How NSA targeted chancellor Merkel's mobile phone

Last week, the German weekly Der Spiegel revealed that NSA intercepted the mobile phone of the German chancellor Angela Merkel. Although most details were not known yet, the fact itself caused a severe crisis in the relationship between the United States and Germany.Meanwhile, the original NSA targeting record containing chancellor Merkel's phone number has been published. One of the entries refers to a document about the NSA's SYNAPSE data model,...

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Kremlin Alledegly Slipped Spy Gadgets into G20 Summit Gift Bags

Russian hosts of the Group of 20 summit near St. Petersburg in September sent world leaders home with gifts designed to keep on giving: memory sticks and recharging cables programmed to spy on their communications, two Italian newspapers reported Tuesday. A Kremlin spokesman denied the allegations reported by Il Corriere della Sera and La Stampa, both of which attributed their stories to findings of technical investigations ordered by the president...

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Do You Have an IT Spy Guy?

Two tales to get you thinking...Old tech equipment rarely dies, it just finds a new home -- and sometimes, that home is with your IT employees... The problem with taking equipment bound for the scrap heap or the recycling bin is that it often still contains sensitive data, which if lost could result in massive liability for the company that owns the equipment. Think... It is more than just theft, much more."There are no secrets for IT," says Pierluigi...

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Business Espionage in America - We Lose More Than We Take in Taxes

The United States has known for sometime that it has been victimized by economic espionage mounted by other countries, especially China and Russia. According to a counterintelligence expert hired by companies to help them counter this threat, the toll for these crimes is far, far higher than what has been officially reported.Economic espionage represents “the greatest transfer of wealth in history,” said General Keith Alexander, NSA director and...

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Ankle Bracelets Have Criminals Bugged

Ankle bracelets featuring GPS tracking technology can do more than allow authorities to follow the whereabouts of criminals ordered to wear them. They also can be used to eavesdrop on conversations without the wearer knowing what’s going on.In Puerto Rico, defense lawyer Fermín L. Arraiza-Navas learned about the bracelet’s expanded surveillance capabilities after meeting with clients fitted with the technology. He told the Puerto Rico Center for...

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How secure is the Merkel-Phone?

(Latest update: October 28, 2013)In an article by the German magazine Der Spiegel it was said that the NSA probably also eavesdropped on the mobile phone of chancellor Angela Merkel, which is dubbed Merkel-Phone in popular media. Der Spiegel provided little detail, but according to an article in Die Welt, the old cell phone number of Merkel was mentioned in a document provided by Edward Snowden. Der Spiegel presented their evidence to the German...

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A Brilliant Halloween Costume, More LED Fun, and a tip of the tin foil hat to the ultimate paranoid!

It's Friday. Oddball time!Weekend Electronics ProjectExtreme LED ThrowiesClick to enlarge.LED throwies are cheery glow-dots you can make in seconds from simple components and stick to any ferro-magnetic surface. But that’s just the beginning — click link to learn how to hack and modify them. Easy to make!...and an anti-NSA home... (just kidding)...

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Encryption Infographic

Every wonder how good your encryption ...

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Citing "Terrifying" Surveillance Tactics, Yet Another U.S. Privacy Service Shuts Down

Yet another American Internet privacy service has bitten the dust, prompted by fears about broad government surveillance demands.San Francisco-based CryptoSeal, a provider of virtual private networks that can be used to browse the Internet anonymously, has closed its doors to users of its private VPN service. In a statement posted online, CryptoSeal announced that a key factor in the closure was the government’s recently revealed attempt to force email provider Lavabit to turn over its private encryption keys. Lavabit shut down in August...

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Court Rules: NO GPS for LEOs w/o CO

A federal appeals court has ruled that law enforcement officials must obtain a warrant before attaching a GPS unit to a suspect’s car and tracking them... “Today’s decision is a victory for all Americans because it ensures that the police cannot use powerful tracking technology without court supervision and a good reason to believe it will turn up evidence of wrongdoing,” American Civil Liberties Union attorney Catherine Crump said in a statement....

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Rental Company Settles Spyware Case

The Federal Trade Commission says Atlanta-based furniture renter Aaron's Inc. has agreed to a settlement over allegations that it helped place spyware on computers that secretly monitored consumers by taking webcam pictures of them in their homes.The FTC said in a Tuesday news release that Aaron's will be prohibited from using spyware that captures screenshots or activates the camera on a consumer's computer, except to provide requested technical...

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No Jail for Skype Sex Scandal Cadets

Australia - The two men at the centre of the Australian Defence Force Academy Skype scandal have avoided jail time. Daniel McDonald, 21, secretly filmed himself having sex with a female cadet and streamed it live to Dylan Deblaquiere, 21, in a nearby dorm room at ADFA in Canberra in 2011.Earlier this year a jury found the pair guilty of sending offensive material over the internet without consent. McDonald was also found guilty of an act of indecency.In sentencing today in the ACT Supreme Court, Acting Justice John Nield rejected jail time... Instead...

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Bugging Boss for a Raise Lands Three Employees in Jail

China - Three public officials were each sentenced to 20 months in jail for illegally wiretapping a county Communist Party chief of central China's Hunan Province, according to a local court ruling on Tuesday. Li Yi, an official with the supervision office of the Mayang Miao Autonomous County Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Yang Fan, a Mayang court officer and Liu Yang, a police officer, were guilty of illegal wiretapping and...

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Landlord, Tenant, SpyCam - What Could Possibly...

I stopped posting these stories a while back, simply because there were so many of them. This is just a reminder. The SpyCam is the Number One illegal eavesdropping tool in use today.Canada - An employee at a major Canadian broadcaster is facing charges of voyeurism, mischief and defamatory libel. 56-year-old David Sealey was arrested Saturday after a man saw a woman he knew secretly filmed in an online video. He notified the victim, who reported the incident to police.A search warrant was issued and over 150 voyeuristic videos of women were found...

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Captain Crunch sez... "Here's looking at you, matey."

It’s not quite “Minority Report”-levels of creepiness, but it’s getting there.He saw this coming.Mondelez International, whose properties include Chips Ahoy, Nabisco, Ritz and other high-profile snack brands, says it’s planning to debut a grocery shelf in 2015 that comes equipped with sensors to determine the age and sex of passing customers. The shelf, which is hooked up to Microsoft’s Kinect controller, will be able to use basic facial features...

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Ex-School IT Director Faces Trial on Wiretapping Charge

PA - The former technology director for Easton Area School District accused of secretly recording a private meeting will face trial in Northampton County Court. Thomas Drago, 54, acknowledged at a hearing Tuesday that prosecutors have enough evidence to merit a wiretap violation charge. Drago's attorney, Philip Lauer said his client will apply for a first-time offender's program. Drago remains free on $50,000 unsecured bail. In August, Drago surrendered to authorities for allegedly recording a conversation with school officials without their permission....

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BOUNDLESSINFORMANT only shows metadata

(Updated: November 27, 2013)Yesterday, the French paper Le Monde broke with a story saying that NSA is intercepting French telephone communications on a massive scale. This is mainly based upon a graph from the BOUNDLESSINFORMANT program, which shows that during one month, 70,3 million telephone data of French citizens were recorded by the NSA.Here, it will be clarified that the BOUNDLESSINFORMANT tool only shows numbers of metadata. Also some screenshots...

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Doc v. Doc Bugging Ends in House Call to Graybar Motel

India - Spying on his wife landed a qualified doctor husband behind bars on Saturday. Dr Gyaneshwar Maini, who owns a private hospital, was arrested for keeping a tab on the locations and conversations of his wife, while installing a high-quality Global Positioning System (GPS) along with a micro-mike packed in a black box in the steering wheel of her sedan car for the past eight months. The victim is also a qualified doctor and employed...

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No more, "Gee, I thought you said..." — Record Your Cell Phone Calls

Here's a useful item for PIs, Security and LEOs — a way to document important cell phone calls, without app sapping charges. No more, "Gee, I thought you said..." Recording Cell Phone conversations using apps is not possible on iPhone, Droid or BlackBerry without paying per minute charges. The Call Mynah Cell Phone Recorder gives you complete control of Recording Cell Phone Calls. You decide to Record Mobile Phone Calls or not, set up your Call Mynah to Record Cell Phone (all calls) or only as you choose. 340 hours of Cell Phone Recording...

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RARE - Politico Admits to Phone Tapping & Butt Bugging

Zambia - Zambian President Admits to Spying on Fellow Officials  During his 2011 election campaign, the current president of Zambia, Michael Sata rose to popularity by playing on anti-Chinese sentiment and the anger of laborers over poor standards at the many large Chinese-run mines in Zambia... According to Global Voices, he tapped the phone of his foreign minister and also planted a bug underneath a chair in the office of the leader of Barotseland region, whose citizens want to secede from Zambia. (mo...

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Industrial Espionage Threats to Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs)

The former president of a transportation company in Texas was sentenced in federal court last month to five years in prison for hacking into his former employer’s computer network and stealing proprietary business information he intended to use for his start-up. The case underscores the fact that much like major corporations, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are targets for industrial espionage.SMEs are in many ways are more vulnerable than big businesses, which are capable of employing a small army of security specialists to safeguard...

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Yet Another Bird Spying Story

Headlines of fowl accused of spying for Israel are making rounds again in Middle Eastern press, with the most recent bird of espionage 'arrested' in Lebanon. Hezbollah and Iranian-affiliated websites reported today that an Israeli 'spy eagle' had been caught this past weekend in Lebanon. According to one Lebanese news site, the eagle had been caught in the town of Achkout by local hunters who alerted authorities after discovering that the bird...

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