Columbia Engineers Make World’s Smallest FM Radio Transmitter

A team of Columbia Engineering researchers...led by Mechanical Engineering Professor James Hone and Electrical Engineering Professor Kenneth Shepard, has taken advantage of graphene’s special properties—its mechanical strength and electrical conduction—and created a nano-mechanical system that can create FM signals, in effect the world’s smallest FM radio transmitter. The study is published online on November 17, in Nature Nanotechnology. (more)...

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DRTBOX and the DRT surveillance systems

(Updated: November 29, 2013)In recently published screenshots from NSA's BOUNDLESSINFORMANT tool about France, Spain, Norway and Afghanistan we see the mysterious term DRTBOX. For example, the screenshot for Norway presents 33 million telephony metadata, which were collected from mobile phone networks by a facility designated US-987F and processed/analysed by DRTBOX:Unlike what it seems, DRTBOX is not a codename, but part of a wireless surveillance...

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U.N. - End Excessive Electronic Spying

A U.N. General Assembly committee on Tuesday called for an end to excessive electronic surveillance and expressed concern at the harm such scrutiny, including spying in foreign states and the mass collection of personal data, may have on human rights.The U.N. General Assembly's Third Committee, which deals with human rights issues, adopted the German and Brazilian-drafted resolution by consensus. It is expected to be put to a vote in the 193-member...

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TUMs Solves Wireless Security Headache. Warning: explanation gives headache.

Researchers at the Technische Universität München (TUM) have proven that wireless communications can be made more secure through a novel approach based on information theory."The method is counter-intuitive and involves information theory and zero capacity channels. "The scheme uses two physical channels – that is, frequency bands in a wireless system – that are inherently useless, each being incapable of securely transmitting a message," says TUM.Intuitively,...

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Why Care About the NSA?

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Protesters Capture Government Surveillance Van

The Security Service of Ukraine, the nation’s intelligence agency, have its white mini-van back, courtesy of the Berkut anti-riot police officers. Demonstrators seized the van during a protest rally on the evening of Nov. 25, suspecting that it contained sophisticated equipment for eavesdropping on telephone conversations of protest leaders. The taking of the van prompted clashes last night between police and protesters. After a 30-minute standoff,...

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Indonesia Posts Truth About Government Spying

Indonesia's former spy chief has said intelligence agencies tapping the phones of national leaders is "normal", and dismissed as an overreaction Jakarta's furious response to reports Australia spied on the president's calls. (mo...

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Smart TVs Lie to You

So-called "smart TVs" have hit the marketplace, essentially turning TVs into computers that let watchers search for videos, install applications or interact with ads. But that connectivity may be a two-way street, as manufacturer LG investigates claims that its line of smart TVs is collecting data on its customers. According to an LG corporate video, "LG Smart Ad analyses users' favorite programs, online behavior, search keywords and other information...

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DIY Surveillance in India Shows Eye-Popping Growth

India's electronic surveillance market - currently at Rs 10 billion ($160,393,125.35 USD) — is growing at a rate of 25% per year as a growing number of people opt for DIY surveillance. Cameras are being installed everywhere — outside buildings to prevent burglaries, in cars to keep track of whether the chauffeur is giving unauthorized lifts, inside homes so that people can keep an eye on everything from nannies to grannies. Even the pet...

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Not to be Out-Spooked by the NSA...

The FBI is expected to reveal Thursday that because of the rise of Web-based e-mail and social networks, it's "increasingly unable" to conduct certain types of surveillance that would be possible on cellular and traditional telephones. FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni will outline what the bureau is calling the "Going Dark" problem, meaning that police can be thwarted when conducting court-authorized eavesdropping because Internet companies aren't required to build in backdoors in advance, or because technology doesn't permit it. Any solution,...

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Shop Owner Installs Surveillance Cameras to... watch the police!?!?

A Miami convenience store owner is fed up with his employees and customers being allegedly harassed by police. So he installs surveillance video to get evidence against the local cops. (mo...

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Help The OSS Society Pass a Law (It's easy.)

What is The OSS Society?The Office of Strategic Services Society celebrates the historic accomplishments of the OSS during World War II, the first organized effort by the United States to implement a centralized system of strategic intelligence and the predecessor to the US intelligence and special operations communities. It educates the American public regarding the continuing importance of strategic intelligence and special operations to...

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Bond Car Submarines at Auction

A car that transformed into a submarine in the James Bond movie "The Spy Who Loved Me" has been sold at a London auction for 550,000 pounds ($865,000).The sale price was below the auction house's initial estimate price of 650,000 to 950,000 pounds — perhaps because the vehicle (a distinctively-shaped white Lotus Esprit) cannot be driven on the road, although it is said to be a fully operational submarine. (mo...

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Screenshots from BOUNDLESSINFORMANT can be misleading

Over the last months, a number of European newspapers published screenshots from an NSA tool codenamed BOUNDLESSINFORMANT, which were said to show the number of data that NSA collected from those countries.Most recently, a dispute about the numbers mentioned in a screenshot about Norway urged Snowden-journalist Glenn Greenwald to publish a similar screenshot about Afghanistan. But as this article will show, Greenwald's interpretation of the latter...

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REPORT: Corporate Espionage Against Nonprofit Organizations

How common is corporate espionage against nonprofits?Most of the cases of corporate espionage we know about in recent years have been uncovered by accident. There has been no comprehensive, systematic effort by federal or state government to determine how much corporate espionage is actually occurring, and what tactics are being used. It is likely that corporate espionage against nonprofits occurs much more often than is known. Get the "T"Who...

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Corporate Espionage Infographic

Infographic via David Schilling, Industry T...

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Recent Technological Innovations Have Completely Changed the Game of Espionage

According to the FBI, competitors criminally seek economic intelligence by aggressively recruiting employees and conduct economic intelligence through bribery, cyber attacks, theft of property, dumpster diving and wiretapping.  They also establish seemingly-innocent business relationships between foreign companies and U.S. industries to gather economic intelligence, including trade secrets. Technologies Used for Espionage Many of the technologies now used for espionage are just updated versions of previous technology: smaller, lighter...

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Audio Surveillance Laws (Party Consent) by State

Click here for statutes.Click to enlar...

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Mass Surveillance Is Big Business: Corporations Are as Good at Spying as Governments

Data is the currency of surveillance, and it's not just the NSA and GCHQ looking to cash in. As a newly released cache of documents and presentation materials highlights, the private surveillance industry is booming. More shocking is that many firms claim in their own corporate PowerPoints that they've got capabilities that rival that of the government giants. The document trove, called the Surveillance Industry Index (SII) and released by Privacy International, and contains 1,203 documents from 338 companies in 36 countries, all of which detail...

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Business Espionage - IKEA Snooping Investigation Continues

French police are questioning top executives of the Swedish furniture chain IKEA after allegations that the company illegally used police files to spy on staff and customers. The arrests of the chief executive officer of IKEA France, Stefan Vanoverbeke, his predecessor, and the chief financial officer, come after more than a year and a half of investigations. Police searched the company’s head office outside Paris 11 days ago. (mo...

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Snooping on Credit Cards with Shopping Carts

Researchers at the University of Surrey, UK have successfully used readily available and inexpensive electronic components, combined with a shopping cart antenna, to eavesdrop on NFC and HF RFID contactless communication.The shopping cart did not perform as well as a small inductive loop antenna (that could be concealed with the electronics in a backpack) but neither are likely to arouse suspicion. The researchers say that the eavesdropping...

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Five Eyes, 9-Eyes and many more

(Updated: November 21, 2013)On November 2, The Guardian published a lenghty article about the Snowden-leaks, which said that besides the close intelligence-sharing group of the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New-Zealand, known as 5-Eyes, there are also groups called 9-Eyes and 14-Eyes. According to The Guardian, the first consists of the 5-Eyes countries plus Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Norway and the latter adding another five European...

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Seattle, where a java junkie hanging on a light pole won't be alone.

If you're walking around downtown Seattle, look up: You'll see off-white boxes, each one about a foot tall with vertical antennae, attached to utility poles. If you're walking around downtown while looking at a smartphone, you will probably see at least one—and more likely two or three—Wi-Fi networks named after intersections: "4th&Seneca," "4th&Union," "4th&University," and so on.That is how you can see the Seattle Police Department's...

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Vegas, where a drunk hanging on a light pole won't be alone.

What happens in Vegas stays... with the authorities? Las Vegas is installing Intellistreets, which are street lights that have many talents -- including the ability to record sound and shoot video. (video repo...

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Economic Espionage: Competing For Trade By Stealing Industrial Secrets

In September 2012 FBI agents in Kansas City, Missouri, arrested two Chinese nationals, Huang Ji Li and Qi Xiao Guang, after they paid $25,000 in cash for stolen trade secrets pertaining to an American company’s manufacture of cellular-glass insulation, or foam glass.Huang trespassed onto the company’s flagship plant in Sedalia, Missouri, 3 months prior and asked suspiciously detailed questions about the facility’s manufacturing process for the insulation....

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