dingo."

"I say we use kilometers instead."

The Byte of the Web Bugs

The Wall Street Journal has been running a series of very interesting - and disturbing - articles the past few days investigating Internet spying and its impact on your privacy.

For instance, did you know that the top fifty US web sites (which account for about 40% of Web pages visited by Americans) install, on average, 64 pieces of tracking technology onto the computers of their visitors? Or, that two-thirds of those tracking files were created by 131 companies, many, if not most, of which are in the business of selling the information they capture from you and me?

Of course, the companies installing the web site tracking software say it is all harmless. In fact, they argue, the information captured about us allows them to create a better on-line experience since the Web ads that we see are tailored to fit our individual interests...

As a result, tracking software on web sites has increased in sophistication to where - using so-called "Web bugs" - your cursor movements on a web page along with what you are typing are being analyzed to create profile of you (or better, your computer) that can be also tracked across web sites. (more)

SpyCam Story #582 - Don't ask, don't tell.

Australia - An army employee alleged to have put a covert filming device in change rooms at his barracks will stand trial. Nathan William Freeman, 27, is charged with indecent filming.

It will be alleged a secret camera resembling a car's key remote was put in change rooms at the Woodside barracks in the Adelaide hills. Police say the item was handed in as lost property and then discovered to be a secret camera on closer inspection. (more)

Reykjavik's Gargoyle SpyCam

Seen during my travels in Iceland this week...

Gargoyle watches the watchers.



Who says Vikings don't have a sense of humor?

The Eight Most Secretive Companies...

...are also some of the most successful. 

Follow their lead. 

Engage a good counterespionage specialist.

The need for secrecy in business has led to a shadow industry known as industrial espionage. The practices of “spying” used to be physical. A spy would have to be near the product to describe or photograph it. Electronic surveillance replaced this in the second half of the 20th century and “bugs,” wire taps, and digital theft of documents became more popular. Today, espionage is incredibly sophisticated... 

This is a list of eight of the most secretive companies in America, firms which rely heavily on keeping secrets. A breach of their most confidential products or services could damage their current business value and, over time, even destroy a company.
• Apple, Inc.
• Xe Services LLC (formerly Blackwater)
• Renaissance Technologies LLC
• Google, Inc.
• Boeing, Co.
• Monsanto, Co.
• PGP
• The Coca-Cola Company
(more)

HSH Nordbank Chief Nonnenmacher Says He Never Approved or Tolerated Spy

Germany - HSH Nordbank AG Chief Executive Officer Dirk Jens Nonnenmacher said he never approved or tolerated spying at the bank and that the lender will “do everything” to examine allegations that spying took place...

German magazine Der Spiegel reported on Aug. 21 that officials at the bank asked a security company to investigate former HSH Nordbank Chief Operating Officer Frank Roth, who was fired last year. The magazine relied on a document citing an unidentified former security adviser.

Nonnenmacher said the security adviser has since made a statement revoking the allegations... (more)

SpyCam Story #581 - Hill Out

MI - Former Egelston Township Treasurer Brian Lee Hill is free on bond after spending three years in prison on a batch of now-reduced child-pornography convictions...

The longtime elected official spent three years behind bars, almost to the day. He was sentenced Aug. 24, 2007, to 10 concurrent terms of 4 3/4 years to 20 years, as well as shorter concurrent terms -- already served -- for electronic eavesdropping. The eavesdropping convictions were for spying on showering foreign exchange students with a videocamera hidden in his bathroom. (more)

SpyCam Story #580 - The Curtains Caper (UPDATE)

Malaysia - Selangor Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim played detective today when he revealed the origins of a spy camera found in his office on August 10.

He said internal investigations by his office have located the factory that made the camera and the store where it had been bought. Khalid also dismissed allegations that it was a “political plot” to not lodge a police report.

The mentri besar had discovered a Fuji-brand camera on a ledge behind the curtains in his office on August 10. He had said checks had also been carried out in the state executive councillors’ offices to detect if there were more hidden cameras. (more)

The Spying on the Neighbor Fiasco

Don't watch this at work. 
Save it for later. 
Have a nice weekend. (video)

Yet another challenge to the 2-party consent eavesdropping laws

Using an iPhone to secretly record a conversation is not a violation of the Wiretap Act if done for legitimate purposes, a federal appeals court has ruled.

“The defendant must have the intent to use the illicit recording to commit a tort of crime beyond the act of recording itself,” (.pdf) the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled.

Friday’s decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which involves a civil lawsuit over a secret audio recording produced from the 99-cent Recorder app, mirrors decisions in at least three other federal appeals courts.

The lawsuit concerns a family dispute over the making of a dying mother’s will. Days before the Connecticut woman died, her son secretly recorded a kitchen conversation between the son, mother, stepfather and others over how to handle her estate after her death. (more)

SpyCam Story #580 - It's curtains for the staff.

East Malaysia - Selangor Menteri Besar Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim has denied a suggestion that he would reshuffle his office staff following the discovery of a hidden video camera in the office.

He said the State Government would first find out why the staff in his office had not detected the device. "If we find out it involved the staff in the Menteri Besar's office, then action will be taken against them.

Abdul Khalid stumbled upon a hidden video camera in a gap between the thick curtains in his office on Tuesday. (more)

Did you know... most eavesdropping devices are found by accident?

Imagine the results if people looked occasionally.
Don't want to do it yourself? 
Call the folks who bring you Kevin's Security Scrapbook.
It's what they do best.

Life, art and duffel bags...

Body of Missing British Spy
Found Stuffed in Bag 
in His Apartment
The body of an employee of Britain's spy agency MI6 has been found in a bag in a central London apartment where he may have been murdered two weeks ago, British media reports.

The body of Gareth Williams, 31, was found Monday stuffed in a large sports bag in his bath only a few hundred yards from MI6 headquarters, the Daily Mail reports.

MI6 gathers secret information about Britain's overseas enemies, making the spy a possible target of terrorists, the Mail says.

BBC's security correspondent says it is not clear what the victim did for MI-6, but that it is reported that he was on loan from the Government Communications Headquarters, the electronic eavesdropping agency, implying he was a technical expert. (more)

(more)