Pegasus Spyware Maker NSO Avoiding a TKO

Will spyware maker NSO Group's struggles reduce use of its eavesdropping tech? Critics doubt it.

Embattled Israeli spyware vendor NSO Group announced a major reorganization Sunday — replacing its longtime CEO and laying off roughly 100 of its 700 employees — but experts who track the growing trade in surveillance technology say that’s unlikely to curtail deployment of the company’s technology designed to secretly monitor its targets...

More broadly, however, NSO may serve as a cautionary tale for the myriad other spyware vendors around the world hawking their wares. “Spyware tech is a risky investment,” Scott-Railton said. “Investors don’t usually line up to get wiped out.” more

In Other Corporate Spy News...

Enterprise giant Oracle is facing a fresh privacy class action claim in the U.S.

The suit, which was filed Friday as a 66-page complaint in the Northern District of California, alleges the tech giant's "worldwide surveillance machine" has amassed detailed dossiers on some five billion people, accusing the company and its adtech and advertising subsidiaries of violating the privacy of the majority of the people on Earth. more

Demise of a Corporate Spy

Shares of Pegasystems have dropped 65% since the start of the year and are unlikely to recover.

(Spoiler Alert... Appian Awarded $2.036 Billion in Damages Against Pegasystems Inc.) 

Appian, for investors who are unfamiliar, is a fellow SaaS vendor that competes in the business process management (BPM) space and also emphasizes low-code software. Appian sued and won a corporate espionage case against Pegasystems. 

In a nutshell, Pegasystems was found guilty of trade secret appropriation: it hired an employee of a government contractor to provide it with access to Appian software. This contractor then passed information (including video recordings of the Appian development environment) to Pegasystems employees. Pegasystems' CEO, Alan Trefler, was also found to have participated in meetings with this contractor present... Appian won a $2.036 billion judgment in its favor. more

Does your company have a Surreptitious Recording in the Workplace policy? If not, read Surreptitious Workplace Recording — and what to do about it.

A Warning Worth Repeating — iPhone's Spying Feature

iPhone’s ‘spying’ feature lets you eavesdrop on conversations without people knowing...

The Apple iPhone is packed full of secret tools and tricks. But one feature is possibly the sneakiest of them all.

The iPhone's 'Live Listen' feature was originally intended to help people with hearing difficulties better manage conversations in noisy environments.

It lets you listen to a live audio feed through your AirPod earphones using the iPhone's microphone from a distance.

However, if used correctly, it means you could listen in on any conversation from outside a room without anybody else knowing. All you'd have to do is hide your iPhone somewhere in the room. more

Apple AirTag: All Things Technical

Adam Catley has done extensive research into the inner workings of the Apple AirTag. He even has a few things to say about the security of the device...

Privacy Concerns (brief summary below)

While it is possible to use other products similar to AirTag to track people, they cannot benefit from the unmatched global coverage of the FindMy network. This makes the AirTag a more appealing device to people with malicious intent and so privacy features are important.

Let’s look at how reality compares to the claims Apple makes about the AirTag privacy features when the known security issues are considered.

• Sound alerts are infrequent and unlikely
• Speaker can be disabled
• Location can be tracked for the whole day
• Location can be spoofed
• “AirTag Found Moving With You” alert can be avoided
• Location history could be decrypted

more

Spybuster Tip #823 - The Car Thief Cell Phone Trick

Another reason not to leave personal belongings inside your vehicle. Memphis police say car thieves are using their cell phone cameras to look through tinted windows.

During a crime forum in the Cooper-Young neighborhood, Crump station officers said it was a new tool being used by the bad guys looking for items to steal.

They told the group it doesn’t matter how dark the tint is on your windows; when you put a cell phone in camera mode up to the windows, you can see right through them.

We (WREG-TV) put a cell up to a back window; sure enough, you could see everything in the backseat. more

Extra Credit: The reverse of this technique is how spy cameras, hidden behind black plastic, can see you when you can't see them. Learn more.

Video Door Bells Get Their Own TV Show

Wanda Sykes is knocking on the door of syndication with a new series that features videos taken from Ring doorbells.

The comedian is to host Ring Nation, a new twist on the popular clip show genre, from MGM Television, Live PD producer Big Fish Entertainment and Ring.

The series, which will launch on September 26, will feature viral videos shared by people from their video doorbells and smart home cameras.

It’s a television take on a genre that has been increasingly going viral on social media.

The series will feature clips such as neighbors saving neighbors, marriage proposals, military reunions and silly animals. more

David B. Watts - New Book - Shines the Light on a Serious Subject

A Chilling Tale of Child Sex Trafficking in Modern America

As if ripped from today’s headlines, Sex and Souls for Sale is a relevant read. No less a public menace than illegal drugs—nor any other kind of organized crime—child sex trafficking is a fact of life and needs to be discussed and exposed. While difficult to comprehend, it is found right here in modern America.

Private Investigators “Mack” Mackey and Bob Higgins are once again on the case as they thread the needle between law enforcement and a Russian crime family.

Our principal characters are flawed: a corrupt police lieutenant, a conman and extortionist with a chip on his shoulder, and his girlfriend, a reformed drug addict with a mysteriously checkered past. All three dig deep within themselves to rescue the children.

Come along on this perilous trip through the criminal underworld set in the New York/New Jersey Area and learn about this shocking crime: child sex trafficking.
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Author David B. Watts started in life as a young police detective in the turbulent sixties, which launched him into a four-decade career in the private sector as a licensed private investigator. His cases ranged from murder, fraud, and embezzlement to major corporate security issues. David has been active in several investigative professional organizations and is respected among his peers.

Other books by David B. Watts:

• Accidental P.I. – A Private Investigator’s Fifty-year Search for the Facts.

• Loose Ends – Murder in the New Jersey Suburbs.

• The Dementia Conspiracy – Where Crime and Corporate Interests Meet.

David’s books are available on Amazon and Barnes & Nobel. He and his wife, Linda, are celebrating their sixtieth anniversary in 2022. They have lived in rural Hunterdon County, New Jersey for fifty-two years. 

David can be reached at TraffickedUSA@gmail.com

Korean YouTuber Hailed As A Hero For Catching “Spycam Perverts”

...And Turning Them In To The Police... 

The problem of the ‘spycam epidemic’ in Korea is nothing new. For years, it has been debated over by activists and politicians, but it continues to victimize folks whereas perpetrators use the footage to promote to others and even blackmail victims. It has gotten to the purpose the place many lists of tips for vacationers going to Korea typically emphasize vigilance towards spycams, as it’s an uncomfortably frequent prevalence, particularly for ladies.

Now, a Korean YouTuber is taking issues into his personal arms. As reported by Korea-based freelance journalist Raphael Rashid, this native hero has proven he has a knack for locating males who’re illegally filming ladies. He typically catches them after which arms them over to the police, even when the boys beg for mercy. more

BTW, the on-line video course SpyCam Detection Training has Korean subtitles.

Indoor Optical Fiber Eavesdropping Approach and its Avoidance

Eavesdropping exploit found in fibre-optic cables

Researchers in China have created a new technique for long-distance eavesdropping by tapping into fibre-optic cables, which are prominently used in networks across the globe.Abstract: The optical fiber network has become a worldwide infrastructure. In addition to the basic functions in telecommunication, its sensing ability has attracted more and more attention. more

In this paper, we discuss the risk of household fiber being used for eavesdropping and demonstrate its performance in the lab. 

Using a 3-meter tail fiber in front of the household optical modem, voices of normal human speech can be eavesdropped by a laser interferometer and recovered 1.1 km away. 

The detection distance limit and system noise are analyzed quantitatively. We also give some practical ways to prevent eavesdropping through household fiber. more

Eavesdropping via fiber optics is actually far from being new, as anyone who dealt with Mason & Hanger last century could tell you. In fact, we were alerting our clients to fiber optic eavesdropping microphones on our thank you mugs...

"Spy Trick #409 - Fiber Optic Microphone"
1994 - 1999
Number made - 323

Be Careful What You Fish For

The U.S. accused a Chinese MIT professor of spying. Now cleared, he helped discover what may be the ‘best semiconductor material ever found’

A team of researchers has discovered what the Massachusetts Institute of Technology calls the “best semiconductor material ever found,” even better than silicon, the material used in just about every computer chip on earth.

In July, scientists from MIT, the University of Houston, and other institutions announced they had proved that cubic boron arsenide performs better than silicon at conducting heat and electricity, opening up new possibilities for smaller and faster chips. The team includes China-born professor Gang Chen, the former head of MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, who was the subject of a yearlong investigation by the Department of Justice before the agency dropped espionage charges because of lack of evidence. more

Surveillance Documentary: Theo Anthony on All Light, Everywhere

Anthony follows the bliss of two hawkers of cutting-edge surveillance technology. 

In Scottsdale, Arizona, taking corporate assertions of transparency at their word, he is given a PR-guided tour of the headquarters of Axon Enterprise, Inc, formerly known as Taser, manufacturer of electroshock weapons and now runaway leader in the deployment of police body cameras. He tests the tech (and its limits) in a mall, captures the police’s internal rationale for body cameras in a training session, and – with the Axon PR now in overdrive – stages a multi-cam Axon-branded arrest scenario in the desert.

Back home in Baltimore, Anthony also attends to the efforts of Ross McNutt, president of Persistent Surveillance Systems, to sell citizens on his “God’s-eye view” plane-mounted live-feed spy cams – somewhat belatedly, since the tech had previously been deployed in 2016 without disclosure even to the mayor. Now he presents a genial face in community liaison meetings, offering blandishments about providing an “unbiased witness” in “troubled cities”. As Anthony’s voiceover says over an Axon promotional video, “It feels like watching a corporation dream out loud”: the claim is objectivity, the dream is omniscience, the end game is power. One thinks of Jeremy Bentham’s all-seeing panopticon, but also of Naomi Klein’s insights in No Logo into corporate aspirations of weightless, unburdened power. more

Journalist Vitaliy Portnikov Finds a Bed Bug

At home in Lvov, journalist Vitaliy Portnikov, presenter of a program about Espresso and Radio Liberty, found a listening device – a voice recorder with the ability to record for a long time.

About this in facebook Deputy Mykola Kniazhitsky said, reports Ukrinform.

“Journalist Vitaliy Portnikov, presenter of a program on Espresso and Radio Liberty, found a listening device at home in Lviv. This is a voice recorder with the ability to record for a long time. The police were called. They were quickly on the spot. do not know who and what purpose this device has installed: our services, foreign or criminals,” said the politician.

Vitaly Portnikov commented on the incident for “Espresso“: “Today, while cleaning the apartment in which I was located at the end of February, when the war started, I found a recording device under the bed. There was an inventory number on the device. I notified the police of my find so they could investigate the incident.”

Vitaliy Portnikov is a well-known Ukrainian journalist, publicist and political commentator. Works with Radio Liberty and Espresso. more

Wiretap: Listen to What Witness Tampering Sounds Like

...Levy writes in his greivance, “On 6/17/14, my office’s wiretap intercepted a conversation during which Galgano, who was trying a case in Westchester County, gave his Office Manager Stefani Capolongo directions, both in a phone call and via text messages (which he later deleted), describing how a Westchester County prospective juror, known to her, should respond to voir dire questions so as to deceive the DA and court as to her partiality. 

Galgano further directed Capolongo to make sure no one talks to anyone, including the police, a directive that was followed because no one did ultimately cooperate with the police.”

At the time, Galgano was the subject to a wiretap on his phone, for tampering and attempting to bribe a witness in the Putnam County rape case. more

U.S. Government Gets More Aggressive to Curb Espionage at Universities

The U.S. Governmental Accountability Office (GAO) thinks the FBI and other agencies are not doing enough to address the espionage threat on U.S. university campuses. 

It issued a report, “Enforcement Agencies Should Better Leverage Information to Target Efforts Involving U.S. Universities” on June 14, 2022, urging the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Commerce to step up their outreach efforts to address the threat. 

Commerce, DHS, and FBI have all concurred with GAO’s recommendations. As a result, U.S. colleges and universities to face yet another organizational risk: an increase in campuses visits by export control and law enforcement agents. more

Facebook May Owe You Money... due to wiretapping laws they transgressed.

Facebook's $90 Million Data Tracking Settlement: Find Out How Much You Could Be Owed

The deadline to find out if you're eligible for a payout is Sept. 22.

Were you on Facebook in 2010 or 2011? 

If so, you may be eligible for part of a class-action settlement from the social media giant stemming from a lawsuit accusing it of tracking users across other websites.

The plaintiffs in the case, Davis v. Facebook, allege the company was aware it violated privacy, communications and wiretap laws -- and its own contract -- by tracking logged-out users.

In 2020, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals determined that Facebook profiting from the sale of users' data constituted a breach of privacy that caused economic harm. When the Supreme Court declined to review the case in March 2021, settlement negotiations began. more