Apple AirPods Live Listen can Eavesdrop

A useful feature of Apple’s wireless AirPods, designed to help hearing impaired, can also be used to engage in eavesdropping...

The feature Live Listen was released with iOS 12, and according to Apple, can be used with AirPods to turn your iPhone iPad, or iPod touch into a microphone - which can then send sound to your AirPods.

“Live Listen can help you hear a conversation in a noisy area or even hear someone speaking across the room,” the website states.

However, as some users have pointed out... 
“If you have AirPods, you can press ‘Live Listen’ to ‘On’ and leave your phone in the room with someone and you can hear what they are saying, thank me later,” one person wrote on Twitter.

People are suggesting it will be a game-changer when it comes to eavesdropping...

Another said: “Literally just bought AirPods to spy on people.” more

Australia's New Encryption Law May Rock the World - bad'day mate

A new law in Australia gives law enforcement authorities the power to compel tech-industry giants like Apple to create tools that would circumvent the encryption built into their products.

The law, the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Act 2018, applies only to tech products used or sold in Australia. But its impact could be global: If Apple were to build a so-called back door for iPhones sold in Australia, the authorities in other countries, including the United States, could force the company to use that same tool to assist their investigations. more

Pinkerton Detectives Still Exist

The security agents, who gained fame as Old West law enforcers, are still around—and they’re not happy about being antagonists in ‘Red Dead Redemption II’

Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency, formed in the 1800s to help law enforcement track down criminals, once sparred with the outlaw Jesse James. It later became entangled in the notorious labor disputes of industrial America.

In the hit videogame “Red Dead Redemption II,” players belong to a gang of bandits in the Old West in 1899 who spend a good deal of time offing Pinkerton agents, known simply as Pinkertons.

The plot twist comes in real life: Pinkerton still exists today as Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations Inc., a specialist in corporate security and risk management—and it’s tired of being the bad guy.

Pinkerton, now owned by the Swedish security firm Securitas AB, hoped a letter sent last month to Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. would persuade the game publisher to do right by the Pinkerton name. The letter included a demand for compensation in the form of a lump sum or “an appreciable percentage of each game sold.” more

To anyone who worked with me at Pinkertons, always feel free to say hello.

Tony Mendez - CIA Hero - Dead at 78

Mr. Mendez’s artistic skills, which included hand-eye coordination that enabled him to look at something and copy it precisely, suited the agency’s need for a counterfeiter and forger.

And so began a career that in time would lead Mr. Mendez, who died on Saturday at 78, to orchestrate one of the most audacious covert operations in C.I.A. history: the rescue of six American diplomats from a tumultuous Iran after Islamic militants had stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979. The militants held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, a humiliating foreign policy debacle that would severely undermine Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

The operation, which took place in January 1980, was kept secret until 1997. It was celebrated in a heart-pounding movie, “Argo,” released in 2012, with Ben Affleck (who also directed) portraying Mr. Mendez. The movie won three Oscars, including for best picture, though some critics took it to task for underplaying the vital role of the Canadians in the operation and for inventing certain scenes, such as a chase on an airport tarmac at the end. more

This Month in Video Voyeurism

The following are some of the cases reported by the news media during the last 30 days. Consider them to be the failures. The tip of the iceberg. The people who got caught. Most people don't get caught.

They are posted here periodically to raise awareness of the magnitude of the problem, and the variety of places where this occurs. Fortunately, anyone with a little awareness training can protect themselves.

NY - A former New York nanny is fighting back after she says she was surreptitiously recorded in a bathroom owned by a powerful and well-connected couple, the New York Post reports. Vanessa Rivas alleges she found a spycam inside the guest bathroom of the apartment where she used to work as a nanny, a place where she often showered.

UK - Airbnb guest finds surveillance camera inside his rented apartment but is told he ‘consented’ to it as it appeared in photos of the property...According to Airbnb's Terms and Conditions, a surveillance device must be disclosed. more

UK - A former footballer has been charged with five counts of voyeurism and arson...cameras were allegedly found in the female staff changing room at HMP YOI Portland where Browne worked as a guard and fitness instructor. Further voyeurism charges have since been brought against Browne relating to incidents in Weymouth, Dorchester and Poole. more

OR - An Oregon State University employee is facing criminal charges...after being accused of videotaping several unsuspecting men inside the stall in a Valley Library restroom. more

OH - A man secretly recorded a woman showering in a Norwood home, according to court records...He allegedly attempted to hide a cell phone that was recording in a wopse of towels in a bathroom. "The recording device captured the victim in a state of nudity as well as the identity of Anthony McDaniel placing the device and attempting to hide it," police records state. It is unclear how the phone was discovered. more

UK - Britain's Parliament has approved a law that will make it illegal to take so-called "upskirting" photos...Gina Martin, 26, campaigned to ban upskirting after she chased down a man who had placed a phone between her legs and taken a picture while she was at a crowded music festival in London's Hyde Park in 2017. more

AR - A man has been found guilty of video voyeurism in Washington County Circuit Court...found guilty on multiple counts of video voyeurism and was sentenced to four years in prison, and two years suspended...Godfirnon hid an iPhone with the "Pocket Spy" app enabled in a restroom where he was installing light fixtures. more

S. Korea - A four-year jail sentence given to the co-founder of a South Korean porn website that hosted thousands of videos of women filmed secretly was criticized by campaigners on Thursday for being too light to be a deterrent. more

AR - The Benton Police Department arrested 28-year-old Matthew McCoy, of Rison, without incident Monday, on 30 counts of video voyeurism and two counts of computer child pornography.
All charges stem from a camera discovered in a restroom at a Benton residence. more

WA - A former volunteer coach and athletic director at the Puget Sound Adventist Academy has been sentenced to 10 months in jail after he pleaded guilty to voyeurism...students who were using an athletic department tablet found a video of two female students changing into the basketball uniforms, police said...The volunteer coach was identified because he also recorded himself and could be seen adjusting the camera angle and turning the video on and off. more

UT - Foster parent charged with 100 counts...state police first became aware of the situation and ordered a search warrant after one of the foster children, a 15-year-old, called his sister and told her he found a digital camera device hidden inside a candle holder in the bathroom he showered in. more

Ireland - One of the first sex offenders to be detected in Northern Ireland by the National Crime Agency has appeared in court charged with breaching the terms of a Sexual Offenses Prevention Order...The voyeurism matters came to light when Dynes was caught on his own recording equipment while installing it in a bedroom, which then filmed a female carrying out private act. more

Canada - Former teacher and voyeuristic vice-principal Brent Hachborn’s teaching licence has been revoked by the Ontario College of Teachers. Hachborn, who was convicted of nine counts of voyeurism after it was learned he had been hiding cameras in the false ceiling of a school bathroom... more

KY - A man is accused of spying on a woman and recording her as she was getting out of the shower...According to his arrest citation, Sales-Molina hid a cell phone in a laundry basket. The phone recorded the woman in the nude after she had taken a shower. more

OH - Cleveland County man accused of filming girls on his boat is expected in court Friday...Detectives said Hillard chiseled a hole at the bottom of the door to sneak in a camera to watch... more

NM - Santos Leon-Pereira was sentenced 94 days in jail for placing recording devices in dressing rooms at stores at Coronado Center...According to court documents, two phones were found in a dressing room at Forever 21, both with the video cameras rolling. more

KY - An Owensboro electrician is accused of voyeurism. Officers were notified on Tuesday of a small camera and memory card installed inside a home where Ryan Lloyd had been working.

The victim told police that Lloyd was doing electrical work in their bathroom...The victim found the camera earlier this week...The memory card obtained nude images of the victim's daughter. more

IN - A Gary middle school employee was fired Monday after he was arrested and charged with child pornography and voyeurism...police said the suspect's statements led them to obtain a search warrant for Saldana's home where authorities found photographs, video files, a hidden pinhole camera and photo negatives they said Saldana appeared to be burning when they arrived Saturday. more 

 

Questions We Get - Cell Phone Location Data

"I want to know is whether your location can be tracked if your location based services are turned off?" - from an attorney who reported on the selling of cell phone location data to bounty hunters. more

Good question. The answer is yes.

The information the phone companies are selling is gathered from the phone's administration communications with the cell sites, "Hi. I'm here. I can accept a call." The signal is picked up from multiple cell sites and is evaluated to determine which site is receiving the strongest signal.

Location is determined by triangulation. While not precise, it can get you into the neighborhood.

If they were using the phone's GPS-based location services the location accuracy would be within a few yards. ~Kevin

Counterespionage Checklist: How to Be Safe on the Internet

An open source checklist of resources designed to improve your online privacy and security. Check things off to keep track as you go. more  Scott Adams

CIA Spy Tool Kit (Preparation H suggested)

The CIA Rectal Tool Kit

The Weed of Crime Bears Bitter Fruits - The Worldwide Huawei Wows

Federal prosecutors are pursuing a criminal investigation of China’s Huawei Technologies Co. for allegedly stealing trade secrets from U.S. business partners, including technology used by T-Mobile US Inc. to test smartphones, according to people familiar with the matter.  

The investigation grew in part out of civil lawsuits against Huawei, including one in which a Seattle jury found Huawei liable for misappropriating robotic technology from T-Mobile’s Bellevue, Wash., lab...

On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of congressional lawmakers introduced legislation that would ban the export of U.S. components to Chinese telecommunications companies that are in violation of U.S. export-control or sanctions laws. Backers said the bill was aimed at Huawei and ZTE Corp...

Last month, Canadian authorities arrested Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou at the request of U.S. authorities...

In another development, Polish authorities last week arrested Huawei executive Wang Weijing and charged him with conducting espionage on behalf of the Chinese government. more

Court: Authorities Can't Force Technology Unlocks with Biometric Features

A judge in California ruled Thursday that U.S. authorities cannot force people to unlock technology via fingerprint or facial recognition, even with a search warrant.

Magistrate Judge Kandis Westmore, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, made the ruling as investigators tried to access someone's property in Oakland.... (however)

The judge in her ruling stated the request was "overbroad" because it was "neither limited to a particular person nor a particular device." The request could be resubmitted if authorities specify particular people whose devices they'd like to unlock. more

Early Documented Case of Video Voyeurism

The first telescoped PoV close-up in film: As Seen Through a Telescope by George Albert Smith uses an iris'ed close-up to give the impression of filming through a telescope, thus giving the viewer the point of view of the main character. There is also a voyeuristic element as the lead (and each of us) witnesses a bit of naughty action...

Police Surveillance "in an unobtrusive manner, with a sleek, yet friendly look."

Florida law prohibits police departments from using drones to surveil citizens. So Miami Beach cops instead got a small blimp...

(City Manager Jimmy Morales) Morales' letter admits cops bought the "tethered" surveillance balloon to get around the state's ban on police drone surveillance. (The ban, passed in 2015, was dubbed the Freedom From Unwanted Surveillance Act.)...

Morales opines that the small dirigible "provided an ideal vantage point in an unobtrusive manner, with a sleek, yet friendly look." more

New Year’s Resolutions for Your Intellectual Property

by Bryan K. Wheelock - Harness, Dickey & Pierce, PLC 
Its the start of a new year, and here are ten things that you should consider doing to enhance your intellectual property in 2019... more

Number 3 is... "Take secrecy seriously. Trade secret protection depends upon whether steps, reasonable under the circumstances, have been taken to protect the secrecy of the subject matter."

The other numbers offer sage advice as well. ~Kevin

Your Tax Dollars at Work - An NSA Freebee!

The US National Security Agency will release a free reverse engineering tool at the upcoming RSA security conference that will be held at the start of March, in San Francisco.

The software's name is GHIDRA and in technical terms, is a disassembler, a piece of software that breaks down executable files into assembly code that can then be analyzed by humans.

The NSA developed GHIDRA at the start of the 2000s, and for the past few years, it's been sharing it with other US government agencies that have cyber teams who need to look at the inner workings of malware strains or suspicious software...

In total, the NSA has open-sourced 32 projects as part of its Technology Transfer Program (TTP) so far, and has most recently even opened an official GitHub account. more

Ding-Dong - Security Cam Man Calling - Weird

CA - Security camera captures prowler getting his licks in.

Click to enlarge.

In ‘weirdest’ case, police say man spent hours near door of home in Salinas... they said spent hours licking the button on an intercom speaker at a home in Salinas, CA...according to Miguel Cabrera, a spokesman for the Salinas Police Department.

Police said the long night of odd behavior began about 2 a.m., when he approached the house and stared straight into the camera of the home’s doorbell surveillance system.

Arroyo hung out in the doorway for more than two hours...the man lay down in front of the door for 20 minutes before springing back up...Afterward, he stood with his back to the camera, appearing to urinate into a planter by the home’s front door, authorities said.

Arroyo also disconnected an extension cord that powered the home’s Christmas lights and walked off with it. Hence the potential petty theft charge, Cabrera said.  “It’s probably the weirdest [case] I’ve heard in many years.” more

Security Awareness Report for Executives

What can executives do to create or enhance environments to enable awareness programs to succeed?

The first of its kind, the SANS Security Awareness Executive Report draws data from the 2018 Security Awareness Report to reveal a detailed analysis of what drives a thriving awareness program. more

Who Are You...Online - Become an OSINT Awesome and Find Out

We are going to show you how to research yourself and discover what information is publicly known about you...

You will not find all the information on a single website. Instead you start with one website, learn some details, then use those details to search on and learn from other sites. Then you combine and compare results to create a profile or dossier of your subject. 

A good place to start is with search engines such as Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo. Each of these have indexed different information about you...

Start by typing your name in quotes, but after that expand your search...

Examples include:
“FirstName LastName” > What information can I find online about this person
“Firstname Lastname@” > Find possible email addresses associated with this person
“Firstname lastname” filetype:doc > Any word documents that contain this person’s name
more
sing-a-long

Judge Nails Husband for Spyware and Eavesdropping on Wife's Calls ...with her attorney ...twice!

A federal judge has levied sanctions on a tobacco heiress’ estranged husband for destroying evidence related to spyware that he secretly installed on his wife’s phone and used to listen in on her calls, including conversations she had with her attorney. 

It was the second time that a judge has hit Crocker Coulson, who is locked in a bitter divorce with Anne Resnik in state court, with spoliation sanctions for destroying evidence of bugging Resnik’s phone. more

Last year...
A man locked in bitter divorce proceedings with a tobacco heiress was caught bugging his wife’s phone and listening in to her conversations with her attorney, an infraction that a Brooklyn judge said should cost him any claim on the family’s wealth. more

The Panopticon Express Doesn't Stop Here

The warnings sound like the plot of a Hollywood spy thriller...

The Chinese hide malware in a Metro rail car’s security camera system that allows surveillance of Pentagon or White House officials as they ride the Blue Line — sending images back to Beijing.

Or sensors on the train secretly record the officials’ conversations. Or a flaw in the software that controls the train — inserted during the manufacturing process — allows it to be hacked by foreign agents or terrorists to cause a crash.  

Congress, the Pentagon and industry experts have taken the warnings seriously, and now Metro will do the same. more

Panopticon is a type of institutional building and a system of control designed ... in the late 18th century. The scheme of the design is to allow all (pan-) inmates of an institution to be observed (-opticon) by a single watchman without the inmates being able to tell whether or not they are being watched.

The Shady Middlemen Who Sell Your Location... in real time.

If you want to follow someone in realtime, you don't need to shell out to shady data-brokers like Securus (which use a marketing company that exploits a privacy law loophole to obtain phone location data).

There are a whole constellation of location data resellers who will do business with anyone, regardless of the notional privacy protections they promise the carriers they'll put in place.

Notably, these resellers do business with bail bondsmen and bounty hunters, who can, for a few dollars, locate any phone on the major carriers' networks.

The carriers were mired in scandal over the Securus affair last year, and pledged to clean up their act (T-Mobile CEO John Legere tweeted "I’ve personally evaluated this issue & have pledged that @tmobile will not sell customer location data to shady middlemen"). They have not. more

Mystery ‘Sonic Attack’ on U.S. Diplomats in Cuba Was Really Crickets

Fake news? You decide.
Diplomatic officials may have been targeted with an unknown weapon in Havana. But a recording of one “sonic attack” actually is the singing of a very loud cricket, a new analysis concludes.

In November 2016, American diplomats in Cuba complained of persistent, high-pitched sounds followed by a range of symptoms, including headaches, nausea and hearing loss.
Exams of nearly two dozen of them eventually revealed signs of concussions or other brain injuries, and speculation about the cause turned to weapons that blast sound or microwaves...

On Friday, two scientists presented evidence that those sounds were not so mysterious after all.

They were made by crickets, the researchers concluded. more

Fact: Buddy Holly released chirping crickets in 1957, and died about two years later. Just coincidence? You decide.

Protecting Trade Secrets in Court Requires Special Security, Like TSCM

Federal prosecutors said a Chinese national employed by an Oklahoma petroleum company has been charged with stealing trade secrets.

Authorities said Hongjin Tan, 35, is accused of stealing trade secrets from his unnamed U.S.-based employer that operates a research facility in the Tulsa area.

An affidavit filed by the FBI alleges that Tan stole trade secrets about an unidentified product worth between $1.4 and $1.8 billion to his employer to benefit a Chinese company where Tan had been offered work. more

Gal Shpantzer, SANS NewsBites news editor notes... "Have you discussed the concept of trade secrets with your legal counsel? Trade secrets are only legally protected if you secure them in a certain manner, above and beyond normal confidential data. www.justice.gov: Reporting Intellectual Property Crime: A Guide for Victims of Copyright Infringement, Trademark Counterfeiting, and Trade Secret Theft (PDF)

Judge: "When did you last check for bugs?"

TSCM - Technical Surveillance Countermeasures

If Spies Rip You Off Due to Your Own Gross Negligence

S. Korea - The government decided to increase penalties against those who illegally transfer technology.

Under the currently law, the penalty for committing espionage involving core national technologies is a maximum of 15 years in jail. The government plans to change the duration to at least three years, with no limits...

Information security gross negligence. (Murray Associates case history photo)

Regardless of whether the offense was intentional or the result of gross negligence, the guilty party will have to pay treble damages, while the government will seize all gains realized from the illegal transfer. more
 ...very similar to a cunning plan for the United States, first proposed in 2012.

Practice Saying, "Yes Master"...like you really mean it!

ROBOTS spying on your social media profiles could stop you from getting your dream job.

Recruitment AI used by companies to pick out applicants scans your posts for signs you might not be right for the role.

Known as DeepSense, the tool assesses your personality based on your online activity – even if you haven't applied for the role and don't know you're being assessed. The language you use, your photos, how often you post and more is merged into a data profile that tells recruiters your interests, teamwork skills, how extroverted or introverted you are, and even your emotional stability. more

Interesting Trends in Counterespionage

 

A new year with new awareness, or just practitioners tuning up their websites?

Security Ponder - How Big is Your Digital Footprint?

2019 may be the year you consider smaller shoes...
Those of us at a certain age grew up in a simpler time. Email was largely unheard of. There was no social media, no Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. There was no e-commerce, no Amazon, Alibaba or Taobao. No online banking. No online dating. Credit card transactions were processed manually. Local businesses accepted personal checks.

In short, there really wasn’t any such thing as a “digital footprint,” where personal information resides virtually, in an electronic ether, potentially available for anyone to see.

But over the last two decades, we’ve moved more and more of our lives into that realm. And almost as soon as we began, people attempted to gain inappropriate access to information of all kinds...

Will we have to change our standards... Time will tell. But there’s no denying our expanding digital footprints are changing the nature of both personal and organizational security.

Monitoring and managing our online personas has become an essential task...  more  sing-a-long

Happy New Year! It's 1984 ...in 2019

Students at more than 10 schools in Guizhou Province, one of China’s poorest provinces, and the neighboring Guangxi region are now required to wear “intelligent uniforms,” which are embedded with electronic chips that track their movements.

The uniforms allow school officials, teachers, and parents to keep track of the exact times that students leave or enter the school, Lin Zongwu, principal of the No. 11 School of Renhuai in Guizhou Province, told the state-run newspaper Global Times on Dec. 20.

If students skip school without permission, an alarm will be triggered.

If students try to game the system by swapping uniforms, an alarm also will sound, as facial-recognition equipment stationed at the school entrance can match a student’s face with the chip embedded in the uniform. more

FutureWatch: Chips embedded in the students.

German Football Club Caught Spying with a Drone

‘We didn‘t do anything illegal!‘
Spy games: German club admit to spying on rivals using drones

German football was stunned at the news that Werder Bremen one of the biggest clubs in the Bundesliga spied on training sessions of rivals Hoffenheim by using drones piloted by club officials...

And remarkably, Werder Bremen has issued a statement taking responsibility for the incident, admitting it was they who arranged for the drone to conduct surveillance of Hoffenheim‘s training session.

An official statement was released, explaining that the drone was piloted by a member of club staff, while the club‘s general manager Frank Bauman made a formal apology and took full responsibility for the incident. more

Spy Book Collection for Kids

Can an undercover nerd become a superstar agent? Ben Ripley sure hopes so—and his life may depend on it!

When Ben Ripley is recruited to the CIA’s Academy of Espionage, it’s a dream come true. But as soon as he gets on campus, Ben finds out that Spy School is way more deadly than debonair. And given his total lack of coordination and failure to grasp even the most basic spying skills, Ben begins to wonder what he’s doing here in the first place.



Luckily, through a series of hilarious misadventures, Ben realizes he could actually become a halfway decent spy…if he can survive all the attempts being made on his life! more

FutureWatch: Spy Technology of the Future

An Exciting Future for Spy Technology

1. Real-Time Facial Surveillance That Doesn't Require Clear, Unobstructed Images
2. Tools That Detect Activity Based on a Phone's Characteristics
3. Increased Uses for Artificial Intelligence
4. Technology to Detect Suspicious Body Language



Although it's not possible to know exactly how espionage experts will depend on the things on this list and others, it's evident that technology will help spies achieve their missions. It may also allow them to diversify their responsibilities as tech takes care of past tasks. more

Being Your Own Bodyguard, by Richard Roth (Kindle)

Click to enlarge.

Foreword by The Honorable Carlos C. Campbell

Rich Roth condenses over four decades of experience as a member of the United States Secret Service, and as a private security consultant and bodyguard.

His business portfolio includes cyber security, executive protection, aircraft and airport vulnerability, threat assessment and mitigation, training, perimeter detection and CCTV systems design and crisis management.

From the plazas of Paris, to dodging the guns in the Gaza strip, to the cafes in Caracas, Roth slips out of the shadows of surveillance to inform readers about how they can protect themselves through situational awareness, adaptation, and employ techniques and tactics for survival and mitigation.

Being Your Own Bodyguard deals with physical layouts and boundaries, psychological characteristics, and physiognomic [facial expressions] clues in assessing threats. Rich draws heavily on his experience with the USSS that includes over one hundred protection assignments. more

Security Director Alert - Well Produced Information Security Awareness Videos for Employees

Foreign intelligence entities, which may include foreign governments, corporations, and their proxies, are actively targeting information, assets, and technologies that are vital to both U.S. national security and our global competitiveness. 

Increasingly, U.S. companies are in the cross-hairs of these foreign intelligence entities, which are breaching private computer networks, pilfering American business secrets and innovation, and carrying out other illicit activities.

The National Counterintelligence and Security Center is dedicated to raising awareness among government employees and private industry about these foreign intelligence threats, the risks they pose, and the defensive measures necessary for individuals and organizations to safeguard that which has been entrusted to their protection.

The following products will enable personnel to better understand these threats and provide guidance and tips for protecting the sensitive information, assets, technologies, and networks to which employees have access. It will also serve to help them protect their personal, confidential information that may be used by others to gain their trust. more

Videos:
Social Media Deception Trailer
Social Media Deception
Social Media Deception Full Video
Social Engineering
Spear Phishing (30 second trailer)
Spear Phishing 2017
Spear Phishing Full Video
Travel Awareness
Human Targeting
Supply Chain Risk Management
Economic Espionage  (True story.)

Infographic - Check Your Phone for Spies

There is a lot which can be done to check your phone for spyware. 
Everything from following instructions in a book to a full forensic inspection.

In the meantime, you can start with this...

You can find a slightly larger version here.

Yet another Spy Museum Opens

The KGB Spy Museum (in New York City) features the largest collection of USSR KGB espionage artifacts.

The KGB, an initialism for КГБ Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti translated in English as Committee for State Security, was the main security agency for the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, KGB always wanted to compete with the CIA in all possible ways.

Interactive spy museum presents to visitors that era special technique: spy cameras, KGB concealment devices, secret recorders, crypto and cipher machines, spy radios, secure telephones...

The museum exhibition, much of which is only now being made public, presents a never-before-seen collection of items covering the activities of prominent KGB agents and revealing the strategies and methods that underlay many of history’s top secret espionage operations. more

"Alexa, what’s my neighbor doing?"

Alexa, what’s my neighbor doing? ‘Human error’ allows user to eavesdrop on stranger’s life.

A German Amazon customer was able to access hours of audio files from a stranger‘s Alexa device that included recordings of him in the shower thanks to a “mistake” by one of Amazon‘s human employees.

Amazon sent the customer a link that included 1,700 recordings of another man and his female companion when he asked to play back the recordings from his own Alexa voice assistant.

He reported the anomaly to Amazon, but the company did not immediately reply, except to delete the files. By then, he had already downloaded them. After weeks of no response from Amazon, the customer notified German trade c‘t, worried the company would just cover up the incident otherwise.

Using the information contained in the recordings, which included their first and last name, the name of their partner, where they lived – even audio of the person in the shower – c‘t was able to locate and the victim, who was... more

Yup, like I said two years ago. ~Kevin

Happy Birthday World's First Spy Musuem

The Spy Museum in Tampere, Finland opened to the public in the summer of 1998. It was the world's first spy museum dedicated exclusively to espionage. This year, the Spy Museum celebrated its 20th anniversary. 

Two years later, in 2000, a sister museum, the International Spy Museum, opened its doors in Washington, D.C.  more

The Case of the Eavesdropping Boyfirend - Settled

"Wonderful fun. Hundreds of practical uses."

A New York City accountant agreed to pay the Securities and Exchange Commission more than a half-million dollars to settle insider trading charges related to the merger of Alaska Airlines and Virgin America. Peter Cho was accused of listening in on his investment banker wife’s* phone calls to glean sensitive information, allowing him to earn over $250K through a series of perfectly timed investments. more   * At the time his fiancée.

The Surprising Spy Story Behind Lafayette Radio

by Rich Post KB8TAD 

Lafayette's three owners
Sometimes when you look closely at a company, a surprise pops up. Such was the case with Lafayette. The change in corporate names in 1939-40 and the separate catalogs in 1942 as well as the sudden and permanent disappearance of Lafayette from Atlanta and Chicago in 1951 triggered the question of why. Was there a rift among partners?

Searching on the names of the three owners as stated in the Federal Trade Commission action against Wholesale Radio in 1935 turned up nothing until... A search on the correctly-spelled names of Samuel J. Novick and Max H. Krantzberg came up with Krantzberg as the Executive Vice President of Lafayette with stock holdings just a bit less than President and Chairman Abraham Pletman in a Securities and Exchange Commission report in 1961. Each owned roughly a third of the outstanding shares...

The communist connection
Novick was not actually the author of "A Plan for America at Peace" but his company sponsored and paid for the publication. He had immigrated to the US from Czarist Russia in 1914 at age 17. One of his early jobs in the US was radio telegrapher. He became an excellent business man. He was also an avowed communist who allegedly paid the bills for radio commentators from the American Communist Party on the Blue radio network. He supported a variety of organizations later deemed to be underground communist groups according to FBI reports. Some labor unions at the time were also controlled by communists allegedly including the one that had honored him. Of course, in free speech America, this was allowed.

Spies and Lies
However, it was after the FBI uncovered a Russian spy that Samuel Novick came to their attention.

Arthur Adams was a high-ranking undercover GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence) operative under the code named "Achilles" and was assigned along with others in the NKVD (forerunner of the Russian KGB) to obtain US corporate and military technology secrets.

In 1937 Novick had written a letter to the US Immigration and Naturalization Service vouching that Adams was a highly skilled radio engineer who had worked for him for 10 years at Wholesale Radio as its Canadian representative and was needed in the US. It was a lie.  more

Extra Credit: Explore old Lafayette catalogues here, and later ones here. Old issues of Monitoring Times may be obtained here.

This Month in... Bots Gone Wild

Sneaky parrot uses Amazon Alexa to shop while owner is away. more

GPS signals across far northern Norway and Finland failed. Civilian airplanes were forced to navigate manually, and ordinary citizens could no longer trust their smartphones. more

Virgin Australia is under investigation after two engines on one of its aircraft "flamed out" during descent and had to be manually re-ignited before the aircraft hit the tarmac. more

Drone shatters passenger jet’s nosecone and radar during landing. more

Uber manager in March: “We shouldn’t be hitting things every 15,000 miles.” "They told me incidents like that happen all of the time," whistleblower wrote. more

New Zealand courts banned naming Grace Millane’s accused killer. Google just emailed it out. more

She'd just had a stillborn child. Tech companies wouldn't let her forget it. A woman pleads with tech companies like Facebook and Twitter to stop serving her ads to intensify her grief. more

Microsoft is sending users who search for Office 2019 download links via its Bing search engine to a website that teaches them the basics about pirating the company's Office suite. more

Delivery robot bursts into flames at UC Berkeley. more

Rudy Giuliani Says Twitter Sabotaged His Tweet (not true) more
Mystery Drone Still on the Loose at Gatwick Airport, But Flights Resume Anyway more

Thousands of people trusted Blind, an app-based "anonymous social network," as a safe way to reveal malfeasance, wrongdoing and improper conduct at their companies. But Blind left one of its database servers exposed without a password, making it possible for anyone who knew where to look to access each user's account information and identify would-be whistleblowers. more

...and a cautionary tale.

FutureWatch: 2019 - Stricter Privacy Regulation (we hope)

After decades of complacency, the regulatory tide is finally turning against the unchecked personal data collection that powers the ad-revenue machines at Google, Facebook, and other big tech firms. 

In Europe, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is an unprecedented leap forward in privacy regulation, with strict rules and harsh penalties designed to limit personal data collection.

Though the US has been slower to act, there is a growing demand for an Internet Dodd-Frank, a sweeping federal legislation designed to protect the privacy of US citizens.

The recently passed California Protection Act (AB 375) is one potential, though imperfect, template for a federal consumer privacy law. This new law affords California residents new privacy rights that entitle them more insight into, and more control over, the personal data companies collect on them...

Google already commented that they "...look forward to improvements to address the many unintended consequences of the law," which could easily translate to prioritizing the protection of the practices that have allowed these companies to make billions at the expense of consumer privacy. more

Government Spying... Outsourced

New Zealand - The State Services Commission delivered a damning report into the use of companies like Thompson and Clark (Investigations Limited) to carry out surveillance on protestors, activists and other members of the public, as well as inappropriately close relationship between investigators and some public servants.

https://amzn.to/2SaAd8i

The Commissioner described the way some agencies allowed some New Zealanders to be targeted by investigators as an affront to democracy.

The report has already claimed its first casualty.

Ross Butler quit as chair of the government insurance agency Southern Response last night before his meeting with the Greater Christchurch Regeneration Minister Megan Woods.

The insurer broke its code of conduct, and possibly the law, when it used security firm Thompson and Clark to secretly record meetings of earthquake victims. more & more

When Technical Surveillance Countermeasures Warnings Are Met With a Shrug

Hackers infiltrated the European Union’s diplomatic communications network for years, downloading thousands of cables that reveal concerns about an unpredictable Trump administration and struggles to deal with Russia and China and the risk that Iran would revive its nuclear program...

The cables were copied from the secure network and posted to an open internet site that the hackers set up in the course of their attack, according to Area 1, the firm that discovered the breach...

Asked on Tuesday about the hack, the National Security Agency said it was still examining the discovery of the European trove. But the former senior intelligence official said that the European Union had been warned, repeatedly, that its aging communications system was highly vulnerable to hacking by China, Russia, Iran and other states.

The official said the warnings were usually received with a shrug...

The Europeans appear, belatedly, to be waking up to the threat. Its senior staff members increasingly use encrypted telephones, and isolated “speech rooms” of Lucite are being installed in key posts... more