Turk Taps Top 70,000 Drops

More than 70,000 telephones in Turkey are currently officially under electronic surveillance, daily Radikal reported Sunday.

Radikal said it was the first media institution to have visited the Telecommunications Directorate, or TİB, in Ankara, the institution responsible for installing and maintaining telephone surveillance by court order.

Exactly 71,538 telephones have been tapped by TİB through court orders, among which 65 percent have ostensibly been tapped to gather intelligence on terrorism and organized crime, Radikal reported. 

Wiretaps for the purpose of gathering intelligence can be requested by intelligence institutions to prevent crimes from being committed.

The remaining 35 percent of surveillance is being carried out because of strong suspicions that a crime has been committed and no other way to obtain evidence. (more)

RED - A spies-in-action comedy

A spies-in-action comedy (based on a graphic novel), populated by terrific actors and blessed with a consistently funny and occasionally hilarious script, however implausible. The acronym RED stands for “Retired, Extremely Dangerous” and refers to Frank Moses (Bruce Willis).

A retired CIA “black ops” agent, Frank is so bored in his suburban home that he keeps calling a Social Security clerk, Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) in Kansas City, pretending his check didn’t come, just to chat. When masked Ninja-like assassins break into his home, Frank demolishes them, then heads to Kansas City to protect Sarah, knowing their calls have been tapped. (more) (trailer)

Local Politics - Wiretapping II

The Allegheny County Jail Oversight Board has no plans to investigate how fired Capt. Thomas R. Leicht Jr. kept his job for years despite failed internal investigations, allegations of bid rigging and a controversial wiretapping program, the board's chair said...

He also used county equipment to wiretap jail telephones from his home and sent recordings of at least six attorney-client calls to prosecutors, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. (more)

Local Politics - Wiretapping I

Editorial from local paper...

NC - Even before anyone knew for sure what was on the digital flash drive that mysteriously appeared in Hope Mills Mayor Eddie Dees' mailbox, town residents had plenty of reason for concern about their leaders.

The "thumb drive" contained recordings of conversations between Town Manager Randy Beeman and Police Chief Robert Hassell. They were all or part of five calls recorded between Feb. 25 and May 17...

It appears that the wiretap originated in the town's Police Department. The mayor says the drive contains calls made into and out of the department. If that's true, it also raises serious questions about the department and its internal security. It fairly screams for a full-blown criminal investigation.

But instead, the commissioners have chosen to wait for the town attorney to investigate, which he's been doing for months now. (more)

iLied, iSnapped.

via Cult of Mac...

"There’s no other way of saying this: Camera Camouflage is sneaky. It’s a camera app that goes out of its way to avoid looking like a camera. It disguises itself as an incoming phone call. You can even instruct it to activate your phone’s ringtone, so you can pretend to take the call and hold the phone to your ear. At which point, things get even sneakier. Camera Camouflage is activated by your voice. When you start speaking, it takes a photo. To onlookers, you’re just answering a phone call. You can keep talking, and keep snapping, for as long as you want." (more)

Do You Know How to Protect Your Cell Phone Calls?

via SC Magazine and Cellcrypt

...So, the problem of cell phone interception is real, growing and unlikely to be eliminated in the foreseeable future.

For an organization, knowing that phone calls have been intercepted at all is difficult. There is rarely a test that can be done, other than looking at the consequences of a lost deal or secret information in the public domain. In fact, in 2010, the Ponemon Institute found that 80 percent of CIOs admitted they would not find out directly if they had been intercepted.

The problem shows a wide geographical variation, both in the number of instances and in the public perception of risk. 

In the United States and mainland Europe, the perception of risk is relatively low. However, travel to Latin America or some parts of Asia, and the perception of an issue has reached the consumer with advertisements on mainstream television for protection equipment. 

Yet few executives traveling around the world have taken special measures to secure their cell phone conversations.

Research from ABI shows that 79 percent of companies' cell phones were routinely used to discuss information that, if intercepted, would lead to material loss to the business. Yet less than one in five had in place adequate measures to address this risk. (more)

New book coming soon...  

Is My Cell Phone Bugged? 

Stay tuned for details.

PA Spycam Suit Settled - Lawyers Win

PA - A suburban Pennsylvania school district accused of spying on students using school-issued laptops has agreed to pay $610,000 to settle litigation stemming from its controversial practice.

Under the proposed settlement, the Lower Merion School District will pay $185,000 to two high school students who had sued the district earlier this year for allegedly snooping on them. The remaining $425,000 will go to attorneys fees. (more)

Business Espionage - Conference Call Eavesdropping

State Republican Party staff members eavesdropped on a conference call organized by party activists to strategize ways to convince GOP candidates adopt more of the party platform, according to several people who participated in the meeting.

S.C. GOP 1st Vice Chairman Patrick Haddon organized the call with party activists including Randy Page, Chad Connelly and Justin Evans. Organizers said the call was intended as brainstorming session for fall campaigns, and not to discuss party leadership or direction.

But when the call ended, the list of participants contained an unknown number. Organizers called the number and reached a phone within Republican Party offices. State party officials declined to discuss the conference call.

“No comment,” S.C. GOP executive director Joel Sawyer said. “I’m not confirming or denying anything.” (more)

To all Murray Associates clients, please re-read the Conference Call section of your reports again. This problem is real and surfaces in the news quite often. Thank you, Kevin

A New Suite of Phone Espionage Software

Phone Creeper V0.9 (BETA) for Windows Mobile Cell Phones - "This is a phone espionage suite. It can be silently installed by just inserting an SD card with the files below on it. The program does not show up under installed programs or running programs and allows for a useful array or features. Phones running this software can be remotely controlled by SMS text messages. All commands will be silently received and deleted immediately and results will be issued back to sender. Pre-configured settings can be added to the installer to have your own default password and phone number to receive live updates. By default, this program will silently reinstall itself even after a hard reset, if the memory card with these files is still in the device." (more)

P.S. There is even an Anti-Creeper app. Both are FREE but donations are solicited.

"Used car... or 'copter, Mr. Bond?"

Three James Bond sports cars – and one helicopter – will be auctioned Oct. 27 at RM Auctions’ Automobiles of London sale at the Battersea Evolution arena.

The highlight of the lot is a 1964 Aston Martin DB5 driven by Sean Connery in “Goldfinger”. There’s also the green 1998 Jaguar XKR driven by the villain ‘Zao’ in “Die Another Day” and the 1969 Lamborghini Islero GTS driven by Sir Roger Moore in “The Man Who Haunted Himself”.

The helicopter at stake is a 1960 Hiller UH -12 E4, which was flown by actress Honor Blackman in her role as Pussy Galore. (Its first time on film was for a 1963 movie called “The VIPs”, which starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.) RM says the chopper will likely go for nearly £400,000. (moore, Roger Moore)

Time to Recycle the Quote of the Century

“The growing use of the electric automobile, with its many advantages of simplicity, ease of operation and noiselessness, has resulted in a demand for some means of conveniently charging the batteries.” — GE Bulletin No. 4772, September 1910.

SpyCam Story #585 - "Purely Platonic, your Honor."

GA - A man was arrested Friday for using his cell phone to take video of a woman in a dressing room.

According to a report released Saturday by the Athens-Clarke County Police Department, Vicente Bautista, 26 of Greensboro, Ga. was in the dressing area of the Plato's Closet located at 196 Alps Road shortly before noon. Police said he put his cell phone under the divider to tape a 36-year-old woman as she tried on clothes. (more)

Business Espionage - Bratz v. Barbie

Mattel Inc will answer accusations it spied on rival toymakers by infiltrating their private showrooms around the globe, after a U.S. court denied its motion to dismiss claims filed by rival MGA.

In an escalation of a long-running battle over MGA's popular "Bratz" dolls, MGA Entertainment Inc accused Mattel of gaining entry to toy fairs with false credentials to steal trade secrets. It says Mattel then concealed evidence about these activities, according to court filings.

MGA has accused Mattel employees of gaining access to private showrooms of toy makers -- including Hasbro Inc, Lego and Sony Corp -- armed with fake business cards and spy cameras, to steal price lists and other sensitive information. (more)

Legal Phone Taps Vulnerable to DOS Attacks

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania say they've discovered a way to circumvent the networking technology used by law enforcement to tap phone lines in the U.S.

The flaws they've found "represent a serious threat to the accuracy and completeness of wiretap records used for both criminal investigation and as evidence in trial," the researchers say in their paper, set to be presented Thursday at a computer security conference in Chicago.

Following up on earlier work on evading analog wiretap devices called loop extenders, the Penn researchers took a deep look at the newer technical standards used to enable wiretapping on telecommunication switches. They found that while these newer devices probably don't suffer from many of the bugs they'd found in the loop extender world, they do introduce new flaws. In fact, wiretaps could probably be rendered useless if the connection between the switches and law enforcement are overwhelmed with useless data, something known as a denial of service (DOS) attack. (more)

Business Espionage - This Zeus is no Cretan

The Zeus banking Trojan could be a useful tool in corporate espionage...

Zeus typically steals online banking credentials and then uses that information to move money out of internet accounts. In the past year, however, Gary Warner, director of research in computer forensics with the University of Alabama, who has been closely monitoring the various criminal groups that use Zeus, has seen some hackers also try to figure out what companies their victims work for...

"They want to know where you work," he said. "Your computer may be worth exploring more deeply because it may provide a gateway to the organisation."

That's worrying because Zeus could be a very powerful tool for stealing corporate secrets. It lets the criminals remotely control their victims' computers, scanning files and logging passwords and keystrokes. With Zeus, hackers can even tunnel through their victim's computer to break into corporate systems. (more)