Today in Spy History

On July 26, 1947, President Truman signed the National Security Act, creating the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (more)

Having Trouble Keeping Track of the Phone Hacking Scandal?

The Telegraph key pounds it out.

Click to enlarge.

Below is a list of the alleged victims of phone hacking. This includes public figures, celebrities and others who have accused News International newspapers of hacking, those who are currently bringing legal action and those who brought successful cases in the courts.

Alleged victims
Milly Dowler
Parents of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman
Families of servicemen and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan
Relatives of victims and victims of 7/7 bombings
Clarence Mitchell, spokesman for Madeleine McCann’s family
Colin Stagg, accused of Rachel Nickell murder
Elle Macpherson, model
Wayne Rooney, footballer
Hugh Grant, actor
Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall
Simon Hughes, Liberal Democrat deputy leader
Helen Asprey, former royal aide
Michael Mansfield, barrister who represented Mohamed Al Fayed at the Princess Diana inquest
Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, private secretary to Princes William and Harry
Peter Mandelson, former Labour minister
David Davis, former shadow Home Secretary
Andrew Neil, BBC presenter
Boris Johnson, London Mayor
Sir Ian Blair, former Metropolitan Police commissioner
Paddy Harverson, Prince of Wales’ communication secretary
Vanessa Feltz, presenter
Lembit Opik, former Liberal Democrat MP
Cousin of Jean Charles de Menezes, Brazilian man shot dead by police
Paul O'Grady, presenter and comedian
John Yates, former Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner
David Cook, former Metropolitan Police detective chief superintendent

Seeking legal action
Steve Coogan, actor and comedian
Sky Andrew, former Olympian
Nicola Phillips, assistant to Max Clifford
Andy Gray, broadcaster
Paul Gascoigne, footballer
Sienna Miller, actress
John Prescott, former Labour Deputy Prime Minister
Brian Paddick, former Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner
Brendan Montague, freelance journalist
Chris Bryant, Labour MP
Jude Law, actor
Ryan Giggs, footballer
Chris Tarrant, presenter
Leslie Ash and Lee Chapman, actress and former footballer
Kelly Hoppen, stepmother of Sienna Miller
Kieren Fallon, jockey
George Galloway, former MP

Successful cases
Max Clifford, publicist
Gordon Taylor, chief executive of Professional Footballers’ Association
Jo Armstrong, legal advisor to Gordon Taylor
Tessa Jowell, former culture secretary (offered settlement)
David Mills, lawyer and ex-husband of Tessa Jowell (offered settlement)
Joan Hammell, former aide to John Prescott (offered settlement)

(more)

The Number 1 Spybusters Tip that would have saved most of these people from being hacked...

Make sure your voice mail and cell phone both have decent secret passwords. 

Don't want to see your name on a list like this someday? 

Read more tips from IMCPB)

TSCM Inspection Reveals Taps & Bugs In Inspector's Office

India - Karnataka Lokayukta Justice Santosh N Hegde, who is probing illegal mining in the state, on Thursday claimed that his phone has been tapped.

Hegde, a former Supreme Court judge, told PTI that after reports of alleged bugging in the office of Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee surfaced, he had asked a professional to carry out a check in his office.

"(The professional) told me that my telephone has been tapped. Every conversation was being recorded from two sources," he said.

Hegde refused to comment on who could have tapped his phone. The tapping had been going on for the past three-four months, he said. (more) 

Tip: Quarterly inspections for bugs and taps (TSCM) within sensitive offices and conference rooms is a generally accepted security practice. (more)

"Murdock, he wrote."

Image courtesy of Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes

UK - A TV show personally overseen by Rupert Murdoch allegedly bugged the rooms of celebrities, politicians and other guests, the show's musical director told a friend shortly before his death, it has been claimed. The allegations came in a 'frantic' phone call from respected BBC journalist and musician, George Webley, days before Webley's untimely death in May, his friend John Romano said. “I have literally never talked to someone so afraid”, Romano said.

“Before his death, George Webley alleged that a News Corp entity bugged dressing rooms of celebs and politicos as far back as 1990. The allegation, if true, would show that News Corp had a pattern of bugging and hacking over a long period of time that went far beyond a rogue editor or reporter for News of the World,” Romano claimed...

“Murdoch-owned papers bugged people all the time, long before the time frame that they are accused of”, Webley claimed, according to Romano. After remaining silent for many years Webley had in 2011 taken his allegations of illegal bugging activity to UK authorities investigating News Corp, Romano believed, and he now feared for his safety, believing his phone was tapped and he was being followed.

“I’ve pissed some really powerful people off”, Webley told Romano in April this year. The BBC journalist seemed so frightened that Romano asked him if he felt his life was in danger. “No, Murdoch’s game is to destroy your life, not end it”, he replied. One week later, Webley died at home, aged 53. Local authorities are yet to release a report on his death but have not described it as suspicious. (more)

Business Espionage: FBI Thwarts Akamai Info Heist

http://www.bottomsupcomic.com/2009/06/trade-secrets/

MA - A former employee of a website content delivery company has agreed to plead guilty to a charge of foreign economic espionage for providing company trade secrets to an undercover FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer, federal prosecutors announced Thursday.

Elliot Doxer, 42, will admit to providing trade secrets from Cambridge-based Akamai Technologies Inc. over an 18-month period to the agent, whom he believed was an Israeli spy, the U.S. Attorney's Office for Massachusetts said in a statement. A plea hearing is scheduled for Aug. 29. (more)

"Everybody wants to get in on the act." It's not just phone hacking.

UK - Millionaire Labour donor David Abrahams claims he was a victim of phone hacking.

Mr Abrahams, who was plunged into the epicentre of a media storm in 2007 when he was accused of making thousands of pounds of illegal donations to Labour, has revealed how he believes he was the victim of secret bugging...

Now he claims the current phone hacking scandal is simply “the tip of the iceberg.

And he claims bugs and other recording devices were placed in his home, prompting him to call in experts who discovered the electrics at his property had been tampered with.

Today he warns there could be much more to come from the hacking scandal. He told the Chronicle: “It’s not just News International and it’s not just phone hacking.

“They put little video cameras in car aerials and bugs and devices in people’s houses. There are a lot of other factors as well as phone hacking. I’ve had it in my own life far too many times.” (more)

More Reporters Bugging Out

Korea - Police said Friday they are currently investigating telephone calls made between a reporter and politician related to the alleged bugging of a Democratic Party meeting...

The potentially-explosive scandal was disclosed to the public on June 26 when the main opposition Democratic Party filed a complaint with the police, claiming a KBS reporter had bugged a meeting held to discuss strategies over the state-run broadcaster’s controversial plan to raise TV subscription fees. (more)

Recover a Stolen Laptop with Free Tracking Software

via Rick Broida, PCWorld...
In the last month, two family members and one friend have had laptops stolen right out of their homes. Sadly, none of the systems were equipped with remote-monitoring software, meaning the chances of recovery are just about zero.

To me this serves as a wake-up call; I'm in the process of evaluating various laptop-recovery services to see which one I should deploy on my own machines.

Short-term, I'm equipping my primary, can't-live-without-it laptop with LockItTight. Like similar services, it relies on a small, hidden client program that performs location tracking, Webcam captures, file recovery, and even keylogging. Unlike similar services, LockItTight is free--for one PC, anyway.

After you sign up for and activate your account, you download and run the LockItTight client (which is compatible with Windows XP and later). And that's pretty much the last you see of it; you won't find any evidence of it in the system tray or Programs menu. (Neither will tech-savvy thieves, which is exactly the point.)

To tweak LockItTight's settings and/or find out what your laptop's been up to, you sign into your account via a Web browser. By default, the client will simply report the laptop's position (usually via Wi-Fi, which in my tests was accurate to about 500 meters), but you can also enable screen capture, Webcam capture, key logs, clipboard logs, remote file retrieval, and remote file deletion. (more)

Need something like this for your Mac? Try Adeona, also FREE.

From the Land of Paladin, Have Antidote, Will Travel

Google's search engine is now fighting against a strain of malware that secretly intercepts Web browser activity on Windows PCs. FREE

Infected users will see a big yellow box at the top of search results, directing them to a Google Web page that explains how to remove the malware. That page urges users to download or update their antivirus software, and also provides manual instructions for removing the malware from Windows computers. (To see if you're infected, run any search on Google.com and look for the yellow box.) (more)

Click to enlarge.

How to Protect Your Home While Traveling

Fred Burton, former special agent and STRATFOR’s VP of Intelligence, discusses ways to protect your home before you travel. Basic tips. (video)

Spy Tools: The Evolution of Two Stage Weapons

(1963) Colonel Klebb is a high ranking member of the feared Russian counter-intelligence agency SMERSH, where she serves as the supervisor of Department II (operations and executions)... Klebb attempts to kick Bond with the poison-tipped shoe, but Bond blocks the attack with a chair. (more)

(1975) It wasn’t just Soviet bloc spies who used such techniques, though. In a 1975 US Senate hearing, CIA Director William Colby handed the committee’s chairman a gun developed by his researchers. Equipped with a telescopic sight, it could accurately fire a tiny dart – tipped with shellfish toxin or cobra venom – up to 250 feet. Colby claimed that this and other weapons had never been used, but couldn’t entirely rule out the possibility. (more) (video) BTW, the "dart" is believed to be an icicle. No 'pop gun' jokes, please.

(1978) The assassination of Georgi Markov in London in 1978 by a man with a poison-tipped umbrella was one of the most infamous incidents of the Cold War. The story reads like it is straight out of a super-spy novel. The forensic autopsy findings and results are as sensational as today's TV crime dramas. There is motive,a possible weapon, the known cause of death, and shadow government workings involved. Still there is no killer, and offically there may well never be. (more)

(2011) This weapon injects a freezing cold ball of compressed gas, approximately the size of a basketball, at 800psi nearly instantly. The effects of this injection will drop many of the world's largest land predators. The effects of the compressed gas not only cause over-inflation during ascent when used underwater, but also freezes all tissues and organs surrounding the point of injection on land or at sea. When used underwater, the injected gas carries the predator to the surface BEFORE blood is released into the water. Thus giving the diver added protection by diverting other potential predators to the surface. (more) (video) No, "Who cut the cheese?" jokes, please.

Project X: Murdock Phone Hacking Scandal Continues to Grow

"Argh, Miss Brooks"

The U.K. police investigation into alleged phone hacking took a dramatic turn on Sunday with the arrest of Rebekah Brooks, the former chief of News Corp.'s U.K. newspaper unit who resigned on Friday.

London's Metropolitan Police, known as Scotland Yard, said they arrested her around noon Sunday (7 a.m. EDT) when she appeared by appointment at a London police station. She remained in custody as of early afternoon Sunday and hadn't been charged.

It's the 10th arrest by police in a dual probe investigating allegations of voicemail interceptions and corrupt payments to police. The allegations focus on the News of the World, News Corp.'s Sunday tabloid that the company recently closed after 168 years amid an escalating scandal. (more)

"Our Miss Brooks"

Our Miss Brooks: Mr. Conklin's "Project X" is a sound system that allows him to eavesdrop on the entire school. (download MP3)

How to Write Like an Educated Spy

Writing a good spy report is not as easy as it looks. You need more than a copy of Strunk & White's manual, The Elements of Style. You need the National Security Agency (NSA) SIGINT Reporter's Style and Usage Manual!
 

Did you know...

• In nautical contexts in SIGINT reports, do not call a ship a boat. As a general guideline, a boat will go on a ship, but not vice versa. Lifeboats go on cruise ships. Submarines are boats. Most of the literate public, however, uses the term boat to refer to any floating contrivance of any size. Such use is standard in general contexts, but not appropriate in SIGINT reports.

• Do not use the terms A-bomb or H-bomb. Spell out the words. Do not capitalize atomic bomb, hydrogen bomb, etc.

• Never include obscenities in a report. If an obscenity is part of a quote, replace it with the phrase ((expletive deleted)).

• PDDG ... (Sorry, that's still classified.)

Military Intelligence: How to make unclassified information classified without classifying it!?!?

The Pentagon is proposing to keep under wraps all unclassified information shared between contractors and the Defense Department except that which is expressly released to the public.

That has sparked an outcry not only from open-government advocates but from contractors who argue they could be forced to pay millions of dollars to install systems to protect that information. Tens of thousands of companies would have to meet the new requirements, according to the Pentagon's own reckoning...

The proposed rule, published June 29 in the Federal Register, would impose new controls for unclassified Defense Department information that is not cleared for public release and that is either provided by DoD to a contractor or else developed by a contractor on the department's behalf. (more)

Military Intelligence: What happens to the real classified information?

The US Pentagon has admitted that a foreign intelligence service stole 24,000 files from a US defense contractor earlier this year.

US deputy defense secretary William J Lynn will not say which contractor was holding the data or which country stole it, but he says over the past few years, information about some of the Pentagon's most sensitive programs has been pilfered from military contractors. 

"Over the past decade terabytes of data have been extracted by foreign intruders from corporate networks of defense companies. Indeed in a single intrusion this past March, 24,000 files were taken," he said.

The admission came as the US defence department announced a new cyber warfare strategy, aimed at securing the military's secrets...

He says it is not the only attack... (more)