When Computer Spy Art is Not Smart

Artist Kyle McDonald put a strange art project into practice when he installed what amounts to surveillance software on the public computers at an Apple store and used the images collected to create a presentation that he hoped would give us, by the facial expressions captured, insight into our relationship with the computers we use...

McDonald figured that Apple had decided the program wasn't a big deal. That was until four Secret Service men in suits woke him up on Thursday morning with a search warrant for computer fraud. They confiscated two computers, an iPod and two flash drives, and told McDonald that Apple would contact him separately. (more)

People Staring at Computers from Kyle McDonald on Vimeo. 

Dude, next time just Christo the store.

Need Expert Police & Security Advice? Check Police-Writers.com

Police-Writers.com was founded by Lieutenant Raymond E. Foster, LAPD (ret.).  An educator and prolific writer himself, Lt. Foster observed that many of the best people in law enforcement were sharing their expertise by writing books. He also recognized that their works needed a headquarters to be easily found. Hence, Police-Writers.com.

The book isles include diverse topic sections, such as:

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Law Enforcement History

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Law Enforcement Technology

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Legal Resources

Other

Police Humor

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Historically, a listing in Police-Writers.com was only granted to "anyone person who completed their probationary period in a state or local police or law enforcement organization." This has recently been expanded to include Other Law Enforcement Writers including Security Professionals, thus making the site an even more valuable repository of expertise.

As Mr. Peabody might say, "This is a site you should ...bookmark!"

Hacked Off - SuperSized - 9 Becomes Almost 4000

UK - Scotland Yard on Thursday night admitted that almost 4,000 people may have had their phones hacked by the News of the World's private investigator, placing further strain on the testimony of senior officers to Parliament that there were only a handful of victims.

In a statement, deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers, indicated that the new investigation into the illegal eavesdropping of mobile phone messages was struggling to deal with the mass of evidence of wrongdoing contained in Glenn Mulcaire's notebooks. 

The Yard's latest statement sharply contrasts with the evidence given by Andy Hayman, the officer who led the original investigation into Mulcaire's activities in 2006-07, which led to prosecutions regarding nine victims, including three Royal aides. (more)

Hacked Off - Is Your Cell Phone Next?

If the cellphone hacking scandal that caused the downfall of Britain's best-selling tabloid, News of the World, made you wonder about your own vulnerability, consider these statistics.

Globally, telecommunications-fraud losses, which includes cases of mobile-phone fraud, were estimated to hit $72 billion to $80 billion in 2009, up 34 percent from 2005, according to a 2009 survey of security experts from the Roseland, N.J.,-based Communications Fraud Control Association. Hacking alone accounted for $3.2 billion in losses for the telecom industry, says CFCA. What's more, the problems have likely only expanded as smartphone use has escalated. (more)

Goodbye Cricket. Hello, Whack-A-Hack-A-Phone

UK - The news keeps getting worse for News Corp. The phone-hacking scandal that has engulfed the company has now spread to The Sunday Times, the British broadsheet that has long been one of Rupert Murdoch's “quality” newspapers.

News Corp.'s daily tabloid The Sun has also been implicated, according to the Guardian, which reported Monday that both newspapers targeted the former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. (more)

Not one to be one-upped by British hack(ing) journalists...

ZombiePhone

Korea - The police and public broadcaster KBS are in a bitter tug-of-war over a reporter’s suspected bugging of the opposition Democratic Party.

Last Friday, police officers searched the journalist’s home and seized his laptop, mobile phone and portable recorder. The broadcaster angrily responded, saying the act ``insulted” KBS and ``infringed on” press freedom.

In a duel between a powerful state organ and a media outlet, one tends to side with the latter. Not in this case. In all likelihood, the public broadcaster is hiding something.

Instead of flatly denying the suspicions of eavesdropping by its employee ― and proving it ― KBS said he did not bug the office of DP Chairman Sohn Hak-kyu in the way the DP and the police allege (by, for instance, using a wireless microphone). DP officials testified the KBS reporter retrieved his cell phone that he (deliberately) left in Sohn’s room. (more)

Business Espionage - Biting the Apple Can Get You Expelled

A technology executive charged with leaking sensitive information about Apple products to hedge fund traders pleaded guilty on Tuesday in Manhattan, the latest guilty plea in the government’s crackdown on insider trading facilitated by so-called expert networks...

Walter Shimoon, a former employee at electronic manufacturer Flextronics, is the 12th person to plead guilty in the government’s investigation of expert network firms...

In addition to sales figures, prosecutors said Mr. Shimoon also tipped a cooperating witness to Apple’s plans to develop a new iPhone. But later in the call, according to a transcript from prosecutors, Mr. Shimoon leaked word of an even more secret product in development, the iPad, which at the time was referred to as K48.

“So, you can get, at Apple you can get fired for saying K48…outside of a, you know, outside of a meeting that doesn’t have K48 people in it,” he told a cooperating witness, according to taped calls. “That’s how crazy they are about it.” (more)

Take a tip from Apple. Buy yourself a business counterespionage program. Shop here.

Phone Hacking Kills a Multi-Million Dollar Business

News Corp.’s News International unit announced that it will shut down its News of the World tabloid, and that this Sunday’s edition will be the last one, amid a deepening phone-hacking scandal... The News of the World is the U.K.'s best-selling Sunday paper, with an average circulation of 3.7 million people, according to analysis firm TGI. (more)

The alternative... Being sued out of business? FutureWatch - News of the Universe 

Why this is important to you... You are responsible for your employee's actions. Ethics, like security is a top-down corporate culture. A strong corporate counterespionage program sends two messages: spying is not tolerated (in either direction), and employees are obligated to pro-actively protect corporate intellectual assets. One visible reminder of this are the corporation's quarterly audits for electronic eavesdropping devices. (more)

Apple Cedes to Patch

Apple Inc. said Thursday it is working to resolve a security hole in its iPhone and other mobile products that German authorities warned could allow cyber criminals to access confidential information or intercept phone conversations.

Users are particularly vulnerable when they view Portable Document Format, or PDF, files, which give attackers an opportunity to infect the devices with malicious software, giving them administrative rights to the device, the German Federal Office for Information Security said Wednesday.

Once the device is infected, cyber criminals could read confident information such as passwords, online-banking data, calendars, e-mails and other information, as well as intercept telephone conversations and the location of the user. The security hole is present in several versions of Apple's iOS software on its iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch products, the agency added. (more)

It Was 1984 When 'Runaway' Predicted Our Robotic Future

This beer can-sized gadget is one of the most surprising military inventions ever. Launched from a cannon, it allows to infiltrate any pirate’s ship with ease. Jack Sparrow, beware! 

Recon-Bot by American manufacturer Recon Robotics is truly amazing. It’s durable enough to be fired from a cannon. 

When it gets to the ship it was aimed at (pirate, most likely) it sticks magnetically to the ship’s side and climbs it all the way up. Being so tiny, it’s perhaps hardly noticeable. Recon Robotics describes it “marsupial”, because there’s another bot, equipped with an infrared camera, nesting inside the bigger one.

When the smaller robot is deployed on the board, it wanders around looking for pirates, hostages, illegal cargo, etc. and sends the footage to the operator. The Recon-Bot is most likely launched from a remote controlled unmanned vessel, allowing very quiet operations. (more)

And, other uses...

Runaway

If You See Your Password Here - Your Account Was Hacked

via consumerist.com...

Stare agog as all the the passwords released in the Sony LulzSec breach race past your eyes in this video.

In it, the computer shows and reads aloud all the passwords, one password per frame. If you're actually able to make out a word or a series of numbers, then that means it's a string being used by more than one person as their password.

Watching some of it might make you want to revaluate your password creation system. Do you see your password in there? Here's advice on creating a strong password that's unique to every site you visit, yet you'll never have a problem remembering. (more)

MBD* News - Chinese Report Chinese Business Espionage

Hunan Sunward Intelligent Machinery may face a lawsuit following allegations of industrial espionage, reports the 21st Century Business Herald, citing an unnamed insider. Sunward was accused of sending industrial spies competitor Shenyang North Traffic Heavy Industry Group to gain access to proprietary technology. The spies have been arrested, the insider added...

An anonymous source at North Traffic said the incident was not the first time Sunward had stolen from competitors; North Traffic has already submitted the case to court. Sunward was established in August 1999 and manufactures construction machinery with a focus on rock-drilling equipment. (more)

SpyCam Story #614 - Recent SpyCam News

OH - A Catawba man was arrested and jailed Monday after investigators say he used a covert camera to record two girls in the shower at his home.

Jack Lee Maley, 45, of 350 N. Champaign St., was taken into custody and charged with three counts of illegal use of minor in nudity oriented material or performance, second degree felonies. One of the juveniles found the camera and reported it to the Clark County Sheriff’s Office. Further investigation revealed that a second juvenile female had also been captured on video as she showered. Neither juvenile was aware they were being recorded. (more)

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CA - A Southern California computer repairman suspected of installing spyware on laptops that enabled him to snap and download photographs of women showering and undressing in their homes was arrested Wednesday at his home, police said.

Police began investigating when a Fullerton resident complained about suspicious messages appearing on his daughter's computer last year...

The software sent fake error messages telling users to "fix their internal sensor soon," and "try putting your laptop near hot steam for several minutes to clean the sensor," Goodrich said. (video) (No blond jokes, please.)

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KS - Hiding in plain sight, a camera recording people without their knowledge or consent. Police are trying to figure out who put a hidden camera in the changing room of the north YMCA. It was hidden inside a clothing hook.

"Someone bumped into it and if fell off and discovered it was a camera," said Lt. Randy Reynolds of the Wichita Police Department. (more)
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CA - A man arrested by Glendora Police for placing a spycam in a Starbucks restroom in Glendora pleaded not guilty in a Pomona Superior Courthouse Tuesday morning.

William Zafra Velasco, 25, was arrested May 4 after he confessed to installing a hidden camera disguised as a plastic hook in a women’s Starbucks restroom in Glendora. (more)
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OH - A 59-year-old Tallmadge man was sentenced to seven years in prison Monday for using his cellphone to film a 13-year-old girl getting out of the shower.
Summit County Common Pleas Judge Paul Gallagher sentenced William Chesrown to prison after he was found guilty by a jury on May 16 of gross sexual imposition, two counts of illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material.

The prosecutor said in December the young girl noticed Chesrown's cellphone pointing at her with the record light on as she got out of the shower. She discovered five nude videos of herself saved on the phone. (more)

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FL - The manager at a Starbucks store in the Brandon Town Center mall called police after finding a device left behind in the cafe's public restroom.

It turns out it was a camera -- but the apparent spy was not as sly as he thought. Police say he left the camera rolling as he got in his car one day, giving them a glimpse of his license plate.

Eric Efaw was arrested and charged with voyeurism yesterday. Police say he admitted to putting the camera in the unisex bathroom, and that he's done it six to seven times in the last two months. (more)
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These stories are presented to raise awareness. The enclosures continue to become more clever. The picture resolution is now HD. Features include: still shots, movies, motion detection, automatic uploading, SD card memory, low-light vision, audio, wireless and more. And, they are inexpensive. Remember, the spycam stories that become news are just the failures. Each story could represent hundreds of successes. Take a moment to see what you are up against. (click here)

British Tabloid Hacked Missing Girl’s Voice Mail

The voice-mail account of a British schoolgirl who went missing in 2002 and whose murdered body was discovered six months later was repeatedly hacked by the News of the World tabloid at a time when no one knew what had happened to her, a lawyer for her family said Monday.

According to the lawyer, Mark Lewis, the newspaper not only intercepted messages left on the phone of the girl, Milly Dowler, 13, by her increasingly frantic family after her disappearance, but also deleted some of those messages when her voice mailbox became full — thus making room for new ones and listening to those in turn. This confused investigators and gave false hope to Milly’s relatives, who believed it showed she was still alive and deleting the messages herself, Mr. Lewis said. (more)

Why Businesses Conduct Checks for Bugging Devices - Reason #43

Reason #43 - Anyone can build or buy a bug with the help of the Internet.

Here are a few examples...

--- Free advice ---

Record Telephone Conversations By Building This "Bugging" Equipment - by Swagatam

 "The circuit of a simple FM transmitter described in the article, when integrated with a telephone line, very interestingly starts transmitting all the conversations made over it. Moreover it doesn’t require any external power for the purpose.

Introduction
At times many of you must have felt the need of spying on somebody’s conversation over the telephone and wondered how to bug a telephone.

Morally it won’t be correct to eavesdrop on an individual’s personal discussion, but through electronics you can always and every time find a way of fulfilling your wishes no matter whether the act is ethical or not.

Though I won’t recommend using the present circuit for listening to somebody’s private talks, it can rather be used as a fun gadget for broadcasting a telephone conversation over the FM radio." (more)

--- Books ---
Now Hear This - The bible of bugging schematics.

--- Low cost devices for sale ---

eBay

--- Antidote --- 

Business Counterespionage Strategy.