TX - Students and visitors caught a glimpse of the complex and deadly world of counterintelligence Monday evening at “Spy Games: The Art of Counterintelligence” as two espionage experts discussed security issues the U.S. faces at home and abroad.
James Olson, former chief of counterintelligence at the CIA and senior lecturer at Texas A&M’s Bush School, and Michael Waguespack, former senior counterintelligence executive with the FBI, described how the U.S. faces a threat rarely seen or heard of by the public — spying.
“There are friendly countries, but there are no friendly intelligence services,” Olson said.
Olson and Waguespack described a world hidden from the public, where
countries use sophisticated spy networks to steal U.S. political and
technological secrets and to compromise U.S. spy networks abroad.
Olson named China, Russia and Cuba as the primary threats in U.S. counterintelligence.
“Never in my memory has our country been more in peril at home and abroad than it is right now,” Olson said. (more)
UK - It looks as though mysterious street artist Banksy may have been in Cheltenham, after a mural pocking fun at government surveillance resembling the Bristol artist’s style have appeared on the side of a house on the corner of Fairview Road and Hewlett Road overnight.
They depict 1950s-style spies, clad in trench coat and trilby hats, carrying listening devices.
They provide a perfect foil to Cheltenham’s role as the home for listening post, GCHQ.
The painted figures, on a wall surrounding a BT telephone box appeared overnight on Sunday morning. (more)
Thermal imaging has already found its way onto smartphones, but a team of researchers from the University of Michigan (U-M) have gone even further with the creation of an ultrathin graphene-based light detector.
Being only slightly thicker than two sheets of graphene, the approach has the potential to put infrared heat detecting technology into a contact lens...
“We can make the entire design super-thin,” states Zhaohui Zhong, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at U-M, "It can be stacked on a contact lens or integrated with a cell phone." (more)
Britain's cyber spy agency - the GCHQ is working on the country's first ever certified degrees for spies.
GCHQ is supposedly working on approving MSc in cyber security or spying according to the briefing note the surveillance agency has sent out to universities that offer MSc courses in cyber security.
These universities have been asked to apply for certification of their course by June 20.
This means graduates will soon be able to boast about having passed a GCHQ-certified degree. (more)
Baltimore - A Pasadena man faces up to five years in prison for tipping off a drug trafficker about a federal wiretap last year.
Joshua Taylor Ferguson, 34, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court Tuesday to unlawfully providing notice of electronic surveillance. His sentencing is scheduled for June. (more)
Closely helps small businesses keep track of the competition with Perch, a social monitoring app for iOS and Android...
In addition to enabling companies to see their competitors’ social chatter — posts, reviews, promotions, etc. — Perch also recommends technology products to business owners based on the data it collects about its competitors’ operations. (more)
Everyone loves a good spy gadget.
From the childhood days of wearing mirrored sunglasses and writing in invisible ink to watching Q’s ridiculous gadgets in James Bond movies, there is a fondness I have for all things ‘spy’. Here in this infographic we go back in history to some of the best real-life spy gadgets. I stress the ‘real life’ aspect because although you won’t find anything quite like James Bond’s underwater-car or wristwatch grapple-guns (though camera pigeons come close to that level of awesome), there are however some pretty incredible stories behind some of these gadgets... (more) (original)
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A security blogger has discovered a flaw in Google Chrome that allows attackers to turn any victim's machine into a listening post.
A blogger named Guya explained that a deprecated speech API known as "x-webkit-speech" can be harnessed to run in the background without any indication to the end user that their microphone is on. His blog post includes a video that demonstrates the flaw, which you can view below.
A developer simply needs to add a single line of code to a website to exploit the bug and gain access to an audio feed of the victim's environment. (more)
UK - Interrogation reports and photographs are among secret MI5 files about World War One spies being made available online for the first time.
Among the spies detailed are Swallows and Amazons author Arthur Ransome and Dutch spy Mata Hari, who was executed for spying for the Germans.
More than 150 files are being made available in the digitized release.
It is part of a series by the National Archives to mark the centenary of World War One. (more)
The files can be accessed at the National Archives link - First World War 100.
Turkey - Some150 officials were dismissed from the various government agencies regarding illegal wiretapping, the Turkish Interior Minister Efka Ala says.
At present time, the measures are being taken for identification of the organizers of illegal wiretapping, the Turkish Anadolu newspaper quotes the minister as saying.
Turkish media reported on Feb. 25 that in 2011 telephone conversations of about 7,000 people associated with the representatives of both the ruling and opposition parties, including family members of the PM were wiretapped, as part of the anti-terrorist operation carried out by the Istanbul prosecutor's office against the Salam terrorist organization. (more)
Ireland - A major scandal over a long-running programme of secret surveillance by the Garda (police) has engulfed the Fine Gael/Labour Party government in Dublin.
Leaks show that for over 30 years Garda stations and prisons across the country have been bugged with listening devices, which have been used to record outgoing and incoming telephone calls. The phones of journalists involved in investigations relating to police activity have been tapped.
Among the thousands of calls on record are hundreds between suspects and their solicitors, a grave infringement on the basic right of defendants to consult in private with a legal representative. According to the information so far made public, such practices continued until November last year before former Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan supposedly stopped them. (more)
PA - A special education high school student made an audio recording of a bullying incident and was later threatened with charges of wiretapping.
School administrators agreed to reduce the sentence, and March 19 the student, from South Fayette High School in McDonald, Pa., was charged with disorderly conduct.
The student and his mother, Shea Love, testified in front of District Judge Maureen McGraw-Desmet that he had been repeatedly shoved and tripped at school, and that a fellow student had even attempted to burn him with a cigarette lighter. (more)
Be careful on the subway. Sure, the platforms are safer than ever, and the cars are even pretty clean. But credit card thieves seem to come up with a new way to steal your personal information every day. The latest ploy: a card-reading spy camera, hiding above the MetroCard machine.
The MTA just put out a call for customers "to be vigilant" when buying MetroCards, after finding the hidden camera inside of a power outlet in the heavily trafficked 59th St-Columbus Circle station. A passenger noticed the device and ripped it down before taking it to the station agent. The MTA also found a card-skimming device installed on one of the machines. (more)
UK - Police have begun an investigation at Leeds United after spy cameras were apparently found at the Elland Road stadium in a security sweep ordered by controversial new boss Massimo Cellino.
West Yorkshire Police would not confirm details of their inquiry but, according to reports, officers were called to the ground on Wednesday after surveillance equipment was found in the boardroom and toilets.
The police inquiry centered around an allegation of theft, relating to the club funds apparently used to buy the cameras. (more)
The NSA is harvesting the online data of millions of airline passengers who use inflight WiFi across the U.S., a secret letter has revealed.
Gogo, the main supplier of WiFi to airlines in the U.S., are among a host of network providers that have been handing over information gleaned from air travelers' browsing history.
The news has enraged privacy campaigners who say the data exchange may be in violation of U.S. law.
A letter, leaked to Wired, Gogo admitted violating the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) - a 1994 wiretapping law that gave a backdoor to government agencies to monitor telecom and broadband activity.
But Gogo states in the letter that it added a raft of new measures to its service that made spying on users easier for the authorities. (more)
