PI Tip #251 - Clean Up Your Crummy Surveillance Videos - FREE

VideoCleaner is FREE professional open-source video enhancement software. With VideoCleaner, you can brighten poorly lit scenes, increase detail clarity, correct the viewing perspective, reverse lens distortion, repairs VHS recordings, improve color contrast, isolate channels, and so much more.

VideoCleaner makes faint movements, distant traffic signal color changes, and small details obvious. You can annotate on-screen with text and highlighting, correct playback speed, provide sweeping or adjacent before-after views, and extract stills.

Being open-source means that you can customize VideoCleaner to fit your needs and delve deep into the science. Everything is free, even the support.
VideoCleaner is free without any purchase price, support or update fees. You are welcome to use VideoCleaner and its components for any legal purpose, personal or commercial, without any requirements or obligations beyond the open-source General Public License (GPL) of its components. You are free to redistribute this software in accordance with its associated GPL. (more)

Wealth Managers Enlist Spy Tools to Map Portfolios

Some of the engineers who used to help the Central Intelligence Agency solve problems have moved on to another challenge: determining the value of every conceivable investment in the world.

Five years ago, they started a company called Addepar, with the aim of providing clear and reliable information about the increasingly complex assets inside pensions, investment funds and family fortunes. In much the way spies diagram a communications network, Addepar filters and weighs the relationships among billions of dollars of holdings to figure out whether a portfolio is about to crash. (more)

Security Scrapbook Post #5000 - FREE SpyWarn™ Announcement

Thank you to everyone who has enjoyed and contributed to Kevin's Security Scrapbook over the years. 5000 is a milestone, and a good time for you to dig into the archives. Enjoy!

It is also a good time to let my clients (and potential clients) know about a new benefit of using Murray Associates services...

FREE SMARTPHONE SECURITY PROTECTION 

1. Free Cell Phone MicSpike™ with Carry Container
    Prevents phones from being turned into bugging devices.

2. Free Anti-Spyware Kit for Smartphones
    Includes the MicSpike™ and more security items.
    SpyWarn™ security kit works for all types of phones.
    It is not available elsewhere. (patent pending)
    Details and free smartphone security tips at...
    https://counterespionage.com/sw.html

3. Free SpyWarn™ Android app.
    A forensic evaluation for discovering spyware
    infections on smartphones.
    Details at... http://www.spywarn.com

4. Free book, "Is My Cell Phone Bugged?" 
    Amazon rated...
    

 

EXCLUSIVE
Available only to clients and those whose offices we inspect.

LIMITED TIME OFFER
This is the perfect time to add our Information
Security / TSCM* services to your security program.
*Technical Surveillance Countermeasures (aka, a bug sweep)

Download our introductory booklet.
http://www.counterespionage.com/download.html

Have questions? Need an estimate?
Just call me... from a "safe" phone.
+1-908-832-7900

Best regards,
Kevin D. Murray, CPP, CISM, CFE, MPSC
"Hey, what's your TSCM provider doing for you?"

Son Bugs Mom's Phone - $500.00 Fine

IL - A judge has fined a Lincoln man $500 for bugging his 90-year-old mother’s phone.

Richard Stamler, 60, pleaded no contest to disturbing the peace last week, and Lancaster County District Judge Andrew Jacobsen fined him... 

Stamler’s sister called police March 28, 2013, after she found a recording device in the basement of their mother’s home that had been connected to the phone line and set to record any time someone in the house picked up a phone.

She told police she recognized her brother’s voice reciting date information on the tape. He admitted to police he recorded calls on his mother's phone, but didn't think it was illegal. (more)

Snooping & Bugging: Five High Profile Cases (and this is just in India)

Was Nitin Gadkari's house bugged? The reported recovery of listening devices from Union Minister Gadkari's house has set tongues wagging in political circles, with Congress suggesting that this shows there is lack of trust among the NDA leaders. Even former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has demanded a probe into this matter.

However, this is not the first time that news of political leaders being snooped upon by their adversaries has surfaced in the media. Let's look back at some similar controversies from the past... (more)

The FBI Speaks Out: Economic Espionage and Protecting Trade Secrets

When: 7/30/2014
From 5:00 PM until 7:00 PM
Where: Boston Bar Association
16 Beacon Street
Boston, Massachusetts
United States

Trade secret thefts, both domestic and international, cost U.S. companies billions of dollars per year.  Over 85 percent of trade secret thefts involve employees and business partners.  It is imperative to put a trade secret protection program in place. The FBI will show you why and how. 
​
In a joint BBA/BPLA sponsored event, federal enforcement specialists Carmine Nigro and Ted Distaso, Brian Moriarty of Hamilton Brook Smith Reynolds, P.C., and Russell Beck of Beck Reed Riden LLP discuss methods of trade secret theft and best practices in theft prevention. (more) (register)

FYI - Just up the street from:
Cheers (pub)
84 Beacon St.
Boston, MA 02108
"Where everybody knows your name." (But that's another privacy issue.)

Reports of India Minister Bedroom Being Bugged

India - Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said there should be an investigation into the report of bugging devices having been found in Union Minister Nitin Gadkari's residence and asked Government to explain the issue in Parliament.

"If Ministers' houses are bugged, then it is not a good omen. It should be investigated. How can it happen? it should be explained by the Government in the House," he told reporters at an Iftar get-together hosted by Congress President Sonia Gandhi

A media report has claimed that high power listening devices were found in the bed room at the 13 Teen Murti Lane residence here of Gadkari, the Road Transport and Highways Minister. (more)

Cost of Corporate Espionage in Germany Today

Every year, industrial espionage costs German businesses around 11.8 billion euros ($16 billion), according to a survey released Monday by the German security firm Corporate Trust.

Every second company in Germany has faced attacks - whether successful or not - with more than three-quarters of those surveyed registering financial losses as a result.

Corporate Trust said the survey reflected answers from 6,767 companies, some 40 percent of which estimated the damage from espionage had cost them anywhere from 10,000 euros to 100,000 euros.

Twelve percent said they lost more than 100,000 euros, and 4.5 percent said they lost more than 1 million euros. (more)

The Easy Fix to About 70% of Data Hacks

You never know when malware will bite. Even browsing an online restaurant menu can download malicious code, put there by hackers.

Much has been said that Target’s hackers accessed the giant’s records via its heating and cooling system. They’ve even infiltrated thermostats and printers among the “Internet of Things”.
 
It doesn’t help that swarms of third parties are routinely given access to corporate systems. A company relies upon software to control all sorts of things like A/C, heating, billing, graphics, health insurance providers, to name a few. If just one of these systems can be busted into, the hacker can crack ‘em all...

One way to strengthen security seems too simple: Keep the networks for vending machines, heating and cooling, printers, etc., separate from the networks leading to H.R. data, credit card information and other critical information. Access to sensitive data should require super strong passwords and be set up with a set of security protocols that can detect suspicious activity. (more)

See Around Corners with Pocket Drone

Researchers at the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center are developing a pocket-sized aerial surveillance device for Soldiers and small units operating in challenging ground environments.

The Cargo Pocket Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance program, or CP-ISR, seeks to develop a mobile Soldier sensor to increase the situational awareness of dismounted Soldiers by providing real-time video surveillance of threat areas within their immediate operational environment.

While larger systems have been used to provide over-the-hill ISR capabilities on the battlefield for almost a decade, none of those delivers it directly to the squad level, where Soldiers need the ability to see around the corner or into the next room during combat missions. (more)

See around Corners. Turn Walls into Mirrors. Well, sort of...

The functional difference between a diffuse wall and a mirror is well understood: one scatters back into all directions, and the other one preserves the directionality of reflected light.

The temporal structure of the light, however, is left intact by both: assuming simple surface reflection, photons that arrive first are reflected first. In this paper, we exploit this insight to recover objects outside the line of sight from second-order diffuse reflections, effectively turning walls into mirrors. (more)

SpyCam'er Goes Free - Guilty or Not - You Decide

UK - A man who hid his phone in a toilet with the intention of filming his colleagues has been cleared of three charges of voyeurism – after magistrates accepted he has an extreme phobia of diarrhea and vomit.

A psychologist was called in to explain how Thomas Clark's actions were not as perverse as was being claimed by prosecutors.

The 28-year-old, from Barry Close in Tilgate, told a court he was petrified someone using the unisex toilet at his workplace before him might have suffered a bout of diarrhea or been sick.

Between November 1, 2012, and June 5, 2013, Mr Clark's phone was found on three occasions hidden in the toilet, by women he worked with at an office in Southgate.

On one occasion it was found in a bin, on another in a newspaper and on the third occasion in an Argos catalog. (more)

Yo, Barry... check it out.

NJ's Top Court Proposes Change to Spousal Immunity

New Jersey's Supreme Court is proposing an exception to the law that keeps conversations between a husband and wife private...

The state's highest court sided with the appeals court that marital communication does not lose its privacy just because it's heard by wiretap. But the justices proposed that the Legislature create a crime-fraud exception when spouses are jointly involved in criminal activity. (more)

Ford - Listening Devices Found in Company Meeting Rooms

A former Ford engineer is being probed by the FBI after listening devices were found in meeting rooms at company offices.

Ford issued a statement saying that it "initiated an investigation of a now-former employee and requested the assistance of the FBI."

It also adds that Ford's offices were not searched by the agency. "Ford voluntarily provided the information and items requested in the search warrant. We continue to work in cooperation with the FBI on this joint investigation. As this is an ongoing investigation, we are not able to provide additional details." (more)

(Sharon) Leach admitted hiding the devices under tables to help her transcribe meetings, her lawyer said... 

The devices were installed before meetings but could not be easily removed, her lawyer said. The audio devices were left in the conference rooms and unintentionally recorded other meetings.

In all, Leach gave Ford security eight Sansa recording devices, her lawyer said. Those are the same devices listed on the FBI’s search warrant on July 11. (more)

From the 'Things are Tough All Over' Files - Scottish Espionage Bankrupt

A renowned four-floor Old Town nightclub has been put up for sale after its parent companies plunged into administration.

Dozens of jobs are at risk while the future of Espionage – based inside India Buildings in Victoria Street – is thrashed out. (more)