Business Espionage: Bratz Bitch Slaps Barbie Over Spying to the Tune of $1 Billion

MGA Entertainment Inc. (MGA) filed a major trade secret theft lawsuit against Mattel Inc. on over reportedly stealing information at industry trade shows, and is seeking damages of at least $1 billion. This is the latest in a long-running battle between the two competing doll makers.

MGA claims that throughout a period of years, Mattel instructed its employees to engage in acts of "espionage and fraud" to steal MGA's trade secrets...
The Bratz doll makers claim that for a number of years, Mattel employees used a "Market Intelligence Department" to steal MGA's trade secrets under the aspices of an 11-page "How-to-Steal" manual. Mattel also reportedly set up "spies," who created false identities by printing fake business cards and used Mattel's accounting department to create mocked-up invoices to back up their fictional businesses in to better gain access to MGA's private showrooms. 

MGA also claims that Mattel employees purchased small video recorders (paid for by Mattel) and cameras to photograph and videotape what they saw in private showrooms and industry trade shows. As a result, Mattel obtained highly confidential information about MGA's designs, price lists and marketing plans for unannounced future products in the highly popular Bratz line, according to MGA. (more)

Husband's Intimate Tweets to Other Woman Posted on Net by Wife... and then...

One of India's most prominent politicians, Shashi Tharoor, has been caught in an excruciating cross-border Twitter scandal after his wife posted allegedly intimate text messages between the government minister and a Pakistani journalist on his social media account. 

The latest Twitter tempest for Dr Tharoor, Minister for Human Resources, author and former senior UN official once mooted as a candidate for secretary-general, threatens not only to scuttle a promising political career and a three-year marriage but also expose the politician to further legal scrutiny over a 2010 Indian Premier League cricket bidding scandal that cost him his then job as a junior minister. (more) (background)

This just in... 
Shashi Tharoor's wife was found dead in a luxury hotel room in Delhi after she went public on Twitter... (more)

Wiretap Boast Makes Mr. Harden Criminal (Darwin Award)

The first of my 2014 Darwin Awards goes to...

OR- Daniel Devon Harden, 38, was arraigned Thursday afternoon on allegations of attempted murder, first-degree assault, second-degree assault and unlawful use of a weapon stemming from a stabbing at a Northeast Portland club on Sept. 23...

Portland police solved the case after Harden boasted about the stabbing, which was picked up during an unrelated federal wiretap investigation into a cocaine-trafficking ring, according to court records. (more)

Drone Law News. A license to shoot 'um down! And, a brillant career move.

• Legislation has been introduced in the Missouri House of Representatives that would regulate the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) and protect the privacy rights of citizens. (more)

Click to enlarge.

• Deer Trail, Colorado - Wearing a black duster and a black cowboy hat, Phil Steel walked to the front of the meeting room armed with a Nerf gun and a smile. The U.S. Army veteran was there to pitch his big idea: an ordinance that would legalize and regulate drone hunting inside Deer Trail city limits. If approved, residents could pay $25 to get a drone-hunting license; the town would pay a bounty for every drone bagged. 

Steel had hammered out the 2,800-word ordinance in just four hours. Its key points: 
- When a drone flies into its airspace, Deer Trail will consider it an act of war.
- You can only shoot at drones flying lower than 1,000 feet.
- Unless your life is in danger, you can only fire up to three shots at a drone. (more)
He has already sold more than 60 of his own licenses online.

 •  ND - Rodney Brossart, a North Dakotan cattle rancher, was sentenced to three years in prison, with all but six months suspended, for terrorizing police officers who were trying to arrest him at his property in 2011. The strange case garnered national attention because it was the first time a law enforcement agency had used an unmanned aerial vehicle to assist in carrying out an arrest. (more)

 • With a 34-2 vote, New Jersey’s State Senate approved a bill that provides some of the nation’s strongest protections against drone surveillance. The bill, which went through several incarnations since being introduced last spring, restricts how police, firefighters and other first responders can use drones... It also includes a ban on outfitting them with weapons. bada-bing-bada-no-boom (more)

FutureWatch - Career Alert - Employment Hope for Twitchy Fingered Youth
The Federal Aviation Administration estimates up to 7,500 commercial drones could be flying in national airspace within a few years... Several colleges now offering courses! (more) (more)

The Federal Aviation Administration estimates up to 7,500 commercial drones could be flying in national airspace within a few years
Read more at http://www.toledoblade.com/local/2013/12/25/Ohio-students-eye-drone-jobs-Copy.html#2lCZsJDGZVL0iU62.99

The Federal Aviation Administration estimates up to 7,500 commercial drones could be flying in national airspace within a few years
Read more at http://www.toledoblade.com/local/2013/12/25/Ohio-students-eye-drone-jobs-Copy.html#2lCZsJDGZVL0iU62.99

Supreme Court to Consider if Police Need Warrants to Search Cellphones

The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a pair of cases about whether the police need a warrant to search the cellphones of people they arrest, presenting a major test of the meaning of the Fourth Amendment in the digital age.

The court has long allowed warrantless searches in connection with arrests, saying they are justified by the need to find weapons and to prevent the destruction of evidence.  

The question for the justices in the new cases is whether the potentially vast amounts of data held on smartphones warrant a different approach under the Fourth Amendment, which bars unreasonable searches.

The lower courts are divided. (more) (more) (GEICO Pig don't care.)

Obama on Digital Spying: Hey, Companies Do It, Too

In a much-anticipated speech, President Barack Obama took to the podium to introduce changes he aims to make to the National Security Administration's surveillance operations... Those in the business community may have been surprised that the president took a moment to remind Americans that spying isn't just a government practice.

Here's what the President said about corporate data tracking:
"Corporations of all shapes and sizes track what you buy, store and analyze our data, and use it for commercial purposes; that's how those targeted ads pop up on your computer or smartphone." (more)

Why does this remind me of my mother saying, "So, if George jumped off the roof would you do it too?"

Eye Spy - Scraping Info From Corneas

Advances in photography are rapidly making indirect spying possible. Reflections off of corneas, or any reflective surface, can be gleaned with off-the-shelf cameras and lenses. 

Have a look...
You may want to close the blinds in your office. (more)

Surreptitious Workplace Recording - Jailer v Jailer

NJ - Federal prosecutors say the deputy director of the Hudson County jail used a website to illegally wiretap some of his fellow employees.

Kirk Eady turned himself in today and made his initial court appearance, where bail was set at $100,000 unsecured bond and he was order to surrender any firearms. Eady has been suspended without pay, Hudson County spokesman James Kennelly said today. Eady earns $120,000 annually...

Prosecutors say that between March and July 2012, Eady used a publicly available website to place telephone calls to four Hudson County jail employees. The website allowed Eady to conceal the telephone numbers from where the calls originated and also call and record two people simultaneously.

The site also made it appear that those people, and not Eady, originated the call. (more)

Kevin's Security Tip of the Day

With all the data breaches in the news recently, you may wonder if your information was plundered. Find out at Have I Been Pawned? Mine has:(

If so, it's time to scurry around and change your on-line passwords.

Need help?
Password generators.
Password managers.
Password strength testers.

Make sure your new passwords are not on this list...
The Top 500 Worst Passwords of All Time

How to Create Easy to Remember Secure Passwords...
You can create a memorable, secure password starting with a simple phrase. We call these "passphrases". For example, let's use a quote from Ogden Nash:

"Happiness is having a scratch for every itch."

If we use the first letter of each word, and substitute 4 for "for", we get:

Hihas4ei

This is a reasonably strong password but we can improve it a bit by adding some special characters:

#Hihas4ei:

Associating Web Sites...
We can use our new password on several different websites by adding a suffix with a mnemonic link to a particular site. Let's use the first letter and the next two consonants in the site name.

Just to add a bit more randomness we'll alternate upper-case and lower case, and if the first character in the site name is a vowel we'll start with upper-case. To mix things up a bit more we'll use the same rule to decide whether to add the site mnemonic to the left side or the right side.
#Hihas4ei:AmZ    for Amazon
fBk#Hihas4ei:    for Facebook
#Hihas4ei:YtB    for YouTube
(more)

Your Automobile is Very Likely Spying on You

...but Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Senate are uniting to put a stop to unfettered snooping via the "black boxes," or "event data recorders," placed in your car by automakers. 

Is your car spying on you? If the vehicle is a fairly new model it probably is, thanks to a "black box" that collects data about what’s going on in your car. And there’s no off switch or way to opt out. By September all new cars sold in the United States will be required to have black boxes, or as they’re more formally called, "event data recorders."

"The amount of data that they record is vast. And it's not capped," said Nate Cardozo, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

That’s just one way new technology installed in automobiles is invading our privacy. At the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last week, Google and a handful of automobile manufacturers, including Audi, GM, Honda and Hyundai, announced a partnership designed to bring the Android mobile platform to vehicles. Those devices are capable of broadcasting your location, Web pages you may have looked at, stores you shopped in and much much more. Chevrolet, for example, showed off a camera mounted on the windshield that records the driver’s point of view and a microphone in the cabin records any noises made in the car.
 
...Consider what Ford’s top sales guy James Farley said at a CES event: "We know everyone who breaks the law. We know when you’re doing it. We have GPS in your car, so we know what you’re doing." Farley quickly retracted his impolitic remarks, but they give you insight into how seriously some automakers take your privacy. (more)

Is your car bugged?
See if you are on the list.
If so, read this. 
~Kevin

Infographic - The Relative Cost of Surveillance

Ashkan Soltani, a privacy and security researcher who has been working with the Washington Post on the Snowden files, has published a graphic that illustrates how technology has greatly reduced the barriers to performing surveillance. Soltani included the graph in a paper published in the Yale Law Journal...

Click to enlarge.

The cost comparison involves the several location surveillance techniques of physical pursuit by foot and in vehicles, location tracking using a radio beeper, a GPS device, or a cell phone.

A few examples for understanding the chart:
• Tracking a suspect using a GPS device is 28 times cheaper than assigning officers to follow him.
• Tracking a suspect using cell phone data is 53 times cheaper than physical covert pursuit.
• Tracking a cell phone is twice as cheap as using a GPS device. (more)

...and now, your moment of spy palindrome and Zen...

Nurse, I spy gypsies, run!

...and a chaser story... 

New Zealander Nancy Wake fought fearlessly for the Allies in World War II, first for the French resistance and later as a spy for Britain’s Special Operations Executive.

Parachuted into the Auvergne in April 1944, she was hanging from a tree when a resistance fighter told her, “I hope that all the trees in France bear such beautiful fruit this year.”

She said, “Don’t give me that French sh_t.”

..."More!" I hear you say...

In November 2006, 23-year-old David Fearn of Staffordshire changed his name to James Dr. No From Russia With Love Goldfinger Thunderball You Only Live Twice On Her Majesty’s Secret Service Diamonds Are Forever Live and Let Die The Man With the Golden Gun The Spy Who Loved Me Moonraker For Your Eyes Only Octopussy A View to a Kill The Living Daylights Licence to Kill GoldenEye Tomorrow Never Dies The World Is Not Enough Die Another Day Casino Royale Bond. 
It’s the longest name in deed poll history. (more)

Huawei Defends Against Whitehall Bugging Claims

UK - Huawei, the Chinese telecoms company that came under suspicion of spying for the Chinese government, has been forced to defend its security records after reports that Government departments believed its technology could be bugged.

Reports at the weekend alleged that three Whitehall departments ordered that video conferencing devices supplied by Huawei should be removed, due to concerns about possible security vulnerabilities in the equipment. (more)

Eavesdropping Software Products Sold in the Open

Viet Nam - (Smartphone) software products have become so smart that they not only allow eavesdropping on normal calls or SMS, but the calls and SMS applied OTT apps as well.

There are four eavesdropping software products mostly popular in Vietnam, namely Amaza Tracker, Spyphone, Copyphone, Mobile Spy. They are originated from other countries, compatible to most of the popular operation systems now, from Android, iOS to Windows Phone, BlackBerry. Especially, the products have been updated regularly to be suitable to the mobile phones of the latest generations...

More dangerously, with the advanced technologies, some spyware products can allow to watch the messages and free calls on Line, Viber, WhatsApp, Facebook, Yahoo. Meanwhile, the majority of the popular products can be compatible with Android and iOS based smart phones.

The information can be copied in files, and then sent to the emails of the eavesdroppers. (more)

British Spies – Licensed to Speed

British spies are to be given a "license to speed", allowing the likes of James Bond to drive fast with impunity in the name of national security.

Transport minister Robert Goodwill was to announce the motoring law changes on Monday, which will hand spooks the same exemption as the police, fire service and ambulance drivers.

Officers in the MI5 and MI6 domestic and foreign intelligence agencies will be able to break the speed limit on surveillance and covert operations once they have completed a training course in high-speed driving. (more)