Barbie Learns How to Talk. (It only took her 50 years.)

In a recent demonstration of its Internet-connected doll, Hello Barbie, a Mattel spokesperson greeted the souped-up version of the iconic doll by saying, “Welcome to New York, Barbie.”

Thanks to voice-recognition technology, Barbie was able to analyze that remark and give a relevant, conversational response: “I love New York! Don’t you? Tell me, what’s your favorite part about the city? The food, fashion or the sights?”

The company promises that the software will enable the doll “to listen and learn each girl’s preferences and then adapt to those accordingly.”

The interactive doll is slated to hit shelves in the fall, and Mattel is likely hoping it will help revive sinking sales of its flagship brand.

But a children’s privacy advocacy group is calling for the company to cease production of the toy, saying Hello Barbie might more accurately be called "eavesdropping" Barbie. Because the doll works by recording children’s speech with an embedded microphone and then sending that data over the Web, these advocates call the technology “creepy” and say it could leave children vulnerable to stealth advertising tactics. On Wednesday, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood launched a petition urging Mattel to keep the doll from hitting store shelves. more

"Well, gag me with a spoon!"

Defense Against the Spy - 1967 CIA Training Film

The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) presents a case study of devices that were used for espionage purposes during the 1960's.

Security Director Alert - Time to Update Your BYOD Policy (You do have one don't you?)

According to Alcatel-Lucent’s Motive Security Labs, around 16 million mobile devices are already infected by malicious software designed to spy on users and steal confidential data.

This form of malware is capable of tracking the phone and its owner’s location, monitoring ingoing and outgoing calls, text messages and emails, as well as tracking web browsers.

Cyber-criminals are now targeting Android devices with infection rates for Android and Windows devices estimated to be split 50/50.

Many multinational firms, however, still employ an unmonitored bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy. This frequently means key staff are connecting to the corporate communications network via unsecured smartphones. It has also led to a situation where staff access social networking sites and audio/visual entertainment of all kinds, exposing them to a growing number of malware attacks. more

Spycams and Wiretaps - Motives for Murder

PA - A man has shot his neighbor eight times - leaving her in critical condition - and taken his own life after accusing her of wiretapping his apartment in a years-long rift.

Steven Outlaw, 51, confronted his downstairs neighbor, 46-year-old Mary Pitts-Devine, in the first-floor hallway of their West Philadelphia building just before 11am on Sunday, WPVI reported.

He shot at her 10 times, hitting her with eight bullets and leaving her in critical condition.

Outlaw then went to his second-floor apartment and shot himself dead, police said.

The shooting came after a simmering argument over whether Pitts-Devine was wiretapping the telephone lines of Outlaw's apartment, Philly.com reported...

He had also written down accusations that she was spying on him with video cameras, according to the channel. more

FutureWatch - FM Bugs Are So Arco - Coming Soon... Bugs with Pluck

For the first time in history, a prototype radio has been created that is claimed to be completely digital, generating high-frequency radio waves purely through the use of integrated circuits and a set of patented algorithms without using conventional analog radio circuits in any way whatsoever. This breakthrough technology promises to vastly improve the wireless communications capabilities of everything from 5G mobile technology to the multitude devices aimed at supporting the Internet of Things.

The significance of this new technology cannot be overstated: Every aspect of radio frequency generation is said to be created using a string of digital bits, and nothing else. There are no analog circuits, no filters, no chokes, none of the traditional circuitry and components expected in a radio transmitter. Consisting of a mere handful of components, including a couple of integrated circuits, an antenna, and not much else, the transmitter – dubbed Pizzicato – promises to change the face of wireless transmission.

Created by Cambridge Consultants, the initial trials of the Pizzicato have been claimed to show that it has fully met all the expectations of its myriad performance requirements. But more than this, the Pizzicato has brought bulky radio circuits down to microprocessor levels, with the promise of even smaller, more efficient uses of the technology in future. more

A Short History of Wiretapping

Wiretapping has been around almost since the invention of the telegraph. 

Union and Confederate soldiers intercepted one another’s telegraph wires during the Civil War, scraping off a small piece of insulation and splicing their own line to the enemy’s. 

Later, private detectives spied for clients. The use of a wiretap in a Connecticut divorce case in the 1880s led that state to ban the practice in 1889. News services stole one another’s articles. The use of a wiretap to convey false cotton prices in London, a plot aimed at stock speculators, set off a panic in New Orleans in 1899.

But in the postwar 19th century, much wiretapping of telegraphs and, later, telephones was carried out by crooks trying to cheat other crooks.
more

Workplace Video Voyeurism - Domino’s Falls This Time

NY - An alleged voyeuristic Domino’s worker was arrested after a young woman noticed something odd in the employee bathroom, according to the Nassau County Police Department.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, a 20-year-old female employee at the 935 Front Street Domino’s in Uniondale took a break to use the bathroom.

Murray Associates composite photo.

The coat rack inside the facility caught her eye, however — specifically, a cell phone peeking out of a jacket pocket. She notified the manager, and her manager dialed 911. The jacket, according to police, belonged to the woman’s co-worker, 19-year-old Jonathan Parra.

Along with footage of the young woman, an investigation revealed images of a 51-year-old man using the bathroom as well.

Parra faces two counts of unlawful surveillance and will be arraigned Tuesday at First District Court in Hempstead.
more

Spying With a Drone May Become a Criminal Offense in CO

Colorado lawmakers want to criminalize the use of drones when they’re used to monitor someone without their consent.

The proposal up for a House committee vote Tuesday would make it a crime of first-degree trespassing to take images of someone when they have an expectation of privacy. Drone users could also be charged with harassment if they use the technology to monitor someone’s movements.

“As technology moves forward, our privacy is becoming more dear to us,” said the bill sponsor, Rep. Polly Lawrence, R-Littleton.

Lawrence’s bill is not just about drones, but “any type of electronic surveillance when a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy.”
more 

Get your (novelty) drone hunting license here. I have one.

Yet More Invisibility Eyeglasses

This year, AVG will reveal a set of concept invisibility glasses at Pepcom in Barcelona before Mobile World Congress. 

What are invisibility glasses?

Developed by AVG Innovation Labs, the glasses help protect your visual identity in the digital age.

Through a mixture of technology and specialist materials, privacy wearables such as invisibility glasses can make it difficult for cameras or other facial recognition technologies to get a clear view of your identity.

...there are generally two different methods of combating unwanted facial recognition:

Infrared Light
The idea is to place infrared LEDs inserted around the eyes and the nose areas. Since the infrared lights are completely invisible to human eyes, they are only detectable by cameras which are sensitive to the wavelengths of these LEDs. They claim to break face detection when the lights are on.

In this example we show how infrared can be used to avoid Facebook’s facial recognition technology.

Retro-reflective Materials
These specialist materials help maintain your privacy at the moment that the image is actually taken.

PS - This is a proof-of-concept project. Not for sale. However, you can make your own.

Other glasses.

Note: Many cell phone cameras have infrared cutoff filters built into their lenses... and you can bet law enforcement facial recognition systems do too.

Fink RAT Co-creator Meets Big Daddy Uncle Sam

One of the co-creators of the Blackshades Remote Access Trojan (RAT) that infected more than 500,000 computers has pleaded guilty to charges of hacking.

 Alex Yücel, 24, faces up to 10 years in prison for his involvement with the $40 program designed to secretly remotely control victims' computers...

Through his creation and sale of the Blackshades RAT, Alex Yücel enabled anyone, for just $40, to violate the property and privacy of his victims...

According to documents filed in the Manhattan federal court, the Blackshades RAT - which was used to secretly take nude photos of Miss Teen USA - could give an attacker complete control over an infected system...
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Indian Oil Ministry Investigating Possible Bugging

India - A sticky tape with a micro-insertion found beneath a table in the office of a top bureaucrat in the ministry has raised suspicion over snooping attempts to tap information on sensitive energy related matters, sources told HT.

“We cannot rule out any possibility... the matter has been brought to the notice of the investigative agencies, who will look into the matter,” a top petroleum ministry bureaucrat told HT requesting not to be identified...

A similar incident of a possible bugging of a government office was reported in June 2011 when suspicion surrounded the office of the then finance minister Pranab Mukherjee. The office of the home ministry and the Intelligence Bureau later confirmed that it was just a suspicion and no bugging took place in the office.
(more)

Indian Corporate Espionage Scandal Deepens

India - A corporate espionage scandal involving allegations of stolen documents from India’s government deepened this weekend, following the arrests of employees at conglomerates controlled by four of the country’s most prominent tycoons, including billionaire brothers Mukesh and Anil Ambani.

The arrests mark the first time since the election of Narendra Modi as prime minister last year that police have launched an investigation targeting such high-profile industrial businesses, and are set leave the companies and their wealthy owners facing a lengthy and potentially damaging legal investigations.
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C.S.I. yi-yi - DNA Can Be Faked!

In a recent story in The New York Times, Andrew Pollack reports that "scientists in Israel have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence, undermining the credibility of what has been considered the gold standard of proof in criminal cases.

"The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person."

“You can just engineer a crime scene,” Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper, which has been published online by the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics, told the Times. “Any biology undergraduate could perform this.”
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Smart TVs Are Not The Only Things Eavesdropping On You

When the story broke that certain Sansung television sets were eavesdropping on their owners -- a polite way of saying the sets were spying -- it raised some alarms and forced Samsung to rewrite its privacy policy. But if you think hi-tech TVs are the only things capable of gathering your private information and sharing it with others, think again:

Our smartphones and computers, of course, listen to us when we're making audio and video calls. But the microphones are always there, and there are ways a hacker, government, or clever company can turn those microphones on without our knowledge. Sometimes we turn them on ourselves. If we have an iPhone, the voice-processing system Siri listens to us, but only when we push the iPhone's button. Like Samsung, iPhones with the "Hey Siri" feature enabled listen all the time. So do Android devices with the "OK Google" feature enabled, and so does an Amazon voice-activated system called Echo. Facebook has the ability to turn your smartphone's microphone on when you're using the app.
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This is something my clients don't have to worry about. I give them SpyWarn MicSpike™... free. ~Kevin

Spyware Makes Android Phones Play Possum

A particularly devious new Android malware can make calls or take photos even if you shut the device down, according to security research firm AVG.

To achieve this, the malware hijacks the shutting down process — making it appear as though your Android device is shutting down. You see the animation, the screen goes black, but the phone is actually still on.

In this state, the malware can use the phone to send your messages to a third party, record a call or take a photo, essentially turning your phone into a device that spies on you.

AVG, which posted code excerpts showing some of the malware's functionality, names this threat Android/PowerOffHijack.A. According to the company, it infects devices running Android versions below 5.0 and requires root permissions in order to act.

The company spokesperson told us some 10,000 devices were infected so far, mostly in China where the malware was first introduced and offered through the local, official app stores.
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Spywarn™ can detect this.