This Week in Spy News

Zimbabwe’s dreaded and notorious spy agency the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) was thrown into turmoil Thursday evening after a London based independent radio station published details of some 480 plus state security agents, many behind acts of torture, murder and abductions. (more)

MELBOURNE'S inner-city surveillance camera network is to expand amid revelations it captures one potential crime every 90 minutes. (more)

Suspected US spy Sarah Shourd, who was released by Iran on humanitarian grounds, has changed her tune about the treatment she received while in the Islamic Republic. (more)

A Russian colonel was convicted of treason for betraying a group of spies in the United States, including Anna Chapman, a court spokeswoman told CNN Monday. (more)

How did scientists build a better spy plane? A little bird told them. Engineers have developed a micro air vehicle (MAV) that mimics the flight abilities of the swift, a passerine bird renowned for its aerial acrobatics. Camera-mounted MAVs are frequently used in reconnaissance and rescue missions to scope out a dangerous situation before humans go in. (more) (video)

If you're the parent of a teen or young driver, listen up. NBC's PC Mike Wendland has found some apps that will let you spy on your kids driving, almost as if you're right there in the passenger seat. Warning: Your kids aren't going to like this. (more) (alternate video link)

Changing Times: Video Vigilantes see through Mob Anonymity

...Nathan Kotylak... When his beloved Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup ice hockey championship on June 15, Nathan...joined a gang of rioters in downtown Vancouver, who did what rioters everywhere always do: break shop windows, burn cars, and fight the power. Police managed to arrest a few of the worst (or slowest) offenders on the spot, but rioters have always been able to take advantage of the anonymity afforded by the mob.

Until now.

The upstanding citizenry of Vancouver, shocked and embarrassed that their city had become synonymous with hooliganism (which is not a Canadian virtue), called for something to be done about this outbreak of anarchy.

Within a few hours, one of those citizens had set up a blog, the Vancouver 2011 Riot Criminal List, where they solicited all of the imagery captured during the riots - photographs from newspaper reporters, video footage from television helicopters, even images snapped on mobiles, uploaded to the web.

Vancouverites set to work, digging up an enormous wealth of material...

We're coming into the 'Era of Omniscience'. Anything that depends on limited knowledge - or, as the strategists term it, 'informational asymmetry' - has begun to fall apart. Whether you're a rioter or a vigilante, a cop or a criminal, a resident or an alien... (more) (sing-a-long)

“I find your lack of faith disturbing.” (Darth, on covert cop apps.)

Smartphones are impressive devices, to say the least. A smartphone user can consume TV, music & movies; communicate via streaming video; check the weather; record audio; take professional quality video footage; snap high quality photos… The list just continues to grow and grow. With all of these incredible capabilities, why not add surveillance?

A recent article over at the Atlantic highlights a fascinating project by 23-year-old hacker Rich Jones. CopRecorder (iPhone) and OpenWatch (Android) are part of an experiment Jones describes as "a global participatory counter-surveillance project which uses cellular phones as a way of monitoring authority figures." In short, CopRecorder and Openwatch are apps that covertly record audio during encounters with authority figures, enabling the user to submit the audio anonymously to the OpenWatch site.

Here's a brief explanation of the project (plus instructions for installation): (more)

...and then they bought Skype. Your tax dollars at work?

 The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published a Microsoft patent application that reaches back to December 2009 and describes “recording agents” to legally intercept VoIP phone calls.

The “Legal Intercept” patent application is one of Microsoft’s more elaborate and detailed patent papers, which is comprehensive enough to make you think twice about the use of VoIP audio and video communications. The document provides Microsoft’s idea about the nature, positioning and feature set of recording agents that silently record the communication between two or more parties.

The patent was filed well before Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype and there is no reason to believe that the patent was filed with Skype as a Microsoft property in mind. [Other than governments worldwide might pay a bundle to be able to eavesdrop on Skype calls.] However, the patent mentions Skype explicitly as an example application for this technology and Microsoft may now have to answer questions in which way this patent applies to its new Skype entity and if the technology will become part of Skype. (more)

Korean Broadcasting & Communications Committee Fears Bugging

Korea - Rep. Kim Jae-yoon (right), the main opposition Democratic Party’s chief secretary at the National Assembly’s Culture, Sports, Tourism Broadcasting and Communication Committee, and the party`s floor spokesman Hong Young-pyo submit Sunday documents to Yeongdeungpo Police Station. The party seeks a police probe into suspected eavesdropping into the party chief’s office in parliament. (more)

Thus making Fritz the butt of some "you sound a little tinny" jokes.

A German chemicals company said on Monday its managers have begun keeping their mobile phones in biscuit tins during meetings in order to guard against industrial espionage.

"Experts have told us that mobile phones are being eavesdropped on more and more, even when they are switched off," Alexandra Boy, spokeswoman for Essen-based specialty chemicals maker Evonik, told AFP.

"The measure applies mostly when sensitive issues are being discussed, for the most part in research and development," she said, confirming a report in business weekly Wirtschaftswoche.

Biscuit tins have a so-called Farraday cage effect, she said, blocking out electromagnetic radiation and therefore preventing people from hacking into mobile phones, not only for calls but also to get hold of emails. (more) (sing-a-long)

Actually, this is a fairly good MacGyver on their part. However, professional enclosures with padding and internal white noise generators are also available.

A Microsoft Wiretap Patent...

...what could possible go wrong?

Microsoft has been granted a patent for technology that acts as a wiretap of sorts for Internet communication, allowing governments or other law-enforcement authorities to record the data without detection.

Dubbed "Legal Intercept," using the technology means "data associated with a request to establish a communication is modified to cause the communication to be established via a path that includes a recording agent" that silently records the data, according to a filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

In other words, the technology intercepts Internet communications data so it can be recorded for the purposes of reviewing it later by, presumably, government or law-enforcement officials.

"Sometimes, a government or one of its agencies may need to monitor communications between telephone users," Microsoft said in the filing, describing how a recording device can be placed at a central office to record communications over a traditional telephone network.

But with Voice over IP and other Internet-based communications, "the [conventional] model for recording communications does not work," according to Microsoft. (more)

China Opens Chain of Spy Schools

Last week, China opened its eighth National Intelligence College on the campus of Hunan University in the central city of Changsha. Since January, similar training schools have opened inside universities in Beijing, Shanghai, Xian, Qingdao and Harbin.

The move comes amid growing worries in the West at the scale and breadth of Chinese intelligence-gathering, with MI5 saying that the Chinese government "represents one of the most significant espionage threats to the UK"...

The new schools aim to transform and modernize the Chinese intelligence services, producing spies who are trained in the latest methods of data collection and analysis. Each school will recruit around 30 to 50 carefully-selected existing undergraduates each year...

The United States has a similar project, named the National Security Education Program (more)

Beef Board Admits CEO Eavesdropped on Conference Calls

The Cattleman's Beef Board has admitted its CEO eavesdropped on conference calls between the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and members of the Federation of State Beef Councils...

The response to NCBA states that Ramey admitted to repeatedly listening in unannounced to NCBA-organized conference calls with state beef council executives, and that he listened to a recording of one of those calls...

Ramey eavesdropped on conference calls during the time NCBA was working to restructure its board, which could have impacted the Federation of State Beef Councils and decisions on checkoff allocations, said Lynn Heinze, Beef Board vice president of communications. (more)

N.B. See this story. ~Kevin

When Board Members Phone It In - One Anti-Eavesdropping Solution

Click to enlarge.

Problem 1: Conference calls very often contain highly confidential and sensitive information – such as Board and Executive Management Team calls, Intellectual Property discussions, high value business deal talks, or crisis management calls. 
 
Problem 2: Traditional conference bridges make it difficult to control who is on a call. Long lived PINs are often distributed freely, making conference calls easy to access by unauthorized parties such as ex-employees.

Cellcrypt Secure Conference Service™ is a solution for extra-secure access and encrypted calling within a secure conference bridge, accessible from cell phones.
 
Cellcrypt secure conference calling uses strong cryptographic authentication in combination with pre-defined phone numbers to ensure that only authorized phones can join. The service has an easy-to use web-based management console for setting up any number of bridges with eligible participants defined using a white list policy.

An optional policy setting enables eligible participants to gain access to the bridge from a standard phone, if required, using a pre-defined phone number and PIN. This allows an administrator to mix unencrypted calls from selected phones over the public telephone network with secure calls from other locations where calling is a concern. (more)

An Invention Which Will Drive Bats Bats... Submarine Sonar too!

Scientists have shown off a "cloaking device" that makes objects invisible - to sound waves.

It uses simple plastic sheets with arrays of holes, and could be put to use in making ships invisible to sonar or in acoustic design of concert halls.

Much research has been undertaken toward creating Harry Potter-style "invisibility cloaks" since the feasibility of the idea was first put forward in 2006.

Those approaches are mostly based on so-called metamaterials, man-made materials with properties that do not occur in nature. The metamaterials are designed such that they force light waves to travel around an object; to an observer, it is as if the object were not there.

But researchers quickly found out that the mathematics behind bending these light waves, called transformation optics, could also be applied to sound waves. (more)

Note: This naturally occurs in humans between the ages of 2-20.

The Tapping Policeman

Prague - The policeman who gained access to wiretapping of influential people's mobile phones managed to circumvent "all control mechanisms" that are to prevent such situations, Czech Police President Petr Lessy said...

The policeman from Varnsdorf, north Bohemia, is suspected of having fraudulently monitored the recordings of wiretapped phone calls of influential judges, officials, journalists and lobbyists, including Klaus's chancellor Jiri Weigl and secretary Ladislav Jakl and Constitutional Court chairman Pavel Rychetsky. (more)

Update: Porta-Potty Peeper Pinched... Pewwwww!

CO - A man has been dubbed the "Porta-Potty Peeper" after he hid in the tank of a portable toilet.

"I was at the yoga festival, doing a little bit of yoga, and I’m just seeing all these goddesses," Luke Chrisco, who said he is a voyeur and not a rapist, told FOX31 Denver. "It seems crazy, but I just felt like I was being blessed by their energy, even though it was unintentional."

Chrisco, 30, added the idea of waiting in a tank of waste and urine to spy on women at the yoga festival in Boulder, Colorado, didn’t bother him.

"There’s bacteria in there, but to me it’s just normal ... we all have bodily fluids,” he said. “It seems terrible, but it didn’t actually smell that bad or anything. I still would have done it even if it smelled a little weird, because where there is muck, there is gold."

Police believe Chrisco has spied on at least 200 women in Boulder and hundreds more across the US and Europe. (more)

Spying on Employees Allowed - Fark: Duty Manager Gets Off

New Zealand - A law change has made it legal to install secret cameras to spy on workers, and companies are employing private detectives to do so.

Fark...
But Wellington International Airport has fallen foul of the Employment Relations Authority for using a private investigator to install cameras to spy on the sexual activities of a manager before the law was changed.

The airport recordings caught duty manager Dieter Ravnjak engaged in "sexual activity" with a woman in an emergency management room and he was dismissed for serious misconduct.

The cameras were installed by private investigator Cedric Hardiman, who also managed the airport's taxi and parking facilities.

At the time, the Private Investigators and Security Guards Act prohibited investigators from making recordings without the consent of the person recorded – in effect banning secret recordings. (more)

Keep Android Apps From Spying on You

A security researcher has released an Android app that allows users to control precisely what information they share with other programs installed on their smartphones.

The latest version of WhisperCore remedies a shortcoming of the Google mobile operating system that has vexed users since its release: a design that often forces them to share their precise location or unique phone identifier with app developers even when the sensitive information has nothing to do with the service being offered. (more)

Corporate Espionage is on the Rise in South Africa

Etienne Labuschagne, Director, SpyCatcher SA...

"Q"

"Devices that used to be the preserve of Q from the James Bond movies, are now easily available in the street for a few hundred rand," said Labuschagne, speaking at the ITWeb Security Summit yesterday.

"Surveillance and counter-surveillance are not only part of the shadowy worlds of politics and international relations."

"Surveillance is not what it used to be – mobile phones can be bugged very easily. You can be sent a simple SMS asking you to update a service, and as soon as you open the link, surveillance software can be installed on your phone without your knowledge.

“Such software can allow the person behind it to call your phone, without it ringing, and allow them to listen directly to you and your surroundings." (more)

Da da da da da da da da, Scatman!

Police Artist Sketch

Police said a suspected peeping tom is still on the loose after he was caught spying on women inside a portable bathroom. During a festival, a woman told police she went inside the port-a-potty and was shocked after lifting up the toilet seat.


A security official was called over and waited for the suspect to come out. Police are not sure how long the man was in there, but when he came out, he was covered in waste. He ran and nobody grabbed him. (more with video)

HD DVR Sunglasses for Cops - "I see you respect my authoritaah."

WA - The Snohomish Police are trying out some new personal video recorders Wednesday at the eye care center...

China has developed a pair of eyeglasses that can record HD video. The Chief was very tight lipped about what exactly they would be getting but did say the first group would be getting them tomorrow thanks to the new police guild who has helped raise money for this.

This may be close to what the police could be receiving as eyewear DVRs...

Micro Spycam - "12 MP pinhole cameras are capable of capturing photographs at professional level resolution. The camera device is incredibly tiny and perfect for spy application as well. Disguised as regular sunglasses you can record situations without anybody around you knowing or aware they are being recorded."

Video Quality: "High quality professional grade video recording HD 1280x720 (720P) video with Sound at 30fps (Frames Per Second) makes a very smooth recording." (more)

Ever wonder just how many types of HD video sunglasses are available? Check here.

India Home Minister Accused of Planting Bugging Devices

India - Janata Party leader Subramaniam Swamy has joined the bugging debate, accusing Home Minister P. Chidambaram of planting devices in Finance Minister Pranab Mukhejee's room at the behest of Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Meanwhile, the BJP has also demanded a "complete probe" into the issue. (more)

Book review: Surveillance or Security?

Surveillance or Security?: The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies 

"Over the last 20 years or so, there have been intermittent moves by the EU and the UK government to implement various levels of online surveillance — first by requiring ISPs to install equipment to facilitate wiretapping, and second by storing the masses of communications data created by all of us.

But, argues Susan Landau, a former Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems, now a fellow at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, you can't build surveillance into networks without also poking some very serious security holes in them. Unlike the telephone network, which was built for control, the internet was built with very different goals in mind: information sharing, bandwidth sharing and robustness in the event of generalised attacks. Or, as Landau quotes former NSA director Brian Snow as saying, the internet was designed 'assuming random malice rather than targeted attacks'." (more)

This Week in World Spy News

Egypt - An Egyptian judicial official said yesterday that the prosecution does not plan to prosecute an American-Israeli man who was arrested in Cairo and accused of spying for Israel. (more)

USA - A Michigan professor called on Congress to investigate the government's alleged spying on him to discredit his blogging about the Iraq war. (more)

UK - While serving time under house arrest in an East Anglian home in the UK, those close to Julian Assange have claimed the British government are spying on him.

It follows the discovery of three CCTV cameras erected outside his temporary home at Ellingham Hall in the county of Norfolk. (more)

Thailand - Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has admitted that the suspected leader of three men arrested for alleged spying on the Thai-Cambodian border has managed to flee the country. (more)

Lebanon - Druze politician Wiam Wahhab denied Thursday that a man charged with spying for Israel was his personal bodyguard. (more)

Sweden - Over fifteen countries are systematically conducting intelligence operations against Sweden, in Sweden or against Swedish interests overseas, according to security service Säpo. (more)

Mexico - Admiral Sergio Javier Lara Montellano, commander of the VIII Naval Region based in Acapulco, said that city police cameras...were aimed at various points inside the military installation. He affirmed that information on movements of the military thus obtained was leaked to organized crime groups. “The information was disseminated to crime groups by taxi drivers who serve as informants and by corrupt police in both the traffic police and in crime prevention,” he said. (more)

Austria - An idyllic Austrian village has apparently impressed Chinese architects so much that they have decided to copy it in their own country. But the townspeople living in the UNESCO World Heritage site are unhappy about the plans. This isn't the first time this sort of copying has occurred. China has also replicated amongst other places, Thames Town. (more)

India - The report that Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s conversations may have been tapped by sticking secret electronic devices in his chambers and that of his staff is a chilling reminder that Big Money now operates so close to the centres of power. ...the bugging devices were first discovered on September 4, 2010, when the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) swept Mukherjee’s office to check for eavesdropping gadgets, and found “plantable adhesive substances”. Translated, it means devices that can monitor conversations could have been stuck to these adhesives, including chewing gum-like stickies. (more)

Canada (Toronto International Airport) - An employee used surveillance equipment to spy on her ex-husband as he walked through the terminal with his girlfriend and kids. A man filed a complaint to the federal privacy commissioner after he discovered that his ex-wife, whose job it is to monitor the flow of traffic at Toronto Pearson International Airport using surveillance equipment, was using her special access to track him through the airport. (more)

How to Obtain a U.S. Government Security Clearance - Free Booklet

"Use our Security Clearance Handbook to boost your cyber career. Cyber security professionals can help secure the United States and secure their own futures with a security clearance. As reported in the Washington Post, the Federal Government and contractors face an accelerating demand for cleared cyber security professionals. To help you get cleared and stay cleared, the University of Fairfax is offering a complimentary Security Clearance Handbook.

Click here to get your free copy of the Security Clearance Handbook.

Business Phone Conversations Latest Target for Eavesdropping: News Report

Business executives may be the latest group to be targeted by eavesdropping of phone conversations, according to news reports.

Reuters said that business executives who have “sensitive information” could be the new group targeted for eavesdropping. Earlier it was politicians, actors and athletes.

Business executives may talk on cell phones to save time during their busy days, with sensitive information exchanged during the conversations.

“We are seeing a growing tension between organizational security requirements and personal convenience requirements with people often discussing sensitive issues on mobile phones to get their jobs done faster or because they have no other practical choice,” Cellcrypt CEO Richard Greco (News - Alert) told Reuters. (more)

Free Poster - Maps Worldwide Radio Spectrum Allocations

Very few engineers can recite worldwide RF spectrum allocations from memory. For the rest of us, Tektronix’ color-coded poster maps out every ITU regional allocation in clear graphical form. It also explains the benefits of Live RF and frequency-domain triggering in radio-satellite communication and spectrum management applications. Download your free poster today! (more)

While you are at it, check out the Number One slot under their "Most frequently downloaded application notes." Hey, that's us! Also, free. (more)

You can read the complete Tektronix, June 2011, Test and Measurement News here.

Coffee Unlike the Starstrucks Kind

There was a time when a nickle of joe was all one could get. The Europeans even had a joke about it. "Why is American coffee like making love in the bottom of a boat?" (Contact me directly for the rude punch line if you don't know it.)

Tinted water. Blaaaach, pewey!

   

Then came the hard stuff in all its rocky Italian stallion iterations. We loved it... but secretly we all knew it was over the top. Given no other choices, we stayed starstruck.

So, I'm in my local wine shop the other day. Andrea, the proprietress, says, "Try this, you'll love it!" (She is right 98% of the time.) But, instead of a bottle of wine, she hands over a black bag—filled with coffee beans. I take it home, set it aside until the starstrucks is exhausted from the old A-9 grinder. Yesterday, I fill the mill with the new black gold. Ten minutes later, I am sipping what coffee should have tasted like all along. Smooth, mellow, aromatic and delicious... and that's without milk or sugar.

I only recall having this experience once before (in 2001) when a security director friend asked his mother to bring back a pound of coffee for me, from a small plantation in Costa Rica. 

Later in the morning, I am at my town post office. Serendipity. Another patron walks in and hands the postmaster–a black bag filled with coffee beans. They begin talking coffee. I pipe up with, "I just tried that for the first time this morning. You'll like it." Surprise. It turns out the coffee company is located in my tiny town! And, the other postal patron, Matt, is a partner in the company. We kept talking.

Did you know, the darker the roasted beans, the less caffeine they have? Seriously, no java jive. Turns out the lighter colored roasted beans are the ones you want with breakfast. Heavy roasting brings out the oils and dissipates the caffeine. I also learn that Matt specializes in organic beans, some from super small-yield estates—like the kind my friend, Ted gave me ten years ago!

Ok, I'll spill the beans. If you are interested in getting better mocha java lava into your vena cava (and other veins) visit a Fair Trade USA certified coffee partner and look for their organic products. The coffee in my black bag came from Black River Roasters. Real java-heads, however, will want to grow their own. Buy your own plantation!

So... what does this have to do with spies and electronic surveillance? Nothing, not even the black bag reference. Sometimes one just has to take a coffee break from the world of espionage and reflect on the good things in life. ~Kevin