Fax Spy Caves

Australia - A former state Labor MP, accused of spying on a Liberal opponent, has quit her taxpayer-funded job and been criticised by the Ombudsman for "highly inappropriate" behaviour.

Heather McTaggart, who was Labor MP for Evelyn until losing her seat at last year's election, confessed to receiving electronic copies of all faxes sent to her successor, Liberal MP Christine Fyffe, for seven months.

She said she deleted any remaining faxes after reading a copy of the anonymous note alerting Ms Fyffe to the fact that Ms McTaggart was receiving her faxes: "I just deleted everything. I panicked and deleted it. That was it. Whatever was there …"(more)

Blind Justice... League Story

Sacha van Loo, 36, is not your typical cop.

"Being blind has forced me to develop my other senses, and my power as a detective rests in my ears," he said from his office at the Belgian Federal Police.

Van Loo, a slight man who has been blind since birth, is one of six blind police officers in a pioneering unit specializing in transcribing and analyzing wiretap recordings in criminal investigations. ...such is his acute sense of hearing that Paul van Thielen, a director at the Belgian Federal Police, compares his powers of observation to those of a "superhero."

When police eavesdrop on a suspected terrorist making a phone call, van Loo can listen to the tones dialed and immediately identify the number. By hearing the sound of a voice echoing off of a wall, he can deduce whether a suspect is speaking from an airport lounge or a crowded restaurant. (more)

SpyCam Story #401 - Royal Shoot-Out

UK - Two men who allegedly demanded £50,000 from a member of the royal family to keep quiet about a sex and drugs video were arrested after a police sting in a hotel room. ...the royal went straight to police who set up a meeting at the £500-a-night Hilton hotel in Central London. ...The meeting was filmed secretly by officers in an adjacent room. (more)

Spy Budgets

For the first time in almost a decade the federal government has pulled back the curtain on the American intelligence budget. In 2007 the country will spend $43.5 billion to spy on its enemies -- plus another $10 billion for the Pentagon that's still classified. Steve Henn reports... (audio) (more)

Wonder what is budgeted to spy against your company?
Try this on for size:
• A$ = The value of your intellectual property.
• B% = A modest one-percent attack budget.
• Cc = The number of interested competitors.
• X$ = The war-chest you are up against.
Formula: (A$ x B%) x Cc = X$
Sample company: ($10,000,000. x .01) x 5 = $500,000.00
These figures are, of course, fictitious and very variable, but you get the idea.

So, how much are you budgeting to counter spying?

FREE counterespionage program development help is available.
Call us.

The presenter, her husband and their 'spying secretary'

UK - Kirsty Wark’s secretary used industrial espionage to get information that could help the Newsnight presenter’s husband to bring a claim for constructive dismissal against his business partners, it was alleged in the High Court

The secretary hacked into the e-mails sent between colleagues of Ms Wark’s husband, Alan Clements, who is accused of trying to get out of a “golden handcuffs” agreement that tied him to the television production company RDF Media. Mr Clements is also accused of deleting entries from his personal diary, which RDF claim would show that he was considering defecting to SMG, a business rival that owns Scottish Television. ...

The PA was allegedly able to access e-mails belonging to former colleagues of Mr Clements, including Hamish Barbour, who is also the husband of the television presenter Muriel Gray. (more)

Russian official charged with wiretapping

A Moscow court has upheld the arrest of a Russian drug control officer on illegal wiretapping charges. The Moscow City Court also rejected a defense request that Lt. Gen. Alexander Bulbov, a department chief in Russia's FSKN agency, be released until his trial begins. (more)

SpyCam Story #400 - Cell Phone Cam Scam

Australia - A man who used a mobile phone to covertly film his former flatmate in the shower has been put on a two-year good-behaviour bond. David William Pender was arrested in July after the woman discovered a mobile phone with its camera running on her bathroom windowsill. (more)

Today's Amazing Stories (not spy-related)

...forget eating bacon, sausage and lunchmeat. No amount is considered completely safe, according to the analysis from the American Institute for Cancer Research and the World Cancer Research Fund. (more)

...a $199 PC (sans display). ...runs a Linux OS and is loaded with (or has links to) free applications, including Gmail, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Calendar, Google Product Search, Google Blogger, Google YouTube, Google Maps, Google News, Meebo (instant messaging), GIMP (image editing), Firefox, Xing Movie Player, RhythmBox (iTunes substitute), Faqly (tech support), Facebook, Skype and OpenOffice.org 2.2. (more) (more)

The world's first 'Divorce fair' has taken place (in Vienna, Austria) to meet rising demand as more and more people untie the knot. ...gave people the chance to speak to lawyers and councillors about parting amicably. Dating agencies were also on hand... (more)

Canadian Information Security Poll

Poll shows that 48% of Canadian executives are not confident private information is secure despite 71% having policies and procedures in place to guard against security breaches. (more)

Bug Your Laptop - Get It Back

The Cautionary Tale of the Khaki Bandit...

"'The khaki bandit' posed as an office worker at several corporations and successfully stole over 130 laptops which he later sold on eBay.

The ease of theft from the corporate offices (including FedEx and Burger King) shows just how bad corporate security can be. In some cases, the career thief just walked into the office behind an employee with a security badge.

Two million laptops were stolen just in 2004, and of those 97 percent were never recovered. Ultimately it was the corporate headquarters of Outback Steakhouse who caught the thief with a bugged laptop that notified them when he re-connected it to the internet." (more) (more)

How the Khaki Bandit (and others) do it...
• Choose targets with care. He went to neighborhoods, cities or states where he was not recognized. He sought large corporate offices to blend in with their large staffs and to find lots of laptops. When possible, he scheduled multiple burglaries for a single building that housing more than one company.

• Know the victims. He observed his targets in advance and paid attention to how employees dressed, whether they needed magnetic passes to enter and move about the building, and what time most of them left for the day.

• Time the arrival. He entered a business on the heels of an employee who could hold open a security door. He often arrived at about 4 p.m., a busy time of day that let him blend with the staff and exploit a time period when receptionists and assistants left for the day, but beefed-up nighttime security measures had not kicked in. He acted like he belonged.

• Make the move. When the office emptied, he went looking for laptops room by room. He kept an eye out for magnetic access cards, too. He had an alibi in case he was confronted. When done, he put the laptops in his shoulder bags - he would carry one into the building with a second bag inside it - and go.

• Move the product. He drove or mailed laptops back to his temporary home. He prepared them for sale by erasing the prior owner's data and installing or updating critical software.

Even folks from the Outback bug their laptops.
You should, too.
Resources...
XTool Mobile Security, Inc. (tracking system)
Computrace (tracking system)
Lo-Jack for Laptops (tracking system)
LaptopLocate (tracking system)
Total Logic Security (marking system)
Ztrace Gold (tracking system)

Zombie Computers From Planet Earth

The greatest threat to global cyber security today, according to Internet Security Systems researcher Josh Corman, may be your mother's computer.

Or more precisely, the collected computers of all the world's mothers. Along with millions of other out-of-date and unsecured PCs strung together by the Internet--what Corman calls "the leper colony"--those machines represent a combined mass of computing power responsible for most of the Net's spam e-mails, much of its click fraud, and the vicious "denial of service" attacks that can knock sites offline and even destroy online businesses altogether. (more)

See: Your PC Might Be A Zombie If...

"So, uh, does this mean the Invisible Fence idea is out, too?"

Taiwanese high school students have launched a campaign to boycott a multi-function electronic identification card. They argued that the radio frequency identification (RFID) student card required by the Taipei City's Bureau of Education violates their rights to privacy.

According to Taipei Times, the High School Student's Rights Association (HSRA) launched the boycott campaign on Sunday. The newspaper quoted the HSRA's secretary, Wang Hao-zheng, as saying that the ID keeps students under strict surveillance like convicts or animals. (more)

UK - Ten students in a secondary school in the United Kingdom are being tracked through RFID implants in their school uniforms in a pilot program. (more)

Not all parents are thrilled. (more)
Not all governments are thrilled. (more)
(In case you don't know... Invisible Fence)

Lessons from Nature - Eavesdropping Iguanas

The Galapagos Marine Iguana is mute, it recognizes and utilizes the alarm call of the Galapagos Mockingbird. This is the first instance of a non-vocal species eavesdropping on another species’ calls. Both the iguana and mockingbird fall prey to the Galapagos hawk, so by recognizing the mockingbird’s warning the iguanas gain important information on avoiding predation. (more)

Being sensitive to clues in your environment can save you, too.

If you feel a funny vibration when you step on your car's brakes, trust your instincts. Inspect. Car vibrations never get better by themselves. They only get worse.

If you have the funny feeling you are being eavesdropped upon, trust your instincts. Inspect. The thought would not have occurred to you if everything were fine.
(Your inspection station.)

Studs Puts Taps into Perspective

The Wiretap This Time
By STUDS TERKEL - Op-Ed Contributor
The New York Times
Published: October 29, 2007
Chicago

EARLIER this month, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the White House agreed to allow the executive branch to conduct dragnet interceptions of the electronic communications of people in the United States. They also agreed to “immunize” American telephone companies from lawsuits charging that after 9/11 some companies collaborated with the government to violate the Constitution and existing federal law. I am a plaintiff in one of those lawsuits, and I hope Congress thinks carefully before denying me, and millions of other Americans, our day in court.

During my lifetime, there has been a sea change in the way that politically active Americans view their relationship with government. In 1920, during my youth, I recall... (more) or (more)

Spooks Getting Spookier

Like previous rumors of psychic espionage programs operated by CIA, NSA, DIA, USAF, and the Navy, at a time when those programs were classified SECRET, word is getting out of a next generation effort. ...

"Spookytechnology" refers to real-world applications, under development right now, that utilize the weird aspects of quantum mechanics for next-generation 21st Century technologies. These include quantum computers, machines that in the words of Oxford's Dr. David Deutsch, compute using matter in other universes, to circuits built on quantum teleportation, with sights set on a next generation Internet using quantum encryption schemes that cannot be broken by ordinary physics.

Dr. Anthony Valentini has proposed using an explanation of the quantum known as pilot-wave theory. The pilot-wave appears as the guiding ghost-in-the-machine of Quantum Mechanics. Valentini has shown that the statistics of ordinary quantum mechanics might be violated by special non-quantum matter, which would have very strange properties indeed. The non-quantum matter could be used (presumably by someone like the NSA) to eavesdrop on theoretically unbreakable quantum secured communications.

Dr. Jack Sarfatti ... has gone even further than Valentini, by proposing that consciousness operates like Valentini's non-quantum matter, allowing for signals to be exchanged between different minds, "beyond space and time." ... Sarfatti suggests that this dance of the mind, body and spirit allows for the mind-to-mind communication reported by the psychic spy community. (more)