Spook Summer School Saturday

Spy School — a Tampa Bay History Center program specially designed for teens — will instruct youngsters about surveillance, information gathering and disguise

Agents and experts will teach children ages 12 to 18, offering tips on how to enter the espionage career field.

The program costs $60 per student but history center members get a $5 discount. Spy School begins Saturday and offers a guided tour with curator Rodney Kite-Powell.

The Tampa Bay area might not seem like an obvious spy hub. But many retired FBI, CIA and military members live in the area, and one of the nation's more high-profile spy court cases unfolded in 2001 in a U.S. District Court in Tampa. Also, United States Special Operations Command is based in Tampa.

For information on Spy School, call (813) 675-8960 or email Jennifer Tyson, the center's assistant curator of education, at jtyson @tampabayhistorycenter .org. (more)

P.S. This is part of the International Spy Museum's traveling road show, "Spies, Traitors, Saboteurs: Fear and Freedom in America." One of the show's features are historical artifacts on loan from Murray Associates / Spybusters, LLC; an APL Badge and ID Card (1917) carried by operatives of the American Protective League (APL) who spied on their fellow Americans on behalf of the U.S. Justice Department during World War I. (see them here)

Spybusters Tip #834 - Singing the Butt-Dialing Blues

Spybusters Tip #834 - Stop butt-dialing by using your phone's password feature.

Here's what happens when you don't...

World's worst butt-dialing story. 

Druggie butt-dials police. Busted.
T-Mobile's Butt Dialing commercial.
"Butt" Dialing Becoming A Problem For 911 Dispatchers.

Brilliant Video Game Thieves Butt-Dial 911 and Brag.
Police bust butt-dialer thanks to a crack in the case.

...and it gets worse.

Free Security e-Book of the Week

FREE book: Fundamentals of Media Security (110 pages)

The most interesting chapters...

• Steganography

• Digital Watermarking

• Digital Scrambling

• Digital Surveillance  

Enter your email address in #1. (The other three questions are benign.) The ebook will download as a pdf.

"The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made."

India - Government today dismissed as "outrageous lie" a media report that at the behest of Home Minister P Chidambaram and his ministry telephones of key government functionaries were bugged. An official statement said attention of the Government has been drawn to a news story published in 'Chauthi Duniya' recently. "The story contains outrageous, baseless and defamatory allegations. There is no truth in the story whatsoever. The allegations that telephones were bugged at the instance of the Home Minister or the Ministry of Home Affairs is an outrageous lie," it said. The statement said that the government reserves its right to take appropriate action against the offending newspaper. Government would like to caution other newspapers and media not to reproduce or repeat the aforesaid story, it said. (more) (alternate quote)

Town Clerk Charged for Recording Colleagues

MI - Augusta Township Clerk Kathy Giszczak has been charged with eavesdropping for tape recording a conversation between the township supervisor and former deputy treasurer.

She turned herself in for the warrant on these charges by coming to the walk-in arraignment...Giszczak is free on a personal recognizance bond.

She has been charged with one count each of eavesdropping and using or disclosing information obtained through eavesdropping. Both counts each carry a maximum penalty of two years in prison and a $2,000 fine. (more)

Ra-Parents Forcing Kids to Live Undercover

Kids are desperate to flee from their parents’ spying, reports the Wall Street Journal. In a piece about “Tweens’ Secret Lives Online,” the Journal tracks the online lengths kids are going to in order to get away from their stalkerish parents.

Digital anthropologist danah boyd told me last year that teens then were fleeing from Facebook to Twitter to escape the prying eyes of adults. WSJ journo Katherine Rosman says that Instagram is now one of the tools kids use to exchange messages in a semi-public way (where the public doesn’t include nosy adults)... 

My own parents certainly didn’t have that luxury. I would disappear with my bike (Me too. With no freakin' helmet, of course.) on a Saturday and be completely out of touch, my whereabouts unknown for hours at a time.

Let’s hope that digitally enabled overparenting doesn’t completely crush kids’ freedom of exploration. Let tweens actually have a little bit of a secret life. (more)

Illegal Watergate Wiretaps Requsted to be Released

A historian of the Richard Nixon presidency wants to review sealed wiretap materials stemming from the 1972 burglary at the Watergate hotel and subsequent criminal prosecutions.

In a pending case in Washington's federal trial court, the U.S. Justice Department on May 3 said "the request for the content of illegally obtained wiretaps poses an unusual legal issue that the department intends to address in its response."

Justice Department lawyer Elizabeth Shapiro asked Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for two more weeks to respond to the request from Luke Nichter, an assistant professor of history at Texas A&M University. The earlier deadline was May 5.

“These and other sealed materials may be the key to determining why the Watergate break-in occurred, who ordered it, and what the burglars were looking [for],” Nichter, who specializes in American political history, wrote in a letter (PDF) to Lamberth in 2010. Nichter is researching whether exposing a prostitution ring was the real reason for the Watergate burglary. (more)

Weakness of U.S. Counterespionage Law Examined

...a recent US court ruling that dealt a blow to the fight against corporate espionage in saying the download of proprietary data does not amount to a criminal offense. (more)

Would you use spy gadgets in order to get custody of your kids?

On Thursday, "ABC World News with Diane Sawyer" explored the increasing use of surveillance equipment among exes in divorce and custody cases, from hiding a camera in a child's teddy bear to installing tape recorders in the home of an ex. (more)

CALEA Seeks New Orifices

The FBI is asking Internet companies not to oppose a controversial proposal that would require the firms, including Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google, to build in backdoors for government surveillance. 

In meetings with industry representatives, the White House, and U.S. senators, senior FBI officials argue the dramatic shift in communication from the telephone system to the Internet has made it far more difficult for agents to wiretap Americans suspected of illegal activities, CNET has learned.

The FBI general counsel's office has drafted a proposed law that the bureau claims is the best solution: requiring that social-networking Web sites and providers of VoIP, instant messaging, and Web e-mail alter their code to ensure their products are wiretap-friendly.

The FBI's proposal would amend a 1994 law, called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, that currently applies only to telecommunications providers, not Web companies. The Federal Communications Commission extended CALEA in 2004 to apply to broadband networks. (more)

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)