Eavesdropping to the Rescue

Low-Frequency Sound Can Reveal That a Tornado Is On Its Way
You can't hear it, but this sound can reveal that a tornado is on its way...

There's another sound, however, that accompanies tornadoes that we can't hear. It is so low in frequency it is beyond the realms of human hearing, but it could offer a way of providing earlier, more accurate warnings of these destructive storms.

With winds that can reach up to 483km/h (300 mph), the storms that produce tornadoes generate low frequency sound waves – or infrasound – that can travel for hundreds of miles.

Eavesdropping on these infrasound signals may not be able to prevent tornadoes from flattening towns and tossing cars into the air like toys, but it could lead to a new type of early warning system that might save lives. more

Controversial Clothes Hook Spy Cameras for Sale on Amazon

Spy cameras disguised as clothes hooks are for sale on Amazon, despite the firm being sued over the gadgets. One clothes hook camera listing seen by the BBC features a picture of the device positioned in a bathroom.

A US judge recently ruled the retail giant must face a case brought by a woman who alleges she was filmed in the bathroom using a clothes hook camera purchased on Amazon.

A privacy expert has said the misuse of such devices may break British laws. Amazon declined to comment on the issue.

The US legal action against the company was brought by a foreign exchange student and aspiring actress... more

Helpful links...
Hidden Camera Detectors – Do They Work?
Spycam Detection Training for Businesses and Individuals (with Spanish, Korean and English closed captions)

Eavesdropping Super Hearing Pucks

Have you ever wanted eavesdropping super hearing powers? Admit it. We all have. Corporate espionage types find it especially useful as well.

There are dozens of ways to bug a room to hear confidential conversations. However, most of these ways requires access to the room to plant the bug. Modern science to the rescue (if you are the bugger). Since about half of corporate espionage is an insider issue this is a big problem for corporate security directors too.

Everyone from the office staff just outside of the boss’s office, to the Machiavellian executive in the adjacent office who wants that promotion, desperately wants to hear behind those closed doors. Now they can. Anybody can. Easily. Covertly. Cheaply... more

Philadelphia Lawyer Advice: Fighting Accusations of Corporate Espionage

Summary of the Spodek Law Group blog post...

Getting accused of corporate espionage can be scary. It can feel like your career or even freedom is on the line. But with the right legal help, you can get through this. In this article, we’ll break down what corporate espionage is, what the consequences can be, and most importantly—your defense options...

What Should You Do if Accused?
First, don’t panic. Just because you’re accused doesn’t mean you’ll be convicted. About half of economic espionage cases end in plea bargains or dismissals. With an experienced legal team, you can avoid the worst outcomes...

• Don’t try to handle this alone. 
• Remain silent. 
• Act quickly.
• Do comply with orders. 
• Watch what you say. 
• Begin gathering evidence.
• Consider independent analysis. 
• Look closely at the motives. 
• Highlight your character. If you have a long career with no prior offenses, that works in your favor. Judges go easier on first-time offenders. more

The Too-Weird-to-Be-Fiction Spy Story

It feels like a script you’d find on the over-piled desk of some harried Hollywood agent: MAGA-style Republican, while toiling for years as a U.S. diplomat and ambassador, secretly leads a double life, allegedly spying for the Cuban government for more than four decades — completely undetected.

Except that if true, the allegations against Victor Manuel Rocha, a career foreign service officer accused of serving as an agent of the Cuban regime since 1981, have real-life — and dangerous — implications. After Rocha was indicted on Monday on espionage charges, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said, “This action exposes one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the U.S. government by a foreign agent.” ...

What surprised you the most about this arrest?

It’s really an amplification of what I thought: the Cubans are really good at espionage. Their intelligence agency, which goes by the acronym DGI, is incredibly effective. And they take the long game. more

Gemini (AI) Launched - Spying Will Never be the Same

It has been in the wild one day.
Imagine where it will be in a year.

 "Analyze this satellite photo. What do you see? How is it important? What are the vulnerabilities? How can I get information from that building? Analyze their networks. What are the vulnerabilities? Design an attack plan." ...all in less than a minute.

:( Update... Google’s new Gemini AI model is getting a mixed reception after its big debut yesterday, but users may have less confidence in the company’s tech or integrity after finding out that the most impressive demo of Gemini was pretty much faked. more

Updater's Update... In a social media post made after this article was published, Google DeepMind’s VP of Research Oriol Vinyals showed a bit more of how “Gemini was used to create” the video. “The video illustrates what the multimodal user experiences built with Gemini could look like. We made it to inspire developers.” ... Perhaps I will eat crow when, next week, the AI Studio with Gemini Pro is made available to experiment with.

I'll stick with, "Imagine where it will be in a year."

FutureWatch: Meta Mind Reading

Meta’s mind reader - Meta wants to get to know its users inside and out.

The company filed a patent application for in-ear “spectroscopy” for “cognitive load estimation.” To put it simply, this uses an in-ear device to measure a user’s brain signals to better understand a user’s brain activity...

By understanding a user’s cognitive load, Meta can learn a lot about a user’s mental state, said Jake Maymar, VP of Innovation at The Glimpse Group. It’s essentially a stress tester, he said, indicating how exactly their mind is reacting to the content in front of them.

But with a company like Meta, “it’s all about advertising,” Maymar said. As you use the device, “It gets to know you. Your device starts to really understand you as a person and can customize these experiences for you, so they really appeal to you.” ... these ads will likely target you closer than just being placed in your favorite games, said Maymar. more

The future of surveillance is mind reading. We've been minding it for years.

Clandestine Ops: Mission Permission Submission

Clandestine online operations now require sign-off by senior officials.

Following a controversy over the Pentagon’s use of clandestine information operations, the U.S. military has eliminated dozens of false online personas it created in recent years and has curtailed the use of such operations overseas, according to senior defense officials.

Clandestine online operations now require sign-off by senior Pentagon officials, the CIA and the State Department, according to the officials, who spoke Monday on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. more

Send Your Name to Jupiter’s Moon Europa

NASA's Europa Clipper will investigate Jupiter’s moon Europa to determine whether there are places below Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, that could support life. 

The mission’s detailed investigation of Europa will help scientists better understand the astrobiological potential for habitable worlds beyond our planet.

Join the mission and have your name stenciled on a microchip that will be attached to the spacecraft as it travels 1.8 billion miles to explore Europa. Sign up to send your name on NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft by Sunday, Dec. 31. HERE

Weirdest Spy Story of 2023?

NY Attorney Accuses Ben Affleck & Matt Damon of Stalking and Bugging Her Home

A New York attorney is suing actors Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, accusing the besties of stalking her and bugging her home to use private details of her life in their movies.

The attorney is hiding her identity as she moves forward with the bizarre case. The Daily Mail got a hold of court documents that claim the actors also hacked her devices and left the attorney in fear of being kidnapped and raped... She found a bug, saw an owl-shaped camera pointed at her home, woke to find a man in her bedroom and saw a man pointing a telescope at her after an alert that her emails had been hacked, according to the suit.

Also named in the suit are Affleck’s brother, Casey Affleck, his wife, singer/actress Jennifer Lopez, actor Kevin Smith, and disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. The suit is also targeting Dimension Films, Disney, Lionsgate, Warner Bros., and Paramount Pictures, who she is accusing of negligence for allowing harassment and plagiarism to take place. more

Court Clerk's Son Charged with Wiretapping

SC - The son of the Colleton County court clerk involved in the Alex Murdaugh case has been charged with wiretapping, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) announced this week. Former Colleton County information technology director Jeffrey Colton Hill, 34, was charged Tuesday and then booked at the detention center, SLED officials said... Hill is the son of Colleton County Court Clerk Rebecca Hill, who was recently accused of jury tampering by convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh’s lawyers. Murdaugh officially filed a motion for a new trial in the murders of his wife and son last month. more

Corporate Espionage: Nvidia Senior Employee Accidentally Reveals Confidential Files

Nvidia sued after senior employee accidentally showed off confidential files taken from previous employer during a video meeting... Nvidia is in hot water after one of its software engineers accidentally let a rival company—and his former employer—in on a secret: that he stole its top-secret research and took it to the trillion-dollar tech giant. more

Recent Spy News

Two Palestinians were murdered in the city of Tulkarm and another was murdered in Jenin in the West Bank on Friday under suspicion of spying for Israel... A Palestinian mob can be seen in the videos abusing the bodies and hanging them on an electric pole as crowds surrounded the area, screaming "You traitors!" N12 reported. more

Ukrainian Man Sentenced to 12 Years for Spying for Russia... was found guilty of providing information to the Russian military and sentenced to 12 years in prison, the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) said in a Telegram post. An investigation found the man had sent voice messages to Russian forces in the area with information about the location of Ukrainian military units, equipment, weapons storehouses, military bases and headquarters. more

India... right before he was arrested by Gujarat’s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) for allegedly spying for Pakistan, Tarapur-based shopkeeper Labhshankar Maheshwari was in conversation with his neighbours. He was telling them that he would be getting his phone back that day, after a nearly three-month investigation, when an ATS vehicle pulled up... Maheshwari was then arrested for “waging war against the Indian state”. more

India... Two former army officers were convicted and sentenced for jail terms over their collaboration with RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) and other anti-Pakistan actions, said the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) on Saturday. According to details, the sentencing came under the Official Secrets Act 1923 and the Army Act 1952 on charges of sedition, working against the interests of national institutions and spying for a foreign agency, as Adil Farooq Raja – who served as major – and Haider Raza Mehdi – a former captain – faced court martial. more

A U.S. court held an extraordinary hearing on November 16th, where a judge carefully considered a lawsuit against the CIA and former CIA director Mike Pompeo for their alleged role in spying on American attorneys and journalists who visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. more

South Korea says Russian support likely enabled North Korea to successfully launch a spy satellite. more

Poland said Wednesday it had charged 16 foreign individuals with spying for Russia, for allegedly preparing acts of sabotage and gathering information on military equipment deliveries to Ukraine. more

Two suspects have been detained in Istanbul on suspicion of “military and political espionage” for Israeli intelligence. The suspects contacted Palestinian software engineer Omar A. on the pretext of doing business in Turkiye, it was reported on Thursday. more

A man detained in Latvia on suspicion of spying for Russia has died in detention after developing sudden health problems, prison authorities said. more

WIMBLEDON finalist David Nalbandian is being sued by his model ex-girlfriend for sexual harassment and stalking after allegedly installing hidden cameras in the air conditioning. Araceli Torrado, 29, made the complaint against her former partner Nalbandian, 41, accompanying it with a video in which she discovers a camera allegedly set up by the Argentinian... The installation of the camera - which a judge ruled was placed there by Nalbandian - is not a crime as the apartment was shared by the couple. more

North Korea Spy Rocket Explodes

North Korea rocket explodes during spy satellite launch, and meteor hunters caught it on camera... The first stage of a North Korean rocket apparently exploded Tuesday (Nov. 21) during a purported spy satellite launch, a new video suggests. A camera at South Korea's Yonsei University, usually used for tracking meteorsor shooting stars, showed the first stage of the North Korean Chollima-1 rocket appearing to erupt and spread debris, Reuters reported Friday (Nov. 24). more

Previously on the Security Scrapbook.

Baby Monitor or Bug? You decide...

In a recent post on the popular subreddit "Am I the A**hole?" (AITA), one distraught user, u/dumblonde7, sought the community's judgment on a delicate family situation.

The post, titled "AITA for 'snooping' on my baby camera?" details a troubling incident involving the user's mother-in-law and a revelation that unfolded through the lens of a baby monitor.

The author recounts receiving a notification on the baby camera in their child's crib and deciding to check in.

The unexpected discovery was a conversation between the mother-in-law and her husband, during which the mother-in-law was allegedly spreading falsehoods about a previous conversation she had with the author.

The user confronted her mother-in-law about the incident, leading to a heated disagreement with the mother-in-law expressing discontent over the perceived invasion of privacy.

The Redditor wrote: "When I opened [the baby camera], my mother-in-law was talking about me to my husband (he was standing up for me of course). She was lying, to my husband, about a conversation she and I had. I confronted her about what she said, and she is mad I was 'snooping.' AITA?" more