The Rube Goldberg Toy I Want for My Birthday

The CIA’s Most Highly-Trained Spies Weren’t Even Human

There would be a rustle of oily black feathers as a raven settled on the window ledge of a once-grand apartment building in some Eastern European capital. The bird would pace across the ledge a few times but quickly depart. In an apartment on the other side of the window, no one would shift his attention from the briefing papers or the chilled vodka set out on a table. Nor would anything seem amiss in the jagged piece of gray slate resting on the ledge, seemingly jetsam from the roof of an old and unloved building. 

Those in the apartment might be dismayed to learn, however, that the slate had come not from the roof but from a technical laboratory at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. In a small cavity at the slate’s center was an electronic transmitter powerful enough to pick up their conversation. The raven that transported it to the ledge was no random city bird, but a U.S.-trained intelligence asset. 

Half a world away from the murk of the cold war, it would be a typical day at the I.Q. Zoo, one of the touristic palaces that dotted the streets of Hot Springs, Arkansas, in the 1960s. With their vacationing parents inca tow, children would squeal as they watched chickens play baseball, macaws ride bicycles, ducks drumming and pigs pawing at pianos. You would find much the same in any number of mom-and-pop theme parks or on television variety shows of the era. But chances are that if an animal had been trained to do something whimsically human, the animal—or the technique—came from Hot Springs. 

Two scenes, seemingly disjointed: the John le Carré shadows against the bright midway lights of county-fair Americana. But wars make strange bedfellows, and in one of the most curious, if little-known, stories of the cold war, the people involved in making poultry dance or getting cows to play bingo were also involved in training animals, under government contract, for defense and intelligence work. (more)

NIST - Not Indelibly Secure & Trustworthy?

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has an image problem. 

Last month, revelations surfaced indicating that the National Security Agency (NSA) may have planted a vulnerability in a widely used NIST-approved encryption algorithm to facilitate its spying activities. And cryptographers are also questioning subtle changes that might weaken a new security algorithm called Secure Hash Algorithm-3, or SHA-3. 

Encryption experts say NIST’s reputation has been seriously undermined but that the security community would like to continue using it as a standards body if it can show that it has reformed. (more)

Lawsuit Blames Companies for Hiring Voyeur

IN - A Hammond man who was convicted in 2011 of using his cellphone to record a woman in a Kmart changing room had a voyeurism conviction, so the victim is suing him, Kmart and the construction and staffing companies that hired him.

The companies shouldn’t have hired a convicted sex offender to remodel the bathroom, said Randy K. Fleming of Sarkisian, Fleming, Grabarek, Sarkisian.

The suit names Mark Anthony Fetzko, 28, of Hammond, as well as Kmart, Sturzenbecker Construction Company Inc. and Labor Ready Midwest Indiana as defendants. (more)

Blue Light Special - "Attention business owners." 
Avoid this type of lawsuit by doing your due diligence.
• Conduct quality background checks before hiring.
• Conduct periodic inspections for planted spycams in all areas where the visiting public and your employees have an expectation of privacy.

One Way Your Android Phone Can Get a Virus

Kevin McNamee stands in front of his laptop on a low stage, a phone in his hand as he scrolls through a program showing his phone’s screen, magnified on a projector screen beside him.

Bits of code start flashing up the screen as he injects command-and-control malware into the command window of the app for Rovio Entertainment Ltd.’s trademark game, Angry Birds – transforming the app into a new version he’s dubbed “Very Angry Birds.”

“And here we go,” he says, frowning down at the screen as he begins to run the new app.

McNamee was presenting at Sector 2013, a conference on all things IT security held in Toronto from Oct. 7 to 9. The director of Kindsight Security Labs at Alcatel-Lucent Canada Inc. in Ottawa, McNamee wanted to show how simple it is to use an Android software development kit to add in malware.

When a user downloads a malware-infested version of the app, he or she is asked to sign off on all kinds of permissions, like access to contact lists, the camera, and so on. If a user carelessly checks off ‘yes’ on all the options, the app is activated with a piece of malware called “Droid Whisper,” and the hacker who wrote it now has access to the phone owner’s contact lists, location, messages, camera, and microphone. That means someone can remotely listen in and record phone conversations, send messages to the phone owner’s contacts, and even take pictures from that phone.

This process can work by injecting malware into basically any Android app by using its application package tool, and it just runs as a service in the background, McNamee said. (more) (presentation)

George Washington's Top-Secret Spy Ring Coming to Cable TV

VA - Gov. Bob McDonnell says a television series about George Washington's top-secret spy ring will be filmed in central Virginia.

The pilot for the AMC Studios project was shot in the Richmond area earlier this year, and AMC has ordered a 10-episode season that will start on AMC in 2014. McDonnell says the first season of the series will begin filming this fall and be completed in the spring.

The working title for the series is "Turn." It's based on the nonfiction book "Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring," by Alexander Rose. It's about the band of spies who helped Washington win the Revolutionary War. (more)

Betty Boop, The Muppets & Three Wiretappers Explain NSA Spying

An entertaining short video 
about NSA spying v. the 4th Amendment to the Constitution, 
as explained in part by...

World's Heaviest Non-Electronic Eavesdropping Device

The massive concrete acoustic mirrors, or "listening ears," lining the southeast coast of England were built between the world wars to monitor the skies for the telltale sounds of airborne invasion.

Constructed between 1927 and 1930, the sound mirrors were part of Britain's national defense strategy. Their parabolic shape collected and magnified sound waves in the air over the English Channel and directed them at a microphone positioned just in front of the parabola. Anti-aircraft defenses were then deployed. The mirrors effectively gave Britain a 15-minute warning of an impending attack. 

The site features three different reflectors, including a 200-foot-long curved wall, a 30-foot-tall parabolic dish, and a 20-foot-tall shallow dish. All three can be seen in Greatstone, located on the northeast side of the Dungeness Nature Reserve. (more)

Hannah Anderson - Be Careful What You Say Around the Hotel Staff

via allvoices.com...
Was Hannah Anderson (kidnapping victum) heard rehearsing her story for the 'Today' show interview that airs today? According to one Pierre Hotel employee -- who wishes to remain anonymous for very obvious reasons -- she was. The hotel employee reached out to me privately and shared that she had been eavesdropping while Anderson's "newly hired PR person" coached her on what to say to Savannah Guthrie during their interview. To be clear, the anonymous tipster told me that she had witnessed a "very damning prep meeting."

The Pierre Hotel employee continued to say the following... (more)

Attorney & PI -- 75-100 Illegal Bugs and Surveillance Devices

CA - Mary Nolan, a family law attorney in San Ramon, California, pleaded guilty in federal court, to four counts of tax evasion and one count of unlawful interception of communications, announced United States Attorney Melinda Haag.

Nolan, 61, entered guilty pleas to all of the substantive counts in the indictment.... according to the plea agreement, Nolan caused her staff to illegally eavesdrop by accessing a listening device that private investigator Christopher Butler had installed in a vehicle used by “N.F” (a victim). Nolan agreed to resign her bar license and never to practice law again.

Butler, who pleaded guilty to unlawful interception and several other offenses on May 4, 2012, admitted having installed approximately seventy-five to one hundred unlawful listening devices at the request of clients or their attorneys, including the listening device in “N.F.’s” vehicle in August 2007. Butler was sentenced to 60 months’ imprisonment on this charge, to be served concurrently with the 96-month sentence on his other counts of conviction. (more)

International Spy Museum Looking for a New Safe House

The International Spy Museum, one of the most popular private attractions in (Washington, DC), would relocate to the former Carnegie Library in Mount Vernon Square under a plan by D.C. officials.

Carnegie Library

Events DC, which manages the District’s convention and sports business, announced Monday that it planned to renovate and expand the historic library building by moving the Spy Museum to the museum’s underground space and building a new “sculpted glass pavilion” on the north side of the building that would house a new visitors center, a café and the Spy Museum store...

In all, the project would add 58,000 square feet to the property, but the idea requires layers of approval from local and federal stakeholders because of the historic state of the grounds and library building, which was completed in 1903 and served as the city’s central library until 1970. (more)

... or, say Beetlejuice three times.

Taiwan - Rumors saying that people can verify if their cellphones or landlines are under surveillance by dialing *960*# and *26 are false, telecommunication experts said recently, as the snowballing controversy surrounding the wiretapping of government officials conducted by the Special Investigation Division (SID) of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office sparked concern among the public that private citizens are also under surveillance. (more) (sing-a-long)

Russia's Herculean Feat - Eavesdrop on All Olympic Communications

Russia is preparing to monitor the communications of athletes and others taking part in the Sochi Winter Olympics at an unprecedented level, according to official documents.

Government tender documents indicate all communications equipment at the Black Sea resort will be tapped, including wi-fi and mobile phone networks, to allow eavesdropping through the Russian SORM (System for Operative Investigative Activities) interception system, The Guardian reported.

Documents seen by Russian journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irinia Borogan point to deep packet inspection (DPI) being used to filter all communications around Sochi, with intelligence agencies being able to sort these, search for keywords and identify and monitor people.

The monitoring plans were discovered on the Russian government Zakupki ("purchases") procurement agency website. By law, all Russian government agencies must buy equipment through Zakupki. This includes the country's intelligence agencies. (more)

Hey, kids! Want a smart watch? All right. Who said "house arrest ankle bracelet"?!?!

AT&T announced a new smart device that goes on the wrist today, but it’s not the Galaxy Gear. This is the Filip, a pseudo-smartwatch for kids that parents can use to keep tabs on their offspring with an unparalleled level of accuracy. This device acts as a phone, GPS tracker, and a panic button all in one somewhat awkward package.

The Filip plugs into an iOS or Android app that allows parents to set five trusted numbers that the watch can place calls to. The announcement glosses over the phone call functionality, but it appears to be entirely speakerphone-based. The app is also used to pull locations from the watch in real time, send direct SMS, and set up “Safe Zones.” A Safe Zone is basically a geo-fence that the watch is supposed to stay inside of. If it leaves the Safe Zone, an alert will be pushed to the smartphone app. This is truly helicopter parenting gone high-tech...

There are only two buttons on the Filip, one of which is a big red panic button. When it’s held for three seconds, the device will go into emergency mode and start ambient sound recording. It also sends text messages to all five trusted numbers and places a call to the first number in the list. False alarms will be quite the affair.

AT&T will be the exclusive network provider for the Filip, but no pricing has been announced. The closest thing to a release date is “in the coming months.” (more)

Business Espionage: Eavesdropping Discovery at Nortel - Update

The Department of National Defence will have to decide whether it is still worth the risk to move into the former Nortel campus after the discovery of listening devices at the facility, say security analysts.

The DND is not releasing details about where exactly the electronic eavesdropping devices were found or whether they were left over from an industrial espionage operation when Nortel occupied the complex in Ottawa’s west end.

Nortel was the target of a number of spy and computer hacking operations, with the main culprits suspected of being associated with China.

But security analysts say other listening devices could remain in the sprawling campus at 3500 Carling Ave. The question is whether they can all be found and whether they are still active...

Sources say the bugs are believed to have been planted when Nortel occupied the campus. (more)