MI - An arrest warrant says a suspect accused of placing hidden video cameras in one of his father's rental properties put the devices in a bedroom and a bathroom, court records reveal.Bradley Scott-Irving Graves, 25, waived a probable cause hearing Wednesday in Rockford District Court and will face trial on two two-year felony charges for possessing and installing eavesdropping equipment...The arrest affidavit alleges Graves went to the home and told the tenants he was installing a smoke detector in the bedroom and a mold detector in the bathroom.A man in the home was suspicious of the claim from Graves, who acts as the maintenance person for his father's rentals, according to court documents."(The victim) further investigated and noted that the mold detector was a camera as well as the detector in the bedroom," sheriff's Detective Ed Kolakowski wrote in court records.Police also found a VCR recording from the devices in a basement. (more) (more) (more) (video)
UPDATE - 5/7/09 - A high tech peeper has admitted to installing a camera in his tenant's shower. This week Bradley Graves entered a guilty plea to a felony charge of eavesdropping, installing and using a device. Graves will be sentenced in June. (more)
UK - Inventor of the web Tim Berners-Lee, along with other online security specialists at the Houses of Parliament in London, have warned that the ever-increasing power of computers is threatening the future of the Internet.The experts are mainly concerned about deep packet inspection (DPI), a technique that makes it possible to peer inside packets of data transmitted across the Internet...He says that DPI is like wiretapping, and can enable firms to learn a huge amount about peoples "lives, hates and fears". (more)
UK - A leading British manufacturer has been caught up in an industrial espionage row after two engineers used a mobile telephone to photograph a secret piece of equipment at an American factory.The photographs are alleged to have been used by Wyko Tire Technology in Dudley, West Midlands, to manufacturer a specialist tyre machine for a Chinese company.Engineers Clark Roberts and Sean Howley are alleged to have tricked their way into the Goodyear factory in Kansas to take seven photographs of machinery used make large “off the road” tyres for earth moving equipment, it is claimed.The pictures were emailed to two Wyko employees at the factory in Britain and were used to manufacturer a similar piece of equipment for the Haohau South China Guilin Rubber Company based in north east China. The contract with the Chinese company was worth $1.2million.Mr Roberts, 46, and Mr Howley, 38 - both employees of Wyko Tire Technology Inc in Greenback, Tennessee - have been charged with 12 offences relating to the theft of trade secrets and wire fraud. They face a maximum sentence of 150 years in prison and a fine of $2.75million (£2million). (more)
Cell phones belonging to hospital staff were found to be tainted with bacteria, including the drug-resistant MRSA superbug, and may be a source of hospital-acquired infections, according to a new study.
Ninety-five percent of the mobile phones were contaminated with at least one type of bacteria, with the potential to cause illness ranging from minor skin irritations to deadly disease.
Most worrying, one in eight of the handsets showed methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA), a virulent strain that has emerged as a major health threat in hospitals around the world. (more)
Why mention this?
I like to keep my clients safe, healthy, happy and alive.
Your cell phone, desk phone, keyboard and mouse could probably 
use a cleaning - like right now. Solutions: compressed air, cotton swabs, lint-free cloth, cleaning fluids, antibacterial wet wipes and sprays. "But wait." Look what I found! A new crud-goop product which is easier and more fun to use. (video) (ebay)
Michael Strahan An Example Case Of Surveillance Spyware Used On Loved OnesAn estimated 3.4 million Americans have been subjected to stalking...When former Giants defensive end Michael Strahan reportedly suspected his girlfriend Nicole Murphy, actor Eddie Murphy's ex-wife, of cheating on him, he allegedly installed a tracking device in her car on two separate occasions, reports CBS News science and technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg reports.And those weren't the only times Strahan has been accused of using technology to monitor those around him. His ex-wife has accused him of tapping her phone and installing a secret video camera... (more) (video)
New Zealand - A promising engineering student who deliberately deleted crucial information from his employer's computer backup systems cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost business and data recovery. Gareth Pert, 23, nearly crippled Hamilton business Progressive Hydraulics while acting out of "pure vindictiveness", said company director Rodney Sharp...
Pert was arrested last month at Auckland International Airport upon his return from Afghanistan where he had been working since the sabotage was reported."His motivation was that he believed he was worth more than he was getting paid. Instead of talking to us, he started adding on five hours on his time card, so we pulled him up on it," Sharp says. "I was probably the first person to sit him down and put him in his place... I said, `You've cribbed your time cards.' He said, `I'm worth it'. I said, `I don't care how good you are, it's just dishonest'." Pert then wiped the backups and never returned to work.
There is evidence he also copied some of the commercially sensitive data but he told police he couldn't remember what he did with it. (more)
Try saying "Afghanistan banana stand" to him.
Scotland - A USB drive is missing from Lothian and Borders Police with details of hundreds of police investigations... “It is understood that the information contained on the stick was not encrypted as it was information being transferred within a secure compound within Police Headquarters,” the police spokesman revealed. (more)How to Crypt Your Stick for FREE.
The universe of private eavesdropping detection practitioners is small, maybe several hundred.The world of knowledgeable private practitioners is smaller, maybe fifty.Then, there is a tiny archipelago of knowledgeable and respected specialists who gravitated to this profession by their innate desire to help others.
Patrick Allan Bennett was one of these Islands. All who knew him, miss him. All who might have known him suffer the loss, unaware.It is not surprising that one of Patrick's outstanding accomplishments was that he was the first Eagle Scout of Troop 74 in Marinwood, CA.Professionally, he was a private investigator and Vice President of Walsingham Associates – one of the very best TSCM companies in the business. I know. I regularly entrust my clients to their care; for over 15 years. Fortunately, Walsingham Associates continues under the guidence of William Bennett.His family's description is moving, "Patrick was a kind, gentle man who loved his family and valued his friendships." You can see it in his face, can't you?There will be a Memorial Service from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm, Tuesday, March 10 at the Lima Family Mortuary Chapel, (408) 263-2868, located at 48800 Warm Springs Blvd, Fremont, CA 94539. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Marin Council Boy Scouts of America, 225 West End Ave. San Rafael, CA 94901
Good-bye, friend.
...all Symbian 60 handsets are at risk.
Taiwan - Authorities in Taipei raided a shop accused of selling mobile phone spying software on Friday, warning that many cellphones are vulnerable to surreptitious eavesdropping and monitoring of text messages...Police said that the cellphone spyware was used by private investigators to catch people in extramarital affairs, but that it had also been used in instances of industrial espionage. (more)
Turkey - Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Şahin has announced illegal wiretappings will be more severely punished through a planned amendment in the penal code.Turkey - Phone tapping and bugging scandals caused booming sales of GSM "jamming" device that jams GSM radio signals. Demand mostly comes from businessmen and artists. "The price range is between 380 TL and 30,000 TL for jamming devices which can stop all mobile phone conversations and bugging," says Mustafa Ender, executive of a company selling jammers. "Another device that spots hidden cameras starts from 575 TL," he says. (more)
TN - Goodyear called in the FBI when the company suspected someone was spying on closely guarded technology for making tires.The global security chief for Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. said in a statement Saturday that the company alerted the FBI after an internal investigation into what he called an apparent attempt in 2007 to steal proprietary technology. (more)This is an excellent example of a properly run corporate security program. Spot the spies during their intelligence collection process. Result: Damage thwarted, cheaply. (formal version of this philosophy)Interesting back-story...The FBI probe was followed by federal charges Friday against two engineers for a Tennessee company, Wyko Tire Technology Inc. in Greenback near Knoxville. The engineers, Clark Alan Roberts and Sean Edward Howley, pleaded not guilty to counts including trade secret theft, wire fraud and conspiracy... Wyko, part of Netherlands-based Eriks Group, designs and builds tire making equipment for tire companies, including Akron, Ohio-based Goodyear... Wyko had contracted to provide Haohau South China Guilin Rubber Co. Ltd. under a $1.2 million order. Wyko had never built one of the machines, the indictment says.
For the past several years, we read in the news that the Taliban are killing "spies" at the rate of 1-7 per week. Discovery of this many "spies" at such a sustained and consistent rate strains credibility. More likely, spy demise is a scared-straight tactic with a personal vendetta side benefit.This week...Taliban militants in Pakistan's restive tribal area on Friday killed two men they accused of spying for US forces stationed across the border in Afghanistan, officials said.
The bullet-riddled bodies of Afghan refugee Sher Khan and Pakistani tribal elder Nazar Jan were found early Friday at separate places in the North Waziristan tribal district bordering Afghanistan, officials in those areas said.
"Notes found with the bodies said the men were killed for spying for the US," tribal police official Rukh Niaz Khan told AFP.
Islamist militants frequently kidnap and kill local tribesmen or Afghan refugees on charges of spying for the Pakistani government or US forces, who are battling a Taliban-led insurgency across the border in Afghanistan. (more)
A senior employee of Taiwan's presidential office was indicted Friday on charges of providing classified information to rival China... Taiwan and China have routinely engaged in espionage against each other since they split amid civil war in 1949. Both have used financial aid in an attempt to lure away the other's allies. (more)
Colombia spyservice to be allowed wiretaps again...
Colombia President Álvaro Uribe signed a law that returns the authority to conduct wiretaps to intelligence agency DAS, lawmakers say. The DAS was relieved from that authority ten days ago after news broke the agency was illegally wiretapping political opponents, judges and journalists. (more) (background 2007) (background 2009)
MI - An arrest warrant says a suspect accused of placing hidden video cameras in one of his father's rental properties put the devices in a bedroom and a bathroom, court records reveal.
