U-2 Spy Plane Teardown

via Brandon Turkus
Aircraft maintenance is no laughing matter. Keeping planes, especially multi-million-dollar spy planes, in the air requires loads of work. Like many military aircraft, the U-2 spy plane gets a complete and total disassembly, a thorough inspection of all its parts, and in the case of the Dragon Lady, a complete repainting.

Sploid has an awesome time-lapse video of the process, which is handled every 4,700 flight hours by Lockheed Martin technicians. The video shows everything from the roll in to the post-maintenance takeoff, with the breakdown of parts, stripping of paint and the general inspection shown in a decent degree of detail. What we find most fascinating, though, is the way the entire plane seems to come apart like a giant Lego assembly. The wings and tail just sort of pop off, leaving the surprisingly tiny fuselage to be inspected.



Following the inspection and reassembly, the U-2 is returned to the Air Force where it can conduct its usual spying and reconnaissance operations. more

The Best Spy Museum You will Never See... except for the parts on-line

The CIA Museum's collection includes artifacts associated with the CIA's predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services; foreign intelligence organizations; and the CIA itself.

The collection includes clothing, equipment, weapons, insignia and other memorabilia that serve as tangible testimony to the Agency's history. Many of the objects the Museum holds were designed, manufactured and used specifically for intelligence operations.

CIA used the “Belly Buster” drill during the late 1950s and early 1960s to drill holes into masonry for implanting audio devices. After assembly, the base of the drill was held firmly against the stomach while the handle was cranked manually. This kit came with several drill bits and accessories.
52.5 cm x 22.5 cm x 5 cm
(L x W x H)

All artifacts displayed in the museum's exhibits have been declassified by the appropriate Agency officials. Please note that because the Museum is located on the CIA compound, it is not open to the public for tours. Take the on-line tour.

Italian Authorities to Spend 150 Million Euros on Monitoring PlayStation Chat

Italian Minister of Justice Andrea Orlando has revealed that the Italian government intends to spend 150 million euros (£105mn | $157mn) 

on new equipment and techniques to monitor encrypted communications, including the PlayStation 4 game chat protocols which recently fell under suspicion as a means of communication by which ISIS may have coordinated the recent attacks on Paris.

It is not clear whether the ‘new instruments’ of surveillance about which Orlando spoke to Il Messaggero [Italian language] will be new to investigative authorities, or new per se – but the decision to make the investment involves not just equipment and technicians, but additional ‘cultural mediators’ in prisons, “to prevent these forms of radicalization, that have developed in other countries in [the same] context.” more

Merry Christmas folks!

Town Supervisor Faces a Second Round of Eavesdropping Charges

NY - Embattled Windham Supervisor Stacy M. Post is facing additional charges in a six-count indictment handed up by a Greene County grand jury.

Post’s second indictment cites alleged illegal activities between Feb. 22 and March 3, 2014, at the Windham Town Hall by the supervisor and former police chief. The first indictment was released in February, after her arrest by state police on Jan. 12...

The most recent indictment charges Post with installing video and audio surveillance software and hardware on her office computer “for the purpose of eavesdropping on individuals without their knowledge or consent” and with using eavesdropping equipment in her possession to eavesdrop on town employee Cynthia Nelson, former town employee Bette Rhoades, Town Clerk Bonnie Poehmel and Councilman Wayne Van Valin between Feb. 25 and March 3, 2014. more

Spy for Art's Sake

Spy vs. Spy: Tech-Savvy Swiss Duo Bitnik Refines the Art of Espionage

‘I’ve hijacked your surveillance camera. How about a game of chess?” The words filled a closed-circuit television screen that only seconds before had shown commuters in London’s Charing Cross station.

Whichever security guard read the message soon saw it replaced by a chessboard and the words: “You are white. I am black. Call me or text me to make your move. This is my phone number: 075 8246 0851.”

In the heart of the world’s most surveilled city, two artists were registering their polite protest with the help of a laptop and an interfering transmitter. Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoj Smoljo, a Swiss team known as !Mediengruppe Bitnik, have been co-opting the spy’s arsenal to practice their own, artistic style of counter-espionage...

 

Artists and spies are loners, operating on the margins. They observe, gather intelligence, surgically intervene, and detect and disseminate artifice. They try to stay ahead of everyone else. more

"Tell me all your secrets," said Barbie, in an unusually deep voice.

The new 'Hello Barbie' doll has come under scrutiny after security experts warned it could be exploited by hackers to spy on young children.

The doll is the 'world's first' interactive doll and has speech recognition and WiFi connectivity so that it can store what owners like and dislike, which manufacturer Mattel says will give everyone a 'unique experience' with the toy...

Bosses and designers behind the new Barbie have come out and defended the doll, saying that it is safe to use. more

Affairs of Spy Pairs... and more

• Thousands Protest Arrest of 2 Turkish Journalists on Spying Charges more 
• 2 Kenyans Arrested for Spying for Iran more 
• AQIM Islamists say killed two men for spying for France more 
• Two pensioners appear in court charged with spying on allotment holders in Stirling more 

...and not to be outdone...

• More than 10 Japanese detained in China for spying since 2012 more 

Vintage Spy Camera Auction in Hong Kong

An incredible archive of rare vintage spy cameras that would rival James Bond's own collection has emerged for sale for £400,000.

Among the rarities is one of only two existing examples of the Lucky Strike Spy Camera developed for the US Signal Corps between 1949 and 1950. The camera, made by the Mast Development Corp, was built to fit inside the outer wrapper from a packet of Lucky Strike cigarettes. Despite its size it was capable of taking 18 x 16mm still photographs with varying shutter speeds, but ultimately it was rejected. It is worth around £43,000. more

Microsoft Makes Windows 10 Automatic Spying Worse - Update

When Windows 10 was released, many people were up in arms over the operating system’s ability to constantly track how users were interacting with it and would send that information back to Microsoft.

With the first major update for Windows 10 that came out earlier this month, Microsoft has seemingly removed Diagnostics Tracking Service, also known as DiagTrack, which was responsible for the tracking. But it turns out the company has just renamed the service.  more

Those who don’t want Windows 10 to constantly send their data back to Microsoft, fear not. There’s a way to disable the service. Forbes has released instructions on how to do so:

1. Hold down the Windows key and tap the R key
2. In the box that opens type ‘services.msc’ and press the Enter key
3. In the ‘Services (Local)’ section locate ‘Connected User Experiences and Telemetry’ and double-click it
4. In the ‘Service status’ section click ‘Stop’
5. Under the ‘Startup type’ drop down menu select ‘Disabled’ and then confirm this and close the window by clicking ‘OK’

Privacy Journal's "Compilation of State and Federal Privacy Laws" - Updated

The Compilation of State and Federal Privacy Laws book 

cites and describes more than 600 state and federal laws affecting the confidentiality of personal information and electronic surveillance.

The laws are listed by state, grouped in categories like medical, credit, financial, security breaches, tracking technologies, employment, government, school records, Social Security numbers, marketing, telephone privacy and many more. Canadian laws too.

The 2015 Supplement to Privacy Journal's "Compilation of State and Federal Privacy Laws" (2013) has just been published, adding 20 more laws enacted by states in the past 12 months.

How Browser Extensions Steal Logins & Browsing Habits; Conduct Corporate Espionage

via boingboing.com
Seemingly harmless browser extensions that generate emojis, enlarge thumbnails, help you debug Javascript errors and other common utilities routinely run secret background processes that collect and retransmit your login credentials, private URLs that grant access to sensitive files, corporate secrets, full PDFs and other personally identifying, potentially compromising data.

Many extensions conduct surveillance without any notification at all, but some do legal backflips to cover up their activities -- characterizing your installation of the extension as explicit permission to spy; pretending that URLs are by nature anonymous and so on. The data is aggregated and sold to unnamed third parties, reputedly for $0.04/user/month. Many of the spying extensions have more than a million users. One of the extensions identified as conducting secret spying advertises itself as a privacy-enhancing tool (!).

Detectify Labs have posted a technical explanation of how Chrome extensions conduct surveillance, and note near the end of their analysis that Firefox extensions are just as prone to spying. more

Microsoft Makes Windows 10 Automatic Spying Worse

Earlier this month Microsoft finally went on record admitting that automatic spying within Windows 10 cannot be stopped. 

This sparked a lot of outrage and with ‘Threshold 2’ it appeared Microsoft had done a sharp U-turn because the background service at the heart tracking (the ‘Diagnostics Tracking Service’ aka ‘DiagTrack’) appeared to have been removed. Critics celebrated and it was another well deserved pat on the back for Microsoft.

Except it turns out Microsoft had just been very sneaky. What Tweakhound discovered and was subsequently confirmed by BetaNews, is Microsoft simply renamed DiagTrack. It is now called the ‘Connected User Experiences and Telemetry Service’ – which is both a) deliberately vague, and b) misleading (don’t ‘Connected User Experiences’ sound great). more

Two Spies Out This Week

Ronald Pelton, former National Security Agency employee convicted of selling defense and communication secrets he gained during his career has been released from federal custody 30 years after his arrest. more
 
Jonathan J. Pollard was released on parole from federal prison on Friday after serving 30 years of a life sentence for violations of the Espionage Act. more

FutureWatch: No Lens Spycams Thinner than a Dime

How thin can a camera be? Very, say Rice University researchers who have developed patented prototypes of their technological breakthrough.

FlatCam, invented by the Rice labs of electrical and computer engineers Richard Baraniuk and Ashok Veeraraghavan, is little more than a thin sensor chip with a mask that replaces lenses in a traditional camera.



"We can make curved cameras, or wallpaper that's actually a camera," says Richard Baraniuk, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice University. "You can have a camera on your credit card or a camera in an ultrathin tablet computer."

Making it practical are the sophisticated computer algorithms that process what the sensor detects and converts the sensor measurements into images and videos. more

Ads Go from Subliminal to Ultrasonic - "PSSST... Any devices nearby?"

Privacy advocates are warning federal authorities of a new threat that uses inaudible, high-frequency sounds to surreptitiously track a person's online behavior across a range of devices, including phones, TVs, tablets, and computers.

The ultrasonic pitches are embedded into TV commercials or are played when a user encounters an ad displayed in a computer browser. While the sound can't be heard by the human ear, nearby tablets and smartphones can detect it. When they do, browser cookies can now pair a single user to multiple devices and keep track of what TV commercials the person sees, how long the person watches the ads, and whether the person acts on the ads by doing a Web search or buying a product.

Cross-device tracking raises important privacy concerns, the Center for Democracy and Technology wrote in recently filed comments to the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC has scheduled a workshop on Monday to discuss the technology. Often, people use as many as five connected devices throughout a given day—a phone, computer, tablet, wearable health device, and an RFID-enabled access fob. Until now, there hasn't been an easy way to track activity on one and tie it to another.

"As a person goes about her business, her activity on each device generates different data streams about her preferences and behavior that are siloed in these devices and services that mediate them," CDT officials wrote. "Cross-device tracking allows marketers to combine these streams by linking them to the same individual, enhancing the granularity of what they know about that person." more