Wednesday, September 30, 2009

SpyCam Story #558 - Missed Fujimori Post

Philippines - The Valenzuela city government will implement two ordinances next month that would regulate liquor businesses and requiring all establishments to install spy cameras within their premises. (more)
FutureWatch...
The beginning of a trend?
Liquor stores... cigarette sellers... gun shops... magazine stands... movie theaters...

SpyCam Story #557 - Saw a Fujimori Once

KY - A former Heartland teacher accused of videotaping underneath cheerleaders' skirts enters a guilty plea. Steve McCuiston, 51, of Murray entered the plea Monday on charges of eavesdropping and evidence tampering... McCuiston formerly taught seventh and eighth grade at Livingston Middle School. He resigned after his arrest. (more)

A Fujimori Kind of Dude

WI - A state appeals court has upheld a Plover man's 25-year prison sentence for sexually assaulting his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint, burglarizing her home and wiretapping her telephone. The man awaits a separate trial on a murder charge involving the woman's suspected lover. (more)

New Contest to be Posted 10/2 @ 12:01 PM EST

Our last contest was such a success we are doing another one.
Be here, Friday, October 2, 2009 at 12:01 PM EST.


"Why the specifics?"

Some of our Security Scrapbook family receive the Scrapbook in digest form via e-mail. To give them a fair shot at "first correct answer received wins," they need some advance notice. ~Kevin

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Spybusters Tip # 385 - FREE Encrypted Memory Sticks. Roll Your Own!

Step 1 - Go to your junk drawer. Grab one of your regular old USB memory sticks.

Step 2 - Go to
TrueCrypt.org.
Grab their FREE encryption software.


Step 3 - Read the Beginner's Tutorial. Load & Lock.


Ta-daaaa!
Instant FREE encrypted memory stick!!!

(clap, clap, clap)

Thank you.

Kevin
P.S. You can also roll Free Mac/Windows XP/Vista/2000/Linus sticks the same way.
Additional Spybusters Tips.

What's Your Counterespionage Strategy?

via Forbes.com...
The biggest security breaches in corporations these days are employees who have been laid off or who are about to get laid off.

When employees leave an organization on their own terms, particularly in good times, many companies scramble to figure out what they had access to and what the value of that information would be to a competitor. There is a large body of case law in the technology industry involving theft of trade secrets, and globalization has added a new twist because laws in some countries are either unenforceable or nonexistent. But in a downturn where millions of workers are being cut, the scale of th
e problem grows by several orders of magnitude. (more)

Chances are, you don't have a counterespionage strategy...
but, can have one at no extra cost!


Face it, an effective counterespionage strategy is not optional.
You need one.

• Executives of publicly held companies have a fiduciary responsibility to protect intellectual property for stockholders.
• Many businesses must demonstrate compliance with privacy and information security laws. (Fines are costly.)
• Keeping your business information private is profitable.

Bonus... It may not cost you a penny!
If your security budget looks like the one below, you are over-protecting the wrong things. Move some coins from left to right, where they will do more good.

For the cost of your least effective security guard, you could have a basic quarterly counterespionage program. No brainer, right? Call me today. I'll set it all up. ~Kevin

(click to enlarge)
Intangible loss has greater $€£¥ impact than physical property loss.
(FULL PRESS RELEASE VERSION)

Monday, September 28, 2009

Tapping into the Treasury...

Intelligence activities across the U.S. government and military cost a total of $75 billion a year, the nation's top intelligence official said on Tuesday, disclosing an overall number long shrouded in secrecy.

Dennis Blair, the U.S. director of national intelligence, cited the figure as part of a four-year strategic blueprint for the sprawling, 200,000-person intelligence community. (more)

"So, uh for $75 Billion every year we must know everything, right Pop?"

Spying on BlackBerry Users for Fun

The 7th annual instalment of the Hack in The Box Security Conference in Malaysia (HITBSecConf) has secured some of the most exciting mainstream and underground ICT security experts who will present on a range of highly relevant hardware and software security topics, on the 7th and 8th of October 2009....

Sheran Gunasekera, Head of Research & Development at ZenConsult will present Spying on BlackBerry Users for Fun - a talk which will demonstrate that BlackBerry handhelds can be compromised to sniff user’s email (and optionally instant messages, web browsing traffic, and SMS messages). The presentation will also see the release of the “Bugs & Kisses” toolkit. Bugs, the interceptor can be deployed on BlackBerry handhelds to sniff emails, while Kisses the detector can be used on the device to detect the presence of Bugs or other ‘Bugs-like’ applications. (more)

Vigil Attorney has California Officials Quaking

CA - A South Bay lawyer wasn't acting as a Peeping Tom or a member of the paparazzi when he hired an investigator to stake out a Morgan Hill official in an unsuccessful search for evidence of a suspected romantic affair, a state appeals court says.

Instead, attorney Bruce Tichinin was exercising a citizen's right to look into possible government wrongdoing, and can sue the city of Morgan Hill for allegedly retaliating against him by denouncing his actions, the appellate panel in San Jose said Monday.

Tichinin's lawyer said the ruling by the Sixth District Court of Appeal should be good news for anyone, including the media, who is trying to find out what public officials are up to. (more)

Leda, the Swann, and the IT Guy

CA - An eastern Ontario union executive has launched a lawsuit against the Canadian Union of Public Employees, accusing a colleague of violating her privacy by reading her emails.

Katherine Thompson, of South Lancaster, Ont., who is currently president for the Air Canada component of CUPE, is seeking $250,000 in damages through a civil suit launched against CUPE, national president Paul Moist and Lesley Swann, former president of CUPE's Air Canada component.

Thompson alleges that in the fall of 2007, when she was secretary-treasurer and Swann was the component president, Swann blackmailed an IT consultant into providing access to Thompson's emails, and then went through the correspondence to spy on her.

CUPE's Air Canada component represents 6,700 flight attendants at Air Canada. (more)

Eavesdropping - A Bad Rap?

Rap artist and producer Dr. Dre may be making an appearance in Detroit soon, but it could be in a courtroom rather than for a concert following a court of appeals ruling.

A ruling last week revives a 2002 case against the artist -- whose real name is Andre Young -- that accuses him of violating state eavesdropping laws by improperly videotaping a backstage conversation by city employees at a concert in July 2000. The original suit sought $3 billion. (more)

SIng-a-long
Listen listen listen.. (listen) whoahh (listen)

Listen listen listen.. (better listen) whoahh-oahhh-oahhh
Listen listen listen.. [harmonizing]
Listen.. mmm-mmm-mmm (more)

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Jail Employees Could Go to Jail for Taps

CO - A member of the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office and two civilian workers face possible criminal charges for allegedly eavesdropping on co-workers' phone calls.

CBS4 reported Friday that the three employees were allegedly monitoring personal phone calls made and received by their co-workers for months.

The three are accused of using a feature on the jail's internal phone system to listen to the calls, the TV station reported.
(more) (more)

Criminals Use Electronic Surveillance Too

PA - During the execution of the search warrant for 807 Green Street, detectives seized a covert video surveillance system designed to warn the drug dealers inside of the presence of police. This system was fully operational during the time of the search with an audio microphone which is a violation of Pennsylvania’s Wiretap Act. (more)

The Real Spy's Guide to Becoming a Spy

The Real Spy's Guide to Becoming a Spy by Peter Earnest with Suzanne Harper

Peter Earnest is former CIA and the founding executive director of the International Spy Museum, located in Washington D.C. This is a must read for any young reader who loves spy related things, be it novels, movies or kits. This book is for any young reader who has ever wonder what do spies do, or how do I become a spy?

Thursday, September 24, 2009

SpyCam Story #556 - The Pet Sitter

CA - Police in Newbury Park say they've found evidence that a man arrested for allegedly spying on his female neighbors with a hidden camera may have taped other people as well. Police say Michael Farge, 38, recorded the daily activities of his neighbors, including them changing, for more than two years.

Residents of the community of condos near Wheelwright Lane told KTLA that Farge was good friends with the women he is accused of watching, a woman and her 19-year-old daughter.
They said Farge had a key to the victims' house and watched their house and pets when they were out of town. (more) (video)