Anatomy of an FBI Vehicle Tracking Device

The FBI's use of GPS vehicle tracking devices is becoming a contentious privacy issue in the courts, with the Obama administration seeking Supreme Court approval for its use of the devices without a warrant, and a federal civil rights lawsuit targeting the Justice Department for tracking the movements of an Arab-American student.

In the midst of this legal controversy, Threat Level decided to take a look at the inside of one of the devices — which are generally custom-made for law enforcement. Working with the teardown artists at iFixit, we examined a device an environmental activist discovered on her vehicle in 2005, which she recently provided to us.

What follows is iFixit's analysis of the first-ever dissection of an FBI vehicle tracker. (more)

WPEC Reports - Spying on you: Cell phone snoops

 

Our deepest secrets are often told during cell phone conversations. Could you imagine if someone would have constant access to your personal information by tapping into your cell phone and listening to your private conversations?

Chai Chaiyanan and his fellow college students are chatting, not knowing danger is about to walk by. A man swiped his smart phone. What the stranger is about to do is nothing short of spying. He's planting a special application that can turn Chai's phone against him, his every move monitored by a mobile spy app.

Turns out the scenario is not a real one and Chai knew he was being spied on. But FIU technology professor Faisal Kaleem, who posed for CBS 12 as our bad guy, says it can happen to you as long as you leave your phone unattended.

Kaleem is talking about powerful apps like Flexispy and others, that once secretly installed are hidden in your phone and untraceable to you.

Room bugging is one function. The bad guy calls the victim's cell and it instantly activates the phone like a microphone. The bad guy can monitor our conversation and the phone appears to be off. (more) (antidote)

Flash: World's Thinest Cell Phone to be announced tomorrow.

via gizmag.com...
Researchers from the Human Media Lab at Canada's Queen's University have created a fully-functioning floppy E-Ink smartphone, which they also refer to as a paper computer. Like its thicker, rigid-bodied counterparts, the Paperphone can do things like making and receiving calls, storing e-books, and playing music. Unlike them, however, it conforms to the shape of its user's pocket or purse, and can even be operated through bending actions.

"This computer looks, feels and operates like a small sheet of interactive paper," said its creator, Roel Vertegaal, who is also the director of the Human Media Lab. "You interact with it by bending it into a cell phone, flipping the corner to turn pages, or writing on it with a pen." ...

The technology is the result of a collaboration between Queen's University and Arizona State University, and will be officially presented on May 10th at the CHI 2011 conference in Vancouver.

"This is the future," said Vertegaal. "Everything is going to look and feel like this within five years." (more)

Santa Eyes Help Sanitize Bad Guys - UWB Radar Sees Through Walls

 There’s a new tool available for soldiers, special forces, and police officers who must surprise a high-value terrorist or enact a hostage rescue: a one-man backpack radar that can see through walls. 

The radar technology is a few years old, but the device — the Prism 200c system from Cambridge Consultants — fits into a small pack and weighs less than 15 pounds. It provides data on the location and movement of people inside a room or building on a handheld device, meaning only a single operator is needed. That’s a big advantage in the field; previous systems were heavier and required a second person with a laptop computer to receive the data. (more) (videos)

Security Fail #100 - The Secured Ladder

Seen in my travels...

When you want to keep your office ladder where it belongs you lock it up, right. A sturdy bicycle lock should do the trick. Smart. 

In fact, you might want to keep the bicycle lock attached to the ladder so you can lock it up wherever you happen to be using it. Oh, very smart! 

Electrical conduit in the maintenance closet makes a sturdy anchor. Nobody is going to risk getting electrocuted sawing through electrical conduit to steal a crummy ladder. Wow, very, very smart!! 

And, we'll attach the lock to the conduit with velcro in case we lose the key... (Blammmmmpppp!) FAIL.

Is that an Atomic Clock in your pocket, or are you just hot to see me?

Atomic clocks are one of those things that most of us have probably always thought of as being big, ultra-expensive, and therefore only obtainable by well-funded research institutes. While that may have been the case at one time, a team of researchers have recently developed an atomic clock that they say is one one-hundredth the size – and that uses one one-hundredth the power – of previous commercially-available products. It's called the Chip Scale Atomic Clock (CSAC), and it can be yours for about US$1,500 ... a little more than what you might pay for a regular clock, but not bad for one that varies by less than a millionth of a second per day. (more)

Update: Lyon Realty former CEO begins jail sentence

Michael Lyon, the former CEO of Lyon Real Estate, began serving a jail sentence Saturday after pleading guilty to felony eavesdropping... Under a plea agreement with the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office, Lyon was sentenced to one year in county jail followed by four years of formal probation. Lyon is serving time at Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center. According to the booking record, his scheduled release is Nov. 4, 2011. (more)

Abbottabad - How did they do it?

Revelations that American spies monitored Osama bin Laden from a safehouse for months before last Sunday's special forces raid have caused further consternation inside Pakistan, where the military is already fighting angry criticism.

CIA agents sequestered in a rented house conducted extensive surveillance on Bin Laden's hideout using an arsenal of high-tech surveillance equipment including telephoto lenses, eavesdropping equipment and radars to detect possible escape tunnels. (more)

One More Step Closer to Mind Eavesdropping

Less spooky than it sounds, but a concept which could be applied to more than just Hello Kitty ears...

(Japanese English from their web site.)

People think that our body has limitation, however just imagine if we have organs that doesn’t exist, moreover we can control that new body? We created new human’s organs that use brain wave sensor. (more)

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“Neurowear” has developed a product called “necomimi” which takes brain signals from our emotions and turns them into visible actions rendering them in the form of wiggling cat ears.

Advertising it as a new communication tool that “augments the human body and ability”, the website introduces the product as a fashion item and gadget that uses brainwaves and other biosensors. Designed obviously for the cutesy Japanese market with its cat ear shape (neco and mimi being the words for cat and ear) the ears mimic a cat’s ears as they wiggle and rise with the wearers emotional state, for example rising in anticipation of eating a delicious cookie, or drop down when relaxed. (more)

Ok, stop laughing. Can't you see a version of this being mandated in classrooms so teachers can tell at a glance who's not paying attention? :)

Company Customer Database Hacked? Kicker... it's a password company!

Password management system LastPass has reset users' master passwords (1.25 million of them according to security expert Brian Krebs) as a precaution following the discovery of a possible hack attack against its systems...

The worst case scenario is that miscreants might have swiped password hashes, a development that leaves users who selected easier-to-guess passphrases at risk of brute-force dictionary attacks. Once uncovered, these login credentials might be used to obtain access to all the login credentials stored through the service, as LastPass explains in a blog post. (more)

World's Smallest Video Camera - Less than 1mm in diameter!

Medigus has developed the world's smallest video camera at just 0.039-inches (0.99 mm) in diameter. The Israeli company's second-gen model (a 1.2 mm / 0.047-inch diameter camera was unveiled in 2009) has a dedicated 0.66x0.66 mm CMOS sensor from TowerJazz that captures images at 45K resolution (approximately 220 x 220 pixels) and no, it's not destined for use in tiny mobile phones or covert surveillance devices, instead the camera is designed for medical endoscopic procedures in hard to reach regions of the human anatomy. (more)

Computer Store Caught Spyware Bugging Computer They Sold

A computer rental store has been caught spying on customers through their webcams, court papers reveal.
 

Rental chain Aaron’s installed secret software on laptops that let it track the keystrokes, screenshots and even webcam images of clients as they used their computers at home, it is claimed.
 

Under surveillance: Rental chain Aaron's is alleged to have installed secret spying software on laptops that let it take photos of customers at home

A Wyoming couple are suing the rental giant, which has 1,679 stores, for breach of privacy after they discovered covert images taken of them using their rented laptop.

Court papers allege that Aaron’s told police that they install the software on all their rental computers.
 

Brian and Crystal Byrd learned that snooping software had been installed on their laptop when an Aaron’s store manager came to their home and wrongly accused them of not paying for the computer.

The manager tried to repossess the laptop and showed them a picture of Mr Byrd using the computer, which had been taken by the machine’s webcam. (more)

Spybusters.com History Page Now Assigned Reading at Harvard

(You know you are in a tough course at Harvard when your professor uses his initials as his email address.)

Scott O. Bradner teaches Security, Privacy, and Usability (CSCI E-170) at Harvard University. One of his reading assignments for this Spring 2011 course is a history I compiled about The Great Seal Bug. I am honored. 

Hey, does this mean I can say I am a teaching assistant at Harvard!? Probably not, but if you like bugs, spies and government espionage, this fascinating story really is a must read. It starts off like this...

"In 1946, Soviet school children presented a two foot wooden replica of the Great Seal of the United States to Ambassador Averell Harriman. The Ambassador hung the seal in his office in Spaso House (Ambassador's residence). 

During George F. Kennan's ambassadorship in 1952 (six years later!), a secret technical surveillance countermeasures (TSCM) inspection discovered that the seal contained a microphone and a resonant cavity which could be stimulated from an outside radio signal." (more)

360º Video Surveillance: Cool... on an iPhone 4, VERY COOL!

Watch the video first.
Use your mouse to move what you see to the left or right.

"The GoPano micro is a lens for the iPhone 4 to make 360º panoramic videos! Just snap the lens to your iPhone 4 and press record to make cool interactive 360º videos. Use it to record all the action of your favorite sport, record your next meeting in 360º or just as a fun toy for the summer.

The GoPano micro will record everything around you simultaneously. You can go back to the recorded video and choose to view any perspective, any angle at any point in time. The GoPano app allows you to upload your 360º video onto our web platform and share 360º videos with your friends. You can watch 360º videos uploaded by others in the app or on the web site. (the GoPano lens records everything simultaneously and not just the scene on the screen, you can pan & zoom in/out anywhere in your recorded video)."

Now, imagine the uses for this in the security field.

• Surveillance - Set it and forget it.

• Technical Surveillance (TS) - Comparison of room items and locations upon completion of installations.

• Technical Surveillance Countermeasures (TSCM) - Comparison of room items and locations upon re-inspection.

• Crime scene documentation.

• Event management documentation.

You get the idea and I am sure you can come up with more.

Problem... You can't buy a GoPano for your iPhone 4, yet. But you can help this project get off the ground for a $50. contribution and get one free once they are manufactured. (more)

SpyCam Story #608 - SpyCam to the Rescue!

The state has revoked a Delaware County nursing-care facility's license following the arrest this month of three workers on allegations that they abused a patient...

The three "care managers" were charged with taunting and physically abusing Lois McCallister, a 78-year-old dementia patient, for 12 minutes and blocking her door when she tried to escape.

McCallister's family contacted Quadrangle administrators in March after she complained of being punched and slapped, but said they were told the allegations were products of McCallister's dementia. The relatives then installed a camera disguised as a clock in her room and turned over the resulting video to Haverford police. (more)