This Week's Spy Headlines

• Your smart TV is spying on you. Here's how to stop it. more
• Your Smart Home Devices Are Spying on You – Now, You Can Spy on Them more
• Your cellphone is spying on you but you can make it stop. more
• Ex-CIA officer Jerry Lee expected to plead guilty to spying for China. more
• Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar's forces have detained two Turkish citizens on charges of spying. more
• Amnesty urges Yemen’s Houthis to free 10 journalists held for spying. more
• Whale found off Norway's coast believed to be spying for Russia. more
• Police Search For Man Caught Spying In Bathroom Stall more
• Family of Palestinian ‘Emirati spy’ disputes Turkish suicide claims. more 
• Despite U.S. spying warnings, Huawei 5G reportedly gets U.K. approval. more
• British Embassy refuses to comment on U.K. spying on Trump campaign. more
• Julian Assange has filed a criminal complaint accusing Ecuadorian embassy of spying on him. more

Colombia's Court - Let's meet at Club Nogal, we know it's not bugged.

Colombia’s constitutional court said on Sunday it had been meeting outside its normal offices citing suspicions that the high court is bugged.

In a pair of messages on Twitter, the court also said it would ask the National Police and the Prosecutor General’s Office if their equipment and personnel are used for possible wiretaps...

Several magistrates confirmed to newspaper El Espectador that they believe that also their phone conversations are being intercepted after several personal conversations were leaked...

“We met in Club Nogal because there are no microphones there,” an anonymous magistrate told the television network. more

I wouldn't bet on it, especially now that you told the press where you meet. ~Kevin

Shooting Where the Sun Don't Shine, or New Cell for Solar Guy

NY - A Rocky Point man secretly video recorded his former co-workers while they were using the bathroom in their Ronkonkoma office, police say.

Michael Evans, 32, allegedly hid a camera in the ladies' room at Trinity Solar in Ronkonkoma last month.

According to prosecutors, the suspect installed the recording device in the restroom on three separate occasions. Authorities say it was plugged into a wall socket and was disguised to look like a phone charger. more

and another Voyeur Films Self...
KY - The Murray Police Department said in a release that officers responded Thursday to Murray High School after staff reported finding a recording device set up in the bathroom of the nurse's station. Police spokesman Sgt. Brant Shutt said the video recorder captured the person putting the device in place. Police arrested 53-year-old Mark Boggess, who is a teacher at the school as well as the track and field coach. He is charged with possession of matter portraying a sexual performance by a minor and voyeurism. more

and The Lollypop Man
UK - An Ipswich lollipop man who secretly filmed a member of staff in a school’s disabled toilets with a mobile phone has been spared an immediate prison sentence... On March 27 staff noticed that a mobile phone was recording from the pocket of a jacket belonging to Thompson which was hanging in the disabled toilets. The phone was taken to the staff office and Thompson was told about the discovery of the phone and asked to leave the school premises. When the phone was checked it was found to contain footage of a staff member using the toilet facilities. more  sing-a-long

and Police Get Moist
FL - The Brevard Sheriff’s Office says a local man used a hidden camera in a cell phone charger to watch women showering in his home. BCSO says he asked his niece to house-sit for him and she brought a friend.  Innvestigators say the women plucked the charger out of the wall, found a memory card in it, put that into a laptop, then saw the footage. Jonathan Moist, 46, is now facing a felony charge of video voyeurism. more
 

Tunnel Spy Traps Himself: "But it worked for El Chapo."

A man in northern Mexico had to be rescued after he accidentally trapped himself in a hole that he dug so he could spy on his former girlfriend in violation of a court order to stay away from her, authorities said Sunday.

The Sonora state attorney general’s office said the 50-year-old man had spent days digging the hole in Puerto Penasco, a town on the Gulf of California, only to become trapped and require assistance to get out...

The newspaper El Universal said the man dug a tunnel under the woman’s house. It said the woman told police that over the course of a week, she had heard scratching noises but assumed the noise was cats.

But when the sound grew louder, she investigated and found her former partner of 14 years trapped below, the report said. She said she ended the relationship because her partner was very jealous. more

Secret Video Surveillance in Hospital Labor and Delivery Rooms Suit

Early this month, 131 patients (and counting) of a women’s hospital in San Diego, California filed a lawsuit against the hospital after discovering that there was secret video surveillance in three labor and delivery operating rooms, recording medical procedures without patients’ consent.

Patients were recorded during Cesarean sections, birth complications, treatment after miscarriage, hysterectomies and other medical procedures from July of 2012 to July of 2013. Approximately 1,800 patients were recorded during this period. The patients are suing the hospital for invasion of privacy, breach of fiduciary duty, negligence, negligent infliction of emotional distress and unlawful recording of confidential information.

In addition to not informing the patients of the hidden cameras, the lawsuit alleges that the hospital was “grossly negligent” in its storage of the recordings. The lawsuit claims that recordings were stored on employee computers, often without password protection and that the hospital “destroyed at least half the recordings but cannot say when or how it deleted those files and cannot confirm that it took the appropriate steps to ensure the files were not otherwise recoverable.” This is not the first lawsuit against the hospital regarding the hidden cameras. more

FutureWatch - Mind Reading - Thought to Speech

Scientists are reporting that they have developed a virtual prosthetic voice, a system that decodes the brain’s vocal intentions and translates them into mostly understandable speech, with no need to move a muscle, even those in the mouth.

“It’s formidable work, and it moves us up another level toward restoring speech” by decoding brain signals, said Dr. Anthony Ritaccio, a neurologist and neuroscientist at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., who was not a member of the research group. more

Mind reading is a topic we keep an eye on here, as it's the future of eavesdropping. ~Kevin

Speak Like You Are Being Recorded

Michael Cohen has disavowed responsibility for some of the crimes to which he has pleaded guilty, privately contending in a recent recorded phone call that he hadn’t evaded taxes and that a criminal charge related to his home-equity line of credit was "a lie."

“You would think that you would have folks, you know, stepping up and saying, ‘You know what, this guy’s lost everything,’” Mr. Cohen said during the March 25 call, recorded without Mr. Cohen’s knowledge by the actor and comedian Tom Arnold...

 Mr. Cohen has himself surreptitiously recorded conversations. During a raid of his home, office and hotel room in April 2018, the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized recordings the lawyer made while talking to journalists, political allies, and others, including Mr. Trump. more

Granny Was A Spy

UK - In 1999, an 87-year-old British woman held a press conference in front of her home to announce that for nearly four decades, she’d worked as a spy for the Soviet Union.

In fact, Melita Norwood was the Soviet Union’s longest-serving British spy...

In 1979, she and her husband—who knew about her spying and disapproved—visited Moscow so the Soviet Union could award her the Order of the Red Banner (she accepted the honorary award, but turned down the financial reward).

How did Norwood get away with it for so long? more

The Bose Knows... legally

According to a recent decision from a federal district court in Illinois, Bose Corp. may monitor and collect information about the music and audio files consumers choose to play through its wireless products and transmit that information to third parties without the consumers’ knowledge. 

Such action does not violate the federal Wiretap Act or the Illinois Eavesdropping Statute.

As such, the Court granted Bose’s motion to dismiss the plaintiff’s class action claims. more

How Real Spies Operate, or Watch the Donut Not the Hole

“The most vulnerable targets are not computers, but people. Human intelligence gathering is an art. It’s about taking advantage of people’s vulnerabilities, no matter what they are, to get the information.”

And the arsenal to do so is said to be wide-ranging, from “IP intercept, ISMI catchers, dumpster diving, listening devices (bugs) and informants, to students at universities, Chinese businesses and their employees.” more
Michael Biggs and Larry Johnson quoted in the article.

“Son, go for it...I will kick your (expletive) (expletive).” An Extortionogrphy Win

FL - The president of Wichita’s teacher union has lost his defamation lawsuit against the makers of hidden-camera videos that captured him admitting to threatening a student with physical violence. 

A federal judge in Florida ruled against Steve Wentz, president of United Teachers of Wichita, and in favor of Project Veritas in connection to videos that were secretly recorded at a Florida hotel bar and a Panera restaurant in Kansas. Project Veritas describes its work as non-profit journalism that investigates and exposes corruption.

In the video, Wentz describes an episode with a former student in which he asked the student to stay after class, locked the door and pulled the shades down.

“You want to kick my (expletive)? You really think I’m a (expletive)?” Wentz says in the video. “Son, go for it. I’ll give you the first shot. But be sure to finish what you start because if you don’t, I guarantee you, I will kick your (expletive) (expletive).” more 

Corporate Security Alert:
Extortionography can be as devastating as audio eavesdropping, especially when targeted against private sector businesses. 

Tip: Conduct searches for electronic surveillance devices (Technical Surveillance Countermeasures, aka TSCM) on a regular basis. At the very least, have a written Recording in the Workplace Policy in effect.

James McCord, 93 - RIP

James McCord, a retired CIA employee who was convicted as a conspirator in the Watergate burglary and later linked the 1972 break-in to the White House in revelations that helped end the presidency of Richard Nixon, died June 15, 2017, at his home in Douglassville, Pa. He was 93...

McCord served in the CIA for 19 years, including as security chief at the Langley, Va., headquarters, before his supporting, at times sensational role in the events that precipitated the first resignation of a U.S. president.

He had retired from the spy agency and was privately employed as head of security for the Committee for the Re-Election of the President — commonly called CREEP — when he became entangled in a scheme to burglarize and bug the Democratic national headquarters at the Watergate building in Washington.

McCord had once taught a college course on how to protect buildings from intrusions, and he helped lead the operation. more

David Fechheimer, 76 - RIP

David Fechheimer, a budding flower child of the 1960s and aspiring English professor who was spurred overnight by the fictional gumshoe Sam Spade to switch careers and become one of the nation’s leading private investigators, died on Tuesday in Redwood City, Calif. He was 76...

“I called Pinkerton and asked if they needed someone who had no experience and a beard,” Mr. Fechheimer said. “To my surprise, they said they needed someone with a beard that day. I thought I would do it a couple of weeks as a goof. It looked like fun, being Sam Spade. Pinkerton put me under cover on the docks, and I was hooked. I never went back to school.”

...He later joined the practice of the celebrated private eye Hal Lipset (famous for secreting a microphone in a martini olive) and opened his own office in 1976. more

Spycam Victim Fights Back

Singapore - NUS guy who filmed girl in shower suspended for a semester & asked to write apology letter.

Victim fights back on social media.

Two separate petitions have been started on behalf of a National University of Singapore student, who was a victim of an act of voyeurism while residing on campus housing.

The two petitions — one with 2,502 signatures and the other with 873 signatures (as of April 21, 5.30am) — were started to call for more to be done for the victim, as well as making punishments harsher as a form of deterrence. more

The USB Spycam - Widely Used - Know What it Looks Like

FL - A Titusville man used a hidden recording device to make videos of several people showering and using the bathroom at his home without their consent, according to the Brevard County Sheriff's Office. 

One of the two realized the USB charger in Moist's bathroom was suspicious and recalled using it to charge her phone when she housesat for him in the past. The device was inspected and an SD memory card was found inside, according to arrest reports.  more