Spy - The Movie

In the mood for a spy movie this weekend?

"Melissa McCarthy made her bones as a scene-stealing supporting player, but her starring vehicles have only occasionally made the most of her comic gifts. Until now, that is: critics say Spy is an inspired, uproarious spoof of espionage thrillers loaded with self-effacing performances and sharp jabs at workplace sexism." more

Let's YTRAP, mate!

A new kind of party craze has many Australians scrambling for invitations. 

Crypto parties, where people gather to learn online encryption, are attracting everyone from politicians, to business people, to activists.

Two years after US spy agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents from the National Security Agency exposing mass global internet surveillance, there is rapidly growing interest in protecting online activity.

There have been crypto parties in Brazil, Germany and the UK, and more than a dozen have already been held in Australia.

Apps like Wickr, Confide and WhatsApp have taken encryption out of the geek lab and to the masses. more

Better grab their car key, too.

...security giant G4S will confiscate smartphones from shareholders and journalists at its AGM in London after activists used them to film their violent removal by security staff at last year’s event.

The blanket ban, which includes staff and board members, comes a year after activists, who bought shares to attend the meeting, staged filmed interventions. The footage later appeared in the UK media.

A spokesman for G4S told the Guardian newspaper: “Last year we had a large number of protesters who were effectively staging demonstrations in the meeting and they were filming it.

“The intention is not to suppress the legitimate free speech of people but it is just simply to maintain some degree of security for our people in the meeting. That is the rationale.” more

Hero4 Minicam Easily Forced into Spycam Servitude by "Criminals"

A security firm has warned it is "too easy" for criminals to take control of GoPro cameras which could then be used to spy on their owners.

Pen Test Partners showed the BBC how it could gain access to a Hero4 camera that appeared to be turned off, to secretly watch or eavesdrop on users, or to view and delete existing videos.

The attack relied on victims setting simple passwords which could be guessed by software within seconds.

GoPro said its security was adequate. more

Cody Labs - One Smart Espionage-Savvy Company

Pharmaceutical company Cody Laboratories Inc. occupied its new $3.7 million. 11,000-square-foot warehouse Monday after a ribbon-cutting that drew Gov. Matt Mead and other dignitaries.

James Klessens, CEO of Forward Cody, an economic development agency, said the company is helping Cody keep Wyomingites in Wyoming.

“If you want to see the warehouse you better come yesterday because after today nobody in the general public is going to gain access to that building,” Klessens said. He indicated that as a pharmaceutical company Cody Labs has to worry about corporate espionage and defending trade secrets, making them an enormously private company. more

Free Spycam Detection Advice on the Net (Worth exactly what you paid for it.)

How to Detect Hidden Spy Cam in Dressing Room
There are camera which are smaller in size that could capture HD videos and possibly hides its presence from Human eye. So conduct this simple test to check whether you are really "Private" with no hidden cameras monitoring.

• Enter trial room with your mobile phone and ensure mobile signal to make calls.
• Try to make call inside the private room, if there is a "Hidden Camera" you cannot make calls due to interference of fiber optics during signal transfer which blocks mobile callls. (sic)
• Making calls without any interference is the sign of Camera free room.

Note: There exist some problem with the above test in low signal areas - Entering closed cabin with low mobile signal will further vanish the meagre (sic) signal earlier available, hence result in out of coverage. more

This is total nonsense of course, but sadly, many trusting souls will believe it. If you really need to make sure your "expectation of privacy" areas are free from spy cameras, may I suggest spycamdetection.training.

Bionic Ear Comes with Wireless Microphone and Control App

Soundhawk is an ear-worn "smart listening system," which the company is very careful to describe as ... well, anything but a hearing aid...

There are two parts: the "scoop" (that's it on the right, above) which is the listening device that you put in your ear, and the "wireless mic," which you can (optionally) place near someone who's talking to you in a noisy environment. The wireless mic can either rest on a table or clip onto something like a shirt or jacket. And you can easily switch between modes using one of the buttons on the earpiece. Using the scoop alone, the audio enhancement is quite good.

...it all connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth Low Energy. The companion app lets you choose among four different listening modes (indoors, outdoors, driving and restaurants), each of which you can customize for brighter or fuller audio, as well as the level of the boost. There's also an output volume control.

There's also the potential for some serious eavesdropping here, if you tuned the settings for that... our closed-door simulations allowed us to understand faint whispers from across a bedroom. The next time you're whispering a secret to a friend, watch out for people wearing Soundhawks in the area. They might be able to hear you. more

Why do I mention it?
So you will know what you're up against.

Antalya Police Tears Down its Office Walls, Paranoid About Bugging

Turkey - The police intelligence unit in Turkey’s primary holiday resort province Antalya has torn down its own walls in a search for a bugging device according to a tip, fueling the debate on government wiretapping.

The search was reported to have been conducted sometime in the past 8 months and apparently had not uncovered any device. The incident is likely to be regarded as indicative of the extent Turkey’s wiretap saga has reached.

Police intelligence forces who were detained and released over eight months ago were once again detained earlier in the week, in one of the latest episodes of the raids to target the police force over illegal wiretapping allegations.

Since the dated December 17, 2013 corruption probe which implicated the government, “illegal wiretapping” cases has resulted in the mass purge of the police force with hundreds of hundreds being imprisoned. Critics have slammed the government for arbitrarily using the allegations as a pretext to politicize the force. more

China Didn't Invent Industrial Espionage

The U.S. Justice Department last week charged six Chinese scientists for stealing trade secrets and engaging in industrial espionage on behalf of China. 

A separate case, announced Friday, involved the former chairman of the physics department at Temple University, a China-born U.S. citizen who allegedly passed along semiconductor technology while working at an unnamed American company.

Such cases often are held up as evidence of China’s perfidy and unscrupulous dealings in the global economy. But before getting into high dudgeon mode, the U.S., and for that matter, almost every Western nation, might wish to remember their own, no-holds-barred campaigns to swipe industrial secrets.

In fact, one of the first cases involved the theft of industrial secrets from China. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Chinese alone possessed the ability to produce high-end “hard-paste” porcelain, an expensive material beloved by Europe’s elites. In the 1680s, a French Jesuit, Pere d’Entrecolles, traveled to China, where he saw the kilns and likely read technical works on the subject... more

Business Espionage - Quote of the Week

"Commercial espionage is considered to be on the rise as our dependence on digital data – and technologies in the workplace – becomes more and more severe... We're only seeing the tip of the iceberg at the moment." ~ Dr Dionysios Demetis, Hull University Business School (UK) more

Summer Reading - Corporate Espionage

Here are five stories that delve deep into the murky world of corporate information gathering.

1. “Drug Spies” (Richard Behar, Fortune, September 1999)

This story about corporate spies fighting pirated drugs in the high stakes pharmaceutical industry reads like a summer action movie, complete with former Scotland Yard detectives, solitary confinement in a Cyprus prison and multinational drug giants.

2. “Confessions of a Corporate Spy” (George Chidi, Inc., February 2013)

George Chidi’s work is more social engineering than cloak-and-dagger, but this first-person piece from a competitive intelligence consultant offers fascinating insight into the less legally shaky subset of the corporate intelligence world. Bonus: the last third of the article functions as a how-to for aspiring information gatherers.

3. “The Secret Keeper” (William Finnegan, New Yorker, October 2009)

If there is a gold standard in the corporate intelligence world, it’s Kroll Inc., Jules B. Kroll’s namesake consulting group. Here the New Yorker profiles Mr. Kroll, who is “widely credited with having created an industry where there was none.”

4. “A Spy in the Jungle” (Mary Cuddehe, The Atlantic, August 2010)

Cuddehe was a freelance reporter with a busted rental car in a Cancún parking lot when a friend called with a “research” job:

…an offer from Kroll, one of the world’s largest private investigation firms, to go undercover as a journalist-spy in the Ecuadorian Amazon. At first I thought I was underqualified for the job. But as it turned out I was exactly what they were looking for: a pawn.

Her recollections, and reflections on why she chose not to take the job, are an interesting counterpoint to the New Yorker article.

5. “The Pizza Plot” (Adam L. Penenberg and Marc Barry, New York Times Magazine, December 2000)

Schwan’s knew that Kraft was going to roll out a new kind of frozen pizza, and that if they wanted to compete they would have to find out all sorts of specifics before the launch. This article, which is adapted from Penenberg and Barry’s 2000 book Spooked: Espionage in Corporate America, is a dazzlingly fun look at just how Schwan pulled that off.

Debate Over NSA ‘Spying’ Program, Explained in Under 2 Minutes

Congress has less than a week to decide the fate of a government surveillance program that was created after 9/11 to prevent terrorist attacks. The program, enabled by a provision under the Patriot Act, gives the National Security Agency a number of tools to fight terror, such as the ability to collect phone records in bulk. With the U.S. Senate deeply divided on the issue, The Daily Signal breaks down the debate happening on Capitol Hill. more

Free Espionage Movies Near Washington, DC

VA - The Crystal City Business Improvement District has revealed the lineup for its annual outdoor summer movie festival. The theme this year: espionage.

The movies are shown weekly on Monday at sunset — around 8:30 p.m. — and are held rain or shine, except in the event of dangerous weather.

Families are encouraged to bring a blanket to the free event. The outdoor “theater” is located in the courtyard of an office building at 1851 S. Bell Street.

The lineup is:
June 1 — Mission: Impossible
June 8 — Mission: Impossible II
June 15 — Mission: Impossible III
June 22 — Mission: Impossible- Ghost Protocol
June 29 — Charlie Wilson’s War
July 6 — RED
July 13 — Argo
July 20 — Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
July 27 — Body of Lies
Aug. 3 — Enemy of the State
Aug. 10 — The Bourne Identity
Aug. 17 — The Bourne Supremacy
Aug. 24 — The Bourne Ultimatum
Aug. 31 — The Bourne Legacy



MIA - "The Conversation"

South Korea's New Law Mandates Installation Of Government-Approved Spyware

The app, "Smart Sheriff," was funded by the South Korean government primarily to block access to pornography and other offensive content online. But its features go well beyond that.

Smart Sheriff and at least 14 other apps allow parents to monitor how long their kids use their smartphones, how many times they use apps and which websites they visit. Some send a child's location data to parents and issue an alert when a child searches keywords such as "suicide," ''pregnancy" and "bully" or receives messages with those words...

Last month, South Korea's Korea Communications Commission, which has sweeping powers covering the telecommunications industry, required telecoms companies and parents to ensure Smart Sheriff or one of the other monitoring apps is installed when anyone aged 18 years or under gets a new smartphone. The measure doesn't apply to old smartphones but most schools sent out letters to parents encouraging them to install the software anyway...

South Korea's new system is by no means impervious. For one, it can only be fully applied to Android phones not Apple Inc. phones. more

A Memorial Day Thought - The Thing We Forgot to Fight For

We fight like hell for freedom, but we let the world pick our intellectual pockets.

Sure, the US has a counterespionage law. But it is a half-way measure. Ok, we do more than Canada. They don't even have a law.

Question... What is the quality of your freedom once your jobs are stolen, and your intellectual property is ripped out from under you? 

Memorial Day is a good day to re-print this post from April 5, 2012.

----------------------------------

Gen. Keith B. Alexander, (NSA)

...called the continuing, rampant cybertheft “the greatest transfer of wealth in history.” (bio)

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Shawn Henry, (FBI) 

...current public and private approach to fending off hackers is "unsustainable.'' Computer criminals are simply too talented and defensive measures too weak to stop them, he said. (bio)

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Richard A. Clark, (presidential advisor) 

"Yet the same Congress that has heard all of this disturbing testimony is mired in disagreements about a proposed cybersecurity bill that does little to address the problem of Chinese cyberespionage." (bio)

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Letter to the Editor - The New York Times

Dear Editor,

Richard A. Clarke’s op-ed piece, “How China Steals Our Secrets,” (4/2/12) states the current business espionage problem perfectly, but we need a solution. Consider this...

The Chinese secrets of: silk and tea production; making porcelain, gunpowder and paper, could not survive Western espionage attacks – not even when protected with death penalties. Espionage killed their economy, and the damage lasted for centuries. Obviously, our competitive advantages are also our National Interest Assets.

The one-sided, punish-the-spy security model, still being used today, never worked. We need to make it two-sided. There must be a proactive legal responsibility to protect.

The solution... Corporate caretakers must be held accountable for protecting their valuables; our national treasures. We need a law creating business counterespionage security standards, with penalties for inadequate protection. We already successfully employ the same concept with medical and financial record privacy.

Kevin D. Murray
Spybusters, LLC

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A cybersecurity law alone will not stop spying. 

If implemented, it will force an increase in traditional spy techniques, such as: bugging, wiretapping, physical intrusions and social engineering. (Remember, computer data is available elsewhere long before it is computerized.) 

Protecting our competitive advantages requires a holistic approach; a National Interest Assets law which would also...

• Protect the entire intellectual property timeline, from brainstorming and initial discussions, to the final product or business strategy. 

• Impose a responsibility of due care upon the creators and holders competitive advantage information.

• Specify compliance requirements aimed at countering traditional business espionage practices. Technical Surveillance Countermeasures Inspections (TSCM / bug sweeps), information-security audits, and information-security compliance procedures; safeguards which can be easily mandated and monitored.

This is a no-brainer, Congress.

The cost of keeping National Interest Assets safe is infinitesimal compared to current losses (not to mention the long-term effects). Just ask the Chinese.
~Kevin