Australian PI Goes Undercover and Gets Sacked (no, really)

Australia - A private investigator who gets paid by councils to have undercover sex inside illegal brothels has been fired after withholding information about a prostitute whom he met on a job.

Over the past four years, "Fred Allen" has received tens of thousands of dollars from at least 10 Sydney metropolitan councils in exchange for evidence that is required, in court, to help close underground parlours.

But in October the investigator was accused, by Sydney-based consultancy firm Brothel Busters, of having "deliberately omitted" important details from a brief of evidence to "protect" an illegal sex worker, with whom he had become "enchanted", while working covertly inside an underground vice den.
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Three Grumpy Spies Nailed with Bugs and Taps

Three men accused in the latest Russian spy case didn't hide behind fake identities and weren't stealing military secrets. The evidence even suggests they were annoyed that their assignment wasn't more like a James Bond film.

Their alleged plot to dig up "economic intelligence" on possible banking penalties and alternative energy sources may not be the stuff of Hollywood movies, but U.S. authorities insist the case is proof that Russian spying is thriving in America more than two decades after the end of the Cold War.

It also shows the time and resources the U.S. still throws at those suspected of being Putin-era spies, using methods developed before many of them were born: listening bugs, hidden cameras and intercepted phone calls.
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Ex-Spy Chief Wanted on Charges of... Spying

Colombia — The former head of Colombia’s intelligence agency ended several years on the run and surrendered to face charges of spying on opponents of former President Alvaro Uribe.

Maria del Pilar Hurtado late Friday turned herself over to authorities in Panama, where she fled in 2010. She was taken on a pre-dawn flight to Bogota, where a judge ordered her to be jailed at the chief prosecutor’s office while charges are considered.

Chief prosecutor Eduardo Montealegre said Hurtado was being processed for at least five offenses that could bring 15 to 20 years in prison for a conviction. He said he would urge Hurtado to cooperate and reveal “who gave the order for the illegal wiretapping.”
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Weird Science - Eavesdropping 3,000 miles away while underwater

1944 - Maurice Ewing and a team of American scientists... believed there may be a layer in the ocean where a combination of pressure and temperature create a narrow channel where certain low-frequency sounds would travel long distances.

In the deep waters of the Atlantic, researches dropped several explosives containing four pounds of dynamite, each timed to detonate at a different depth. Using an underwater microphone called a hydrophone, a second boat stationed 900 miles away successfully detected the sounds.

Subsequent tests picked up the signal at a distance of 3,000 miles.



The discovery of the SOFAR sound channel opened up a new way to study the world's oceans, as well as a unique tool in the nation's defense.
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Four of the Newest (and lowest) Social Engineering Scams

1. Phishing with new lethal-strains of ransomware
Ransomware caught businesses’ attention in 2013 with Cryptolocker, which infects computers running Microsoft Windows and encrypts all of its files, as well as files on a shared server. The extortionists then hold the encryption key for ransom (about $500 USD), to be paid with untraceable Bitcoin. The longer the victim waits to pay, the higher the price, or the data can be erased. Now, copycat CryptoDefense has popped up in 2014 and targets texts, picture, video, PDF and MS Office files and encrypts these with a strong RSA-2048 key, which is hard to undo. It also wipes out Shadow Copies, which are used by many backup programs... 

2. Phishing with funerals 
Perhaps a new low - social engineering gangs have been caught sending people phishing emails that appear to be from a funeral home telling the reader that a close friend of yours is deceased and the burial ceremony is on this date. They have already penetrated and compromised the funeral home’s website, so the moment that the concerned friend clicks on the compromised website they get redirected to a bad guy’s server...

3. IVR and robocalls for credit card information 
Similar Articles group masks Social engineering attacks from the front lines attention. Bad guys steal thousands of phone numbers and use a robocaller to call unsuspecting employees. “It’s fully automated, Sjouwerman says. “The message goes something like – ‘This is your credit card company. We are checking on a potential fraudulent charge on your card. Did you purchase a flat screen TV for $3,295? Press 1 for yes or 2 for no.’” If the person responds no – the script then asks the victim to enter his credit card number, expiration date and security code. In some cases, employees worry that their company credit card has been compromised and they might get into trouble, so they play along...

4. Healthcare records for spear-phishing attacks 
With massive data breaches in 2013, the criminal element has reached a point where they can grab personally identifiable information and start merging records – including healthcare records. For instance, a bogus email looks like it’s coming from your employer and its healthcare provider announcing that they’ve made some changes to your healthcare program. They’re offering preferred insurance rates for customers with your number of children. Then they invite the email reader to check out a link that looks like it goes to the health insurer’s web page. “Because the email is loaded with the reader’s personal information, there’s a high likelihood of one click – and that’s all it takes” to infiltrate company systems...
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How the Hell Are These Popular Spying Apps Not Illegal?

(a long and excellent article)
Here are some sordid scenarios. Your ex-girlfriend can see every time you swipe right while using Tinder. Your former husband is secretly listening to and recording your late-night Skype sessions with your new boyfriend. Some random slippery-dick is jacking off to the naked photos in your private photo library. For millions of people, it's not hypothetical. 

Someone could be spying on every call, Facebook message, snapchat, text, sext, each single keystroke you tap out on your phone, and you'd never know. I'm not talking about the NSA (though that too); I'm talking about software fine-tuned for comprehensive stalking—"spyware"—that is readily available to any insecure spouse, overzealous boss, overbearing parent, crazy stalker or garden-variety creep with a credit card. It's an unambiguously malevolent private eye panopticon cocktail of high-grade voyeurism, sold legally. And if it's already on your phone, there's no way you can tell.

Spyware companies like mSpy and flexiSPY are making money off the secret surveillance of millions of people's devices. Literally millions of people, according to the sales figures provided by these spyware companies, are going about their days not knowing that somewhere, some turdknockers are scouring their photo libraries and contacts and WhatsApp messages, looking for digital misdeeds.

Spyware has been around for decades, but the current crop is especially invasive. They make money by charging people—from $40 a month for a basic phone spying package on mSpy up to $200 a month on one of flexiSPY's bigger plan—for siphoning activity off their target's devices.
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The Sundance Film the FBI Doesn't Want You to See

(T)ERROR is the first film to document an active FBI counterterrorism sting investigation.

In the feature documentary (T)ERROR, which premiered this week at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, everyone is spying on everyone: the informant on the target, the target on the informant, the FBI on the informant, the filmmakers on the FBI.

Incredibly, directors Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe manage to film not just the one doing the surveilling but also the one being surveilled — without either subject knowing the other is also appearing on-camera.

It’s a daring feat made even more impressive when you realize the FBI has no idea that the informant they’re using is in fact simultaneously using them.

But unlike Homeland or some John le Carré novel, where spying is sexy and the characters are all perspicacious, (T)ERROR depicts the reality of today’s domestic intelligence gathering: it is not glamorous, the vernacular is informal, the surveillance techniques utilized include “advanced” approaches like trying to befriend someone on Facebook, and incompetence abounds (at one point a confidential phone number is discovered by typing it into Google).
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Cell Phone Spying Case to Court - Force Sheriff to Reveal Secrets

NY - The Erie County Sheriff's Office is scheduled to be in court next week as it refuses to hand over information regarding its use of cell phone spying equipment.

2 On Your Side was first to report on the agency's use of so-called cell site simulator equipment. The machines -- often used under the names "Stingray" and "KingFish" -- mimic cell phone towers and trick phones into sending over information.



As we reported exclusively, the county paid more than $350,000 for the machines.
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The Top 5 Soviet Bugs & Wiretaps During the Cold War

In an interview Leonid Shebarshin, a former head of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB said, “Our good fortune will only be made known after we suffer a major defeat. Our real success will be made known no earlier than 50 years down the line.” Successful spy operations are already a thing of the past, with modern-day intelligence seeming to consist of a series of failures...

1. Operation “Information of Our Times”
2. The wiretapping of Franklin D. Roosevelt in Tehran
3. A bug in the U.S. coat of arms (The Great Seal Bug)
4. Bugs in Moscow and beyond
5. The Soviet Union’s Cuban ears
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This Week in World Eavesdropping Wiretapping Surveillance & Spying

Australia - Deputy Police Commissioner Nick Kaldas will front a parliamentary inquiry into a long-running NSW police bugging scandal. Mr Kaldas was one of more than 100 police alledgedly spied on more than a decade ago as part of a covert internal corruption investigation.
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IL - Illinois legislators provoked public outrage by reviving an eavesdropping law that the Supreme Court of Illinois struck down earlier in the year—in part because it prohibited citizens from recording public interactions with police. Sponsors and supporters of the new version of the law... insisted that the new statute would allow citizens to record police and that the public's concern was unwarranted. In fact however, Illinois' new eavesdropping law is confusing and harsh. Although it does not ban all recording of police—the court took that off the table—it discourages it about as much possible
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R. Crumb prediction (1967)

US - A program used by U.S. and British spies to record computer keystrokes was part of sophisticated hacking operations in more than a dozen countries, security experts said on Tuesday, after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden reportedly leaked the source code for the program.
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Canada - On Monday, a new report was released, based on leaked documents from Edward Snowden, showing that Canadian intelligence agencies—part of the Five Eyes spying conglomerate that includes the US, the UK, Australia and New Zealand—partnered with UK spies to siphon sensitive data from thousands of smartphones by sniffing traffic between applications on the phones and the servers owned by the companies that made the applications. The so-called Badass program is designed to sniff the normal unencrypted communication traffic of certain smartphone apps to glean location information, the unique identifier of the phone and other data that can help spies learn the identity of phone users, among other things. It can also be used to uncover vulnerabilities in a phone to help spies hack it.
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US - Former U.S. nuclear scientist gets 5 year sentence for spying.
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US - The Department of Justice is using an expanded license plate collection program -- originally intended to track drug crime -- to monitor ordinary citizens without criminal records, government documents reveal, raising questions about how widely surveillance data is shared among agencies and companies.
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NYC - A contractor for Johnson & Johnson was arrested for placing a hidden spy camera in a company bathroom that recorded multiple people using the toilet, authorities said. Stephen Lewins, 42, of Brooklyn, was arrested for unlawful surveillance on January 23, after the pinhole camera was discovered in the restroom a week earlier, the NYPD said. A Johnson & Johnson employee found the camera and an SD card hidden in a wall above a light switch inside the unisex bathroom Jan. 16. The company said it alerted the NYPD immediately.
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WI - A ban on undercover videos on Wisconsin farms is being considered at the state Capitol. Though the bill is expected in the next week or so, laws known as “ag gags” have been proposed all over the country. According to the ASPCA, 26 state legislatures have looked at bans on covert video and pictures. That footage is typically used by animal rights groups to expose animal cruelty and mistreatment.
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Canada - A cast member of CTV sitcom Spun Out has been accused of voyeurism after two women alleged they found hidden cameras in a Toronto condo. Jean Paul "J.P." Manoux, 45, was charged Tuesday by Toronto Police with one count of voyeurism. Last week, Police officers responded to a call from two women -- ages 27 and 25 -- at a Queen St. W. condominium building. The two women allegedly "discovered hidden cameras and video equipment connected to the Internet" in a condo they rented from a man, according to a police statement.
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Panama’s Ex-president’s Hunger for Gossip Fueled Tapping

When the United States rejected former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli’s request for spying equipment to eavesdrop, U.S. diplomats feared, on his political enemies, the former supermarket baron turned to another source: Israel.

Now scores of Panama’s political and social elite are learning that the eavesdropping program that Martinelli’s security team set in place sprawled into the most private aspects of their lives – including their bedrooms. Rather than national security, what appears to have driven the wiretapping was a surfeit of the seven deadly sins, particularly greed, pride, lust and envy.

Nearly every day, targets of the wiretapping march to the prosecutors’ office to see what their dossiers contain, often emerging in distress. Martinelli, who left office in July, is facing a rising tide of outrage not only over the wiretapping, but also over reports of vast corruption. His personal secretary has left the country. The eavesdropping equipment has vanished.
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Town Supervisor Accused of Eavesdropping on Employees

NY - State Police arrested the Windham Town Supervisor after they say she used video and audio recording devices to eavesdrop on employees.

Stacy Post, 51, put the recording devices in the Windham Town Office Building after being elected to Town Supervisor, according to police.

They say Post eavesdropped on employees and other users of the town offices.

Post has been charged with felony eavesdropping and possessing eavesdropping devices.
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You Only Live Once, or Die Another Day

The former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko may have survived a previous poisoning attempt before a lethal dose of polonium was slipped into his tea at a London hotel, a long-awaited judicial inquiry into his death was told Tuesday.

The former KGB officer, an outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was living in Britain and doing consultancy work for the British intelligence service MI-6 when he met two Russians for a drink at the Millennium Hotel in November 2006. Weeks later, he suffered an agonizing death, apparently from the effects of radiation poisoning.

The strange case soured relations between Britain and Russia for years. On his deathbed, Litvinenko claimed that he had been poisoned on Putin’s orders.
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Need A Secure Portable 1 or 2TB Hard Drive? (Yeah, you do.)

iStorage diskAshur Pro 1TB review: one of the most secure and encrypted portable hard drives you can buy...

If you use a portable drive for business, there's a very strong case for keeping that data secure with a hardware-encrypted drive. And when customer data is at stake, there's a legal obligation to button it down to keep it confidential in the event of the drive being lost or otherwise compromised.

Even home users may prefer to keep their files and data to themselves. Which is why encrypted portable drives like the iStorage diskAshur Pro can be such a great idea, with their built-in keypads that need a numerical PIN to be entered before they give up their secrets.

The diskAshur Pro follows a line of similar drives sold in this country (UK) by iStorage Limited, which are rebranded and renamed drives designed by and made for Apricorn Inc in the USA. This latest version is called the diskAshur Pro, otherwise known as the Apricorn Aegis Padlock Fortress, and has been given a FIPS 140-2 security rating.
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Avoid Video Surveillance Liability

via Eric Pritchard, Esq...
Summary: Here are five keys to limiting your liability when using and deploying video:

1. Understand and obey wiretap laws. Federal wiretap laws prohibit the interception of oral communications with limited exceptions.

2. Obey state laws prohibiting video cameras. Several states prohibit or regulate video surveillance.

3. Obey state laws respecting privacy rights. Every state has law concerning an individual’s privacy rights.

4. (Installers) Use an effective, enforceable contract to allocate the risk of loss. An effective contract for the provision of video-related services and equipment should limit your company’s liability just like it does for other services.

5. (Installers) Installing video without a recurring contract is a missed opportunity. Develop a policy of not selling or installing video cameras without a contract for some form of recurring revenue. 

• Side note: If you are the user, keep the system maintained so you are not accused of providing a false sense of security.