The Incredible World of SPY-Fi: Wild and Crazy Spy Gadgets, Props, and Artifacts from TV and the Movies
by Danny Biedermanfrom Publishers weekly...
Even people who aren’t big spy movie fans know that James Bond gets to play with some great gadgets. The same goes for the casts of Mission: Impossible, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and I Spy.
Biederman has been immersed in the spy world, at least as Hollywood depicts it, from the time of his youth in the 1960s, when he was introduced to a world of "spies, gadgets, adventure, and beautiful women—everything that a ten-year-old boy could possibly want."
Since then he has collected over 4,000 props from various sets, amassing such an impressive trove that in 2000 the CIA asked him to exhibit it at its headquarters.
This book tells the story of each TV series and movie through Biederman’s props, which range from the coat hook used in U.N.C.L.E. to open a secret passageway, to the gold sofa that adorned James West’s private railroad car in The Wild Wild West.
from forbes.com...
Silently tapping into a private cellphone conversation is no longer a high-tech trick reserved for spies and the FBI. Thanks to the work of two young cyber-security researchers, cellular snooping may soon be affordable enough for your next-door neighbor.In a presentation Wednesday at the Black Hat security conference in Washington, D.C., David Hulton and Steve Muller demonstrated a new technique for cracking the encryption used to prevent eavesdropping on global system for mobile communications (GSM) cellular signals, the type of radio frequency coding used by major cellular service providers including AT&T (nyse: T - news - people ), Cingular and T-Mobile. Combined with a radio receiver, the pair say their technique allows an eavesdropper to record a conversation on these networks from miles away and decode it in about half an hour with just $1,000 in computer storage and processing equipment...
Who will be the customers for their innovative espionage technique?
Hulton and Muller say they aren't sure yet. (more)
UK - A council worker has been arrested on suspicion of spying on women in the toilets at Coventry's historic Council House. The arrest came after police were called in following a complaint by a victim. There are fears that a man may have somehow concealed himself underneath the floorboards of the toilets and filmed unsuspecting victims on his mobile phone. (more)
Brazil - Brazilian police said on Tuesday they were treating the theft of strategic data from Brazil's state-run energy giant Petrobras as a case of industrial espionage.Petrobras confirmed last Thursday that four laptops and two RAM memory chips were stolen in late January from a transport container owned by the U.S. oil-field service company Halliburton, a longtime Petrobras business partner.The data came from a drilling ship in the Santos basin, where a huge new oil reserve was recently discovered. The find could make Brazil one of the world's major oil producers...Caetano confirmed it was not the first case of data robbery from Petrobras. The company reported similar cases to police about a year ago but said they did not involve important information.He faulted the security in the latest case. (more)
The case is scheduled to resume March 5th. The Huffington Post claims they have the Witness List: "Chris Rock, Stallone, Bert Fields, Tom Cruise and hundreds more." The list of 244 people, however, has made the rounds and wound up here. Rambo says he is willing to testify, "Why not? I don't want to be left out." Stallone said he wasn't surprised to hear the allegations that such activity occurs in Hollywood. "In this town, nothing seems as it is," Stallone said. "There's so much skullduggery." (more)
Conversations from thousands of internet chatrooms, message boards and other public forums have been transformed into an electronic art piece. Described as a unique portrait of the internet, the electronic art - called the Listening Post – forms a free exhibition at the Science Museum in London. The piece samples text fragments of uncensored and unedited internet conversations over 231 small electronic screens standing approximately 4m high and 5m wide. The text is accompanied by computer-synthesized voices reading or singing the words that surge, flicker and disappear over the screens. Listening Post is a collaboration by sound artist Ben Rubin and statistician and artist Mark Hansen, who wanted to address the question: "What would 100,000 people chatting online sound like?" (more)
Israel - The number of wiretaps performed by the police rose 22 percent last year, from 1,128 in 2006 to 1,375, despite Knesset members' complaints that this tactic is overused. Over the last five years, the number of court-approved wiretaps has risen 42 percent.
By comparison, only 1,839 wiretaps were carried out in the entire United States in 2006.
According to Professor Yoram Shahar of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, this means that per capita, Israeli policemen use 20 times as many wiretaps as do their American counterparts, and a random Israeli is 30 times as likely to be wiretapped as a random American. (more)
It's the stuff the best spy stories are made of, the broadsheets this week had a small story in their technology sections about the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) National Institute for Electronics and Encryption Research (UEKAE) having developed a completely original software package that allows mobile phones to be encrypted. This makes it possible for mobiles to be safe enough to discuss national secrets without fear of interception. This type of protection is, officials at TÜBİTAK say, especially vital in the field of military communication when phone calls intercepted by foreign agencies could have potentially fatal consequences for soldiers in the field.
According to TÜBİTAK's February press statement, they have been working on the technology for 20 years and it will be offered first to Turkey's army and then to the public and private companies. This software, they say, will put Turkey in the top league of countries for protecting information and privacy. There will be many for whom the encrypted cell phone has come not a moment too soon and others who are already regretting the development. (more)
from c|net, by Declan McCullagh...
Computer scientists have discovered a novel way to bypass the encryption used in programs like Microsoft's BitLocker and Apple's FileVault and then view the contents of supposedly secure files.
In a paper (PDF) published Thursday that could prompt a rethinking of how to protect sensitive data, the researchers describe how they can extract the contents of a computer's memory and discover the secret encryption key used to scramble files. (I tested these claims by giving them a MacBook with FileVault; here's a slideshow.)"There seems to be no easy remedy for these vulnerabilities," the researchers say...
Their technique doesn't attack the encryption directly. Rather, it relies on gaining access to the contents of a computer's RAM--through a mechanism as simple as booting a laptop over a network or from a USB drive--and then scanning for encryption keys. How the scan is done is one of the most clever portions of the paper. (more)
from the TriSquare website – TSX300...
"eXtreme Radio Service (eXRS) two-way radios use proprietary Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS) in the ISM band (900 MHz frequencies). 10 Billion channels." (more)
What does this walkie-talkie mean to you?
- "Secure Conversation – No Eavesdropping"
- Communications range of at least 1-2 miles.
- Very good communications within buildings.
- Voice Operated Transmit (VOX)
- No license required.
- Accessories include a headset.
- Cost: less than $100.00 per pair!
What else does this mean?
- A quick hack turns it into a long-range stealth bug!
- The average TSCM sweep team will likely miss it.
- Advanced Eavesdropping Detection will find it.
The FBI revealed that human error led to surveillance of an entire email network back in 2006, rather than the single email address approved by the secretive court which approves domestic wiretaps and other forms of e-surveillance...
The ISP involved allegedly misinterpreted a warrant for one email address to be a warrant for - ahem - the entire network. (more)
UK - A man who secretly filmed boys in a toilet and was caught with a camera at a children's swimming club has escaped a jail term. David Ashton (42) was arrested at Parkside Pool in Cambridge after staff were alerted to his suspicious behaviour during a parents-only training session for eight to 16-year-olds. Police found a video camera in a briefcase he was carrying. When officers searched his home, they discovered covert recordings of men and boys using a toilet cubicle, as well as other indecent images of children. (more)
That's right!
If you have a phone.
If you have a credit card.
You have a heavy-duty digital wiretap at your fingertips!
Of course, so does everyone else, so watch what you say 007.
...from the service provider's web site - callrecordercard.net...
It is easy to make high quality digital recordings. We will provide you with your own personal phone number in our state of the art, secure telecom switch.
- To record an important conversation, you first dial your personal phone number (PPN), which connects you to the recording equipment and then dial the number you want to record.
- To record incoming calls, the calls will automatically be recorded as they pass through our recording switch.
Your conversation will then be recorded and stored on our secure, password protected system, for you to play back as needed. Our advanced digital processors will record every word on both sides of the conversation.
Our clients use their Call Recorder Cards for both their business and personal needs. These are some of the typical uses of the Call Recorder Card:
- Record employee's calls to review their job performance
- Record details of complicated negotiations
- Maintains recorded records of verbal agreements
- Insurance investigator interviews
- Dictate recordings to be transcribed
- Dictate memos while on the road
- Disclosed monitoring of children's conversations
- Law enforcement investigations
not to mention...
- nailing that deadbeat jerk you used to be married to
- presenting a new cell phone to that special someone
- 'changing' the home phone number
- set up a sting
- or, post a PPN (pointed to [his/her name here] on-line, and wait for the fun to begin.
No need to have bulky recorders, or phone interceptor equipment. Simply follow the user friendly instructions to automatically direct your calls through our state of the art telecommunication switch.
Your important conversations will be stored in a safe digital format that only you can access and/or retrieve with your very own PIN (Personal Identification Number).
Testimonials (!?!?)
I had my housekeeper start making her calls through my Personal Phone Number. Lo and Behold! She spent hours a day on the phone just chatting! No wonder the housework never got done. O.G. - Connecticut
I gave a new cell phone to my teenager and told her that the calls were being recorded. Now I have peace of mind! Y.P. Texas
One interesting FAQ...
Q: Can I change the number that the other person will see on their caller ID when I make an outgoing call from my PPN?
A: Yes, when placing the calls follow the prompts to change the number the other person will see on their caller ID.
Useful service? Yes.
What could possibly go wrong? (snicker)
Earlier this season (1999), a Jets defensive player went into a small room at the team's practice facility in Hempstead, N.Y., and was stunned by what he saw. Inside was a bank of video screens, he said, showing various parts of the complex. On one screen, to the player's surprise, was a view of the locker room. ...''A lot of things around here have knocked me for a loop, but this is one of the biggest,'' said the defensive starter, who asked not to be identified for fear of repercussions. ''My first thought was, 'Has the team been spying on us?' ''A spokesman for the Jets denied that the team uses video cameras for surveillance purposes...
A number of players, team executives and union officials believe putting hidden cameras in the locker room, the training room or other parts of the workplace is a good idea. Others believe that cameras are a violation of a player's privacy. (more)
Pop Quiz: Who was Bill Belichick working for in 1999?
The Incredible World of SPY-Fi: Wild and Crazy Spy Gadgets, Props, and Artifacts from TV and the Movies
