This Week in Strange Espionage, Wiretapping and Eavesdropping Cases

ESPIONAGE
FL - In a dispute over a hotel in Palm Beach, Florida, the inn’s majority owner filed a state court suit accusing its ex-manager of taking trade secrets including client lists, business records and financial data, The Palm Beach Daily News reported... The ex-manager, who owns a 1 percent interest in the hotel, allegedly entered the property Oct. 20 and is occupying the premises without permission, according to the newspaper. (more)

WIRETAPPING*
MI - A Ford City man facing felony wiretapping charges for recording a parking dispute outside his home said Tuesday after a second preliminary hearing was postponed that the ordeal is taking its toll on him and his family. (more) (* in the legal sense)
 
EAVESDROPPING
IN - An Indiana judge has shot down a bid by a man with Chicago ties to have criminal charges against him dropped because prosecutors allegedly eavesdropped on a private conversation he had with his attorneys. (John B. Larkin) agreed to a recorded interview with police at the LaPorte County jail... At one point, the authorities took a break and left Larkin in the room with his two defense attorneys, shutting the door behind them. But unknown to Larkin and his lawyers, the recording continued...  
Similar allegations were leveled at LaPorte County prosecutors in a separate murder case earlier this year. (more)

FutureWatch: A Cell Phone Pocket Drone

For the first time a pocket size drone design for consumer and able to travel with user 24/7 where ever, whenever. All your need is your smart phone. (more) 

FutureWatch: Mindreading - Talking to yourself used to be a strictly private pastime...

That's no longer the case – researchers have eavesdropped on our internal monologue for the first time. The achievement is a step towards helping people who cannot physically speak communicate with the outside world.

"If you're reading text in a newspaper or a book, you hear a voice in your own head," says Brian Pasley at the University of California, Berkeley. "We're trying to decode the brain activity related to that voice to create a medical prosthesis that can allow someone who is paralyzed, or locked in, to speak."

When you hear someone speak, sound waves activate sensory neurons in your inner ear. These neurons pass information to areas of the brain where different aspects of the sound are extracted and interpreted as words.

In a previous study, Pasley and his colleagues recorded brain activity in people who already had electrodes implanted in their brain to treat epilepsy, while they listened to speech. The team found that certain neurons in the brain's temporal lobe were only active in response to certain aspects of sound, such as a specific frequency. One set of neurons might only react to sound waves that had a frequency of 1000 hertz, for example, while another set only cares about those at 2000 hertz. Armed with this knowledge, the team built an algorithm that could decode the words heard based on neural activity alone (PLoS Biology, doi.org/fzv269). (more)

Texas Oil - Target of Business Espionage

TX - “...look at the Eagle Ford Shale and the billions of dollars that's bringing into the Texas economy, the bad guys see that,” said FBI San Antonio Special Agent in Charge Christopher Combs...

Christopher Combs nailed it in this interview.

...they are also looking to snatch company secrets. "It's corporate espionage, there’s no question about it," said Combs. “Foreign governments or foreign companies are looking for any competitive advantage. Whether it's the widget that you use to drill, or it's a process that you use to track inventory better. They're really looking at the company as a whole to find out every little thing that you do that makes you a better company on the world market."...

“We also worry about foreign governments placing people in companies where they really want to find out the secrets," said Combs. ... "They'll take an individual and maybe spend years to work that individual into a particular position in the company, so that they can gather those secrets and bring them overseas," Combs said. Combs also warned about disgruntled U.S. employees who want to take revenge on their companies. "It's not just the threats coming in from the outside, but what information is going from the inside out," he said. 

It's a warning to companies, no matter the industry, to keep an eye out. “It has to be a holistic perspective where you are looking at the people who work in your corporation, your internet and security, and how you conduct business, whether it's here in the country or overseas,” said Combs. (more)

Compilation of State and Federal Privacy Laws now comes with a 2014 Supplement

Includes new privacy laws on demands 

for social-media passwords by employers and universities, use of credit reports by employers, new tracking technologies, new state restrictions on use and disclosure of Social Security numbers, plus updated chapters on credit reporting, medical, financial, testing in employment, insurance, government information, and much more, grouped by categories and listed alphabetically by states. Descriptions of state, federal, and Canadian laws are included.

Describes and gives legal citations for more than 800 state and federal laws affecting the confidentiality of personal information and electronic surveillance, grouped in categories like banking, medical, credit, school records, wiretapping, tracking technologies, ID theft, Social Security numbers, telephone, and employment testing and more. 

Compilation of State and Federal Privacy Laws 2013 edition is now available with a 2014 supplement included.

T-Mobile Adds New Encryption to Their Network

T-Mobile seems to have made good on its parent company's (Deutsche Telekom) promise, from last year, to upgrade its 2G networks to a stronger encryption standard 

after the Snowden revelations forced many firms (especially abroad) to take a better look at their security and the security of their customers.

The new encryption standard is called A5/3 and should be much harder to crack, while the old one was called A5/1 and could be cracked even by a single PC back in 1999. In 2008, passive surveillance of the "encrypted" 2G network was already possible.

T-Mobile aims to stop this sort of surveillance with the new A5/3 encryption standard, although it won't be able to stop targeted attacks by IMSI Catchers, which are devices the police, FBI and potential criminals may be using to eavesdrop on phone conversions and texts over a certain local area. (more)

Guess Who's Making the Next Secure Cell Phones

The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÃœBITAK) intends to start producing mobile phones that are protected from wiretapping, Turkish Minister of Science, Industry and Technology Fikri Isik was quoted by Al Jazeera Turk TV channel as saying.

"Turkey also intends to establish production and export smartphones protected from wiretapping to neighboring countries."

The minister did not mention the specific date of the production and the cost of the project. (more)

Not surprising. Turkey has had some serious cell phone eavesdropping problems over the past few years. Many at high levels of government.

Book: Staying Safe Abroad - A must-have for any traveler these days.

Edward Lee spent 30 years keeping travelers safe while a Regional Security Officer at the U.S. Department of State. 

He condensed his knowledge and experience into a handy book. If you travel, you need this book.

via amazon.com...
"Staying Safe Abroad" was written to help foreign travelers operate safely abroad in an ever-increasing risky world, where crime, terrorism, natural disasters and political unrest are realities that travelers can face every day, depending on their destination. "Staying Safe Abroad" will educate both novice and seasoned travelers on the risks they will face abroad and how to mitigate those risks by knowing how to make good response choices.

Former Ford Motor Co. PR Chief Accuses Company of Bugging

Ford Motor Co.'s former head of public affairs said the Dearborn automaker bugged his phone during the 2001 Firestone tire crisis. 

The Detroit News reports Jason Vines said that after he was fired along with then-CEO Jacques Nasser in October 2001, a Ford security official told him his car and phone had been bugged.

The longtime public affairs official wrote all about the incident in his new book, "What Did Jesus Drive? Crisis PR in Cars, Computers and Christianity." It will be published Nov. 1 by Waldorf Publishing. (more)

Weird NJ: Is Spy House America's 'most haunted house?'

It's a lone white wooden building that stands with its back to the windswept shore of the Sandy Hook Bay in the Port Monmouth section of Middletown, NJ.

Its official name is the Seabrook-Wilson Homestead, but most people know it much better as The Spy House. Though its true history belies many of the legends that have circulated for years about this old property, that has not dissuaded some believers in the paranormal from dubbing it "the most haunted house in America." (more)

BTW - At $78 million, Dracula's Castle among top haunted mansions is for sale.

Forget the Drones, Here Comes Spy Turtle

Justice Department's National Security Division Tackles Economic Espionage

The Justice Department has reorganized its National Security Division to combat the increasing threat of state-sponsored economic espionage and theft of corporate America’s secrets. 

Cyber isn't the only door to the goods.

“Nation states day in and day out intrude” into U.S. computer networks, Assistant Attorney General John Carlin told reporters today. “Committing intrusions for economic benefit by nation states … is not something that’s going to be accepted.”

The reorganization lets Carlin, who was confirmed in April after nearly a year as acting head of NSD, put his stamp on a division that has been jockeying for turf and recognition since it was created in 2006 as part of the national security reforms after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. 

As a law enforcement matter, it means bringing an “all-tools” approach to combating cyber attacks and economic spying, Carlin said. (more)

Extra credit reading for Mr. Carlin, Anita M. Singh, and staff... (more) (more)

Home of the Stingray Bans its Warrentless Use

Thanks to the Florida Supreme Court and a drug dealer, Sunshine State police can no longer track unsuspecting citizens through their cellphones without a warrant.

That’s welcome news to those concerned about local law enforcement’s use of advanced surveillance technology, sometimes supplied by military contractors, to monitor cellphone locations and incoming and outgoing phone numbers.

Public records obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union show the practice has been widespread and mostly under the radar. (more)

Spy Phone Labs Sues Google for 2 Million

Spy Phone Labs of Wayne, N.J., claims in its complaint that its app (Spy Phone) was downloaded more than 1.1 million times in its first year on the Google Play marketplace, where most smartphone apps for the Android operating system are sold. 

But downloads plummeted to 260,000 in the second year, after Spy Phone complained to Google about trademark infringement by competing products and the app maker was twice suspended from Google Play, the suit claims...

The Spy Phone app allows the location of the phone to be monitored remotely, and allows a remote user, such as a parent, to see the phone numbers of persons exchanging calls or messages with the phone’s user. The app also allows Internet usage on the phone to be monitored remotely. While the app is available for free, Spy Phone generates revenue from ad sales on the website where users download information about the phone’s usage, the suit says. (more)

White House Fence Jumper Bugged About Bugs

Latest White House intruder wanted to talk to president about spy devices, father says...

The first time Dominic Adesanya tried to speak to President Obama about the spying devices supposedly stashed in the Adesanya home, his father said Adesanya hopped on a Megabus and headed to Washington, where he had a run-in at the White House...

Dominic Adesanya dropped out of school and for the past year he has been worried about cameras hidden in the family’s house or people spying on him, his father said.

He has torn up the home, cutting through drywall and crawling through the attic, looking for the devices, his father said. (more)