An Invention Which Will Drive Bats Bats... Submarine Sonar too!

Scientists have shown off a "cloaking device" that makes objects invisible - to sound waves.

It uses simple plastic sheets with arrays of holes, and could be put to use in making ships invisible to sonar or in acoustic design of concert halls.

Much research has been undertaken toward creating Harry Potter-style "invisibility cloaks" since the feasibility of the idea was first put forward in 2006.

Those approaches are mostly based on so-called metamaterials, man-made materials with properties that do not occur in nature. The metamaterials are designed such that they force light waves to travel around an object; to an observer, it is as if the object were not there.

But researchers quickly found out that the mathematics behind bending these light waves, called transformation optics, could also be applied to sound waves. (more)

Note: This naturally occurs in humans between the ages of 2-20.

The Tapping Policeman

Prague - The policeman who gained access to wiretapping of influential people's mobile phones managed to circumvent "all control mechanisms" that are to prevent such situations, Czech Police President Petr Lessy said...

The policeman from Varnsdorf, north Bohemia, is suspected of having fraudulently monitored the recordings of wiretapped phone calls of influential judges, officials, journalists and lobbyists, including Klaus's chancellor Jiri Weigl and secretary Ladislav Jakl and Constitutional Court chairman Pavel Rychetsky. (more)

Update: Porta-Potty Peeper Pinched... Pewwwww!

CO - A man has been dubbed the "Porta-Potty Peeper" after he hid in the tank of a portable toilet.

"I was at the yoga festival, doing a little bit of yoga, and I’m just seeing all these goddesses," Luke Chrisco, who said he is a voyeur and not a rapist, told FOX31 Denver. "It seems crazy, but I just felt like I was being blessed by their energy, even though it was unintentional."

Chrisco, 30, added the idea of waiting in a tank of waste and urine to spy on women at the yoga festival in Boulder, Colorado, didn’t bother him.

"There’s bacteria in there, but to me it’s just normal ... we all have bodily fluids,” he said. “It seems terrible, but it didn’t actually smell that bad or anything. I still would have done it even if it smelled a little weird, because where there is muck, there is gold."

Police believe Chrisco has spied on at least 200 women in Boulder and hundreds more across the US and Europe. (more)

Spying on Employees Allowed - Fark: Duty Manager Gets Off

New Zealand - A law change has made it legal to install secret cameras to spy on workers, and companies are employing private detectives to do so.

Fark...
But Wellington International Airport has fallen foul of the Employment Relations Authority for using a private investigator to install cameras to spy on the sexual activities of a manager before the law was changed.

The airport recordings caught duty manager Dieter Ravnjak engaged in "sexual activity" with a woman in an emergency management room and he was dismissed for serious misconduct.

The cameras were installed by private investigator Cedric Hardiman, who also managed the airport's taxi and parking facilities.

At the time, the Private Investigators and Security Guards Act prohibited investigators from making recordings without the consent of the person recorded – in effect banning secret recordings. (more)

Keep Android Apps From Spying on You

A security researcher has released an Android app that allows users to control precisely what information they share with other programs installed on their smartphones.

The latest version of WhisperCore remedies a shortcoming of the Google mobile operating system that has vexed users since its release: a design that often forces them to share their precise location or unique phone identifier with app developers even when the sensitive information has nothing to do with the service being offered. (more)

Corporate Espionage is on the Rise in South Africa

Etienne Labuschagne, Director, SpyCatcher SA...

"Q"

"Devices that used to be the preserve of Q from the James Bond movies, are now easily available in the street for a few hundred rand," said Labuschagne, speaking at the ITWeb Security Summit yesterday.

"Surveillance and counter-surveillance are not only part of the shadowy worlds of politics and international relations."

"Surveillance is not what it used to be – mobile phones can be bugged very easily. You can be sent a simple SMS asking you to update a service, and as soon as you open the link, surveillance software can be installed on your phone without your knowledge.

“Such software can allow the person behind it to call your phone, without it ringing, and allow them to listen directly to you and your surroundings." (more)

Da da da da da da da da, Scatman!

Police Artist Sketch

Police said a suspected peeping tom is still on the loose after he was caught spying on women inside a portable bathroom. During a festival, a woman told police she went inside the port-a-potty and was shocked after lifting up the toilet seat.


A security official was called over and waited for the suspect to come out. Police are not sure how long the man was in there, but when he came out, he was covered in waste. He ran and nobody grabbed him. (more with video)

HD DVR Sunglasses for Cops - "I see you respect my authoritaah."

WA - The Snohomish Police are trying out some new personal video recorders Wednesday at the eye care center...

China has developed a pair of eyeglasses that can record HD video. The Chief was very tight lipped about what exactly they would be getting but did say the first group would be getting them tomorrow thanks to the new police guild who has helped raise money for this.

This may be close to what the police could be receiving as eyewear DVRs...

Micro Spycam - "12 MP pinhole cameras are capable of capturing photographs at professional level resolution. The camera device is incredibly tiny and perfect for spy application as well. Disguised as regular sunglasses you can record situations without anybody around you knowing or aware they are being recorded."

Video Quality: "High quality professional grade video recording HD 1280x720 (720P) video with Sound at 30fps (Frames Per Second) makes a very smooth recording." (more)

Ever wonder just how many types of HD video sunglasses are available? Check here.

India Home Minister Accused of Planting Bugging Devices

India - Janata Party leader Subramaniam Swamy has joined the bugging debate, accusing Home Minister P. Chidambaram of planting devices in Finance Minister Pranab Mukhejee's room at the behest of Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Meanwhile, the BJP has also demanded a "complete probe" into the issue. (more)

Book review: Surveillance or Security?

Surveillance or Security?: The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies 

"Over the last 20 years or so, there have been intermittent moves by the EU and the UK government to implement various levels of online surveillance — first by requiring ISPs to install equipment to facilitate wiretapping, and second by storing the masses of communications data created by all of us.

But, argues Susan Landau, a former Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems, now a fellow at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, you can't build surveillance into networks without also poking some very serious security holes in them. Unlike the telephone network, which was built for control, the internet was built with very different goals in mind: information sharing, bandwidth sharing and robustness in the event of generalised attacks. Or, as Landau quotes former NSA director Brian Snow as saying, the internet was designed 'assuming random malice rather than targeted attacks'." (more)

This Week in World Spy News

Egypt - An Egyptian judicial official said yesterday that the prosecution does not plan to prosecute an American-Israeli man who was arrested in Cairo and accused of spying for Israel. (more)

USA - A Michigan professor called on Congress to investigate the government's alleged spying on him to discredit his blogging about the Iraq war. (more)

UK - While serving time under house arrest in an East Anglian home in the UK, those close to Julian Assange have claimed the British government are spying on him.

It follows the discovery of three CCTV cameras erected outside his temporary home at Ellingham Hall in the county of Norfolk. (more)

Thailand - Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has admitted that the suspected leader of three men arrested for alleged spying on the Thai-Cambodian border has managed to flee the country. (more)

Lebanon - Druze politician Wiam Wahhab denied Thursday that a man charged with spying for Israel was his personal bodyguard. (more)

Sweden - Over fifteen countries are systematically conducting intelligence operations against Sweden, in Sweden or against Swedish interests overseas, according to security service Säpo. (more)

Mexico - Admiral Sergio Javier Lara Montellano, commander of the VIII Naval Region based in Acapulco, said that city police cameras...were aimed at various points inside the military installation. He affirmed that information on movements of the military thus obtained was leaked to organized crime groups. “The information was disseminated to crime groups by taxi drivers who serve as informants and by corrupt police in both the traffic police and in crime prevention,” he said. (more)

Austria - An idyllic Austrian village has apparently impressed Chinese architects so much that they have decided to copy it in their own country. But the townspeople living in the UNESCO World Heritage site are unhappy about the plans. This isn't the first time this sort of copying has occurred. China has also replicated amongst other places, Thames Town. (more)

India - The report that Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s conversations may have been tapped by sticking secret electronic devices in his chambers and that of his staff is a chilling reminder that Big Money now operates so close to the centres of power. ...the bugging devices were first discovered on September 4, 2010, when the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) swept Mukherjee’s office to check for eavesdropping gadgets, and found “plantable adhesive substances”. Translated, it means devices that can monitor conversations could have been stuck to these adhesives, including chewing gum-like stickies. (more)

Canada (Toronto International Airport) - An employee used surveillance equipment to spy on her ex-husband as he walked through the terminal with his girlfriend and kids. A man filed a complaint to the federal privacy commissioner after he discovered that his ex-wife, whose job it is to monitor the flow of traffic at Toronto Pearson International Airport using surveillance equipment, was using her special access to track him through the airport. (more)

How to Obtain a U.S. Government Security Clearance - Free Booklet

"Use our Security Clearance Handbook to boost your cyber career. Cyber security professionals can help secure the United States and secure their own futures with a security clearance. As reported in the Washington Post, the Federal Government and contractors face an accelerating demand for cleared cyber security professionals. To help you get cleared and stay cleared, the University of Fairfax is offering a complimentary Security Clearance Handbook.

Click here to get your free copy of the Security Clearance Handbook.

Business Phone Conversations Latest Target for Eavesdropping: News Report

Business executives may be the latest group to be targeted by eavesdropping of phone conversations, according to news reports.

Reuters said that business executives who have “sensitive information” could be the new group targeted for eavesdropping. Earlier it was politicians, actors and athletes.

Business executives may talk on cell phones to save time during their busy days, with sensitive information exchanged during the conversations.

“We are seeing a growing tension between organizational security requirements and personal convenience requirements with people often discussing sensitive issues on mobile phones to get their jobs done faster or because they have no other practical choice,” Cellcrypt CEO Richard Greco (News - Alert) told Reuters. (more)

Free Poster - Maps Worldwide Radio Spectrum Allocations

Very few engineers can recite worldwide RF spectrum allocations from memory. For the rest of us, Tektronix’ color-coded poster maps out every ITU regional allocation in clear graphical form. It also explains the benefits of Live RF and frequency-domain triggering in radio-satellite communication and spectrum management applications. Download your free poster today! (more)

While you are at it, check out the Number One slot under their "Most frequently downloaded application notes." Hey, that's us! Also, free. (more)

You can read the complete Tektronix, June 2011, Test and Measurement News here.

Coffee Unlike the Starstrucks Kind

There was a time when a nickle of joe was all one could get. The Europeans even had a joke about it. "Why is American coffee like making love in the bottom of a boat?" (Contact me directly for the rude punch line if you don't know it.)

Tinted water. Blaaaach, pewey!

   

Then came the hard stuff in all its rocky Italian stallion iterations. We loved it... but secretly we all knew it was over the top. Given no other choices, we stayed starstruck.

So, I'm in my local wine shop the other day. Andrea, the proprietress, says, "Try this, you'll love it!" (She is right 98% of the time.) But, instead of a bottle of wine, she hands over a black bag—filled with coffee beans. I take it home, set it aside until the starstrucks is exhausted from the old A-9 grinder. Yesterday, I fill the mill with the new black gold. Ten minutes later, I am sipping what coffee should have tasted like all along. Smooth, mellow, aromatic and delicious... and that's without milk or sugar.

I only recall having this experience once before (in 2001) when a security director friend asked his mother to bring back a pound of coffee for me, from a small plantation in Costa Rica. 

Later in the morning, I am at my town post office. Serendipity. Another patron walks in and hands the postmaster–a black bag filled with coffee beans. They begin talking coffee. I pipe up with, "I just tried that for the first time this morning. You'll like it." Surprise. It turns out the coffee company is located in my tiny town! And, the other postal patron, Matt, is a partner in the company. We kept talking.

Did you know, the darker the roasted beans, the less caffeine they have? Seriously, no java jive. Turns out the lighter colored roasted beans are the ones you want with breakfast. Heavy roasting brings out the oils and dissipates the caffeine. I also learn that Matt specializes in organic beans, some from super small-yield estates—like the kind my friend, Ted gave me ten years ago!

Ok, I'll spill the beans. If you are interested in getting better mocha java lava into your vena cava (and other veins) visit a Fair Trade USA certified coffee partner and look for their organic products. The coffee in my black bag came from Black River Roasters. Real java-heads, however, will want to grow their own. Buy your own plantation!

So... what does this have to do with spies and electronic surveillance? Nothing, not even the black bag reference. Sometimes one just has to take a coffee break from the world of espionage and reflect on the good things in life. ~Kevin