ACLU Seeks to Uncover Government Spying on American Cell Phones

In a massive coordinated information-seeking campaign, 34 ACLU affiliates are filing over 375 requests in 31 states across the country with local law enforcement agencies large and small that seek to uncover when, why and how they are using cell phone location data to track Americans. 

"The public has a right to know how and under what circumstances their location information is being accessed by the government – and that is exactly what we hope our information requests will uncover." (more)

"Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits."

Former Beatle Paul McCartney said after returning from his summer tour he will get in touch with police over his ex-wife’s claim that the couple had been spied on by a British newspaper, according to media reports. 

"I don't think it's great. I do think it is a horrendous violation of privacy, and I do think it's been going on a long time, and I do think more people than we know knew about it. But I think I should just listen and hear what the facts are before I comment," he said.

McCartney ex-wife, Heather Mills, made an allegation during an interview with the BBC that she had been spied on. The allegation implicates the Trinity Mirror PLC group of newspapers and Pier Morgan. She said she "looks forward to receiving Piers Morgan's answer as to how he knew the content of her private voicemail messages." (more) (sing-a-long)

...whereupon his mom spanked his calf.

Shaquille O'Neal has been accused of tracking his wife's car in a new lawsuit. (No, not the one he is wearing.)

The world-famous basketball player is accused of becoming so concerned that his wife Shaunie was meeting up with his mistress Vanessa Lopez that he began 'spying on her'. 

...lawsuit alleges that Shaquille O'Neal planted a tracking device on then-wife Shaunie's car...'On September 25, 2009 O'Neal purchased an Ultimate Bluetooth Mobile Phone Spy, and an Ultimate People Finder Software system...O'Neal had his wife's car wired and hired "Guidepoint," a company to place a GPS tracking system on her car to track her movements and her whereabouts...

The lawsuit continues: 'If the affair came to light, O'Neal knew his mother would be furious. (more)

Hunk, a hunk of burning bucks... for Hackers

As the annual Black Hat hacker conference kicks off here, Microsoft is turning to the hacker community to help mitigate the Windows platform.

The world’s largest software vendor today announced Blue Hat Prize, an academic challenge aimed at generating new ideas for defensive approaches to support computer security. This year, Microsoft is offering $250,000 in cash and prizes to researchers who design a novel one-time mitigation for memory safety vulnerabilities. (more) (sing-a-long)

Hunk, a hunk of burning love... for Hackers

The National Security Agency has a challenge for hackers who think they're hot stuff: prove it by working on the "hardest problems on Earth."

Computer hacker skills are in great demand in the U.S. government to fight the cyber wars that pose a growing national security threat -- and they are in short supply.

For that very reason an alphabet soup of federal agencies

-- DOD, DHS, NASA, NSA -- are descending on Las Vegas this week for Defcon, an annual hacker convention where the $150 entrance fee is cash only -- no registration, no credit cards, no names taken. Attendance is expected to top 10,000. (more) (sing-a-long)

Quote of the Day = The Number One Ring Tone in Egypt

"I deny all these accusations completely."
HOSNI MUBARAK, the former president of Egypt, in court on charges of corruption and complicity in the killing of protesters. (more)

Wireless Cell Phone Recorder ...doubles as wiretap

The device puts the end user in complete control over when, where, and how calls are recorded. Recording telephone conversations has never been easier or more efficient.

This digital voice recorder comes packed with every feature imaginable. The user simply wirelessly pairs their existing mobile phone via Bluetooth and the Cell Corder handset is used in place of the mobile phone.

With 150 hours of standby time and 8 hours of talk time the Cell Corder handset can be used within 10 meters (30 feet) of the user’s mobile phone while recording every detail from both sides of the conversation to the Caller ID information along with time, date, and call duration. And with a huge recording capacity of up to 340 hours, the unit memory will take quite some time to fill up. (more) (sing-a-long)

Handy, but imagine this in an office setting where the boss (or any employee of interest) uses a mobile phone for confidential calls. If someone has a few seconds to pair this up with their phone. Instant wiretap.

Tips:

• Always password protect your phone.

• Never let it out of your possession.

• Check your Bluetooth settings periodically. Know what you are connected to.

• If the IT department supplies you with a new company phone, reinstall the software yourself before using it.

Fly Spy Sly - Hacks WiFi and Eavesdrops Cell Phones - Cry or Sigh?

How do one ex-Air Force official and one former airplane hobby shop owner, both of whom happen to have decades of experience as network security contractors for the military, spend their weekends? Building a flying, unmanned, automated password-cracking, Wi-Fi-sniffing, cell-phone eavesdropping spy drone, of course.

At the Black Hat and Defcon security conferences in Las Vegas next week, Mike Tassey and Richard Perkins plan to show the crowd of hackers a year’s worth of progress on their Wireless Aerial Surveillace Platform, or WASP, the second year Tassey and Perkins have displayed the 14-pound, six-foot long, six-foot wingspan unmanned aerial vehicle. The WASP, built from a retired Army target drone converted from a gasoline engine to electric batteries, is equipped with an HD camera, a cigarette-pack sized on-board Linux computer packed with network-hacking tools including the BackTrack testing toolset and a custom-built 340 million word dictionary for brute-force guessing of passwords, and eleven antennae.

“This is like Black Hat’s greatest hits,” Tassey says. “And it flies.”

On top of cracking wifi networks, the upgraded WASP now also performs a new trick: impersonating the GSM cell phone towers used by AT&T and T-Mobile to trick phones into connecting to the plane’s antenna rather than their carrier, allowing the drone to record conversations and text messages on a32 gigabytes of storage. A 4G T-mobile card routes the communications through voice-over-Internet or traditional phone connections to avoid dropping the call. “Ideally, the target won’t even know he’s being spied on,” says Tassey. (more) (specs) (sing-a-long)

SpyCam Story #616 - Cam or Gun? Duh, both!

NC - A Knightdale man faces charges that he put a camera in a woman's home to spy on her, according to arrest warrants.

The warrants state that Decarlos Lajuan Upchurch, 34, also broke into the woman's home early Saturday and pointed a black handgun at her. (more)

Scared of SCADA? You will be now...

In news that will probably leave you tutting and muttering “I knew this would happen,” two hackers have found a way to unlock cars that use remote control and telemetry systems like BMW Assist, GM OnStar, Ford Sync, and Hyundai Blue Link. These systems communicate with the automaker’s remote servers via standard standard mobile networks like GSM and CDMA — and with a clever bit of reverse engineering, the hackers were able to pose as these servers and communicate directly with a car’s on-board computer via “war texting” — a riff on “war driving,” the act of finding open wireless networks. (more)

The real scary part...

It’s not just cars that use telephony as a control network: there are 3G security cameras, traffic control systems, home automation systems, and — most worryingly — SCADA systems. SCADA is an acronym that covers almost any industrial control system, from manufacturing to power generation, to water treatment and the management of oil and gas pipelines. To quote Don Bailey, one of the hackers: “What I got in two hours with the car alarm is pretty horrifying when you consider other devices like this, such as SCADA systems and traffic-control cameras. How quick and easy it is to re-engineer them is pretty scary.”

SpyCam Story #615 - An American Bugging

FL - Two female Bulgarian students visiting the United States for the summer found hidden cameras hidden in their Florida apartment this week and fear they may have been videotaped throughout their three-month stay.

Ratitsa Dzhambazova, 23, and Vanya Amokovareva, 22, discovered at least four cameras stashed throughout the apartment they were sub-leasing for the summer in both bedrooms, the bathroom and the living room area, according to police.

"This is unbelievable, but one night I had a dream that someone watch me when I was naked," said Dzhambazova.

The women's worst nightmare came true when a male roommate pulled one of the smoke detector-like devices off the wall that discovered a camera hidden inside. They later discovered more cameras stationed around the apartment.

Four other roommates moved out of the apartment after the cameras were found, according to Dzhambazova, a journalism student. (more)

Not quite Theodore Dreiser, but a sad tale nonetheless. Reminds me of another multiple spycam incident in Florida.

News of the World - Phone Fiasco - Yet Another Victim

UK - The mother of a murdered child who became the face of a News of the World campaign to change British sex-offender laws says she was on the list of a private investigator who hacked phones for the tabloid— a development that is likely to generate more scrutiny for Rebekah Brooks, the former News Corp. executive who edited the paper at the time.

The mother of a murdered child who became the face of a News of the World campaign to change British sex-offender laws said she may have had her voice mails hacked. Paul Sonne also reports that James Murdoch will remain Chairman of BSkyB.

Sara Payne, in a prepared statement, said Thursday that police had found her details on a list seized from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who worked for the now-closed News of the World and intercepted mobile-phone voice mails. Ms. Payne is the mother of Sarah Payne, an eight-year-old British girl who was abducted and murdered in July 2000 by a man who had a previous conviction for abduction and sexual assault against a child. (more)

FutureWatch - The Cone of Silence... without the cone!

The Walls of Silence!

Get Smart

When it comes to the sound-proofing of buildings, most people likely think of using materials that simply absorb the sound waves in a noisy room, so they can't proceed into a neighboring quiet room. 

Get Smarter

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), however, are taking a different approach. They have created something known as an acoustic diode, that only allows sound traveling through it to go in one direction. If incorporated into building materials, such diodes would let sound travel from the quiet room to the noisy one, but would simply block noise transmission in the opposite direction. (more) (much more)

Corrections Officer Pleads Guilty to Eavesdropping on Superiors

OH - The second of three corrections officers at the Trumbull County Jail has pleaded guilty to reduced charges in an eavesdropping case in which the jail employees were listening to their superiors.

Robert J. Rihel Jr., 46, of Leavittsburg, pleaded guilty to 13 misdemeanor counts of falsification in a bill of information and will undergo a pre-sentence investigation ordered Thursday by Judge John M. Stuard.

Rihel, who was placed on administrative leave without pay, had been indicted on 23 counts of ''interception of wire, oral or electronic communications - a fourth-degree felony.'' The various counts in the indictment say the eavesdropping occurred from July 7 to Nov. 1, 2010. (more) (sing-a-long)

Watergate: David Gergen - White House Files

Why is this man laughing?

87 pages of selected David Gergen White House files related to Watergate and the resignation of President Richard Nixon. These files were not available to the public until July 21, 2011. David Gergen worked as a presidential adviser for Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. This set also includes four documents from the files of William Timmons, Assistant for Legislative Affairs, also released on July 2, 2011. This set contains correspondences to and/or from David Gergen, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Allexander Haig, Pat Buchanan, Ron Ziegler, Ben Stein, Len Garment, Stephen Bull, and Ray Price. (download) (answer)