SpyCam News - The Covert Case of the Double Takedown

UK- Israel's ambassador to the UK has apologised after a senior member of his staff was secretly filmed saying he wanted to "take down" Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan.

Israeli Embassy senior political officer Shai Masot made the comment in footage filmed in a London restaurant... It was recorded in October 2016 as part of an investigation by Al Jazeera. more with video

Aside from the obvious, this story is important because it showcases the audio and video capabilities of today's spy cameras. If this has you personally concerned for your privacy (and it should), check out spycamdetection.training. ~Kevin

Australian Police Make a Good GPS Point

West Australian police are urging beachgoers to keep their valuables safe this summer, with a particular warning to those who use navigation devices...

Acting Senior Sergeant Martin said... navigation devices in particular posed a risk because owners usually programmed in their home location.

"If they leave their keys down at the beach sand, the offenders will grab the keys off the beach, walk up to the car park, find which car the keys belong to, they'll have access to that Navman, press that home button and now they've got keys and the location where those keys can be utilized and burglaries committed." more 

Spybusters Tip # 815 - Do not enter your exact home location into your GPS device, smartphone, laptop, etc. Your town center is close enough. Hopefully, you know the rest of the way home. ~Kevin

Odd-Ball - Anti Facial Recognition to Debut at Sundance Film Festival

HyperFace is a new kind of camouflage that aims to reduce the confidence score of facial detection and recognition by providing false faces that distract computer vision algorithms...

HyperFace will launch as a textile print at Sundance Film Festival on January 16, 2017.

Prototype

HyperFace works by providing maximally activated false faces based on ideal algorithmic representations of a human face. These maximal activations are targeted for specific algorithms. The prototype is specific to OpenCV’s default frontalface profile. Other patterns target convolutional nueral networks and HoG/SVM detectors... HyperFace reduces the confidence score of the true face (figure) by redirecting more attention to the nearby false face regions (ground).

Conceptually, HyperFace recognizes that completely concealing a face to facial detection algorithms remains a technical and aesthetic challenge. Instead of seeking computer vision anonymity through minimizing the confidence score of a true face, HyperFace offers a higher confidence score for a nearby false face by exploiting a common algorithmic preference for the highest confidence facial region.

In other words, if a computer vision algorithm is expecting a face, give it what it wants. more

Wiretapping — Olmstead v. United States (1928)

via Popular Mechanics...
For as long as people have communicated via wires, other people have been finding ways to listen in on their communications. After the telegraph was invented in 1837 and the telephone in 1876, detectives like the Pinkertons quickly realized the usefulness of tapping phone lines, for reasons varying from personal to corporate espionage. States and government agencies like the Justice Department acted slowly in response to the phenomena, passing laws and regulations without consistency.

Roy Olmstead

These laws would be ultimately challenged by one of the largest Constitutional undertakings of all time: Prohibition. Ray (sic) Olmstead was a cop-turned-bootlegger out of Seattle, known as "the Good Bootlegger" for his insistence of only selling alcohol imported from Canada and refusing to let his employees carry guns. But running his operation like a more traditional business opened Olmstead up to the same structural flaws of a business, which allowed federal agents to wiretap and then raid him.

Olmstead sued, claiming his Fourth Amendment rights had been violated, the Supreme Court disagreed in a 5-4 decision. Chief Justice and former President William Howard Taft believed in a strict interpretation of the Fourth Amendment, one that could only rely on physical presence and sight. The telephone just didn't feature into the equation.

However, it was the dissent that truly lasted. Given by Justice Louis Brandeis, it begins to focus on the future in a way that sounds downright prophetic today. "The progress of science," Brandeis wrote, "in furnishing the Government with means of espionage is not likely to stop with wire-tapping. Ways may someday be developed by which the Government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences of the home. Advances in the psychic and related sciences may bring means of exploring unexpressed beliefs, thoughts and emotions." more

Light Bulb with Internet Streaming Camera Debuts at CES

NV - One of the products on show at CES is a lightbulb made by Bell & Wyson with an internet-streaming camera built into its body. video

Security Director Alert - Russian Cyber Activity, GRIZZLY STEPPE

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released a Joint Analysis Report (JAR) that details Russian malicious cyber activity, designated as GRIZZLY STEPPE. 

This activity by Russian civilian and military intelligence services (RIS) is part of an ongoing campaign of cyber-enabled operations directed at the U.S. Government and private sector entities.

DHS recommends that network administrators review the Security Publication for more information and implement the recommendations provided.

Home Invasion? Domestic Violence? Shout "Alexa" (before "help") for Documentation

Can amazon echo be used against you in a court of law? Have you ever wondered if “Alexa” is really spying on you?

Homicide investigators in Arkansas want Amazon to hand over a potential suspect’s “echo” transcripts. Brad Young of Harris-Dowell and Fisher Law Firm says Amazon has so far refused two requests.

“Amazon’s position is, is that the echo only records 60 seconds of information and then writes over if for the next 60 seconds,” Young says. “So, their position is that it would only have 60 seconds of information.”

However, when you ask your Echo a question, it is saved by Amazon as well as by Apple when you query Siri. Young says his legal personal opinion is that there is an expectation of privacy for things that are said – not queried.

“….when you ask Echo ‘Find what’s the best way to dispose of a dead body’ if that were the question, that information is saved,” Young says. “That information is available if it is a query posed to a device.”

Companies say it’s encrypted and no one can access it. Young says this has become a completely new “legal territory.” more additional info

Seriously, Alexa could become an omnipresent digital ear-witness. ~Kevin  

Secretary Arrested for Eavesdropping — Now Her Boss Suddenly Leaves

NY - Several town councilors confirm Supervisor Manny Falcone announced a sudden leave of absence at a meeting Wednesday evening...

Councilors say Falcone oversaw the duties performed by his former secretary Ellen Colelli. Colelli was arrested weeks ago, accused of eavesdropping. The felony charge brought by State Police accuses Colelli of listening to town employees by using video surveillance equipment that was installed inside the Geddes town office building...  Falcone has not been charged with a crime. more

Flying Tom's Last Peep

UAE - A 28-year-old man died after falling from a high rise building in Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, 
while spying on ladies living in the opposite building. The witness told police that the deceased fell due to imbalance while standing and looking into the rooms of the ladies.

Sharjah Police said that they received a call about the incident at the operation room and soon arrived at the site. The man was found dead in a pool of blood. He was rushed to Al Kuwaiti Hospital and then to forensic laboratory. more

Warsaw Waiter Wiretapping

Poland – A Polish court has sentenced a businessman and two waiters convicted in the illegal wiretapping of top Polish politicians in Warsaw restaurants to prison terms.

The court set a prison sentence of 2½ years to Marek Falenta, the businessman convicted of masterminding the wiretapping, and lesser sentences to two waiters involved. A third waiter must pay a fine.

The release of those tapes sparked a political scandal in 2014 that contributed to the loss of power last year of Civic Platform, the centrist party that governed Poland for eight years. more

Extra credit: Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter

Mobile Security: The InfoWorld Deep Dive

As iPhones, iPads, and Android devices become increasingly standard business equipment, IT organizations struggle on how to manage and secure them, and the data that runs through them.

Click to enlarge.

This guide, available in both PDF and ePub editions, explains the security capabilities inherent to each major mobile platform and where using third-party tools make sense -- and where they don't.

It also walks you through the factors to consider in terms of risk for your corporate data, and outlines a rational way to protect that data without getting tied up in knots.  more

Click to enlarge.

Android Phones (700 Million) Have Spying Firmware Pre-installed

The term “mobile phone security” is something of a joke these days, with the number of exploits, bugs, and breaches that are endlessly assaulting us and putting our personal information at risk. So, when security outfit Kryptowire sounded the alarm on Chinese company Adups for using its pre-installed apps to spy on Android users with Blu smartphones, it wasn’t exactly a shock.

Now, however, the impact of Adups alleged spying is growing in magnitude, and it’s dragging other Android device manufacturers into the quagmire.

Adups is a company that facilitates over-the-air updates for mobile devices, so its firmware is pre-installed on lots of devices. However, the firmware does much more than it claims, and has the ability to snoop in areas that it shouldn’t, and without the user ever knowing. That information can then be collected by Adups for whatever purposes it desires.

Trustlook, another digital security firm, dug deeper on what devices utilize Adups and could be used by the Chinese company to scrape your private information, and the list is absolutely massive. Trustlook says that over 700 million Android smartphones have Adups firmware installed that puts the user at risk of having text messages, call histories, and device information collected without their knowledge or consent. more

Recorder Found Hidden in the End of a Flashlight

via John Van de Luijtgaarden

"I was just asked to confirm a finding... Got a message with a bad picture of a round black "thingie" inside the end part of a Mag-Lite.

I immediately recognized this one as the EDIC type 16 recorder (B30 model). It is now to wait for the exact type and how much it has been recording. It's memory capacity can run up to a 300 hours sadly the battery cannot.



A great hiding place for a naughty tool in a strategic place !! The Security main office / control room... Keeping you informed"

Last Minute Holiday Gifts for Your Favorite PI

Ho, ho, ho.

more more button video

Reality Spyware Documentary - Find My Phone

What happens to a smartphone after it's stolen? That was the question that a film student in Amsterdam had in mind when he produced a short documentary about a smartphone thief and their stolen goods. On the surface, it might not sound like the most avant-garde idea out there. But here's what made it interesting: the student procured material for his documentary by spying on the thief using a bugged smartphone.

The student, a certain Anthony van der Meer, intentionally had a phone of his stolen – one that he loaded with software called "Cerberus."

As The Next Web reported, the software gave him access to the device location, its features, and its contents – all of which he could retrieve when he wanted. The software also allowed him to make use of the phone's camera and microphone so he could spy on the thief.


For 2 weeks, that's exactly what der Meer did. He spied on the thief, tracking his moves, which resulted in the documentary posted above called Find My Phone – almost the namesake of the Apple app "Find My iPhone" used to find one's phone or disable it after being stolen. more

Excellent work, Anthony! ~Kevin