Notes From ‘Watchers’ of Spy Kim Philby Made Public

A new exhibition at the National Archives in London will reveal the extent of MI5 operation to expose the British double agent...

Secret surveillance of Britain’s ­notorious double agent, Kim Philby, made public for the first time in archived documents, reveals how keenly the Security Service wanted to confirm or disprove early suspicions of his high-level treachery.

In daily bulletins submitted to MI5 in November 1951, undercover operatives describe how Philby, codenamed Peach, moved about London...

Philby, who later worked for the Observer as a Middle East correspondent, has been called the “Third Man” because he was suspected by both MI5 and the Americans of being the elusive double agent who had tipped off the two spies before they could be questioned, allowing them to flee to Moscow via France...

Philby finally fled to Moscow, handing over a written confession to his old MI6 friend, Nicholas Elliott. He had been accused by Flora Solomon, a former girlfriend, who said he had once tried to recruit her...

Philby spent 25 years in Moscow, instructing trainee spies in the techniques of “tradecraft”. When he died, in 1988, he received full KGB honours. more

An El Cheapo Laser Listener (<$30.)

With the availability of electrical components, building a laser microphone from scratch is possible. Using three components, with an optional fourth, users can listen to distant audio [sort of]. The build is straightforward if a device accepts and records mono audio input.

As SomethingAboutScience explains, a laser microphone works by shining a laser beam at a window or picture frame in a room. The beam’s reflection is captured by a photodiode, which converts the vibrations through the glass into audio. A red light laser isn’t necessary; a covert infrared laser can be used instead.

For a more in depth look at laser eavesdropping, click here.

RIP: Oleg Gordievsky, KGB Spy Who Defected to the UK - 86

Oleg Gordievsky, a Soviet KGB officer who helped change the course of the Cold War by covertly passing secrets to the UK, has died at home in England.

Gordievsky died on March 4 in England, where he had lived since defecting in 1985. Police said on Saturday that they are not treating his death as suspicious. 

Historians consider Gordievsky one of the era’s most important spies. In the 1980s, his intelligence helped avoid a dangerous escalation of nuclear tensions between the USSR and the West. more

Dr. Seuss on Surveillance

Dr. Seuss wrote a story about a Hawtch-Hawtcher Bee-Watcher who had a rather peculiar job. He was tasked with keeping an eye on his town’s only lazy bee. 

The idea was that if a bee is watched, it’ll work harder, right? 

Well, guess what? That didn’t seem to work at all! So, they decided to assign another Hawtch-Hawtcher to watch the first one, and then another to watch the second… and so on. Before you know it, the entire town was watching each other watch a bee!

HR Tech Firm Sues Rival for Corporate Espionage

HR software provider Rippling has sued competitor Deel for allegedly planting a spy in its Dublin office to steal trade secrets, court documents [PDF & VERY interesting] showed on Monday. Rippling claims the employee, identified as D.S., systematically searched internal Slack channels for competitor information, including sales leads and pitch decks.

The company discovered the alleged scheme through a "honeypot" trap -- a specially created Slack channel mentioned in a letter to Deel executives. When served with a court order to surrender his phone, D.S. locked himself in a bathroom before fleeing, according to the lawsuit. "We're all for healthy competition, but we won't tolerate when a competitor breaks the law," said Vanessa Wu, Rippling's general counsel. Both companies operate multibillion-dollar HR platforms, with Rippling valued at $13.5 billion and Deel at over $12 billion. more

“The world has changed.

Corporate Espionage is the new Healthy Competition.

You need Operational Privacy to compete.”

counterespionage.com

UPDATE - HR giant hired plumbers to search toilets for phone after fears alleged corporate spy in Dublin flushed it away. more

Former Council Candidate Bugs Town Hall

FL - A former Southwest Ranches council candidate is accused of planting a recording device in Town Hall and sharing the information with a business owner locked in a lawsuit with the city, according to court documents and town officials.

John Garate, 50, was arrested by Davie police on Dec. 19 after they caught him leaving Town Hall with a recording device he secretly placed in a conference room the day before, according to an arrest report.

His arrest was the culmination of an investigation that started two weeks earlier, when town officials called police to report their belief that someone had recorded a Dec. 4 closed-door meeting in that conference room. The purpose of that meeting was to discuss strategies for ongoing civil cases.

Police reviewed Town Hall surveillance footage and identified Garate as someone who walked into the building on Dec. 5, entered the conference room, and walked out with “something in his hands,” according to the arrest report.... Police planted their own recording device ahead of a second closed-door meeting scheduled for Dec. 18.

...the recording shows Garate entering the conference two hours before the Dec. 18 meeting. After he left Town Hall, but before the meeting, police checked the conference room and “verified that a device was placed on the bookshelf.”

The next morning, after the meeting, Garate returned to Town Hall, entered the conference room, picked up the device and was stopped by police as he was leaving. “During the search incident to arrest, in the defendant’s pocket was a black device with a USB attachment,” the police report states.

John Garate, 50, was arrested by Davie police on Dec. 19 after they caught him leaving Town Hall with a recording device he secretly placed in a conference room the day before, according to an arrest report. more

You might also be interested in: The World’s Smallest Voice Recorder?

AI is Watching You Drive, And it Knows More Than You Think

SUMMARY

• AI traffic cameras are becoming widespread, detecting violations like texting or not wearing seat belts.
• Location determines enforcement methods, with some countries automating citations while others involve human officers.
• AI cameras can improve road safety by catching distracted drivers, but data security, accuracy, and bias concerns remain.

Think you can sneak a quick text or drive without buckling up? AI traffic cameras may have other plans. These high-tech cameras are popping up everywhere, and they're no longer only looking for speeders. They can detect way more than you think.

As you drive past, the camera snaps a high-resolution photo of your car. These images capture the license plate, front seats, and “driver behavior.” Then, AI software analyzes the image to detect violations, like if you’re holding a phone or riding without a seat belt.

• Acusensus heads-up system snapshot of a passenger not wearing a seatbelt.

The system doesn’t issue tickets right away. Instead, it assigns a “confidence level.” This is basically a guess at how sure the AI is that you broke the rules. If the confidence is high enough, the flagged image goes to a human officer, who makes the final call.

If they decide you are breaking the law, you get a ticket. If not, the image is deleted. more

Book: In the Shadow of Giants: A true story of corporate espionage... by Liam Monclair

A true story of corporate espionage in the shadow of China’s rise.

At the heart of modern power struggles, In the Shadow of Giants follows the extraordinary journey of Liam Monclair, a security and strategy expert. This gripping narrative, blending memoir and thriller, opens the door to a unique and little-known universe—corporate espionage, geopolitical manipulations, and cultural tensions—spanning from the skyscrapers of Shanghai to the streets of Jakarta and the vast deserts of the Middle East.

From the escalation of a fierce conflict between Altéone Group—a French multinational—and Wang Industries, a Chinese giant led by the enigmatic Mr. Wang, to high-stakes missions in Iraq and the protection of a football star in dangerous zones, the author unveils the inner workings of a demanding world. 

Based on a true story, In the Shadow of Giants is both a tribute to those who work behind the scenes and an exploration of a life lived on the edge. Masterfully blending suspense and thought-provoking insights, it takes readers deep into the hidden reality of an extraordinary existence. more

The Atlas of Surveillance

The Atlas of Surveillance, which documents police surveillance technology across the US. See how your city is spending its money. 

FutureWatch: Acoustic Eavesdropping with Multi-Antenna mmWave Radar

Acoustic eavesdropping against private or confidential spaces is a significant threat in the realm of privacy protection. 

While the presence of soundproof material would weaken such an attack, current eavesdropping technology may be able to bypass these protections. 

This paper introduces mmEcho, a new acoustic eavesdropping method that utilizes millimeter-wave signals to sense vibration induced by sound precisely. Through signal processing techniques such as the intra-chirp scheme and phase calibration algorithm, mmEcho achieves micrometer-level vibration extraction without requiring target-related data. 

To improve the range of eavesdropping attacks while reducing noise, we optimize radar signals by leveraging the widespread availability of multiple antennas on commercial off-the-shelf radars. We comprehensively evaluate the performance of mmEcho in different real-world settings. 

Experimental results demonstrate that, with the aid of multi-antenna technology, mmEcho can more effectively reconstruct the audio from the target at various distances, directions, sound insulators, reverberating objects, sound levels, and languages. Compared to existing methods, our approach provides better effectiveness without prior knowledge, such as the speech data from the target. more

RIP: Mark Klein, AT&T Tech, NSA Check - 79

Mark Klein, a bona fide hero who risked civil liability and criminal prosecution to help expose a massive spying program that violated the rights of millions of Americans.

Mark didn’t set out to change the world. For 22 years, he was a telecommunications technician for AT&T, most of that in San Francisco. But he always had a strong sense of right and wrong and a commitment to privacy.

Mark not only saw how it works, he had the documents to prove it.

When the New York Times reported in late 2005 that the NSA was engaging in spying inside the U.S., Mark realized that he had witnessed how it was happening. He also realized that the President was not telling Americans the truth about the program. And, though newly retired, he knew that he had to do something. He showed up at EFF’s front door in early 2006 with a simple question: “Do you folks care about privacy?” more

RIP: Peter Sichel, Spy Turned Wine Guy -102

Peter Sichel was a shrewd observer, a skill that served him as both spy and marketing genius. 

As a U.S. intelligence officer in occupied Berlin in the aftermath of World War II, the German-Jewish immigrant put Western fears to rest when he concluded that the Soviet Union did not intend to launch a military invasion of West Germany. 

Later, after he’d grown disenchanted with espionage, Sichel took over his family’s wine business. Realizing that most Americans in the late 1950s had little knowledge of wine, he determined that they’d be drawn to something simple. He chose Blue Nun, a slightly sweet German white his family had been making since the 1920s, and the brand became ubiquitous. At its peak in 1984, it sold 30 million bottles... more

Hackers are Taking Aim at Board Directors

Well-known CEOs and executives aren’t the only potential victims of hacks and threats from criminals. Board directors also have to be vigilant, according to Jason Lish, the global chief information security officer at Cisco.

“Often times they’re targets, especially for public companies, where their profiles are out there,” he said during a virtual conversation on Thursday hosted by Fortune in partnership with Diligent for The Modern Board series.

Lish added that he’s even seen an increase in the mailing of physical ransom letters to board directors and company executives. “How do they stay protected in their personal lives?” he said. “Because threat actors will try to do reconnaissance.” more

TSCM is the corporate counterespionage measure you need.

Secret Commands Found in Bluetooth Chip - Used in a Billion Devices

A potential security issue has been discovered by cybersecurity researchers that has the capability to affect more than one billion devices.

According to researchers at the cybersecurity firm Tarlogic, a hidden command has been found coded into a bluetooth chip installed in devices around the world. This secret functionality can be weaponized by bad actors and, according to the researchers, used as an exploit into these devices.

Using these commands, hackers could impersonate a trusted device and then connect to smartphones, computers, and other devices in order to access information stored on them. Bad actors can continue to utilize their connection to the device to essentially spy on users. more

Chinese Spy Balloon Packed with American Tech

A Chinese spy balloon that crossed over the United States in 2023 was packed with American technology that could have enabled it to spy on Americans, according to two sources with direct knowledge of a technical analysis conducted by the U.S. military.

The discovery of a satellite communication module, sensors and other tech from at least five American firms underlines the failure of U.S. efforts to restrict exports of technology that could have military uses to main adversary China as well as to countries such as Russia and Iran. It also raises questions over the role of private companies that sell their equipment globally in keeping control over the ultimate users of dual-use technology that can have defense applications as well as civilian uses.

A Chinese patent reviewed by Newsweek describes a communications system for exactly such a balloon as the one that crossed America, based on using a satellite transceiver from a U.S. company that the balloon’s controllers in China would use to communicate with it and that would send data back, and that is easily available online. more