Thomas Cook Counters Espionage

After secret talks in a room designed to prevent bugging, British tour operator Thomas Cook has bought a majority stake in Intourist, the Russian travel agency founded under Joseph Stalin. (more)

Stalin founded a travel agency?!?!

(Shrugs shoulders, walks away with a head full of jokes that will never see the light of day.) Sortalike when you're in a Siberian... (Slaps hand over mouth.)

Fed Taps Trim Hedge

A broad U.S. crackdown on insider trading accelerated as the government charged an employee at an expert-network firm with conspiring to leak confidential information. Prosecutors also won a legal victory against a founder of the Galleon Group hedge fund that cements their ability to use wiretaps against Wall Street investors. (more)

Micro SD Card Crypts Cell Calls and SMS

Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) and Secusmart have released a new generation of the SecuVOICE solution for wiretap-proof cell phone calls. 

This new and improved version of the encryption solution will allow the German federal authorities to make phone calls - and also send SMS messages - without any risk of interception. 

The core component of this integrated solution is the new Secusmart Security Card, which encrypts calls and SMS messages end-to-end and provides secure authentication. The microSD card used in the cell phone was specially developed for Secusmart by Giesecke & Devrient Secure Flash Solutions (G&D SFS), a joint venture of G&D and Phison Electronics Corporation. The German federal authorities will soon be deploying the first crypto cards to offer this combined functionality. (more)

Patriots suspected of spying?!?! (Shocking.)

(US football story) For the second straight weekend, the three-year-old notion of the Patriots engaging in tactics not recognized by the rule book hovers over one of the team’s biggest out-of-division rivalries. 

In his look-ahead to the coming weekend, Peter King of SI.com points out that Colts quarterback Peyton Manning fears the presence of enemy ears in the visitors’ locker room at Gillette Stadium... None of it means that bugs have been planted in the locker room, but there’s nothing wrong with being cautious. Even if the caution becomes paranoia. (more) (history)

Solution... Electronic surveillance detection inspections.

Thus leaving no time to collect on the sex part.

Charging IAS officer Ravi Inder Singh with corporate espionage for sexual and monetary favours, the Delhi Police Special Cell told a court on Wednesday that Singh spoke with ‘middleman’ Vineet Kumar at least 10,000 times in the last two months and helped clear the file of telecom company Telcordia in the first week of November “abusing his official position”. (more)

Ellison publicly charged Apotheker with overseeing an "industrial espionage scheme" to steal Oracle software...

...and wins "one of the 10 or 20 largest jury verdicts in U.S. legal history."

SAP AG must pay Oracle Corp $1.3 billion for software theft in a jury verdict that could be the largest-ever for copyright infringement. (more)

"The weed of crime bears bitter fruit."

You know it's time to call in the PR folks when...

via the sharp eyes at newlaunches.com...

For those of you unfamiliar with the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the Fourth Amendment is in place to guard citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures. Not that it really stops the government from doing so or anything but they try and it is for our own safety… most of the time. But Airport security and those scans can be quite a problem, what with all the radiation and all from the scanners etc. so aside from lead underwear and radiation blocking fig leaves on your delicates, another company has come up with Forth Amendment T-shirts with the prints in metallic dye that will show up on scans. (more)

SpyCam Story #587 - Year's Weirdest Story

A New York University professor has an eye in the back of his head after undergoing a surgical procedure to install a camera in his skull, part of an art exhibition commissioned by a new museum in Qatar.

“I am going about my daily life as I did before the procedure, but I ask for a period of rest before I am going to give any interviews,” Professor Wafaa Bilal said in a statement issued Tuesday through a spokeswoman, Mahdis Keshavarz.

The surgery was performed in the U.S., according to Keshavarz. She declined to specify the hospital or doctor, saying Bilal preferred not to disclose that information until after he has healed. She also declined to specify the precise date of Bilal’s surgery, though as recently as Friday evening she said the procedure had not yet been performed.

The thumbnail-size camera implanted in his head will automatically snap one photograph per minute for an entire year, as The Wall Street Journal reported last week. Bilal, an assistant professor in the photography and imaging department of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, intends to activate the camera on Dec. 15.

The project, titled “The 3rd I,” was commissioned by Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art. Bilal plans to broadcast a live stream of images from the camera to monitors at the exhibit in Qatar, scheduled to open Dec. 30.

Last week Bilal launched a website connected to the project. Whether a live feed of pictures from his head-camera will also appear on his website remains unclear. (more)

...and most every other country in the developed world.

A number of suspicious women in the Gulf state of Qatar are spying on their husbands by using readily available hi-tech devices.

The women are trapping their husbands by handing spy devices, like miniature cameras fitted in pens and cigarette lighters, as gifts, The Peninsula newspaper reported.

Some wives who are not able to make their husbands accept such gifts slyly place the devices in their cars, the report said.

The paper said that it interviewed "a number of women who said their friends or colleagues admitted to spying or having spied on their husbands as they suspected they were cheating on them." (more) (eBay Spy Central) (sing-a-long)

"But, of course, Fearless Leader."

The conversations of Bulgarian army generals and top officers have been secretly wiretapped.  

The scandal broke out after a spy cam hidden in a watch was found in one of the rooms of Sofia Shipka hotel, owned by the Ministry of Defense. The military prosecution has already been alerted about the attempted espionage and its experts are now working to find out if secret records had been made and who might have used them. 

The computer surveillance system installed in room 222 of the Shipka hotel has been receiving information from 69 spy cameras installed in different recreation centers of the Bulgarian army across the country, while most of the military clubs in Bulgaria have been wiretapped under the pretext of higher security.

"I admit ordering the watch with the spy cam in it, but the gadget has never been used,” said Nikolay Markov, former security officer at the Recreation Centers Department with the Ministry of Defense. (more)

Colombia CIA Illegal Eavesdropping Suspect Flees

A former director of Colombia’s central intelligence agency, under investigation in an eavesdropping and illegal surveillance scandal has been granted political asylum in Panama.

Maria del Pilar Hurtado a lawyer headed the Department of Administrative Security (DAS) in Colombia, from August 2007 2008. She is one of four former directors of the agency in charge of the Colombian intelligence services, being investigated for their roles in a scheme of eavesdropping and illegal surveillance of judges, opposition politicians, journalists and human rights workers. (more)

Students: Enter for your chance to win an Interview with a Spy!

Ever wonder what a real spy does? Do they really drive a car like James Bond, have really cool gadgets, and make narrow escapes around every corner? Now’s your chance to find out!

The International Spy Museum announces a new student podcast in which student’s questions from across the nation will be accepted and possibly selected for this exclusive podcast interview with a real spy. (more)

When Suits Spy II

Australia - Senior managers of the companies building Australia's largest desalination plant in Victoria have denied authorising covert surveillance at the site.

Construction workers have walked off the site near Wonthaggi, south-east of Melbourne, following allegations the project's joint venture company, Thiess Degremont, hired operatives to spy on them. The allegations were revealed this morning by The Australian newspaper, which says it has sources and documents about what was called Operation Pluto. 

The newspaper says it was a secret deal between senior managers of Thiess and the Australian Security Intelligence group (ASI), a company run by experienced strike breaker Bruce Townsend. (more)

The China Whooshing Sound (It's the Same Old Song)

CA - A San Ramon, California, man is facing charges he stole valuable technology (The sugar pie.) from his former employer in hopes of building competitive location-aware products.

Zhiqiang "Michael" Zhang was arrested Tuesday, on charges that he stole trade secrets from Sirf Technology, a San Jose, California, maker of Global Positioning System chipsets, used by wireless location-aware programs in devices such as mobile phones and automobile navigation systems. A noted expert on location aware technology, Zhang had been a director of software development before resigning from Sirf in May 2009. He had been with the company for seven years.

According to prosecutors, Zhang then set up a company called Anywhere Logic "in order to develop and sell location-based services utilizing trade secrets stolen from Sirf."

Zhang allegedly hired two Sirf engineers (The honey bunch.), Xiaodong Liang and Yanmin Li away from Sirf to work at Anywhere Logic. They have also been charged in the case, but are now living in China. (The same old song.) (more) (sing-a-long)

Third of Smart Phone Users Not Smart

Almost a third of employees regularly breach enterprise mobile management policies by using personal smartphones for work purposes, according to a report.

The survey of 1,100 mobile workers by iPass, a provider of enterprise mobility services, found 22% of employees breached their employers' strict smartphone policies when using non-managed personal smartphones to access corporate information, putting data at a security risk.

"Un-provisioned smartphones are a significant risk to enterprises," said Steven Wastie, senior vice-president marketing and product management at iPass. "20% of these mobile employees have experienced a relevant security issue with their smartphone containing business data lost, stolen, infected or hacked." (more)