If the competition isn't bugging you, they are probably doing this...

Interesting read...
A competitive intelligence consultant discusses things that can help a business--at the expense of another. (more)

Report Recommends a TSCM Sweep of City Hall

According to the report*, many staff members worry there are bugs in city hall that an exterminator cannot remove.

So much so, that one of the official recommendations is to sweep city hall.  

"The Council should retain an outside firm to conduct a sweep of City Hall for bugs or other surveillance or electronic devices," the report reads. "While it is doubtful that any such devices exist in City Hall, there is a clear and present perception among staff that the facility is not secure and possibly bugged. Many employees in the City have resorted to the use of their personal cell phones and often leave the premises to discuss sensitive matters. A sweep of City facilities would help restore confidence in the security and privacy of the City buildings."

The findings of fact revealed that "based on credible and objective evidence, Police Chief Debra Duncan secretly tape recorded former City Manager Wayne Herron." (more)

* The rest of the story...
"the report" aka "The Fox Report" - "Attorney Anthony Fox led the team of two attorneys, Sarah Hutchins and Mary Crosby. They interviewed about 24 people, including current and former employees." "The report cost $50,000." 

A sweep of the sensitive City Hall areas would have cost less than 1/4 of that. ~Kevin

Law Proposed to Let Parents Wiretap Kids

An Ohio lawmaker plans to introduce a bill that would allow parents to wiretap their child’s cell phone conversations to be used in court.


Under the bill, only parents or guardians would be allowed to track online or cell phone communications of a minor under the age of 18. (more)

Groundbreaking Encryption App is a Fed Freaker

For the past few months, some of the world’s leading cryptographers have been keeping a closely guarded secret about a pioneering new invention. Today, they’ve decided it’s time to tell all. 

Back in October, the startup tech firm Silent Circle ruffled governments’ feathers with a “surveillance-proof” smartphone app to allow people to make secure phone calls and send texts easily. Now, the company is pushing things even further—with a groundbreaking encrypted data transfer app that will enable people to send files securely from a smartphone or tablet at the touch of a button. (For now, it’s just being released for iPhones and iPads, though Android versions should come soon.) That means photographs, videos, spreadsheets, you name it—sent scrambled from one person to another in a matter of seconds. 

Click to enlarge.

“This has never been done before,” boasts Mike Janke, Silent Circle’s CEO. “It’s going to revolutionize the ease of privacy and security.” 

The sender of the file can set it on a timer so that it will automatically “burn”—deleting it from both devices after a set period of, say, seven minutes. Until now, sending encrypted documents has been frustratingly difficult for anyone who isn’t a sophisticated technology user, requiring knowledge of how to use and install various kinds of specialist software. 

What Silent Circle has done is to remove these hurdles, essentially democratizing encryption. It’s a game-changer that will almost certainly make life easier and safer for journalists, dissidents, diplomats, and companies trying to evade state surveillance or corporate espionage. Governments pushing for more snooping powers, however, will not be pleased. (more)

Authorities... "No probing all the way. Promise."

The U.K. plans to install an unspecified number of spy devices along the country’s telecommunications network to monitor Britons’ use of overseas services such as Facebook and Twitter, according to a report published Tuesday by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee.

The devices — referred to as “probes” in the report — are meant to underpin a nationwide surveillance regime aimed at logging nearly everything Britons do online, from Skype calls with family members to visits to pornographic websites. The government argues that swift access to communications data is critical to the fight against terrorism and other high-level crime.

Authorities have been at pains to stress that they’re not seeking unfettered access to the content of emails or recordings of phone calls, but rather what many have described as “outside of the envelope” information: Who sends a message, where and how it is sent, and who receives it. (more) ...for now.

Business Espionage - Sentences Short - Fines Small

MO - A Chinese business owner and one of his employees have pleaded guilty in Missouri to conspiring to steal trade secrets from a U.S. company, in what one expert called a rare example of foreign business people being successfully prosecuted for corporate spying.

Ji Li Huang, 45, and Xiao Guang Qi, 32, admitted Friday, Jan 25 in federal court that they tried to buy Pittsburgh Corning Corp.’s proprietary formula for cellular glass insulation by bribing an employee of the company’s Sedalia plant.

U.S. District Judge Brian Wimes sentenced Huang to 18 months in federal prison and fined him $250,000. Qi — Huang’s employee at a plastic novelties manufacturer called Ningbo Oriental Crafts Ltd. — was sentenced to time served and fined $20,000, with the understanding that he would leave the United States immediately. Both men paid their fines Friday, The Kansas City Star reported. (more)

British Army Unveils New Mini Spy Drone

The British army has demonstrated a new tiny spy drone as the latest weapon against Taliban militants in Afghanistan.

Soldiers from the Brigade Reconnaissance Force at Camp Bastion demonstrated the eight-inch long plastic moulded drone, which has three cameras hidden inside its nose and weighs just 15 grams.

Codenamed the Black Hornet, the tiny aircraft is being used by British troops against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The small flying machine, which has a smooth grey body and twin black rotors, can either be controlled directly or programmed to fly to a given set of co-ordinates and then return to base after carrying out its spy missions. (more)

Two sneaky Android apps have been detected...

The apps cloaks as cache cleaners but instead snoop around once connected to PC. Superclean and DroidCleaner are the two applications uncovered by Kaspersky Labs. Both feature clean-up of Android phone or tablet cache files.

The so-called "cleaners" promise to make devices faster and to increase processing but turns out to download three separate files - autorun.inf, folder.ico, and svchosts.exe. These components are automatically placed in the root of the device's SD card, and once the user connects it to the computer using USB mode, the malware begins to execute itself.

The malware activates the desktop microphone, encrypts all recording, and send all gathered information back to the developer of the malicious application according to Kaspersky. Aside from infecting the PC, the malware also uploads Android device's information, opens arbitrary browser links, uploads and deletes SMS, and distributes contacts, photos, and coordinates online. (more)

New Wave Of Hidden Cameras Make Spying Easy

It’s becoming easier than ever to keep an eye on spouses, children, business partners, and nannies with a new wave of spy gear.

Note: The spy gadgets are real, and work very well — the 'antidote' gadgets used to protect against them, not so well. Save your money. 

Need protection? Find a professional electronic countermeasures specialist. Invest your money with them. Need help finding one? Check here. ~Kevin

Spy vs. Spy vs. Judge Leonie

A former CIA officer who pleaded guilty to identifying a covert intelligence officer was sentenced on Friday to 30 months in prison.

John Kiriakou and prosecutors agreed on the term as part of the plea agreement he struck in October.

Kiriakou, 48, declined to make a statement at the Alexandria, Virginia, federal court prior to sentencing by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema. "Alright, perhaps you've already said too much," Brinkema said. (more)

See What Drones See

These unmanned flying robots–some as large as jumbo jets, others as small as birds–do things straight out of science fiction. 

Much of what it takes to get these robotic airplanes to fly, sense, and kill has remained secret. But now, with rare access to drone engineers and those who fly them for the U.S. military, NOVA reveals the amazing technologies that make drones so powerful as we see how a remotely-piloted drone strike looks and feels from inside the command center.

From cameras that can capture every detail of an entire city at a glance to swarming robots that can make decisions on their own to giant air frames that can stay aloft for days on end, drones are changing our relationship to war, surveillance, and each other. And it's just the beginning. Discover the cutting edge technologies that are propelling us toward a new chapter in aviation history as NOVA gets ready for "Rise of the Drones." 

Sneak preview...

The full program is available on-line. ~Kevin

Experts warn on wire-tapping of the cloud

Leading privacy expert Caspar Bowden has warned Europeans using US cloud services that their data could be snooped on.

In a report, he highlights how the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendment Act (FISAAA) allows US authorities to spy on cloud data.

This includes services such as Amazon Cloud Drive, Apple iCloud and Google Drive.

He told the BBC this heralded a new era of "cloud surveillance". (more)

Man held on suspicion of business espionage

UK - A 52-YEAR-OLD man was arrested yesterday in Oxfordshire on suspicion of business espionage. The Metropolitan Police Service made the arrest as part of Operation Tuleta, an investigation into criminal breaches of privacy... The arrest, the 20th in Operation Tuleta, is part of the Kalmyk investigative strand of inquiry relating to computer hacking offenses. (more)

New Report: Drones Could Be Used for Stalking, Voyeurism

The sight of a drone in flight is likely to become a regular occurrence in the United States within the next few years. But the rise of unmanned technology could lead to new crimes like “drone stalking” and “drone trespassing,” lawmakers are being told. 

A Congressional Research Service report published Wednesday, Integration of Drones Into Domestic Airspace: Selected Legal Issues, sets out the many contentious areas around unmanned aircraft. It cautions that in the future, as drones become more easily available to private citizens, we may see the technology used to commit various offenses. This could mean neighbors using drones to infiltrate one another’s gardens as a means of harassment, or a voyeur using one strapped with a camera and microphone to photograph women and listen in on people’s conversations.

“Traditional crimes such as stalking, harassment, voyeurism, and wiretapping may all be committed through the operation of a drone,” the report says. “As drones are further introduced into the national airspace, courts will have to work this new form of technology into their jurisprudence, and legislatures might amend these various statutes to expressly include crimes committed with a drone.”

Of particular note is a section in the report titled “Right To Protect Property From Trespassing Drones.” It outlines that in certain instances, under a section of tort law, “a landowner would not be liable to the owner of a drone for damage necessarily or accidentally resulting from removing it from his property.” This doesn’t necessarily mean that you can “use force”—like shooting the thing down—if someone flies an unmanned aircraft onto your property. But it does mean you could remove a drone from your property without resorting to force, and if it were “accidentally” damaged in that process, you might not be in trouble. (more)

Alerts sent in by our Blue Blaze Irregulars this week...

• "Time to take the glue gun to your USB ports." Data exfiltration using a USB keyboard. 

• "Dust off your information security policy (or start putting one in place…)" Do you have a comprehensive information security program? Many businesses are still operating without one, leaving them open to preventable data breaches.
 
• "Enough already: encrypt those portable devices" The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced it had reached a settlement with a cord blood bank in respect of the loss of nearly 300,000 customers’ personal information. ...The information had been stored on unencrypted backup tapes, an external hard drive and a laptop that were stolen from a backpack left in an employee’s car.

• “This call may be recorded” - Ninth Circuit says disclaimer not always necessary. But it’s still a good idea! 

• "Man cleared of spying on his wife via computer software..." His attorney argued that prosecutors could not prove why Ciccarone used the software.

• "Nestlégate" Court convicts Nestle of "spying" on Swiss activists. (vintage commercial)