Über SpyCam - Sight, Sound and Smell

A Global Hawk robotic plane, hovering more than 11 miles above Afghanistan, can snap images of Taliban hide-outs so crystal clear that U.S. intelligence officials can make out the pickup trucks parked nearby — and how long they've been there.

Halfway around the globe in a underground laboratory in El Segundo, Raytheon Co. engineers who helped develop the cameras and sensors for the pilotless spy plane are now working on even more powerful devices that are revolutionizing the way the military gathers intelligence.

The new sensors enable flying drones to "listen in" on cellphone conversations and pinpoint the location of the caller on the ground. Some can even "smell" the air and sniff out chemical plumes emanating from a potential underground nuclear laboratory. (more) (sing-a-long)

PI Spy vs. The Fecal People

UK - A private detective agency is using spy cameras to catch dog walkers who don't clean up after their pets. Investigator Mark Halstead, 35, uses all-weather infra-red cameras hidden in trees and hollowed-out stones... At the moment he is offering his services for free around Milton Keynes, but hopes to go nationwide. (more)

"Just throw in some scary words."

from a recent press release...

...is the world's leading provider of high attenuating radio frequency and infrared optically clear substrates for privacy and electronic eavesdropping protection i.e. RF flood attacks, "bugs", LASER attacks, thermal imaging, also known as Technical Surveillance Counter-Measures (TSCM). (more)

Dudes. Thermal imaging?!?!

1. Thermal imaging is not an electronic eavesdropping technique.

2. Thermal imaging is not even a visual privacy invading technique.

"What did you say your name was?"

CA - The former chief executive of the Sacramento area's largest independent real estate firm was arrested early Wednesday morning for secretly recording guests in his homes, says Sacramento County District Attorney Jan Scully... Investigators interviewed the three women, identified as Jane Doe #1, Jane Doe #2, and Jane Doe #3, who said they did not know or consent to the videotaping

Lyon, 54, was arrested by sheriff's deputies at his home in Carmichael and was booked into Sacramento County Jail. Jail records show Lyon was arrested on four felony counts of electronic eavesdropping on separate occasions, with bail set at $60,000.

After posting bail, the former CEO of Lyon Real Estate told reporters the charges are "all allegations." "I am intent on clearing my good name." (more)

When Suits Investigate

Pacific Gas and Electric announced that it placed an executive on paid suspension while it investigates his admitted efforts to surreptitiously infiltrate a community of activists. William Devereaux, senior director of PG&E's SmartMeter program, admitted to multiple news outlets that he used a fake name Thursday in an effort to join an online discussion group of SmartMeter opponents. (more)

Best Sites for Online Snooping

via Forbes.com...
A few simple tools can get you information once available only to private investigators and police.

Slide Show: Best Sites For Online Snooping

In May Matthew Smith received a piece of junk e-mail from a marketer. The marketer chose the wrong guy to spam. 

Smith, a pseudonym, is a former hacker and now works as a network security engineer. He runs a blog called Attack Vector devoted to online security issues. He decided to use the marketer, named Steve, as his guinea pig to show how easy it is to track down information about someone based solely on an e-mail address, and documented how he did it to serve as a warning to others who may not understand the power of what's available to anyone looking to dig into your background. (more)

How Your Boss Knows Your XBox Habits

via windowsitpro.com

Q. I'm a boss who tricked my workers into adding me as Xbox Live friends. How can I spy on them when they're "working" from home to make sure they're not playing Xbox?

A. One of the great features of the Xbox and its online service is the integration with the xbox.com website. It lets you easily see all your Xbox friends. It can be abused by mean bosses to quickly, in table form, see the last time the friends were on XBOX and what they were doing. 

Just perform the following:
Go to www.xbox.com and select "Sign In" in the top right of the xbox.com site.
• Sign in with the Live ID associated with your XBox Live ID.
• Click on your own profile.
• Select View All Friends under Friends.
You can see who's online, who's offline, when they were last online, and what everyone is or was doing. (more)

The Fine Line Between Listening and Eavesdropping

During the Middle Ages, eavesdropping was illegal in England, but overheard conversations could be used as evidence in court. Today, the internet, cell phones and reality TV make it difficult not to pry into the conversations and private lives of friends or strangers. In a new book, linguistics professor John Locke argues that eavesdropping is actually a good thing. Prying has helped humans stay away from danger, find food, identify mate mates, and assured us that we are not alone. (New Hampshire Public Radio audio report)

"If it wasn't the guards, it must be the cleaners."

Australia - A Tasmanian cleaner who stole State Government documents, and leaked them to the Opposition and the media, has been sentenced to 84 hours of community service... Outside court, Nigel John Jones maintained his innocence and said he will appeal against the conviction. (more)

This Week in Spy News

Real Life

• The Georgian special services arrested 15 people today accused of spying for Russia. (more)

• The highest-ranking CIA officer ever convicted of espionage was expected to plead guilty to additional charges that he tried to collect money from old contacts in Russia while in prison, a newspaper reported Thursday. (more)

• Freed U.S. hiker Sarah Shourd says she doesn't know if she'll return to Iran to face espionage charges with her two companions still held in prison there. (more)

• Authorities in Norway have launched an investigation into whether the United States conducted illegal surveillance in the Nordic country, the Ministry of Justice told CNN Thursday. (more)

• Officials of the US embassy in Copenhagen may be illegally collecting data about Danish citizens, they find suspicious, the Politiken newspaper reports. (more)

• Taiwan got another spy shock recently when they arrested two men who were spying for China. The shock part came from the fact that one of the men, Lo Chi Cheng was an army colonel. The other was an unnamed Taiwanese businessman who had business in China and spied on China. Then came another shock. The other guy was really a double agent, who had recruited the colonel, who obtained classified information that was then delivered to China. (more)

• Northrop Grumman’s ginormous experimental spying blimp is progressing rapidly... The Army awarded Northrop a $517 million contract in June to develop a trio of unmanned, seven-story, football-field sized mega-blimps called Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicles. If successful, the blimp will stay in the air for up to three weeks at a time, using 2500 pounds’ worth of “sensors, antennas, data links and signals intelligence equipment” to capture still and video images of civilians and adversaries below and send the pictures to troops’ bases. (more)

Art Imitates Real Life

• Though based on a true story with a well-known outcome, Doug Liman's "Fair Game" is as suspenseful as any fictional thriller -- and considerably more tragic. Based-in-truth thriller about CIA spy Valerie Plame. With Naomi Watts, Sean Penn. Director: Doug Liman (1:44). PG-13: Language. At area theaters. (more) (trailer)

• NBC is scrapping J.J. Abrams' spy series "Undercovers..." ...middling reviews and declining ratings made the show increasingly destined for the chopping block. Wednesday night's airing delivered only 5.8 million viewers. Three more episodes will air in the coming weeks. (more)

• Like Aaron Eckhart? Spy dramas? Then perhaps you'll like THE EXPATRIATE. Former Bat villain Aaron Eckhart (THE RUM DIARY, RABBIT HOLE) has been cast as an ex-CIA agent in the spy drama from German director Philipp Stölzl (NORTH FACE, BABY) and newcomer scribe A.E. Amel. xists, his coworkers are gone, and his assistant is really a trained operative out to kill him. Production begins next year Belgium and Montreal. (more)

Sprint Excludes Chinese Companies From Contract Over Security Fears

Sprint Nextel is excluding Chinese telecommunications-equipment makers Huawei Technologies and ZTE from a contract worth billions of dollars largely because of national security concerns in Washington. The Defense Department and some U.S. lawmakers have been increasingly concerned about the two companies’ ties to the Chinese government and military, and the security implications of letting their equipment into critical U.S. infrastructure. Some officials argue China’s military could use Huawei or ZTE equipment to disrupt or intercept American communications. (more)

Personal Spying - Drones On

Here at Kevin's Security Scrapbook I have been watching the development of drones for years. These are my two personal favorites: Do It Yourself Sky Spies - The Draganflyer and "MAV" The Scariest SiFi Movie You'll See this Year.

If you followed the Scrapbook, you already knew where this is going.  

Time for an official FutureWatch prediction... Private Investigators will start selling off all the old TSCM gadgets they bought which never turned a profit to invest in a drone. Although the applications will be limited (by practicality and law), drones will offer solutions to previously unsolvable problems. 

Early adopters will easily recoup their investments and turn a profit via rental of the drone for special assignments, and/or selling the photos/video at a premium price. In fact, having a drone should bring in previously unattainable assignments. 

P.S.
This is a window of opportunity. It may take up to ten years for new laws (and FAA regulations) protecting public safety and privacy to catch up.

...via The Wall Street Journal...
Personal drones aren't yet plying U.S. flyways. But an arms race is building among people looking to track celebrities, unfaithful lovers or even wildlife. Some organizations would like them for emergency operations in areas hit by natural disasters. Several efforts to develop personal drones are scheduled for completion in the next year.

"If the Israelis can use them to find terrorists, certainly a husband is going to be able to track a wife who goes out at 11 o'clock at night and follow her," said New York divorce lawyer Raoul Felder. (more)

The AR.Drone, an iPhone-controlled helicopter powered by four separate blades

Can't wait?

Check out what's available now!

A.R. Drone (specs) (video)
AERYON Labs (specs) (video)
And many more. 

SpyCam Tee Shirt

"Even Mr. Bond has to have an off day when all his fancy duds are at the $1.50 Dry Cleaners and he's down to his last pair of underpants. But just because his suit jackets are gone doesn't mean he can't hide fancy spy gadgets on his person. Before he drags out the t-shirts he wore while canvassing for decade-old political campaigns or his favorite band that broke up when he was in college, he goes for his old standby, the From Tokyo With Love Electronic Spy Camera Shirt.

It's so deliciously obvious. Centered in the artwork on the shirt is the man himself, holding a camera to his face. But not just a picture of a camera. Hidden behind the soft cotton exterior is a fully-functioning spy camera. That's right. Whatever your chest can see, the camera can see. A cable connects the camera to a small black box that fits discreetly in your pocket. Just reach in, press the button, and your shirt will capture the evidence before you." (more)

Open Season on Marital Bugging and Tapping in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit

A Texas court has ruled that a husband accused of monitoring his wife's computer through a keystroke logger did not violate federal wiretapping laws. 

Larry Bagley was sued in June by his wife Rhea Bagley, who accused him of surreptitiously placing audio recording devices in their house as well as a software keystroke logger. The Bagleys are in the process of divorcing.

The complaint in this civil case says that during the divorce proceedings, the husband revealed the existence of the surveillance tech and acknowledged that the "software recorded screenshots of activity on this computer." The husband replied in court documents that "in all conversations, the defendants' children were present and defendant was able to consent to recordation by way of vicarious consent."

U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal ruled on October 18 in favor of the husband, saying that the court was required to follow a Fifth Circuit decision saying that the federal wiretap law known as Title III does not apply to marital relationships.

Here are some excerpts from the court's opinion:
Whether Title III provides a remedy for interspousal wiretapping within the marital home is a question that has divided the federal courts of appeal. The Fourth, Sixth, Eighth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits have held that such wiretapping is actionable under Title III. The Second and Fifth Circuits have held that Title III does not apply to interspousal wiretaps. (more)

P.S. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit includes:

Eastern District of Louisiana
Middle District of Louisiana
Western District of Louisiana
Northern District of Mississippi
Southern District of Mississippi
Eastern District of Texas
Northern District of Texas
Southern District of Texas
Western District of Texas

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit includes:
District of Connecticut
Eastern District of New York
Northern District of New York
Southern District of New York
Western District of New York
District of Vermont

Industrial Espionage Case Expands

Silicon Valley is bracing itself for fireworks as a long-running intellectual property and industrial espionage dispute between two of the most powerful names in technology finally reaches court.

Oracle is suing its arch-rival SAP for exploiting what it says were illegal downloads of Oracle software code three years ago, and the case has now dragged in another technology titan, Hewlett-Packard, which hired the former SAP boss Leo Apotheker to be its chief executive a month ago. (more)

“A few weeks ago I accused HP’s new CEO, Leo Apotheker, of overseeing an industrial espionage scheme centring on the repeated theft of massive amounts of Oracle’s software,” Mr Ellison said in a statement released this week. (more)