The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a pair of cases about whether the police need a warrant to search the cellphones of people they arrest, presenting a major test of the meaning of the Fourth Amendment in the digital age.
The court has long allowed warrantless searches in connection with arrests, saying they are justified by the need to find weapons and to prevent the destruction of evidence.
The question for the justices in the new cases is whether the potentially vast amounts of data held on smartphones warrant a different approach under the Fourth Amendment, which bars unreasonable searches.
The lower courts are divided. (more) (more) (GEICO Pig don't care.)
In a much-anticipated speech, President Barack Obama took to the podium to introduce changes he aims to make to the National Security Administration's surveillance operations... Those in the business community may have been surprised that the president took a moment to remind Americans that spying isn't just a government practice.
Here's what the President said about corporate data tracking:
"Corporations of all shapes and sizes track what you buy, store and analyze our data, and use it for commercial purposes; that's how those targeted ads pop up on your computer or smartphone." (more)
Why does this remind me of my mother saying, "So, if George jumped off the roof would you do it too?"
Advances in photography are rapidly making indirect spying possible. Reflections off of corneas, or any reflective surface, can be gleaned with off-the-shelf cameras and lenses.
Have a look...
You may want to close the blinds in your office. (more)
NJ - Federal prosecutors say the deputy director of the Hudson County jail used a website to illegally wiretap some of his fellow employees.
Kirk Eady turned himself in today and made his initial court appearance, where bail was set at $100,000 unsecured bond and he was order to surrender any firearms. Eady has been suspended without pay, Hudson County spokesman James Kennelly said today. Eady earns $120,000 annually...
Prosecutors say that between March and July 2012, Eady used a publicly available website to place telephone calls to four Hudson County jail employees. The website allowed Eady to conceal the telephone numbers from where the calls originated and also call and record two people simultaneously.
The site also made it appear that those people, and not Eady, originated the call. (more)
With all the data breaches in the news recently, you may wonder if your information was plundered. Find out at Have I Been Pawned? Mine has:(
If so, it's time to scurry around and change your on-line passwords.
Need help?
Password generators.
Password managers.
Password strength testers.
Make sure your new passwords are not on this list...
The Top 500 Worst Passwords of All Time
How to Create Easy to Remember Secure Passwords...
You can create a memorable, secure password starting with a simple phrase. We call these "passphrases". For example, let's use a quote from Ogden Nash:
"Happiness is having a scratch for every itch."
If we use the first letter of each word, and substitute 4 for "for", we get:
Hihas4ei
This is a reasonably strong password but we can improve it a bit by adding some special characters:
#Hihas4ei:
Associating Web Sites...
We can use our new password on several different websites by adding a suffix with a mnemonic link to a particular site. Let's use the first letter and the next two consonants in the site name.
Just to add a bit more randomness we'll alternate upper-case and lower case, and if the first character in the site name is a vowel we'll start with upper-case. To mix things up a bit more we'll use the same rule to decide whether to add the site mnemonic to the left side or the right side.
#Hihas4ei:AmZ for Amazon
fBk#Hihas4ei: for Facebook
#Hihas4ei:YtB for YouTube
(more)
...but Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Senate are uniting to put a stop to unfettered snooping via the "black boxes," or "event data recorders," placed in your car by automakers.
Is your car spying on you? If the vehicle is a fairly new model it probably is, thanks to a "black box" that collects data about what’s going on in your car. And there’s no off switch or way to opt out. By September all new cars sold in the United States will be required to have black boxes, or as they’re more formally called, "event data recorders."
"The amount of data that they record is vast. And it's not capped," said Nate Cardozo, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
That’s just one way new technology installed in automobiles is invading our privacy. At the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last week, Google and a handful of automobile manufacturers, including Audi, GM, Honda and Hyundai, announced a partnership designed to bring the Android mobile platform to vehicles. Those devices are capable of broadcasting your location, Web pages you may have looked at, stores you shopped in and much much more. Chevrolet, for example, showed off a camera mounted on the windshield that records the driver’s point of view and a microphone in the cabin records any noises made in the car.
...Consider what Ford’s top sales guy James Farley said at a CES event: "We know everyone who breaks the law. We know when you’re doing it. We have GPS in your car, so we know what you’re doing." Farley quickly retracted his impolitic remarks, but they give you insight into how seriously some automakers take your privacy. (more)
Is your car bugged?
See if you are on the list.
If so, read this.
~Kevin
Ashkan Soltani, a privacy and security researcher who has been working with the Washington Post on the Snowden files, has published a graphic that illustrates how technology has greatly reduced the barriers to performing surveillance. Soltani included the graph in a paper published in the Yale Law Journal...
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| Click to enlarge. |
The cost comparison involves the several location surveillance techniques of physical pursuit by foot and in vehicles, location tracking using a radio beeper, a GPS device, or a cell phone.
A few examples for understanding the chart:
• Tracking a suspect using a GPS device is 28 times cheaper than assigning officers to follow him.
• Tracking a suspect using cell phone data is 53 times cheaper than physical covert pursuit.
• Tracking a cell phone is twice as cheap as using a GPS device. (more)
Nurse, I spy gypsies, run!
...and a chaser story...
New Zealander Nancy Wake fought fearlessly for the Allies in World War II, first for the French resistance and later as a spy for Britain’s Special Operations Executive.
Parachuted into the Auvergne in April 1944, she was hanging from a tree when a resistance fighter told her, “I hope that all the trees in France bear such beautiful fruit this year.”
She said, “Don’t give me that French sh_t.”
..."More!" I hear you say...
In November 2006, 23-year-old David Fearn of Staffordshire changed his name to James Dr. No From Russia With Love Goldfinger Thunderball You Only Live Twice On Her Majesty’s Secret Service Diamonds Are Forever Live and Let Die The Man With the Golden Gun The Spy Who Loved Me Moonraker For Your Eyes Only Octopussy A View to a Kill The Living Daylights Licence to Kill GoldenEye Tomorrow Never Dies The World Is Not Enough Die Another Day Casino Royale Bond.
It’s the longest name in deed poll history. (more)
UK - Huawei, the Chinese telecoms company that came under suspicion of spying for the Chinese government, has been forced to defend its security records after reports that Government departments believed its technology could be bugged.
Reports at the weekend alleged that three Whitehall departments ordered that video conferencing devices supplied by Huawei should be removed, due to concerns about possible security vulnerabilities in the equipment. (more)
Viet Nam - (Smartphone) software products have become so smart that they not only allow eavesdropping on normal calls or SMS, but the calls and SMS applied OTT apps as well.
There are four eavesdropping software products mostly popular in Vietnam, namely Amaza Tracker, Spyphone, Copyphone, Mobile Spy. They are originated from other countries, compatible to most of the popular operation systems now, from Android, iOS to Windows Phone, BlackBerry. Especially, the products have been updated regularly to be suitable to the mobile phones of the latest generations...
More dangerously, with the advanced technologies, some spyware products can allow to watch the messages and free calls on Line, Viber, WhatsApp, Facebook, Yahoo. Meanwhile, the majority of the popular products can be compatible with Android and iOS based smart phones.
The information can be copied in files, and then sent to the emails of the eavesdroppers. (more)
British spies are to be given a "license to speed", allowing the likes of James Bond to drive fast with impunity in the name of national security.
Transport minister Robert Goodwill was to announce the motoring law changes on Monday, which will hand spooks the same exemption as the police, fire service and ambulance drivers.
Officers in the MI5 and MI6 domestic and foreign intelligence agencies will be able to break the speed limit on surveillance and covert operations once they have completed a training course in high-speed driving. (more)
China - Police have arrested a divorced man and his mistress for subjecting his ex-wife to months of illegal surveillance, intimidation and extortion to gain control of half of her company, local media reported Friday.
The suspects, surnamed Zhu and Liu, spent almost a year spying on their victim, surnamed Wei, by installing monitoring software on her computers and bugging her home, her car and her luggage in a plot to destroy her reputation, according to a report in the Xinmin Evening News. By the time they were caught, the pair had cost Wei's company more than 100 million yuan ($16.5 million) in lost business.
Police said more and more illegal surveillance cases have emerged as technology has advanced, according to the report. Last year, Shanghai police arrested about 190 suspects for the illegal trade or use of surveillance equipment, seizing 500 pieces of equipment and more than 100 million pieces of personal information. (more)
Maryland legislators will consider a package of laws to curb electronic surveillance by police, requiring a search warrant to use drones, email, cellphone towers or license plate readers to track people.
Measures sponsored by a bipartisan pair of senators come amid a national debate over government surveillance after revelations about the extent to which the National Security Agency collects information on U.S. citizens. (more)
Obama to unveil spying reforms on 17th January
White House spokesman Jay Carney said that Obama's remarks would show the "outcomes of the work that has been done on the review process."
The White House said on Thursday that the president was nearing the end of his soul searching about US spying reforms as he met lawmakers who oversee the intelligence community. (more)
FBI Director James Comey recently told reporters that the federal government's spying on American citizens via the National Security Agency is the "way the founders intended." (more)
CA - Sen. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) and Sen. Joel Anderson (R-San Diego) introduced the Fourth Amendment Protection Act to prohibit any state support of the NSA. “State-funded public resources should not be going toward aiding the NSA or any other federal agency from indiscriminate spying on its own citizens and gathering electronic or metadata that violates the Fourth Amendment,” Lieu said in a press release. (more)
Private Eye Sky Spies
Click-bait, or cold reality? The headline for Robinson Meyer’s article in the Atlantic about three Silicon Valley start-ups and their plans to make money off satellite photography of the earth is “Silicon Valley’s New Spy Satellites.” Very soon, it’s likely that it will be substantially easier to buy recent, high-resolution imagery of the Earth’s surface... the message they send together is simple: We’re all spies now. (more)
What Will Anna Chapman Do Next? Former spy Anna Chapman,
who was sent back from the United States to Russia in a major spy swap
in 2010, is going to present her own clothing line at a fashion show in
the Turkish resort of Antalya. (more) (Anna's adventure timeline)
500 Years of History Shows that Mass Spying Is Always Aimed at Crushing Dissent (more)
Boycott Of RSA Security Conference Builds In Wake Of NSA Spy Scandal (more)
TX - A pioneer in cancer research is facing a second degree felony charge in an alleged plot to spy on his ex-wife while they were going through their divorce.
According to prosecutors, Dr. Steven Curley plotted with a computer expert to install a program called eBlaster. (more)
IA - ...the Iowa City landlord found guilty last year of spying on his tenants
(six counts) through bathroom peepholes in 2012, has motioned for a new trial... (speed bump) ...The city’s Housing and Inspections Services office says the city’s
housing code doesn’t address cases such as this, therefore Miller is
able to continue to own and manage the properties. (more)
PA - Forty-three years after the mysterious theft of up to 1,000 documents
from an FBI office outside Philadelphia, three former political
activists are publicly confessing to the brazen burglary, calling it an
act of “resistance” that exposed “massive illegal surveillance and
intimidation.”... Members of the burglary team, armed with little more than a crowbar and wearing suits
and ties, then walked off undetected with suitcases stuffed with
sensitive bureau files that revealed a domestic FBI spying operation
known as COINTELPRO. (more)
Canada - A St. Albert man who surreptitiously took pictures of young girls in
change rooms at five Alberta recreational facilities... was sentenced
to two years in prison Tuesday. (more)
FL - A St. Augustine man and former Putnam County deputy (and St. Johns County reserve deputy) accused of using his cellphone to record a tanning room at the U.S. 1 South World Gym was sentenced Tuesday to 300 days in jail... a woman reported that a gym employee put a cellphone in the closet of the tanning room to record people getting in and out of the booth... (more)
The Point
Anyone can be a spy. The technology is cheap, and easy to use. Just add motivation.
FutureWatch
This will become a real workplace issue in 2014.
And now, a very creepy moment of spy Zen...
Transport minister Robert Goodwill was to announce the motoring law changes on Monday, which will hand spooks the same exemption as the police, fire service and ambulance drivers. 