This Week in Business Espionage

• XPO Logistics Inc. charges that rival YRC Worldwide Inc. went to illegal extremes as XPO bought Con-way Inc. last year, the WSJ’s Loretta Chao writes, raiding the less-than-truckload carrier for executives and trade secrets on its operations and its customers. YRC won’t comment on the charges... XPO’s allegation of what amounts to corporate espionage comes at a critical time for the company. more

• One of the UK’s largest companies, British American Tobacco (BAT) is facing demands that it be investigated by the US Department of Justice, following allegations that it engaged in widespread bribery of politicians and policymakers in Africa... There are also claims that the company engaged in corporate espionage and the sabotage of competitors in Kenya. more

• Barcelona (soccer team) say they are “oblivious” to allegations of industrial espionage brought against them and former President Sandro Rosell. The Spanish Press reported on Friday that communications group Mediapro had taken Barca and Rosell to court, with its owner Jaume Roures accusing the ex-patron of e-mail theft, divulging business secrets and invading his privacy. more

• If American businesses want to curb the theft of their trade secrets and intellectual property by other countries, they are going to have to do it themselves. The good news for the American private sector is that machine learning (ML) and behavioral analytics, are offering some promise of detecting hackers before they start exfiltrating trade secrets and intellectual property (IP)... The not so good news is that those businesses are not going to be getting much help from the government. more

...and from "The World is a Strange Place" files...
• A U.S. law firm specializing in cross-border matters has opened its first office in China recently, aiming to assist local companies with legal issues against the background of a spate of spying charges against Chinese nationals. The law firm, Alston & Bird, opened its Beijing office on January 27, marking the first overseas branch of the law firm. The firm has served as counsel to a number of Chinese clients, including Tianjin University's Professor Zhang Hao, who was charged in the U.S. with economic espionage and theft of trade secrets. more

Another Bad Week for Spies

• Saudi Arabia places 27 on trial for spying for Iran more

• Hamas armed wing executes member 'for spying for Israel' more

• North Korea detains American citizen for allegedly spying more

• Iran holding several dual citizens on charges of spying more

• Four arrested 'spies' of postal dept suspended more

• Spy row officer lodges complaint against her superior more

and, to make spy image matters worse...
• Gabriel Kahane Wears Sunglasses Inside to Look Like a Spy and Sings About It on 'The Fiction Issue' more

Don't Trust Hotel Safes - Reason 6 - A Sock & Magnet Can Open Many of Them

15,000+ People Get Paid by Their Eavesdropper

People will turn their smartphones into spying devices for just $5/month

Symphony Advanced Media, founded in 2010, has recruited over 15,000 people to be part of its “panel of media insiders.”

They downloaded an app from Symphony that collects a ton of information from their smartphones, and turns on their microphones every minute for 5-6 seconds to see what they’re watching on their TV or computer. Here’s how Symphony describes on its website what it knows about each individual in its panel:

Click to enlarge.

The data sucked up from panelists’ phones includes where they are; their Internet traffic; their search keywords; which mobile apps they use and for how long; how many calls, emails and texts they send; and, of course, what they’re watching on network or digital TV. In exchange for having everything they do on their phone spied on, panelists are paid $5/month—not in cash, but in the form of points on Perks.com. more

Amateur Eavesdroppers in the News This Week

MA - Brianne St. Peter McMahon, 36, was indicted Wednesday by a Plymouth County Grand Jury on charges including wiretapping and misleading a police investigation, according to the office of Plymouth District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz.

In October 2015, McMahon allegedly slipped her cellphone into the pocket of a witness, who was set to appear before a grand jury at Brockton Superior Court, to record the proceedings and interviews related to the murder of 45-year-old Robert McKennacq, according to Cruz’s office.

Later that afternoon, State Police seized the phone from the witness, a friend of McMahon’s who was unaware the device had been placed in her pocket, according to the indictment. more

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MA - Three employees at Wyman-Gordon company in Grafton, Massachusetts, are facing felony wiretapping charges for setting up a hidden camera with audio to record their coworker inside their workplace, reports CBS Boston. more

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S. Africa - An electronics expert testified in court on Monday that he planted a “bugging” device in the Pietermaritzburg advocates’ chambers and helped put a GPS tracker on an advocate’s car at the request of KZN advocate Penny Hunt.

Houston Wayne Impey said he had, at Hunt’s request, also removed the CCTV hard drive installed at the advocates’ chambers to copy the footage captured on the system.

Hunt had told him to plant the bugging device in the ceiling of the advocates’ chambers so she could listen to, and record, conversations in her secretary’s office, because she suspected her of leaking confidential information, he said. more

FutureWatch - Another Step Closer to the Future of Eavesdropping

...a new experiment at the University of Washington may be bringing ESP closer to the realm of reality.

According to University of Washington computational neuroscientist Rajesh Rao and UW Medicine neurosurgeon Jeff Ojemann, the combination of a brain implant and a complex algorithm has given researchers the ability to predict human thoughts with unprecedented speed and accuracy. In fact, the duo says, they’re able to track what we’re thinking as we’re thinking it, bringing us closer to mind reading than ever before...

 “We were trying to understand, first, how the human brain perceives objects in the temporal lobe, and second, how one could use a computer to extract and predict what someone is seeing in real time,” explained Rao to the UW NewsBeat. “Clinically, you could think of our result as a proof of concept toward building a communication mechanism for patients who are paralyzed or have had a stroke and are completely locked-in,” he said. more

FutureWatch - Keep Your Eye on IoT - The Encryption Debate is a Distraction

...products, ranging from “toasters to bedsheets, light bulbs, cameras, toothbrushes, door locks, cars, watches and other wearables,” will give the government increasing opportunities to track suspects and in many cases reconstruct communications and meetings. more

...from "Don’t Panic: Making Progress on the ‘Going Dark’ Debate"
The audio and video sensors on IoT devices will open up numerous avenues for government actors to demand access to real-time and recorded communications.

A ten-year-old case involving an in-automobile concierge system provides an early indication of how this might play out. The system enables the company to remotely monitor and respond to a car’s occupants through a variety of sensors and a cellular connection. At the touch of a button, a driver can speak to a representative who can provide directions or diagnose problems with the car. During the course of an investigation, the FBI sought to use the microphone in a car equipped with such a system to capture conversations taking place in the car’s cabin between two alleged senior members of organized crime.

In 2001, a federal court in Nevada issued ex parte orders that required the company to assist the FBI with the intercept. The company appealed, and though the Ninth Circuit disallowed the interception on other grounds, it left open the possibility of using in-car communication devices for surveillance provided the systems’ safety features are not disabled in the process.

Such assistance might today be demanded from any company capable of recording conversations or other activity at a distance, whether through one’s own smartphone, an Amazon Echo, a baby monitor, an Internet-enabled security camera, or a futuristic “Elf on a Shelf” laden with networked audio and image sensors. more

Attention Attorneys - Time to Sweep for Electronic Surveillance Devices

With attention growing on the use of shell companies in high-end real estate, an activist organization released a report Sunday night that said several New York real estate lawyers had been caught on camera providing advice on how to move suspect money into the United States. 

The report is the result of an undercover investigation carried out in 2014 by Global Witness, a nonprofit activist organization that has been pushing for stricter money-laundering rules.

The lawyers featured in the report include a recent president of the American Bar Association. more video sweep service

Business Espionage: Corn Spy Pops

Security for Dupont Pioneer’s cornfields in Iowa suspected something when they detected men crawling around in the cornfields, and alerted the FBI two years ago. 

Now, one man — Chinese citizen Mo Hailong — has admitted to attempted kernel theft.
Mo was a part of a conspiracy to smuggle U.S. corn from producers Dupont Pioneer and Monsanto in Iowa and ship it to China, where scientists would attempt to replicate the corn’s genetic properties. Prosecutors accused Mo of working with others in the group Kings Nower Seed, a subsidiary of the Beijing Dabeinong Technology Group, the Associated Press reports. more

Spies Accused of Winging It, or A Very Sordid Sortie

Israel Nature and Parks Authority officials are pleading for the release of a vulture after residents of a southern Lebanese town captured the bird, claiming it was being used for spying. 

Lebanese media reported that the bird – allegedly carrying Israeli spy equipment -- was caught Tuesday to prevent it from attacking citizens in the town of Bint Jbail, according to the Jerusalem Post...

Israeli officials said the bird was released in the Gamla Nature Reserve about a month ago after arriving from Spain in 2015. The bird, outfitted with a transmitter, was brought to Israel in hopes to increase its local population, the officials added. more

P.S. They came to their senses and released the vulture.

Even Antiquarian Book Shops are Less Suspicious

A Canadian citizen who ran a coffee shop near the sensitive China-North Korea border has been charged with spying by Beijing after being kept in detention for more than a year.


Kevin Garratt... “has been accused of spying and stealing China's state secrets”, state news agency Xinhua said, citing “authorities”.

"During the investigation, Chinese authorities also found evidence which implicates Garratt in accepting tasks from Canadian espionage agencies to gather intelligence in China," Xinhua reported. more

The Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2015

Prepared Statement by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee
Executive Business Meeting

The next bill on the agenda is S.1890, the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2015, introduced by Senators Hatch and Coons.

As we learned in a recent Committee hearing, while state trade secret laws provide U.S. companies many protections, at times these laws are inadequate.

The threats trade secret owners face are coming from thieves who are able to quickly travel across state lines and who use technology to aid their misappropriation. In many cases, the existing patch-work of state laws governing trade secret theft presents difficult procedural hurdles for victims who must seek immediate relief.

Further, the pace of trade secret theft is mounting and federal law enforcement authorities don’t have the bandwidth to prosecute but a fraction of cases. This means that victims of trade secret theft cannot rely on criminal enforcement, making a civil cause of action an effective way to go after the perpetrators.

The Defend Trade Secrets Act would amend the Economic Espionage Act of 1996 to create a federal civil remedy for trade secret misappropriation, allowing for a uniform national standard without preempting state law. The bill would provide clear rules and predictability for trade secret cases. Victims will be able to move quickly to federal court, with certainty of the rules, standards, and practices to stop trade secrets from being disseminated and losing their value. By improving trade secret protection, this bill will also help to incentivize future innovation.

Additionally, Ranking Member Leahy and I will be offering an amendment to help protect whistleblowers. more

Security Director Alert: Check your board and conference rooms for equipment made by AMX

Lots of companies -- and even the White House -- use a conference calling system that could possibly be tapped by hackers, according to new research.

On Thursday, cybersecurity experts at SEC Consult revealed a secret doorway that's built into a popular conference calling product built by a company called AMX.

AMX makes tablet panels used to control conference calls for businesses, government agencies and universities.

The company hard-coded backdoor access into its system. AMX created a "secret account" with a permanent username and password, which means a hacker who already sneaked into a computer network could tap into actual meetings, if the hacker knew the backdoor access code.

It's a glaring security hole. more

Murray Associates Recommendation
A firmware update is available for products and systems incorporating the NetLinx NX Control platform:

NX Series Controllers NX-4200 FG2106-04 NX-3200 FG2106-03 NX-2200 FG2106-02 NX-1200 FG2106-01	Massio® ControlPads MCP-106 FG2102-06X-X MCP-108 FG2102-08-X
Enova® DVX All-in-One Presentation Switchers DVX-3256HD FG1906-22/24 DVX-3255HD FG1906-16/18 DVX-3250HD FG1906-15/17 DVX-2250HD FG1906-11/13 DVX-2255HD FG1906-12/14 DVX-2210HD FG1906-07/09

Firmware downloads require a current login and password for the AMX Account Center to access the protected Technical Documentation and Support Materials sections of the AMX by HARMAN website. Technical Support Staff within End User organizations should contact their authorized AMX Dealer or HARMAN Professional representative for assistance.

More Banksy Art, from Artsy

I received this email today and thought you might like to know...

Hi - my name is Oliver, and I work at Artsy. While researching Banksy, I found your page: http://spybusters.blogspot.com/2014_06_01_archive.html. I wanted to briefly tell you about Artsy's Banksy page, and about our mission.

Click to enlarge.

We strive to make all of the world’s art accessible to anyone online. Our Banksy page, for example, provides visitors with Banksy's bio, over 150 of his works, exclusive articles, as well as up-to-date Banksy exhibition listings. The page even includes related artist & category tags, plus suggested contemporary artists, allowing viewers to continue exploring art beyond our Banksy page.

Glad to help!
Here is another Banksy anti-surveillance piece of art.

Radar Rat, 2004
Spray paint and silkscreen on paper
14 × 14 in
35.6 × 35.6 cm
Gallery Nosco
Sold
£20,000 - 30,000 ($28,500 - $42,800)

World's Largest Bugging Device Hears What You Can't... and it may save our butts!

This desolate outpost in remotest Greenland is home to one of the world's most high-tech listening devices, tasked with saving humanity from itself.

Located along the coastline just outside the village of Qaanaaq – which bears the additional distinction of being the world's most northerly palindrome – the sole purpose of Infrasound station IS18 consists of listening to the planet's groans that occur at frequencies too low for the human ear to detect, occurring within the range of 20 Hz down to 0.001 Hz.

Click to enlarge.

Qaaanaaq's eight-element array is divided into two sub-arrays bolstered by wind reduction technology, all of which are linked to a Central Processing Facility (or CPF) that churns out data around-the-clock to a central terminal in Qaanaaq proper. But why put such an extremely space-age device in a village accessible only by helicopter, whose locals subsist largely on narwhal, seals, and polar bears?

In its most practical application, IS18 is part of a network of highly specialized sensors charged with monitoring the globe for atomic blasts, as set forth by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). Around the clock, the array monitors the entire world for distinctive blast patterns produced by such explosions, as their unique pattern of ultra-low frequency sound waves persist even when ricocheting through the Earth's surface. more