Media Wiretapping did not start with News of the World

How far would the media of the time go for a story or some inside information? 

The FBI of the 1930s was concerned about newspapers and magazine personnel tapping the telephones of FBI Offices, especially the Chicago Division. 

In this 1935 memo from E. A. Tamm, these fears are set out with efforts of the Bureau to code their conversations to thwart the Chicago American, and also to purposely "test" the system.

According to the Encyclopedia Of Chicago website, "In 1900, Chicago had nine general circulation newspapers when William Randolph Hearst's sensationalistic evening Chicago American appeared, followed by his morning Chicago Examiner (1902). The American upheld the raucous Hearstian/Chicago tradition of “The Front Page,” even after it was sold to the Chicago Tribune in 1956, renamed Chicago Today, and turned into a tabloid. Today died in 1974. The morning Examiner became the Herald-Examiner in 1918 and died in 1939, never able to overtake the Tribune." (more)

The FBI 1935 Tamm memo – taken from the Dillinger file.

Caller ID Spoofing and Your Privacy

via The New York Times...

For all of the palace intrigue recently about who in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation kingdom knew what about phone hacking when, one fundamental question about the scandal has gone mostly unanswered: Just how vulnerable are everyday United States residents to similarly determined snoops?

The answer is, more than you might think.

AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile do not require cellphone customers to use a password on their voice mail boxes, and plenty of people never bother to set one up. But if you don’t, people using a service colloquially known as caller ID spoofing could disguise their phone as yours and get access to your messages. This is possible because voice mail systems often grant access to callers who appear to be phoning from their own number.

Meanwhile, as Edgar Dworsky, a consumer advocate who founded ConsumerWorld.org, discovered recently, someone armed with just a bit of personal information about a target can also gain access to the automated phone systems for Bank of America and Chase credit card holders. (more)

So, what are your "friends" saying about you?

The real Banjo

Six-week old mobile application Banjo has been updated with a new feature that lets users virtually stalk locations, and the people there, in real-time. 

Banjo, for those unaware, is a new social discovery service which reveals the social network present at any given location at a particular time. To be clear, it’s not another social network, it’s a layer on top of social networks. With Banjo, you don’t have to create a profile, add friends or collect followers, or perform any of the other typical social networking behaviors.

Instead, to use Banjo, you simply launch the app to see what the people around you are saying and doing right now. The app pulls its data from social networking services like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, TwitPic and Instagram, accessing both the publicly available check-ins and the geotags that accompany status updates and posts. (more) sing-a-long

From our no free lunch department - Smartphone Juice Jacking

It certainly seems innocent enough at first glance: a free charging kiosk at an airport, hotel or shopping mall.

Most people wouldn't hesitate to charge their dying smartphones - even though the kiosk could theoretically be configured to read most of the data on a device and upload malware. 



To demonstrate the potential threat, Brian Markus, president of Aires Security, along with fellow researchers Joseph Mlodzianowski and Robert Rowley, built a juice jacking kiosk at Defcon 2011 to educate the masses about the risks associated with blindly plugging in mobile devices. (more)


Tip: This trick will not work on most devices if they are powered down entirely before charging.

Free Mobile Phone Threat Report

Free Mobile Phone Threat Report

Click on illustrations to enlarge...

Free Mobile Phone Threat Report

Prepared by Lookout, "a smartphone security company dedicated to making the mobile experience safe for everyone."

News of the World Phone Hacking - Another Arrest

U.K. police arrested a 38-year-old man Thursday in connection with the ongoing investigation into alleged phone hacking by News Corp.'s now-closed News of the World tabloid.

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The arrest relates to the scandal stemming from allegations that the News of the World illegally intercepted the voice mails of celebrities, politicians and crime victims, through a practice known as phone hacking. Police also are probing possible police bribery by News of the World staff in exchange for information. The weekly tabloid was closed last month amid the scandal.

The arrested man couldn't immediately be identified. His marks the 13th arrest authorities have made since reopening their investigation into phone hacking in January. (more)

Get in on the laptop privacy survey - Get free privacy software!

Oculis is running a mobile worker privacy survey to collect useful data about attitudes and experiences with display privacy. Their thesis is that display privacy is a significant security industry issue and that most people have strong but unfulfilled desires for a more private experience. They intend to use the results of the survey to generate new awareness with the press, and to answer typical customer questions about why end users need PrivateEye or Chameleon.

Take the survey and you receive a FREE license for their PrivateEye screen protector, a very cool piece of software that alerts you to shoulder surfers, and blurs your screen when you are not looking at it. How? The secret is your computer's camera. It watches your back and recognizes your face! (FAQs)

The survey link is: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/OculisPrivacySurvey

Here are the preliminary results from a few selected questions:

The Most Extensive Radio and Technical Museum List

If you have an interest in antique radios, TVs, computers and other technical equipment, this is the list to bookmark. Over 100 radio and technical museums around the world. Sponsored by radiomuseum.org

FutureWatch Prediction Comes True - Tampa Redux

Tampa - "You are only a stranger here once." 

August 2011 - The Tampa Police Department plans to circle its downtown area with surveillance cameras prior to the 2012 Republican National Convention, but Assistant Police Chief Mark Hamlin says the locations will not be disclosed in order to keep potential troublemakers from gaining a tactical advantage. A local political activist has publicly stated he is troubled by this decision.

September 2008 - FutureWatch - Although facial recognition and tracking didn't catch on the first go-around (the Tampa, Florida experiment), it is ripe for a come-back. 5 years from now, this will be commonplace – along with automatic license plate readers and motion-intention evaluators.

August 2003 - It is with sadness we note the demise of our favorite city motto... Tampa - "You're only a stranger here once." Tampa police have scrapped their controversial security camera system that scanned city streets for criminals, citing its failure over two years to recognize anyone wanted by authorities.

History - July 2001 - The Tampa City Council took a fully-informed look at Ybor City's controversial high-tech face-scanning software. When the dust settled, the council split down the middle with a 3-3 vote on whether or not to do away with the face-scanning software.

Tampa Police Radio Room c.1920's

(How Antonio Prohías might see it.)

News of The World Spying - More Threads

UK - MPs have reignited the News of the World phone-hacking scandal with the publication of new documents which suggest News International was involved in a four-year cover-up.

The Guardian says Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch and their former editor Andy Coulson "face embarrassing new allegations of dishonesty and cover-up after the publication of an explosive letter written by the News of the World's disgraced royal correspondent, Clive Goodman".

In the article by Nick Davies, who broke the original story, he says Goodman makes the following claims: "that phone hacking was 'widely discussed' at editorial meetings at the paper until Coulson himself banned further references to it; that Coulson offered to let him keep his job if he agreed not to implicate the paper in hacking when he came to court; and that his own hacking was carried out with 'the full knowledge and support' of other senior journalists, whom he named." (more)

News of The World Spying - Like Pulling a Sweater Thread

Revelations that U.K. tabloid journalists may have graduated to hacking computers in addition to mobile phones may form the next scandal facing Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., a U.K. lawmaker investigating privacy violations by the now-defunct News of the World said.

Police and parliament have mostly focused their probes on how journalists illegally accessed the voicemails of celebrities, politicians and crime victims, and who at the company knew about it. More revelations of computer hacking and other forms of spying could emerge, Tom Watson, a Labour Party lawmaker, said yesterday.

“My own concerns are that this will lead to other forms of covert surveillance, and I think the next scandal will be computer hacking and we're going to be living with this for weeks and months to come,” said Mr. Watson, who is also a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee that is investigating phone hacking. (more)

If you are not one of our clients, you may not know these espionage secrets...  

• When you are a target, you won't be spied upon just using one method – a variety of tactics will be used. 

• The reasons electronic surveillance is investigated first is because it is a common tactic, easy to discover, and must be eliminated before one starts accusing people directly. 

• A successful counterespionage strategy will take all your vulnerabilities, and all their tactics into consideration.

The News of The World case is slowly unraveling into a textbook case of corporate espionage, thus proving the reality of it. This is the tip of the iceberg. Only failed spying becomes headlines.

FutureWatch: Bugs, wiretaps, more bribes, blackmail and sex.

Control Anything Cellular or WiFi in Your Enterprise

AirPatrol Corp. today unveiled ZoneDefense, a new mobile monitoring and policy enforcement technology that lets enterprises support the use of consumer and mobile devices on premises while also ensuring that end users are adhering to company security policies.

 ZoneDefense is a security technology that can detect any mobile device in an enterprise, track its location, check its compliance with company policy and enforce rules based on where the user is located and who is nearby. (more)

In addition to the release of ZoneDefense, AirPatrol issued a new white paper that offers guidelines on implementing wireless security policies. For a free copy, click here.

Disclosure: I use AirPatrol technology in my counterespionage inspections, but do not profit in any way by bringing their products to your attention.

"Page Eight" - Modern Intelligence Practices Scrutinized

Canada - Spies and assassins will get moviegoers' adrenaline pumping at the Toronto International Film Festival this year...

The 10-day festival opens on September 8 and will close with David Hare's "Page Eight", a contemporary spy film that casts a critical eye on modern intelligence practices. (more) (synopsis)

Eavesdropping History - NEW Nixon Bugs

One morning in early March 1971, Army counterintelligence agent Dave Mann was going through the overnight files when his eyes landed on something unexpected: a report that a routine, nighttime sweep for bugs along the Pentagon’s power-packed E-Ring had found unexplained – and unencrypted — signals emanating from offices in the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Someone, it seemed, was eavesdropping on the top brass.

Mann was no stranger to bugs. It was a busy time for eavesdroppers and bug-finders, starting with the constant Spy vs. Spy games with Russian spies. But the Nixon years, he and everyone else would soon discover, had extended such clandestine ops into new territory: bugging not just the Democrats, but people within its own ranks. Eventually, most of the Watergate-era eavesdropping schemes were revealed to the public, including the bombshell that Nixon was bugging himself. But the bugs Dave Mann discovered in the E-Ring in March 1971 — and another batch like it — have remained buried all these years. Until now. (more)

Security Director Alert - Another Name for your Rolodex... Data Killers

Why would anyone want to shred a smartphone...twice?  

Well, if they wanted to be sure that all of their private information wouldn't fall into the wrong hands; they might shred it or burn it or both! Who would blame them when Wikileaks and identity theft stories dominate the news headlines? From corporate espionage to bored hackers, it seems someone is always after someone else's data! How does one keep private, corporate or government information from becoming public knowledge?

Recently a large federal agency that had upgraded their enterprise-wide smartphones wanted to have the old phones destroyed. The security officer responsible for the destruction of these smartphones took the smartphones to an un-knowledgeable electronics recycling company who shredded the phones. Unfortunately that company didn't have the specialized equipment to shred them small enough and the officer found several intact SIM cards in a pile of shredded residue. Luckily he found the un-shredded cards before the Inspector General found them! (more)

As you can see, not all shredding companies are created equal. Data Killers is the destruction arm of Turtle Wings, Inc., an ISO certified, woman-owned, HUBZoned company holding multiple GSA contracts. These folks claim they can get it done right the first time:

Elizabeth Wilmot, President

301-583-8399
1-877-KILLS-DATA
info@DATAKILLERS.com