Corporate Spies Killing The CIA

The CIA is having a growing problem with their analysts and spies being recruited away by corporations. One unpleasant, for government intelligence agencies, development of the last few decades has been the growing popularity of "competitive intelligence" (corporate espionage.) It's a really big business, with most large (over a billion dollars of annual sales) corporations having separate intelligence operations. Spending on corporate intel work is over $5 billion a year, and is expected to more than double in the next four years.

The corporate recruiters have a pretty easy time of it, as they can offer higher pay, better working conditions and bonuses. (more)

Eavesdropping Movie - "Monte Rouge"

Title: Monte Rouge
Writer/Director: Eduardo del Llano
Time: 15 minutes
Plot: Electronic eavesdropping.
Setting: Cuba.
Humor: Dark, subtle; like Monte Rouge.

"...two plain-clothed security agents knock at the door of a young man, Nicanor O'Donell.

"Good morning, my name is Rodríguez. This is comrade Segura," they tell him. "We're here to install the microphones."

"Our mission is to install microphones in your home to listen directly to the anti-governmental comments you make," the SDE (state security) agent says.

Nicanor can't believe. To him it is a bad dream or a bad joke.

The agents explain that they run a pilot scheme to make their work "more inclusive." No longer will the SDE break in to the houses of suspects to place microphones, they will just knock on the door and ask the house owner to let them install them. All in the name of "more openness."

In exchange they ask that Nicanor accepts the "obvious limitations" of having only two microphones placed in the house (one in the bathroom). And, to ensure that all subversive conversations are held in that place, offering to install a free mini-bar in the bathroom to get guests to go there for these conversations.

In a mild mannered conversation (with some dark undertones), they explain they know all about him: his black market dealings (exchanging a table from a museum with a guard of the museum for a VCR), the conversations he has had with friends in bars, ... The say he was selected for this test program because of his "excellent analysis" that goes beyond "more bitching" (and the fact that he lived close to the station while they had no access to a car).

They also ensure him that the devices are independent of the electricity grid (Cuba is known for its blackouts) as it "hardly would make sense to make eavesdropping dependent of the electricity." The young man is also warned that it is known to them that he also makes some positive comments about Cuba, but that he is to refrain from that "crap" as doesn't interest them and is a waste of their time.

The author stresses that he did not mean to indict Cuba's state security system, he just wanted to create and describe an present absurd Kafkaesque situation. He succeeded.

In Cuba and abroad there is a lot of speculation that del Llano and the other participants in Monte Rouge, could face reprisals for the irreverent clip. Let's hope that the popularity of the clip will protect them."
(en español: video Part 1 video Part 2)

Spy Agency’s Eavesdropping Rose Last Year

S. Korea - The Broadcasting and Communications Commission (BCC) said Thursday that the number of eavesdropping requests from the spy agency and police last year was the highest since 2004, while the number of cases of e-mail monitoring and caller identification also rose.

Telephone companies allowed the National Intelligence Service (NIS), police officials and prosecutors to tap 1,142 phone calls last year, up from 1,062 cases in 2006. Most of the requests were from the NIS, the spy agency.

The number of caller identification requests from investigation authorities also increased by more than 20 percent to 183,659 cases from 150,743, the BCC said. E-mail monitoring rose 28.9 percent to 326 cases.

Furthermore, the actual number of eavesdropping cases can be higher than the released figure since multiple requests on a single case are counted as one, the BCC said. (more)

Court-Approved Wiretapping Rose 14% in '07

Last year might have been a rough year for U.S. home prices, but growth in government wiretaps remained healthy, with the eavesdropping sector posting a 14% increase in court orders compared to 2006.

In 2007, judges approved 4,578 state and federal wiretaps, as compared to 4,015 in 2006, according to two new reports on criminal and intelligence wiretaps.

State investigators are increasingly turning to wiretaps, according to newly released statistics. State police applied for 27% more wiretaps in 2007 than in 2006, with 94% of them targeting cell phones, according to figures released by the U.S. Courts' administrator.

In 2007, state judges approved 1,751 criminal wiretap applications, without turning any of them down, according to the report (.pdf). That's a near-three fold increase in state wiretaps since 1997. (more)

Wanted: Surveillance Camera Monitors

Washington - The D.C. government plans to begin centralized monitoring of about 5,000 security cameras it maintains throughout the city, giving emergency-management officials a broad look into schools, public housing and other sites.

The city says the system will save money and provide 24-hour monitoring, rather than the sporadic attention in the current patchwork of camera systems. But civil liberties advocates expressed alarm.

"Having it all together in one place brings us one step closer to the kind of scary movie scenario where they can track somebody moving across the city," said Art Spitzer, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union for the Washington area.

D.C. police will continue to watch their 73 surveillance cameras in high-crime neighborhoods, Darrell Darnell, head of the D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, said yesterday. But his agency will set up a center to monitor an array of other closed-circuit TV cameras, including nearly 3,500 inside D.C. public schools, 131 used by the Department of Transportation and 720 used by the D.C. Housing Authority. (more)

Wiretap Laws Morph With Technology

Excellent article detailing how legal wiretapping in the United States was forced to grow with technology.

In the old days, everyone was linked to a lug nut... (everyone's telephone) ended up in the basement of the telephone company's switching station. There, the wire emerged, pegged to a rack by a single copper lug nut. Acres of racks lined the walls, each holding rows and columns of lug nuts and their wires, neatly stacked atop each other...

And then it all went sideways.

At the same time that the phone companies were preparing for the transition to digital, the use of cellphones -- which were inherently harder to tap because they used phone lines differently than analog devices -- mushroomed. ...Electronic surveillance, once such a dependable, relatively easy craft, was becoming inordinately difficult. (more)

"...thus proving they could keep a secret, for decades."

Japan - The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications' regional information policy office has decided to warn local governments about using analog cordless phones after it was learned that people could listen in on calls with commercially available receivers. (more)

"36 billion channels; still nothing worth watching!"

New anti-terrorism rules 'allow US to spy on British motorists'

UK - Routine journeys carried out by millions of British motorists can be monitored by authorities in the United States and other enforcement agencies across the world under anti-terrorism rules introduced discreetly by Jacqui Smith.

The discovery that images of cars captured on road-side cameras, and "personal data" derived from them, including number plates, can be sent overseas, has angered MPs and civil liberties groups concerned by the increasing use of "Big Brother" surveillance tactics. (more)

"Relations... have always been based on true friendship and mutual values and interests."

Germany's foreign minister has apologized to his Afghan counterpart for officials' snooping on correspondence between a German reporter and an Afghan government minister, the Foreign Ministry said Saturday.

A spokesman at the ministry, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, said Frank-Walter Steinmeier telephoned Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta about the wiretapping incident and said those involved had been disciplined and three officials transferred to other duties.

Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Sultan Ahmad Baheen confirmed the call had taken place. He said Spanta accepted Steinmeier's apology "and both foreign ministers emphasized the good relations of both countries and both mentioned that this will not affect bilateral relations." (more)

“A half-truth is a whole lie” - Yiddish Proverb

Israel on Wednesday assured the United States that it had not spied on its key ally since 1985, after the arrest in New York of an US Army veteran (Ben-Ami Kadish) charged with passing defense secrets to the Jewish state nearly 30 years ago...

The case has been linked to the 1980s Jonathan Pollard spy scandal which rocked US-Israeli relations... The government publicly admitted in 1998 that Pollard had been an agent acting on its behalf and awarded him Israeli citizenship.

"Relations between the United States and Israel have always been based on true friendship and mutual values and interests," foreign ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said. (more)

Answer: "Mission Creep"

Question: What happens when tiny towns are given big £'s to watch for terrorists who never come?

UK - Campaigners have called for a "root and branch review" of spy laws after it emerged local councils were using them to track dog-foulers and litter bugs.

The Press Association contacted 97 councils to find out how they were using the powers, originally designed to combat crime and terrorism. It followed the controversy surrounding the case of a family in Poole, Dorset, who were tracked covertly for nearly three weeks to check they lived in a school catchment area...

...the research found the law was also used to find out about people who let their dog foul, a breach of planning law, an animal welfare case and an instance of littering.

Surveillance was also used to investigate alleged misuse of a disabled parking badge. (more)
Once surveillance is part of the civil infrastructure justifying usage moves from difficult to easy.

What happens in Vegas...

Las Vegas, NV - Clark County police and prosecutors say they have intercepted more than 29,000 incriminating conversations in 11 years, yet the wiretap recordings usually are hidden -- even years later -- because they are rarely used in open court to prosecute murderers, drug dealers and others.

Now a prominent Las Vegas defense attorney, Dominic Gentile, suggests they are being used, instead, to improperly gather intelligence about alleged crimes for which no wiretap was authorized. Failing to reveal the search results is cheating, he said, because when those other crimes are prosecuted, it denies defense lawyers any chance to examine the wiretap affidavit and question the tap's legality. (more)

Corporate Security Directors. Make your job easier.

Get your employees to love you.
Distribute this new book...
"Staying Safe Abroad."

Ed Lee, a retired U.S. diplomat and Federal agent, spent most of his years in the U.S. State Department as a Regional Security Officer (RSO) in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, where he successfully kept diplomats, their families and U.S. interests safe from terrorism and crime.

In 2002, Ed returned to the State Department as a senior advisor to help institute post-9/11 anti-terrorism strategies, retiring again in 2006. He then formed Sleeping Bear Risk Solutions, which provides investigative, emergency planning and staff security services. He also regularly delivers speeches on terrorism and international security to corporate and governmental audiences. (ISBN: 978-0-9815605-0-2, 360 Pages, $22.95)

Staying Safe Abroad: Traveling, Working & Living in a Post-9/11 World "is the best book yet on travel security. This book is one that should be read and kept in every traveler’s briefcase for reference.” — John L. Makowski, Director - Global Security, Briggs & Stratton Corporation

"Every person who travels, whether abroad or domestically, should own this book." — Martha Miller, Ph.D., Cross Cultural Trainer to U.S. Diplomats and Multinational Executives

P.S. - Employees... A free copy of this should accompany the plane ticket whenever your employer sends you abroad. Ask your Security / Personnel / Travel Department Director for a copy. It's the least they could do for you. If all else fails, buy it yourself.

If you are my client, I'll buy it for you!
Contact me for a free copy. ~Kevin

Anticipated Mission Creep Arrives

UK - Anti-terrorism surveillance is being used to spy on kids

Councils are using anti-terrorism surveillance laws to spy on children trying to buy alcohol, it has emerged. One authority alone has run 70 snooping operations, including tracking youngsters and covertly filming people selling counterfeit DVDs. It also admitted using the laws to obtain phone records and e-mails of those suspected of what it described as 'petty' offences. (more)

Putting the squeeze on Blackberry to get the juice

Talks between Indian officials and Canada's Research In Motion (RIM, the BlackBerry Bunch) would seem not to have gone very smoothly...

The backstory here is that the top brass at India's burgeoning and powerful state security services are concerned that Blackberry's advanced communications technology cannot be breached by their operatives and thus the "authorities" are currently unable to eavesdrop Blackberry users.

They have asked RIM to provide them with the capability to conduct covert surveillance on Blackberry users by requiring the company to install local servers and provide secret back door access to services, but the Canadian vendor has so far refused to comply. (more)

Wannabea Spy?

The Shin Bet website now features recruitment blogs by four high-tech spies.

Israel’s domestic intelligence agency shed some of its shadowy mystique three years ago when it went online to draw new applicants. Recently, the site launched a new page, on which four Shin Bet computing experts discuss what they like about their jobs.

The Hebrew-language texts are sparing on details, with only silhouette portraits of the authors, whose names are withheld. Security sources said the Shin Bet hopes the blogs will help win over recruits from the private high-tech industry. (more) (What does a Spy look like?)

CNN Report - Chinese spies in the US

Night Flight

Two men attempting to board a plane to China with nearly a dozen sensitive infrared cameras in their luggage were arrested... Yong Guo Zhi, a Chinese national, and Tah Wei Chao, a naturalized U.S. citizen, were arrested for investigation of trying to take thermal imaging cameras with potential military use to China without the proper export licenses... Ten of the cameras, which measure about 2 inches square and cost about $5,000 each, were found in the men's checked luggage... (more) (related video) (the other Night Flight)

"...and she went to the hospital to have it removed! Blahaaaaaa..."

Australia - Attorney-General Robert McClelland says the proposal to let some employers access workers' emails without consent is only being considered as a way to stop cyber terrorist attacks.

He says it would not be targeted at personal communications.

"What you would be looking and permitting access to is information that would reveal an attempted infiltration," he said.

But deputy Opposition leader Julie Bishop says...
"Employers should not be burdened with the responsibility of intercepting emails involving staff suspected of behaviour that threatens Australia's national security."

"This places an unfair surveillance responsibility upon employers and effectively requires them to undertake what is a potential criminal investigation." (more)

Seriously bad idea...
- Pay IT guy to do a government intelligence agents' work?
- Pay twice!?!? Salary for IT guy and (via taxes) government intelligence agents'.
- Conflict of interest? Employees spying on friends and colleagues?
- Entrust national security to an army of untrained private employees...
- ...whose work product might equal less than educated guesswork?
- ...who may be tempted to use the snoop power for personal gain?
- Not to mention: loss of regular business productivity, opening new avenues of corporate espionage, data vulnerabilities, etc.
Outsourcing your job responsibilities should not be an option; especially when you have been entrusted with national security.

"Youz gotta problem with dat?!?!"

from The Bay City Times Opinion page...
MI - When The Times looked into the money that road commissioners lavished on themselves, we found a board besotted with inflated retirement benefits and fancy junkets.

We also found that one commissioner, now retired, had used a Road Commission credit card to give himself quick loans at casinos. In another instance, the commission's former finance director was caught using a tape recorder to eavesdrop on employees.

In the lives of private citizens, both incidents might have resulted in felony charges. But in the buddy-buddy world of government, no charges stuck. (more)

Crime Does Not Pay! (No, really, it doesn't.)

According to a new study dug up by Secrecy News, modern-day spies -- at least the ones who get caught -- don't appear to be making much money.

The study (.pdf), conducted for the Defense Personnel Security Research Center based on its Espionage Database, concludes that "Two thirds of American spies since 1990 have volunteered. Since 1990, spying has not paid well: 80% of spies received no payment for espionage, and since 2000 it appears no one was paid.” (more)

Blackemail, Espionage or Just Coincidence?

MA - Two staff members in the school superintendent’s office spied on e-mails sent to Cambridge School Committee members over the span of one month. (more)

...administration officials did not tell the School Committee they were receiving committee e-mails from parents and others. A School Committee member only found out the two school officials were copied into School Committee e-mails after they hit “reply all” and found the duo copied in the e-mail. 14 days after it was discovered, School Committee members voted to enter contract negotiations with Superintendent Thomas Fowler-Finn. (more)

"Arrivederci Roma"

"I continue to use the mobile phone with greater freedom, but if there is any news which comes out about my telephone calls being recorded I will leave this country". ~ Silvio Berlusconi, Italian politician, entrepreneur, and media proprietor.

Berlusconi said this when he explained that he had a plan to deal with the indiscriminate use of bugs. "We should only allow the bugging for crimes such as terrorism and organized crime". (more)

From Alligator Clips to Data Rips

The digitization of information has made wiretapping incredibly easy, while at the same time making legislation around warrants and civil liberties exponentially more complex, said experts during an afternoon panel at RSA yesterday.

“Two and a half years ago, me and my partners at the New York Times exposed a national wiretapping program and we still can't tell what it's all about,” said Eric Lichtblau, investigative reporter, who officiated the panel. (more)

India Wants to Eavesdrop on BlackBerrys

BlackBerry users, beware of the snoops. India's Telecommunications Dept. told telecom carriers, Internet service providers, and officials at Research In Motion (RIM), the Canadian company that makes BlackBerrys, that it wants to eavesdrop on transmissions from every BlackBerry phone in the country. To comply, RIM might have to route calls and e-mails through government computer servers based in India. (more)
FutureWatch... Look for other countries to jump on this bandwagon.

S(he) M(aybe) E(arliest) R(ussian) S(py) H(ero) - B. Badenov

Russia’s oldest counter-intelligence officer is 100 years young. And although she's long retired, Maria Lyovina is still barred from revealing sensitive details about her work in the past.

She may not look like your archetypal secret agent but Maria Lyovina was catching spies long before the world had ever heard of James Bond.

A great grandmother three times over, her Ulanovsk flat is filled with family photographs. One is a striking image of the young woman German agents came to fear.

Maria was working as a secretary in a Leningrad factory when the Soviet Union entered the Second World War.

She was recruited by Army officers looking for an experienced typist.

She joined SMERSH, a counter intelligence group dedicated to catching traitors and undercover Germans. Its name literally meant ‘death to spies’. (more) (video)

"Sunlight is the best disinfectant."

Trinidad & Tobago - Sweeping legislative changes, including a proposal to regulate the practice of wiretapping in the entire region, are among a series of recommendations agreed to by Caricom Heads of States, Bharrat Jagdeo, the Guyanese president, revealed yesterday.

Speaking to reporters outside of the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton Trinidad where a special security meeting of the Caricom Heads of Government was concluded. Jagdeo disclosed that he had personal knowledge that wiretapping is done throughout the region and revealed that it was agreed by heads of government that the practice should be regulated by legislation.

“People wiretap now,” he said, “but they can’t use it for evidence because it’s done illegally.” (more)

Bet you never heard of CARICOM.
Guess how many countries we are talking about here...
Full Members
Antigua and Barbuda
Bahamas
Barbados
Belize
Dominica
Grenada
Guyana
Haiti
Jamaica
Montserrat
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Suriname
Trinidad and Tobago
Associate Members
Anguilla
Bermuda
British Virgin Islands
Cayman Islands
Turks and Caicos Islands
Observers
Aruba
Colombia
Dominican Republic
Mexico
Netherlands Antilles
Puerto Rico (U.S.)
Venezuela

That's a lot of wiretappers who will soon be able to present their evidence in court!
It may also change some old saws...
"Sunny places attract shady characters."
may now become...
"Sunlight is the best disinfectant."

Spy Buster Locates Sophisticated Wireless Eavesdropping Devices

According to the Freedonia Group, a market research group in Cleveland, Ohio, companies spend over $95 billion annually on corporate security.


One of the fastest growing areas for this spending is corporate espionage prevention.

Factors in this growth include everything from globalization to decreased employee loyalty and the fact that the most valuable asset of a corporation these days is information, which can be easier to steal than a piece of machinery.

So what’s a worried executive or security professional to do?
Increasingly, companies and government agencies are turning to firms that specialize in detecting and removing eavesdropping and other surveillance devices... (more)

Track My Treads - The TPMS Privacy Blowout

via hexview.com
New technologies always come with privacy issues.
Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems (TPMS) is one of those technologies.

What is TPMS?
TPMS lets on-board vehicle computers measure air pressure in the tires.

How does TPMS work?
In a typical TPMS, each wheel of the vehicle contains a device (TPMS sensor) - usually attached to the inflation valve - that measures air pressure and, optionally, temperature, vehicle state (moving or not), and the health of the sensor's battery. Each sensor transmits this information (either periodically or upon request) to the on-board computer in the vehicle. To differentiate between its own wheels and wheels of the vehicle in the next lane, each TPMS sensor contains a unique id.

TPMS transmits data that uniquely identifies your car!
Here is where privacy problems become obvious: Each wheel of the vehicle transmits a unique ID, easily readable using off-the-shelf receiver. Although the transmitter’s power is very low, the signal is still readable from a fair distance using a good directional antenna.

Why is this a problem?
If you live in the United States, chances are, you have heard about the “traffic-improving” ideas where transportation authorities looked for the possibility to track all vehicles in nearly real time in order to issue speeding tickets or impose mileage-adjusted taxes... Guess what? With minor limitations, TPMS can be used for the very purpose of tracking your vehicle in real time with no substantial investments! TPMS can also be used to measure the speed of your vehicle... (remember) car manufacturers know serial numbers of every part in your vehicle, including unique IDs of TPMS sensors.
("Your ticket is in the mail.")

Now, no article is complete unless it mentions terrorists...
It is now super easy to blow up someone's car. There's no need to fix the explosive to the vehicle. No more wires and buttons. No human factor. A high-school kid with passion for electronics can assemble a device that will trigger the detonator when the right vehicle passes by. (more)

Congressman Ordered to Pay in Wiretap Case

A federal judge has ordered Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) to pay nearly $1.2 million to House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), settling a legal dispute over McDermott's actions in leaking the contents of an intercepted 1996 conference call involving Boehner and other Republican leaders.

Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia,... had already levied a $60,000 civil fine against McDermott in 2004 for violating federal wiretapping statutes by receiving the intercepted audiotape of the conference call and releasing its contents to several members of the media....

Boehner was speaking on a cellphone in Florida, where his conversation was illegally recorded by a couple who heard it on a radio scanner. (more)

The Case of the Telepathic Ray Gun, or...

..."Does that ringing in my ears bother you?"
via Discovery.com
I know some of you may not want to believe this, but the U.S. government may well already have the ability to beam secret commands to you through the fillings in your teeth. Well, not exactly. But close. A recently declassified 1998 U.S. Army report, “Bioeffects of Selected Nonlethal Weapons,” describes government plans for a microwave weapon that would transmit voice communication that seems to emanate from within a human target’s own brain. (It was obtained and posted on the Web by Freedom From Covert Harassment & Surveillance, a Cincinnati-based organization that advocates on behalf of people who believe they are being stalked and subjected to “electromagnetic harassment.”)

To quote the report:
Because the frequency of the sound heard is dependent upon the pulse characteristics of the RF energy, it seems possible that this technology could be developed to the point where words could be transmitted to be heard like the spoken word, except that it could only be heard within a person’s head.

This is possible because of something called the Microwave Auditory Effect, which was first discovered during World War II, when people working in the vicinity of radar transponders complained of hearing strange clicking noises that other people nearby didn’t notice. The effect is caused by thermal expansion of the region around the cochlea. In the 1960s, neuroscientist Allan H. Frey, who was the first to publish research on the effect, was able to induce it in human subjects with pulsed microwaves from a transmitter 100 meters away.

It’s unclear just how far the government’s microwave auditory research and development efforts have progressed since 1993, when the report was written... (more)

Money Talks - Spies Walk

UK - Thousands of Chinese spies are infiltrating Britain in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics.

They are hellbent on stealing scientific, military and industrial secrets in a bid to make China the world's No1 superpower. The spies are recruited from the 90,000 Chinese who visit Britain each year. Forty per cent of them are on business and a third are students.

A Whitehall source said: "They are told to hoover up everything they can get their hands on. "It can be anything from the results of university lab experiments to secret industrial technology." China's targets include banks, power and water companies, telecom firms and even Parliament.

But Foreign Secretary David Miliband fears any crackdown would upset China and jeopardise trade deals worth £20billion. (more)

Jury finds against Providence in wiretapping lawsuit

RI - A federal jury has returned a verdict against city of Providence authorities for illegally recording the phone calls of their employees at a public safety complex. City officials say the jury on Wednesday awarded compensatory and punitive damages of about $525,000... (more)