Sports Quote of the Week

"In my 28 or 29 years in the NFL, I have never listened to an opposing team's communication," ... "I have never asked for the capability to listen to an opposing team's communications. I have never inquired as to the possibility of listening in on an opposing team's communications. And I have never been aware of any capability to listen in on an opposing team's communications at the Superdome or at any NFL stadium." New Orleans Saints, General Manager, Mickey Loomis responding to an ESPN report that accuses him of wiretapping the opposing coaches' booth in the Superdome during the 2002-04 seasons. (more)

A joint Louisiana state police and FBI task force is investigating allegations that the New Orleans Saints set up general manager Mickey Loomis' booth in the Superdome so he could listen in on opposing coaches.

State police Col. Mike Edmonson confirmed the joint effort today after discussing the matter with Dave Welker, special agent in charge at the FBI's New Orleans field office.

"I thought that was an excellent opportunity to share resources to see if federal or state wiretapping laws were in fact broken," Edmonson said by phone from Baton Rouge. (more)

Autistic Boy Wears Wire to Get Help

Stuart Chaifetz is mad. He's so mad, he took his story to YouTube.

Confused as to why his "sweet and gentle" autistic son Akian, 10, was suddenly kicking school employees and throwing chairs, Chaifetz decided to wire the boy. He stuck a digital recorder in his son's pocket and was able to tape 6.5 hours of class time.

What he heard was shocking. The teacher and aide were yelling at Akian and calling him names.

When the district's response wasn't enough, MSNBC reports Stuart Chaifetz posted the following video on the web: 

 

The above audio includes the teachers talking about having a hangover, calling Akian a bastard and telling him to shut up. At one point, the aide angrily tells the autistic boy, "Go ahead and scream, because guess what? You are going to get nothing until your mouth is shut."

This sounds bad, but it gets worse. (more)

Show of hands. Feeling sorry for Rupert yet? Hands? Anyone???

UK - Rupert Murdoch used his testimony before a U.K. inquiry on Thursday to portray himself as the victim, not perpetrator, of a cover-up over phone hacking -- a twist that could certainly anger those suing his company for invading their privacy to sell newspapers.

The 81-year-old media magnate apologized. He said he had failed. He noted that the corporate cleanup of the British phone hacking scandal had cost his New York-based News Corp. hundreds of millions of dollars and transformed its culture.

"I failed, and I'm sorry about it," Murdoch said, adding later: "We are now a new company altogether." (more)

Hiding all Spies in a "Central" Intelligence Agency was Just Too Obvious to Work

The Pentagon confirmed it would be establishing a new intelligence agency, the Defense Clandestine Service, meant to work with the CIA, that would establish spy networks to monitor long-term threats to U.S. national security interests, pointing to places like Iran and North Korea. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta approved the program Friday. The DCS would bring the federal government’s intelligence agency total to 17. (more)

Just for the record...
The 16 federal intelligence agencies are: the CIA, the FBI, and, in the Department of Defense, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the U.S. Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Marine Corps Intelligence Agency, and the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency, the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Intelligence and Analysis the Coast Guard Intelligence, the Drug Enforcement Agdministration's Office of National Security Intelligence, the Treasury Department's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, and the Energy Department's Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence

"Chief, I've cracked the case. Would you believe..."

UK - A yoga expert says a British spy found dead in a sports bag could have zipped himself in, though a colleague had failed in more than 100 attempts to do it.

Gareth Williams worked for Britain's secret eavesdropping service GCHQ but was attached to the MI6 overseas spy agency when his remains were found in August 2010 inside the bag, which was found in a bathtub at his London apartment. (more)

China - When Hu Jintao, China’s top leader, picked up the telephone last August to talk to a senior anticorruption official visiting Chongqing, special devices detected that he was being wiretapped — by local officials in that southwestern metropolis.

The discovery of that and other wiretapping led to an official investigation that helped topple Chongqing’s charismatic leader, Bo Xilai, in a political cataclysm that has yet to reach a conclusion.

Until now, the downfall of Mr. Bo has been cast largely as a tale of a populist who pursued his own agenda too aggressively for some top leaders in Beijing and was brought down by accusations that his wife had arranged the murder of Neil Heywood, a British consultant, after a business dispute. But the hidden wiretapping, previously alluded to only in internal Communist Party accounts of the scandal, appears to have provided another compelling reason for party leaders to turn on Mr. Bo.

The story of how China’s president was monitored also shows the level of mistrust among leaders in the one-party state. To maintain control over society, leaders have embraced enhanced surveillance technology. But some have turned it on one another — repeating patterns of intrigue that go back to the beginnings of Communist rule. (more)

Camera Trap Snares Man Allegedly Leaving Bizarre Trinkets for Neighbor

IA - A West Des Moines man who for five years has allegedly been leaving raw meat, dolls and other trinkets on a neighbor’s property has been caught on film and now faces harassment charges, according to police.

The victim, a 45-year-old woman, first reported to police in 2007 that someone was depositing odd items — a plastic bag containing raw meat, a Christmas ornament and small dolls, for example — on her property... Last fall, police installed a trail camera, commonly used to track deer and other wildlife, in hopes of catching the suspect in the act.

Police Navidad

Last week, the woman reported to police she had watched via the camera as the suspect left items on a fire hydrant, including food, Vaseline petroleum jelly, paper clips, a tape measure, a plastic container full of what appears to be motor oil and two caulking tubes...

The investigation is continuing. (more)

PI's Spy Plane Vanishes on Easter. Divine Intervention?

Swaziland - A spy plane worth E20 000, belonging to Private Investigator Hunter Shongwe has gone missing.

Shongwe says the unmanned craft which had only three days disappeared while on a mission around Lobamba on Thursday afternoon.

The gadget operates as a spy camera to take pictures of people and places without raising suspicion.

By remote control, he flew the small aircraft in the direction of Somhlolo National Stadium where members of the League of Churches were arriving for the Easter services.

The small plane was on a mission to record everything that was happening at the stadium and surrounding areas during the night.

His mission of spying on the Christians failed when the gadget got lost. (more)

How much information about yourself are you putting online?

As a business owner, you are doubly responsible in safekeeping the information you put online. But before you can protect you business data, you need to learn to protect your personal data first.

Read the Trend Micro Digital Lifestyle e-guide, Be Privy to Online Privacy, and be a better informed digital citizen.

You’ll learn:
How online advertisers are tracking your browsing behavior,
The consequences of what you post in your social media.
How mobile apps can access the information stored in your mobile device, if you allow them.

Irony Alert: You'll have to give up some information about yourself to get it. ~Kevin

Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (CISPA) Protest

Civil liberties organizations are launching a week of Internet-wide protests against the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (CISPA), the controversial cybersecurity legislation that would negate existing privacy laws and allow companies to share user data with the government without a court order.

The coalition is urging the public to take part in a Twitter protest directed at their lawmakers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has created an interactive tool for people to find their representatives and their Twitter handles, and to share how CISPA's privacy invasions would affect their day-to-day lives. (more)

Indonesia Now a Business Espionage Target

As Indonesia’s economy soars at an impressive rate and with the defense budget expanding aggressively, several state companies and government agencies have increasingly become targets of espionage.

National Intelligence Agency (BIN) head Lt. Gen. Marciano Norman said recently there were indications that espionage activities have been increasing lately.

“We’re worried with such activities. More resources are now allocated to prevent them. It’s part of my priorities,” Marciano said, refusing to elaborate further. He said there were two Asian countries — one of which is a neighboring nation — that have become more aggressive in spying into Indonesia’s economy. (more)

Belgium - Reuters reported that ArcelorMittal workers involved in a bitter dispute over the closure of furnaces in Belgium pointed the finger at the company after discovering that a union meeting was recorded with a camera pen and after being sent secretly filmed footage of workers.

Belgium's heavy industry has been in decline for years and Liege has been the scene of acrimonious protests by workers after ArcelorMittal, the world's biggest steelmaker, said it planned to close operations there. (more)

A Memory Stick that Self-Destructs

Technology has now created the ultimate USB stick - used by the secret service. If you lose it you can track its location and if it falls into the wrong hands you can even remotely scramble its content. (video) (product)

What are spies really like?

via the BBC...
Most people have watched a spy film, but few have ever met someone from the intelligence community. So how close are real spies to the Bournes and the Bonds? Peter Taylor looks at the world of the modern day secret agent... (more)


What does a spy look like? There is no exact answer, but a composite picture was developed by the Business Espionage Controls and Countermeasures Association... (more)

The Cybercrime Wave That Wasn’t

via The New York Times...

In less than 15 years, cybercrime has moved from obscurity to the spotlight of consumer, corporate and national security concerns. Popular accounts suggest that cybercrime is large, rapidly growing, profitable and highly evolved; annual loss estimates range from billions to nearly $1 trillion...

Yet in terms of economics, there’s something very wrong with this picture...

...in numeric surveys, errors are almost always upward: since the amounts of estimated losses must be positive, there’s no limit on the upside, but zero is a hard limit on the downside. As a consequence, respondent errors — or outright lies — cannot be canceled out. Even worse, errors get amplified when researchers scale between the survey group and the overall population...

The cybercrime surveys we have examined exhibit exactly this pattern of enormous, unverified outliers dominating the data. In some, 90 percent of the estimate appears to come from the answers of one or two individuals. In a 2006 survey of identity theft by the Federal Trade Commission, two respondents gave answers that would have added $37 billion to the estimate, dwarfing that of all other respondents combined...

Among dozens of surveys, from security vendors, industry analysts and government agencies, we have not found one that appears free of this upward bias. As a result, we have very little idea of the size of cybercrime losses. (more)

Thus proving once again, fear-mongering is profitable.

• Keep a cool head. 

• View the risk holistically. 

Your valuable information was/is available elsewhere, before it is ever entered into a computer.

• Balance your security budgets appropriately. 

Information risk management isn't solely an IT issue... no matter what the IT security vendors and other vested interests tell you. ~Kevin