A Brief History of Personal Video Teleconferencing

Browsing through eBay can be an educational experience. Last night I saw the history of how we got to where we are today with smartphone video calls. Here is a quick look, in pictures, of course. Some will enlarge when clicked. ~Kevin

1912 - Scientific American

1914 - Tom Swift

1914 - Tom Swift graphic

1931 - A prediction.

1954 - Caption for Kay Labs "Soundphoto" unit.

1954 - First commercial video teleconferencing by Kay Labs.

1964 - Japanese demo at an industrial fair.

1958 - Toshiba video teleconferencing.

1964 - Bell System. Demoed at NYC World's Fair.

1979 - Early teleconferencing.

Today - Apple iPhone FaceTime

Amazing.

More on License Plate Reading in Massachusetts

A Security Scrapbook Blue Blaze Irregular in the area checks in...

"A related observation to the automatic license plate scanners. I bet Boston/MA has more than they are admitting to.

For instance: Logan Airport central parking has been employing this technology for at least a year if not two.

They scan your plate when you take your ticket to park. This way they know which car is tagged to which serialized parking ticket. Then the periodically drive through the parking lot capturing plates. When you pay for your parking they print the location of your car as a courtesy.

I recently tested the system. I usually park facing out and I have only a rear plate. Most times the system cannot tell me where I left my car. So this past time I purposely parking with my plate facing out. Sure enough my location was printed.

I bet they drive through at night. I keep my eyes peeled when I'm there looking for the vehicle."

10-4 ~Jersey

SpyCam Story #621 - ...and he's still not jaded.

Australia - Hidden cameras in change rooms and toilets are far more common than people realize and advances in technology have made them so small that they are virtually impossible to detect, a Sydney counter-surveillance expert said.

Organizations are typically oblivious to the presence of hidden cameras and, on the odd occasions they do find them, are reluctant to come forward to police for fear of reputational damage, said Julian Claxton, a surveillance expert whose company, Jayde Consulting, conducts sweeps for recording devices.

Just this year, Claxton has investigated two instances in Sydney, one involving a hidden camera in the change room of a Sydney private school and another involving a camera placed in the toilet of a building in Haymarket. (more)

Remember the guy who bolted a camera to his cranium?

Cameraman now has competition... 

Take a one eyed film maker, an unemployed engineer, and a vision for something that’s never been done before and you have yourself the EyeBorg Project. Rob Spence and Kosta Grammatis are trying to make history by embedding a video camera and a transmitter in a prosthetic eye. That eye is going in Robs eye socket, and will record the world from a perspective that’s never been seen before... (videos)

San Francisco artist Tanya Marie Vlach has a very similar project underway - she lost her left eye in a car accident, and is now working on replacing it with a camera eye, that will play a part in a variety of art works. (more)

But... 

Who thought of this first?

March 7, 1974

Artificial Eye May Give Blind New Sight

Click to enlarge.

FutureWatch - Highway Panopticon Panic

MA - Civil libertarians are raising the alarm over the state’s plans to create a Big Brother database that could map drivers’ whereabouts with police cruiser-mounted scanners that capture thousands of license plates per hour — storing that information indefinitely where local cops, staties, feds and prosecutors could access it as they choose...

The computerized scanners, known as Automatic License Plate Recognition devices, instantly check for police alerts, warrants, traffic violations and parking tickets, which cops say could be an invaluable tool in thwarting crime...

Some ALPR scanners already are deployed on Massachusetts roads. State police have two. Several cities use them for parking enforcement. Chelsea has four scanner-mounted cruisers.

“It’s great for canvassing an area, say after a homicide if you are looking for a particular plate,” said Chelsea police Capt. Keith Houghton. “You can plug it in, and drive up and down side streets. It sounds an alarm if you get a hit.” (more) (video demo - worth watching) (countermeasure:)

Libyan Spy Center Provides Glimpse of Government Capabilities Worldwide

via The Wall Street Journal...

On the ground floor of a six-story building here, agents working for Moammar Gadhafi sat in an open room, spying on emails and chat messages with the help of technology Libya acquired from the West.

The recently abandoned room is lined with posters and English-language training manuals stamped with the name Amesys, a unit of French technology firm Bull SA, which installed the monitoring center...

Earlier this year, Libyan officials held talks with Amesys and several other companies including Boeing Co.'s Narus, a maker of high-tech Internet traffic-monitoring products, as they looked to add sophisticated Internet-filtering capabilities to Libya's existing monitoring operation, people familiar with the matter said.

Libya sought advanced tools to control the encrypted online-phone service Skype, censor YouTube videos and block Libyans from disguising their online activities by using "proxy" servers, according to documents reviewed by the Journal and people familiar with the matter...

Libya is one of several Middle Eastern and North African states to use sophisticated technologies acquired abroad to crack down on dissidents. Tech firms from the U.S., Canada, Europe, China and elsewhere have, in the pursuit of profits, helped regimes block websites, intercept emails and eavesdrop on conversations...

The Tripoli Internet monitoring center was a major part of a broad surveillance apparatus built by Col. Gadhafi to keep tabs on his enemies. Amesys in 2009 equipped the center with "deep packet inspection" technology, one of the most intrusive techniques for snooping on people's online activities, according to people familiar with the matter.

Chinese telecom company ZTE Corp. also provided technology for Libya's monitoring operation, people familiar with the matter said. Amesys and ZTE had deals with different arms of Col. Gadhafi's security service, the people said. A ZTE spokeswoman declined to comment.

VASTech SA Pty Ltd, a small South African firm, provided the regime with tools to tap and log all the international phone calls going in and out of the country, according to emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and people familiar with the matter. VASTech declined to discuss its business in Libya due to confidentiality agreements.

Libya went on a surveillance-gear shopping spree after the international community lifted trade sanctions in exchange for Col. Gadhafi handing over the suspects in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 and ending his weapons of mass destruction program...

The Tripoli spying center reveals some of the secrets of how Col. Gadhafi's regime censored the populace. The surveillance room, which people familiar with the matter said Amesys equipped with its Eagle system in late 2009, shows how Col. Gadhafi's regime had become more attuned to the dangers posed by Internet activism...

The Eagle system allows agents to observe network traffic and peer into people's emails, among other things. In the room, one English-language poster says: "Whereas many Internet interception systems carry out basic filtering on IP address and extract only those communications from the global flow (Lawful Interception), EAGLE Interception system analyses and stores all the communications from the monitored link (Massive interception)."

On its website, Amesys says its "strategic nationwide interception" system can detect email from Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail and see chat conversations on MSN instant messaging and AIM. It says investigators can "request the entire database" of Internet traffic "in real time" by entering keywords, email addresses or the names of file attachments as search queries... 

Across town from the Internet monitoring center at Libya's international phone switch, where telephone calls exit and enter the country, a separate group of Col. Gadhafi's security agents staffed a room equipped with VASTech devices, people familiar with the matter said. There they captured roughly 30 to 40 million minutes of mobile and landline conversations a month and archived them for years, one of the people said.

A description of the company's Zebra brand surveillance product, prepared for a trade show, says it "captures and stores massive volumes of traffic" and offers filters that agents can use to "access specific communications of interest from mountains of data." Zebra also features "link analysis," the description says, a tool to help agents identify relationships between individuals based on analysis of their calling patterns.

Capabilities such as these helped Libya sow fear as the country erupted in civil war earlier this year. Anti-Gadhafi street demonstrators were paranoid of being spied on or picked up by the security forces, as it was common knowledge that the regime tapped phones. Much of the early civil unrest was organized via Skype, which activists considered safer than Internet chatting. But even then they were scared. (more)

Back When International Calls Could Not Be Direct Dialed

On Aug. 30, 1963, the hot-line communications link between Washington, D.C., and Moscow went into operation. (more)

The first generation of the hot line had no voice element at all; the memorandum called for a full-time duplex wire telegraph circuit, based on the idea that spontaneous verbal communications could lead to miscommunications and misperceptions. This circuit was routed Washington, D.C. - London - Copenhagen - Stockholm - Helsinki - Moscow. The Washington - London link was originally carried over the TAT-1, the first submarine transatlantic telephone cable. A secondary radio line was routed Washington, D.C. - Tangier - Moscow.

Leaders would state their message in their native language, which would be translated at the receiving end.

This was the Washington side of the hotline. In the foreground, an Air Force S/SGT is examining tape from the Teletype Corp. Model 28 ASR Automatic Send-Receive teletype (ASR) which is fitted with an "under the dome" reperforator. The reperforator is separate from the keyboard,  printer,  and T-D (reader), and was usually plugged into a patch panel. Directly behind the standing man is a  Teletype Model 28 ASR. Also pictured are two identical sets of equipment at the right side:  two Russian T63 teleprinters and two ETCRRM  crypto units. The above configuration would have been duplicated in Moscow.  (NSA photo enhanced by Jerry Proc)

The first use of the hotline was in 1967, during the six-day Egypt-Israel War, when both superpowers informed each other of military moves which might have been provocative or ambiguous.

Bligh me, Captain Lowcock. Right handy havin' a third leg.

UK - Private security firm G4S has sacked two members of staff who tagged a man's false leg allowing him to remove it and break a court-imposed curfew.

The pair were fooled by Christopher Lowcock, 29, who wrapped the prosthetic limb in a bandage when G4S set up the system at his Rochdale home.

He was then able to remove the limb and break a curfew imposed for offences involving drugs, driving and a weapon...
 

The company revealed the second employee who went to check on the monitoring equipment at Lowcock's home was also sacked for failing to realize he had fooled them into tagging his false leg. (more)

Project for a Rainy Day - Build a Motion Detecting SpyCam

A quick and dirty tutorial for building a spycam that begins recording when it detects motion within its field of view. With a little more effort and imagination it could be covertly re-packaged into almost any everyday object around the office, or home, or car, or... well, you get the idea. (video) Why do I mention it? So you will know what you're up against.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy comes to theaters November 18th, 2011 and stars Ralph Fiennes, Colin Firth, Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy, Ciarán Hinds, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jared Harris. The film is directed by Tomas Alfredson. (trailer)

Woman acquitted on eavesdropping counts

IL - Tiawanda Moore went to Chicago police headquarters last August to file a complaint against a patrol officer for allegedly fondling her during a domestic disturbance call.

According to Moore, however, two police investigators assigned to investigate the officer's conduct instead tried to talk her out of pursuing the complaint. Frustrated, she put her BlackBerry on her lap and quietly flipped on its recorder.

But the former stripper was the one who ended up in trouble - criminally charged with violating an obscure state eavesdropping law that makes audio recording of police officers without their consent a felony offense.

In a quick repudiation Wednesday of the prosecution case, though, a Criminal Court jury took less than an hour to acquit Moore on both eavesdropping counts. (more)

Others have not been so lucky in escaping this double-standard Kafkaesque selective application of the eavesdropping law in "two-party consent" states.

U.S. Electronic Surveillance Laws

Federal law includes all interstate calls, and there are several sources of authority for electronic surveillance in the U.S. The Wire and Electronic Communications Interception and Interception of Oral Communications Act (formally known as the "Title III" Wiretap Act, 18 U.S.C §§ 2510-2520), typically requires a court order issued by a judge who must decide that there is probable cause to believe that a crime has been, is being or is about to be committed. 

Wiretaps can also be ordered in suspected cases of terrorist bombings, hijackings and other violent activities are crimes. The government can wiretap in advance of a crime being perpetrated. 

Judges seldom deny government requests for wiretap orders. 

Electronic surveillance involves the traditional laws on wiretapping--any interception of a telephone transmission by accessing the telephone signal itself--and eavesdropping--listening in on conversations without the consent of the parties. More recently, states have extended these laws to cover data communications as well as telephone surveillance. 

For example, in Florida, interception and disclosure of wire, oral, or electronic communications is prohibited. State and federal policymakers face the challenge of balancing security needs via electronic surveillance against individual privacy.

The list of laws was last revised one year ago, but remains a worthwhile reference. U.S. Electronic Surveillance Laws

UK Private Investigators - "...just can't get no respect."

via the Financial Times...

They eavesdrop on your conversations, rifle through dustbins and pretend to deliver pizzas while taking covert photographs with a disguised camera. They hide, watch and wait, and hang around for hours in the freezing cold, crouched down in the back of a parked car dying to use the bathroom.

This is the real life of Britain’s private investigators. There are between 4,000 and 5,000 of them now active. The stereotype is of the disgraced police officer, thrown off the force, all grubby raincoat and cigarette dangling from his lower lip; or the lithe, brooding, silent panther, with eyes in the back of his head, capturing the bad guys. Neither is quite right, nor quite wrong. (more) (Duckman - American private investigator stereotype)

SpyCam Story #619 - "Hey, I'm depraved on account I'm deprived."

Australia - A Sydney architect who filmed up a teenage girl's skirt has escaped jail, after the court heard he was under stress from political events in his native Sri Lanka at the time.

Sabapathy Chandrahasan, 57, was caught in February this year filming up a girl's skirt at Sydney's Central Railway Station. Police then searched his home at Earlwood, in the city's inner west, where they uncovered more than 1000 such videos on his computer. Chandrahasan pleaded guilty...

His lawyer argued the offenses were relatively minor and said his client suffered from events in Sri Lanka. He said Chandrahasan has been ostracized by the Sydney Tamil community, of which he was a key figure...

Chandrahasan was given a nine-month suspended sentence, which will be followed by a good behavior bond. He has also been ordered to receive medical treatment. (more) (sing-a-long)

SpyCam Story #618 - Keeping Up with The Pervs

Australia - Canberra's Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) is at the centre of another sex scandal this morning after a male cadet was arrested for allegedly videoing a female cadet as she took a shower.

Police allege the 21-year-old cadet found the phone hidden in a vent above a shower at her accommodation block last night.

It is alleged the phone was recording video while the woman was showering.

Police arrived at ADFA at 11:50pm, and seized the mobile phone, laptop and a USB memory stick from the 21-year-old male cadet's room.

The arrest came on the same day that Defence Minister Stephen Smith said an independent report into sexual abuse allegations within the ADF had to be delayed because of the sheer volume of complaints. (more)