The Wiretap Garrote

Courtesy Murray Associates - Click to Enlarge

Maryland's highest court has upheld a law allowing police to listen in on cell phone calls that suspects make outside the state, a tool that authorities say is key to fighting the drug trade.

The 5-2 Court of Appeals ruling is a victory for law enforcement, said Brian Kleinbord, chief of criminal appeals division for the Maryland Attorney General's Office. "It means that drug dealers can't evade a wiretap by driving their cars across the state line."

But dissenters argued that multi-state wiretaps are the latest example of police using advances in technology to chip away at privacy rights.

Randy E. McDonald, a Washington-based lawyer who argued the case for a man convicted on drug charges, said police have gone too far and he is considering an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. (more)

The Gist of the Constable Eavesdropping Case Strikes Back

TX - A former Galveston County deputy constable (James P. Gist), who resigned last year after the district attorney’s office launched a criminal investigation into allegations that he bugged Precinct 7 Constable Pam Matranga’s office, filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing the constable of sexual harassment...

In a series of allegations listed in the lawsuit, Gist maintains Matranga would lift her shirt over his head and press his head into her cleavage. He also alleges the constable would make crude statements and gestures...

...The lawsuit also states Gist had a recording device on his desk “in an effort to record and collect evidence of defendant Matranga’s sexual harassment.” (more)

Skipping the PI, they DIY spy!

The spy shop has become a new tool in the arsenal for feuding couples calling it quits in America. From phone tracking and GPS, to hidden cameras and microphones, America’s divorce lawyers have seen technology play a prominent role in their cases.

More than 80 percent of the nation’s top divorce attorneys say they’ve seen an increase in the role electronic data and social networking sites play in divorces, according to the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.

One of the primary reasons is that do-it-yourself snooping has become relatively cheap and easy. Surveillance equipment can cost less than $300. It is simple to mount a microphone in a child’s blue jeans, as one Texas mother did, or hide a camera in a child’s favorite doll. (more)

Watch Over Me Requests Up 10%

US - In a letter to the Senate, the Justice Department reports it made 1,745 requests to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for special authority for wiretaps last year. That’s 10% more than 2010. None of those requests were denied, although judges did require changes to 30 requests.

The FBI also issued 16,511 national security letters seeking information like financial and phone records on 7,200 people. (more) (sing-a-long)

Another Surveillance Concern - SMS Intercept Via CCTV

Australia - Surveillance cameras used during last year's Rugby World Cup could zoom in on individual spectators and camera operators could read their text messages, a privacy forum has heard... Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff says reading someone's text messages in public could cause concern, but the legitimacy of the action could depend on what it was used for. (more)

The Great Seal Bug Story (updated)

Our compendium of first and second-hand accounts about The Great Seal Bug continues to grow. The latest contribution has just been posted, along with this rare schematic of the bug from Scientific American, and a video newsreel of Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. showing off the device at the United Nations in 1960.

Our latest voice of history begins... "I am a former Foreign Service Officer.
I have a certain amount of first hand, and a larger amount of 2nd hand knowledge about the thing, having worked for a couple of years in the early 1960s in the organization that was responsible for dealing with it and all similar problems - the division of technical services of the office of security of the department of state: abbreviated as O:SY/T.

I knew the tech who actually discovered the thing (slightly), and heard from him in detail exactly how he found it." (more)

Board of Directors' Communication Portals

by Jason Clark, CSO, Websense
Imagine that criminals broke into headquarters and bugged your executive offices for insider information—and then made millions trading on that information. That's what can happen if you jump into a Board Communication Systems too quickly. It has already happened: They silently monitor your Board of Directors communications until they hear insider information that they can use to strike it rich on the stock market.

A Board Communication System, often called a Board Portal, is supposed to be a secure cloud system that your CEO, CFO and board of directors use to communicate with one another to make sure any highly sensitive information about the company is protected—from insiders, the IT department, and bad guys. Information that is shared between board members can range from company strategy, to M&A plans, to non-public financial performance details. Imagine the havoc that could ensue if anyone was able to access sensitive knowledge and then use it to their advantage. 

Why BCSs Need Proper Security Measures
...If a Board Portal is breached, this could mean every one of your shareholders is a potential plaintiff (arguing that their investment has been placed at increased risk of harm due to insider trading or other stock price manipulation)... And this doesn't just affect public companies. Private companies that do business with public companies may need to start disclosing breaches to keep corporate customers as clients. (more)

SpyCam Story #659 - This Week in SpyCam News

SpyCam stories have become commonplace and the techniques used, repetitive. We continue to keep lose track of the subject for statistical purposes, but won't bore you with too many details. Only links to the stories will be supplied unless there is something useful to be learned.

AZ - School principal and assistant caught passionately kissing via student cell phone.
Australia - Father jailed for hidden camera in the bathroom where his daughters showered.
CA - Maintenance man at Sears arrested for allegedly filming women in changing rooms.
Internet - Spycam Magazine - A new magazine focusing on hidden and spycam products.

SC - Cellphone camera in a toilet roll filmed female employees. Security guard charged.

FL - Teacher accused of using a pen camera to video girls changing for gym.
UK - Man rigged up a spy camera to secretly watch a teenage girl in the bath.
IN - Notre Dame pen SpyCam Man escapes jail time.
UK - Man convicted of using spycam pen in toilet.
WA - Voyeurism evidence against father-in-law of missing mother Susan Powell admitted.
CA - York University - At least six incidents of voyeurism this year on campus.
ID - Former high school teacher made plea deal he secretly videotaped students
FL  - Man accused of cellphone video of women in Target, Walmart and Publix.
IN - Mom files half-million dollar lawsuit against a former high school janitor accused of secretly filming her son and 41 other boys in a school locker room
UK - Web designer who spied on three young women given a community order.
IN - High school basketball player charged. Cell phone video in the locker room.
MS - Complainant found videos of herself fully naked of her taking a bath on computer.
TN - A 33-year-old Baptist youth evangelist investigated in three states for video voyeurism.

CISPA: Big Brother's Best Friend

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) passed the House yesterday, amended but barely improved. (more)

The government would be able to search information it collects under CISPA for the purposes of investigating American citizens with complete immunity from all privacy protections as long as they can claim someone committed a "cybersecurity crime". Basically it says the 4th Amendment does not apply online, at all. (more)

CISPA would "waive every single privacy law ever enacted in the name of cybersecurity," Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat and onetime Web entrepreneur, said during the debate. "Allowing the military and NSA to spy on Americans on American soil goes against every principle this country was founded on." (more)

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)