When Social Notworking May Really Mean Not Working

Employers ask job seekers for Facebook passwords
When Justin Bassett interviewed for a new job, he expected the usual questions about experience and references. So he was astonished when the interviewer asked for something else: his Facebook username and password.

Bassett, a New York City statistician, had just finished answering a few character questions when the interviewer turned to her computer to search for his Facebook page. But she couldn't see his private profile. She turned back and asked him to hand over his login information.

Bassett refused and withdrew his application, saying he didn't want to work for a company that would seek such personal information. But as the job market steadily improves, other job candidates are confronting the same question from prospective employers, and some of them cannot afford to say no. (more)

LAUSD Can Now Spy on Teachers' Online Activity, Punish Them for Facebook Comments
Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters tells teachers -- and any other adult associated with the district -- that they'd better keep their social-media persona in check.

Actually, the new policy was put in place almost two months ago. But until the news wire mentioned it in an article today, it seems to have passed quietly under the radar. (more)

FutureWatch: Your Next TV May Watch You

via the HD Guru...

Artist's conception. Not really Samsung.

Samsung’s 2012 top-of-the-line plasmas and LED HDTVs offer new features never before available within a television including a built-in, internally wired HD camera, twin microphones, face tracking and speech recognition.  

While these features give you unprecedented control over an HDTV, the devices themselves, more similar than ever to a personal computer, may allow hackers or even Samsung to see and hear you and your family, and collect extremely personal data.

And unlike other TVs, which have cameras and microphones as add-on accessories connected by a single, easily removable USB cable, you can’t just unplug these sensors.

Privacy concerns

We began to wonder exactly what data Samsung collects from its new “eyes and ears” and how it and other companies intend use it, which raises the following questions:

* Can Samsung or Samsung-authorized companies watch you watching your Samsung TV? 

* Do the televisions send a user ID or the TV’s serial number to the Samsung cloud whenever it has an Internet connection? 

* Does Samsung cross reference a user ID or facial scan to your warranty registration information, such as name, address etc.? 

* Can a person or company listen to you, at will, via the microphone and Internet connection? 

* Does Samsung’s cloud store all this information? How secure is this extremely personal data? 

* Can a hacker intercept this data or view you via the built in camera? 

* Can a third-party app program do any of the above? 

* Exactly what information does the TV send to Samsung or other parties? 

* Does Samsung intend to sell data collected by its Smart TV owners, such as who, what and when one is viewing? (more)

Send your Kids to Camp this Summer... Spy Camp

 This isn’t your ordinary day camp—this is Spy Camp!

Somewhere deep inside the International Spy Museum in Washington DC is an elite group of 10-13 year old recruits, lurking in the shadows, preparing to take on top secret missions. No one really knows who they are, or for that matter, what they’re really up to. Now it’s your turn to join their ranks. 

Each day at Spy Camp is filled with top secret briefings and activities that will put spy skills and street smarts to the test. Aspiring KidSpy recruits will hone their tradecraft, learn from real spies, and hit the streets to run training missions. Develop a disguise for cover, make and break codes, discover escape and evasion techniques, create and use spy gadgets, uncover the science behind spying—all of this and more awaits young recruits! (Secret Briefing)

Case History: How Foreign Espionage is Killing U.S. Companies

A cautionary tale of woe...

Last June, three men squeezed inside a wind turbine in China’s Gobi Desert. They were employees of American Superconductor Corp., a maker of computer systems that serve as the electronic brains of the device... to test a new version of its control system software...

The software was designed to disable the turbine several weeks earlier, at the end of the testing period. But for some reason, this turbine ignored the system’s shutdown command and the blades kept right on spinning.

The problem wasn’t immediately clear, so the technicians made a copy of the control system’s software and sent it to the company’s research center...

...some startling findings... The Sinovel turbine appeared to be running a stolen version of AMSC’s software. Worse, the software revealed Beijing-based Sinovel had complete access to AMSC’s proprietary source code. In short, Sinovel didn’t really need AMSC anymore...

...in March 2011, Sinovel abruptly and inexplicably began turning away AMSC’s shipments...

AMSC had no choice but to announce that Sinovel -- now its biggest customer, accounting for more than two-thirds of the company’s $315 million in revenue in 2010 -- had stopped making purchases. Investors fled, erasing 40 percent of AMSC’s value in a single day and 84 percent of it by September.

What happened to AMSC may be incredibly brazen, but it’s hardly exceptional. There have been a large number of corporate spying cases involving China recently, and they are coming to light as President Barack Obama and the U.S., along with Japan and the European Union, have filed a formal complaint to the World Trade Organization over China’s unfair trading practices. 

...14 U.S. intelligence agencies issued a report describing a far-reaching industrial espionage campaign by Chinese spy agencies. This campaign has been in the works for years and targets a swath of industries.

“It’s the greatest transfer of wealth in history,” General Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, said at a security conference at New York’s Fordham University in January. (more)

Manufacturing is gone.

Intellectual property is going.

What will we have left to sell?

Please. Start taking espionage seriously. ~Kevin

FutureWatch: The Most Powerful Spy Center In the World

Deep in the Utah desert, at the feet of the Wasatch mountain range, is one of the most secret, most guarded, most secure facilities in the world. Here is where everything you say is analyzed to search for security threats against the United States.

It's the National Security Agency's Utah Data Center, a $2 billion facility that will capture, record and scrutinize every communication in the world, from emails to phone calls to text messages to chats. It will also crack codes. According to Threat Level, the encryption cracking will be the most powerful in the world, and will help get into "financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications."

There will be four data rooms, 25,000-square-foot each, full of servers, cooled down by 60,000 tons of machinery and 1.7 million gallons of water per day. The site has its own 65-megawatt electrical substation, as well as backup generators that can power the whole thing for three days, uninterrupted. Just the video security system alone costs more than $10 million. (more)

SpyCam Story #657 - Rutgers SpyCam Case Verdict

NJ - An ex-Rutgers student accused of using a webcam to spy on his gay roommate was convicted of invasion of privacy but cleared of some of the more serious charges of bias intimidation Friday.

Dharun Ravi, 20, was stoic as the jury rendered its mixed verdict in New Jersey’s Middlesex Country Superior Court after deliberating since Wednesday.

Ravi was accused of 15 counts after using a webcam to spy on roommate Tyler Clementi’s dorm-room tryst with another man in 2010.

Clementi, 18, jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge three days after the spying incident. (more)

Two Simple Tips to Prevent Snooping on Your Lost Cell Phone

Anyone who loses their mobile phone should expect the data to be accessed by the person who finds it, and business data is no exception, according to a study released this week by security firm Symantec.

In its Smartphone Honey Stick Project, Symantec "lost" 10 phones in each of five cities, leaving them on top of newspaper boxes, in food courts, and even the ladies restroom of a Chinese restaurant. In all but one instance, people who found the phones accessed the devices, with 83 percent of people accessing one or more of the four business applications, including two human resources files, corporate email, and a remote administration tool. More than 4 out of 10 people even accessed the banking application on the device.

...two simple security measures can protect the data on devices... 

• While complex passcodes are best, using even a simple four-digit code would protect the devices from casual access.

• Installing a remote management tool to remotely track the device can help to quickly recover a lost phone. Most device management tools also allow users to remotely delete the data on the device, a hedge against a more tech-savvy data thief. (more)

Advice: Use Cell Phone Forensics, not Spyware, to Gather Evidence

via Pursuit Magazine...
"As a private investigator, I’m often asked by businesses to gather information from cell phones owned by a company; you can protect your business by tracking your employee’s cell phone data. Even though I know the best method for collecting data from phones is through mobile phone forensics, one client was insistent that we use spyware to track calls, text messages, etc. from one specific employee they suspected of stealing from the company..." (and it goes downhill from here) (more)

Privacy Invading Lawsuit - Apps

Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Yelp and 14 other companies have been hit with a lawsuit accusing them of distributing privacy-invading mobile applications.
 
The lawsuit was filed by a group of 13 individuals in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas earlier this week. The suit charges 18 companies with surreptitiously gathering data from the address books of tens of millions of smartphone users. (more)

Psychopath Chat

To investigate whether there are actually “psychopathic tendencies” in the way a person talks, researchers at Cornell University compared stories told by 14 imprisoned psychopathic male murderers with those of 38 convicted murderers who were not diagnosed as psychopathic. 

Each subject was asked to describe his crime in detail; the stories were taped, transcribed and subjected to computer analysis.

The analysis showed that psychopaths are more likely than other criminals to use words that reveal a great degree of selfishness, detachment from their crimes and emotional flatness, the study found. These include conjunctions like “because,” “since” or “so that,” to imply that the crime “had to be done” to obtain a particular goal. 

Here are a few other notable differences:

• Psychopaths used twice as many words relating to physical needs, such as food, sex or money, while non-psychopaths used more words about social needs, including family, religion and spirituality.
• They were also more likely to use the past tense, suggesting a detachment from their crimes.
• They tended to be less fluent in their speech, using more “ums” and “uhs.” The exact reason for this is not clear, but the researchers speculate that the psychopath is trying harder to make a positive impression and needs to use more mental effort to frame the story. (more)

"Yer out!" Baseball Spy Gets the Boot

AZ - A scout for the Los Angeles Angels who was watching San Francisco take infield practice Wednesday morning was ejected from Scottsdale Stadium at the request of Giants manager Bruce Bochy.

Media reports said Angels scout Jeff Schugel was taking notes during the Giants’ routine drills when he was told to leave the ballpark.

Earlier this spring, Diamondbacks manager Kirk Gibson had scouts removed while they were watching drills at Arizona’s camp. (more)

FS - Slightly Tarnished Surveillance Equipment Company - Buyer's Identity Protected

French technology company Amesys is offloading its business that sells Internet-interception equipment, a move that comes six months after it became public that Moammar Gadhafi's regime had been using the technology to spy on Libyans.

Bull SA, Amesys's parent company, said Thursday it had "signed an exclusivity agreement with a view to negotiating the sale of the activities" related to its Eagle interception product. Bull declined to identify the buyer. (more)

From Racoon Twsp. in Beaver County a Bed Bugger's Comedy

PA - A Raccoon Township man was charged after police said he hid a listening device under his wife's bed in an attempt to catch her having an affair.
Suzanne Cripe, contacted police and said she had found a "transmitter device" under her bed... She told police she thought the device had been placed there by her husband, Wayne Comet Cripe.

The Cripes "have been separated for some time," and were still sharing a house, but they had separate bedrooms, the police report said.
 

When police made contact with Wayne Cripe he said, "I guess she found the transmitter," before police even asked him any questions.
 

Cripe told the police he put the transmitter under his wife's bed because he wanted to know whether she and her boyfriend were having sex. He told police he was tired of hearing them and wanted to know "if the coast was clear" before entering his home. (more)

SpyCam Story #657 - This Week in SpyCam News

SpyCam stories have become commonplace and the techniques used, repetitive. We continue to keep lose track of the subject for statistical purposes, but won't bore you with the details. Only links to the stories will be supplied unless there is something useful to be learned.

CA - Man spying in college Men's Restroom- Low tech, using mirror.

NJ - Jury gets case in Rutgers webcam spying trial.

Canada - Man charged with voyeurism in Halifax has waived his right to a bail hearing.

LA - Man faces 23 more counts of video voyeurism and child pornography.

LA - Guard's coat-hook cams in 2 office ladies restroom and on dumpster at Marti Gras.

UT - Man tapes encounter with BYU male student and tried to extort money for silence.

UK - Teacher secretly filmed women and kids, many locations – including Botanical Gardens.

Canada - Pen spycam captures woman swim teacher in changing room.

Canada - City sweeps all the change rooms of all the swimming pools for staff and citizens.

OH - Park ranger indicted - accused of placing an iPod on record mode in a restroom.

UT - Man charged with voyeurism - allegedly set up cameras in estranged wife’s bedroom.

MA - Man arraigned for cell phone spycaming in YMCA girl's locker room. 

NV - School police use hidden cameras, catch teacher's aide roughing two students.

FL - Video voyeurism bill passes House and Senate; goes to Gov. Rick Scott. 

MS - Mississippi bill would make voyeurism a felony... but only if victim is under 16.

Australia - Former lawyer jailed for indecently filming boys with hidden cameras.

IL - Man taped employees of local restaurant using commodes in employees' bathroom.

ID - Man indited on video voyeurism - woman unable to resist due to being drugged.

UT - Previously convicted spycam'er at University of Utah re-arrested.

IN - Former Notre Dame office employee pleds guilty - pen cam in women's restroom.

LA - Man in Pecanland Mall men's room looking for nuts with cell cam.

FutureWatch - Facebook and the Fourth Amendment

Click to enlarge

"...as Justice Sotomayor recently suggested, the wholesale sharing of your reading history with Facebook friends may ultimately impact the Supreme Court’s understanding of what constitutes a “reasonable expectation of privacy...”
"The recent trend toward social readers and other types of frictionless sharing may at first glance seem innocuous, if inane... users may not understand that sharing what they read with friends may mean sharing what they read with the government, as well. That is a whole lot more serious than just annoying your friends with your taste for celebrity gossip. Indeed, it may be another step toward the death of the Fourth Amendment by a thousand cuts." —Margot Kaminski, writing in the Wake Forest Law Review (more)