Watch Over Me Requests Up 10%

US - In a letter to the Senate, the Justice Department reports it made 1,745 requests to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for special authority for wiretaps last year. That’s 10% more than 2010. None of those requests were denied, although judges did require changes to 30 requests.

The FBI also issued 16,511 national security letters seeking information like financial and phone records on 7,200 people. (more) (sing-a-long)

Another Surveillance Concern - SMS Intercept Via CCTV

Australia - Surveillance cameras used during last year's Rugby World Cup could zoom in on individual spectators and camera operators could read their text messages, a privacy forum has heard... Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff says reading someone's text messages in public could cause concern, but the legitimacy of the action could depend on what it was used for. (more)

The Great Seal Bug Story (updated)

Our compendium of first and second-hand accounts about The Great Seal Bug continues to grow. The latest contribution has just been posted, along with this rare schematic of the bug from Scientific American, and a video newsreel of Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. showing off the device at the United Nations in 1960.

Our latest voice of history begins... "I am a former Foreign Service Officer.
I have a certain amount of first hand, and a larger amount of 2nd hand knowledge about the thing, having worked for a couple of years in the early 1960s in the organization that was responsible for dealing with it and all similar problems - the division of technical services of the office of security of the department of state: abbreviated as O:SY/T.

I knew the tech who actually discovered the thing (slightly), and heard from him in detail exactly how he found it." (more)

Board of Directors' Communication Portals

by Jason Clark, CSO, Websense
Imagine that criminals broke into headquarters and bugged your executive offices for insider information—and then made millions trading on that information. That's what can happen if you jump into a Board Communication Systems too quickly. It has already happened: They silently monitor your Board of Directors communications until they hear insider information that they can use to strike it rich on the stock market.

A Board Communication System, often called a Board Portal, is supposed to be a secure cloud system that your CEO, CFO and board of directors use to communicate with one another to make sure any highly sensitive information about the company is protected—from insiders, the IT department, and bad guys. Information that is shared between board members can range from company strategy, to M&A plans, to non-public financial performance details. Imagine the havoc that could ensue if anyone was able to access sensitive knowledge and then use it to their advantage. 

Why BCSs Need Proper Security Measures
...If a Board Portal is breached, this could mean every one of your shareholders is a potential plaintiff (arguing that their investment has been placed at increased risk of harm due to insider trading or other stock price manipulation)... And this doesn't just affect public companies. Private companies that do business with public companies may need to start disclosing breaches to keep corporate customers as clients. (more)

SpyCam Story #659 - This Week in SpyCam News

SpyCam stories have become commonplace and the techniques used, repetitive. We continue to keep lose track of the subject for statistical purposes, but won't bore you with too many details. Only links to the stories will be supplied unless there is something useful to be learned.

AZ - School principal and assistant caught passionately kissing via student cell phone.
Australia - Father jailed for hidden camera in the bathroom where his daughters showered.
CA - Maintenance man at Sears arrested for allegedly filming women in changing rooms.
Internet - Spycam Magazine - A new magazine focusing on hidden and spycam products.

SC - Cellphone camera in a toilet roll filmed female employees. Security guard charged.

FL - Teacher accused of using a pen camera to video girls changing for gym.
UK - Man rigged up a spy camera to secretly watch a teenage girl in the bath.
IN - Notre Dame pen SpyCam Man escapes jail time.
UK - Man convicted of using spycam pen in toilet.
WA - Voyeurism evidence against father-in-law of missing mother Susan Powell admitted.
CA - York University - At least six incidents of voyeurism this year on campus.
ID - Former high school teacher made plea deal he secretly videotaped students
FL  - Man accused of cellphone video of women in Target, Walmart and Publix.
IN - Mom files half-million dollar lawsuit against a former high school janitor accused of secretly filming her son and 41 other boys in a school locker room
UK - Web designer who spied on three young women given a community order.
IN - High school basketball player charged. Cell phone video in the locker room.
MS - Complainant found videos of herself fully naked of her taking a bath on computer.
TN - A 33-year-old Baptist youth evangelist investigated in three states for video voyeurism.

CISPA: Big Brother's Best Friend

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) passed the House yesterday, amended but barely improved. (more)

The government would be able to search information it collects under CISPA for the purposes of investigating American citizens with complete immunity from all privacy protections as long as they can claim someone committed a "cybersecurity crime". Basically it says the 4th Amendment does not apply online, at all. (more)

CISPA would "waive every single privacy law ever enacted in the name of cybersecurity," Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat and onetime Web entrepreneur, said during the debate. "Allowing the military and NSA to spy on Americans on American soil goes against every principle this country was founded on." (more)

Sports Quote of the Week

"In my 28 or 29 years in the NFL, I have never listened to an opposing team's communication," ... "I have never asked for the capability to listen to an opposing team's communications. I have never inquired as to the possibility of listening in on an opposing team's communications. And I have never been aware of any capability to listen in on an opposing team's communications at the Superdome or at any NFL stadium." New Orleans Saints, General Manager, Mickey Loomis responding to an ESPN report that accuses him of wiretapping the opposing coaches' booth in the Superdome during the 2002-04 seasons. (more)

A joint Louisiana state police and FBI task force is investigating allegations that the New Orleans Saints set up general manager Mickey Loomis' booth in the Superdome so he could listen in on opposing coaches.

State police Col. Mike Edmonson confirmed the joint effort today after discussing the matter with Dave Welker, special agent in charge at the FBI's New Orleans field office.

"I thought that was an excellent opportunity to share resources to see if federal or state wiretapping laws were in fact broken," Edmonson said by phone from Baton Rouge. (more)

Autistic Boy Wears Wire to Get Help

Stuart Chaifetz is mad. He's so mad, he took his story to YouTube.

Confused as to why his "sweet and gentle" autistic son Akian, 10, was suddenly kicking school employees and throwing chairs, Chaifetz decided to wire the boy. He stuck a digital recorder in his son's pocket and was able to tape 6.5 hours of class time.

What he heard was shocking. The teacher and aide were yelling at Akian and calling him names.

When the district's response wasn't enough, MSNBC reports Stuart Chaifetz posted the following video on the web: 

 

The above audio includes the teachers talking about having a hangover, calling Akian a bastard and telling him to shut up. At one point, the aide angrily tells the autistic boy, "Go ahead and scream, because guess what? You are going to get nothing until your mouth is shut."

This sounds bad, but it gets worse. (more)

Show of hands. Feeling sorry for Rupert yet? Hands? Anyone???

UK - Rupert Murdoch used his testimony before a U.K. inquiry on Thursday to portray himself as the victim, not perpetrator, of a cover-up over phone hacking -- a twist that could certainly anger those suing his company for invading their privacy to sell newspapers.

The 81-year-old media magnate apologized. He said he had failed. He noted that the corporate cleanup of the British phone hacking scandal had cost his New York-based News Corp. hundreds of millions of dollars and transformed its culture.

"I failed, and I'm sorry about it," Murdoch said, adding later: "We are now a new company altogether." (more)

Hiding all Spies in a "Central" Intelligence Agency was Just Too Obvious to Work

The Pentagon confirmed it would be establishing a new intelligence agency, the Defense Clandestine Service, meant to work with the CIA, that would establish spy networks to monitor long-term threats to U.S. national security interests, pointing to places like Iran and North Korea. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta approved the program Friday. The DCS would bring the federal government’s intelligence agency total to 17. (more)

Just for the record...
The 16 federal intelligence agencies are: the CIA, the FBI, and, in the Department of Defense, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the U.S. Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Marine Corps Intelligence Agency, and the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency, the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Intelligence and Analysis the Coast Guard Intelligence, the Drug Enforcement Agdministration's Office of National Security Intelligence, the Treasury Department's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, and the Energy Department's Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence

"Chief, I've cracked the case. Would you believe..."

UK - A yoga expert says a British spy found dead in a sports bag could have zipped himself in, though a colleague had failed in more than 100 attempts to do it.

Gareth Williams worked for Britain's secret eavesdropping service GCHQ but was attached to the MI6 overseas spy agency when his remains were found in August 2010 inside the bag, which was found in a bathtub at his London apartment. (more)

China - When Hu Jintao, China’s top leader, picked up the telephone last August to talk to a senior anticorruption official visiting Chongqing, special devices detected that he was being wiretapped — by local officials in that southwestern metropolis.

The discovery of that and other wiretapping led to an official investigation that helped topple Chongqing’s charismatic leader, Bo Xilai, in a political cataclysm that has yet to reach a conclusion.

Until now, the downfall of Mr. Bo has been cast largely as a tale of a populist who pursued his own agenda too aggressively for some top leaders in Beijing and was brought down by accusations that his wife had arranged the murder of Neil Heywood, a British consultant, after a business dispute. But the hidden wiretapping, previously alluded to only in internal Communist Party accounts of the scandal, appears to have provided another compelling reason for party leaders to turn on Mr. Bo.

The story of how China’s president was monitored also shows the level of mistrust among leaders in the one-party state. To maintain control over society, leaders have embraced enhanced surveillance technology. But some have turned it on one another — repeating patterns of intrigue that go back to the beginnings of Communist rule. (more)

Camera Trap Snares Man Allegedly Leaving Bizarre Trinkets for Neighbor

IA - A West Des Moines man who for five years has allegedly been leaving raw meat, dolls and other trinkets on a neighbor’s property has been caught on film and now faces harassment charges, according to police.

The victim, a 45-year-old woman, first reported to police in 2007 that someone was depositing odd items — a plastic bag containing raw meat, a Christmas ornament and small dolls, for example — on her property... Last fall, police installed a trail camera, commonly used to track deer and other wildlife, in hopes of catching the suspect in the act.

Police Navidad

Last week, the woman reported to police she had watched via the camera as the suspect left items on a fire hydrant, including food, Vaseline petroleum jelly, paper clips, a tape measure, a plastic container full of what appears to be motor oil and two caulking tubes...

The investigation is continuing. (more)

PI's Spy Plane Vanishes on Easter. Divine Intervention?

Swaziland - A spy plane worth E20 000, belonging to Private Investigator Hunter Shongwe has gone missing.

Shongwe says the unmanned craft which had only three days disappeared while on a mission around Lobamba on Thursday afternoon.

The gadget operates as a spy camera to take pictures of people and places without raising suspicion.

By remote control, he flew the small aircraft in the direction of Somhlolo National Stadium where members of the League of Churches were arriving for the Easter services.

The small plane was on a mission to record everything that was happening at the stadium and surrounding areas during the night.

His mission of spying on the Christians failed when the gadget got lost. (more)

How much information about yourself are you putting online?

As a business owner, you are doubly responsible in safekeeping the information you put online. But before you can protect you business data, you need to learn to protect your personal data first.

Read the Trend Micro Digital Lifestyle e-guide, Be Privy to Online Privacy, and be a better informed digital citizen.

You’ll learn:
How online advertisers are tracking your browsing behavior,
The consequences of what you post in your social media.
How mobile apps can access the information stored in your mobile device, if you allow them.

Irony Alert: You'll have to give up some information about yourself to get it. ~Kevin

Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (CISPA) Protest

Civil liberties organizations are launching a week of Internet-wide protests against the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (CISPA), the controversial cybersecurity legislation that would negate existing privacy laws and allow companies to share user data with the government without a court order.

The coalition is urging the public to take part in a Twitter protest directed at their lawmakers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has created an interactive tool for people to find their representatives and their Twitter handles, and to share how CISPA's privacy invasions would affect their day-to-day lives. (more)

Indonesia Now a Business Espionage Target

As Indonesia’s economy soars at an impressive rate and with the defense budget expanding aggressively, several state companies and government agencies have increasingly become targets of espionage.

National Intelligence Agency (BIN) head Lt. Gen. Marciano Norman said recently there were indications that espionage activities have been increasing lately.

“We’re worried with such activities. More resources are now allocated to prevent them. It’s part of my priorities,” Marciano said, refusing to elaborate further. He said there were two Asian countries — one of which is a neighboring nation — that have become more aggressive in spying into Indonesia’s economy. (more)

Belgium - Reuters reported that ArcelorMittal workers involved in a bitter dispute over the closure of furnaces in Belgium pointed the finger at the company after discovering that a union meeting was recorded with a camera pen and after being sent secretly filmed footage of workers.

Belgium's heavy industry has been in decline for years and Liege has been the scene of acrimonious protests by workers after ArcelorMittal, the world's biggest steelmaker, said it planned to close operations there. (more)

A Memory Stick that Self-Destructs

Technology has now created the ultimate USB stick - used by the secret service. If you lose it you can track its location and if it falls into the wrong hands you can even remotely scramble its content. (video) (product)

What are spies really like?

via the BBC...
Most people have watched a spy film, but few have ever met someone from the intelligence community. So how close are real spies to the Bournes and the Bonds? Peter Taylor looks at the world of the modern day secret agent... (more)


What does a spy look like? There is no exact answer, but a composite picture was developed by the Business Espionage Controls and Countermeasures Association... (more)

The Cybercrime Wave That Wasn’t

via The New York Times...

In less than 15 years, cybercrime has moved from obscurity to the spotlight of consumer, corporate and national security concerns. Popular accounts suggest that cybercrime is large, rapidly growing, profitable and highly evolved; annual loss estimates range from billions to nearly $1 trillion...

Yet in terms of economics, there’s something very wrong with this picture...

...in numeric surveys, errors are almost always upward: since the amounts of estimated losses must be positive, there’s no limit on the upside, but zero is a hard limit on the downside. As a consequence, respondent errors — or outright lies — cannot be canceled out. Even worse, errors get amplified when researchers scale between the survey group and the overall population...

The cybercrime surveys we have examined exhibit exactly this pattern of enormous, unverified outliers dominating the data. In some, 90 percent of the estimate appears to come from the answers of one or two individuals. In a 2006 survey of identity theft by the Federal Trade Commission, two respondents gave answers that would have added $37 billion to the estimate, dwarfing that of all other respondents combined...

Among dozens of surveys, from security vendors, industry analysts and government agencies, we have not found one that appears free of this upward bias. As a result, we have very little idea of the size of cybercrime losses. (more)

Thus proving once again, fear-mongering is profitable.

• Keep a cool head. 

• View the risk holistically. 

Your valuable information was/is available elsewhere, before it is ever entered into a computer.

• Balance your security budgets appropriately. 

Information risk management isn't solely an IT issue... no matter what the IT security vendors and other vested interests tell you. ~Kevin

Teen Taps Top Cops

A teenager eavesdropped on highly-sensitive police counter-terror conversations after bypassing technology from the 1980s, hackers have claimed.

The leader of an anarchist group known as Team Poison said it was "easy" to drop "a 24-hour phone bomb" on elite security officers...

Is that, at, at, at you Bryce?

In another recording officers appear to be discussing counter-terror operations while Team Poison listens in. The group - which uses the Twitter name @_TeaMp0isoN - claimed the calls were made to MI6 - but it is understood they were in fact picked up by the Metropolitan Police's counter-terrorism command.

Trick, reportedly a 17-year-old who launched Team Poison in 2010, emailed the Press Association, saying the group bypassed outdated technology to compromise a server from Malaysia to record conversations. He wrote: "Yes, it was easy :)"

Trick said: "The phone denial of service was done via a custom script for Asterisk which was installed on an overseas server. The conversation was tapped into via a private phreaking method, their phone system is old and we found a way to get in via basic but private phreaking technique." (more)

Privacy Journal 2012 Privacy Law Compilation Updated

With a surge in the final days of the 2011 session, the California legislature enacted several new privacy protections that clearly keep the state at the top of the privacy-protecting states in the U.S., according to a new survey of the states by Privacy Journal.

The monthly newsletter reports on new privacy laws enacted by states and Congress each year. The information is available in its Compilation of State and FederalPrivacy Laws, updated yearly. (more)

Two Cell Phone Eavesdropping Attacks Reported

 • Security firm Cryptography Research showed how it's possible to eavesdrop on any smartphone or tablet PC as it is being used to make a purchase, conduct online banking or access a company's virtual private network.

• Researchers at security firm McAfee, a division of chipmaker Intel, highlighted several ways to remotely hack into Apple iOS, the operating system for iPads and iPhones.

McAfee's research team remotely activated microphones on a variety of test devices and recorded conversations taking place nearby. They also showed that it's possible to steal secret keys and passwords, and pilfer sensitive data, including call histories, e-mail and text messages.

"This can be done with absolutely no indication to the device user," says Ryan Permeh, McAfee's principal security architect. (more)

IKEA Apologizes to Workers for Spying

 The management of IKEA in France, where workers have sued the company for allegedly spying on employees, admitted that activities contravening its ethical standards had taken place and pledged to put a stop to them. (more)