Traveling Light in a Time of Digital Thievery

Note: Having recently traveled to China, I can attest to Mr. Lieberthal's concerns....Do yourself (and your company) a favor, Just accept the fact that you "will" be collected against...and take Mr. Lieberthal's advice...very seriously.  JDL

nytimes.com

SAN FRANCISCO — When Kenneth G. Lieberthal, a China expert at the Brookings Institution, travels to that country, he follows a routine that seems straight from a spy film.
He leaves his cellphone and laptop at home and instead brings “loaner” devices, which he erases before he leaves the United States and wipes clean the minute he returns. In China, he disables Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, never lets his phone out of his sight and, in meetings, not only turns off his phone but also removes the battery, for fear his microphone could be turned on remotely. He connects to the Internet only through an encrypted, password-protected channel, and copies and pastes his password from a USB thumb drive. He never types in a password directly, because, he said, “the Chinese are very good at installing key-logging software on your laptop.”
What might have once sounded like the behavior of a paranoid is now standard operating procedure for officials at American government agencies, research groups and companies that do business in China and Russia — like Google, the State Department and the Internet security giant McAfee. Digital espionage in these countries, security experts say, is a real and growing threat — whether in pursuit of confidential government information or corporate trade secrets.


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Apple iTunes flaw 'allowed government spying for 3 years'

telegraph.co.uk
An unpatched security flaw in Apple’s iTunes software allowed intelligence agencies and police to hack into users’ computers for more than three years, it’s claimed.

A British company called Gamma International marketed hacking software to governments that exploited the vulnerability via a bogus update to iTunes, Apple's media player, which is installed on more than 250 million machines worldwide.

The hacking software, FinFisher, is used to spy on intelligence targets’ computers. It is known to be used by British agencies and earlier this year records were discovered in abandoned offices of that showed it had been offered to Egypt’s feared secret police.

Apple was informed about the relevant flaw in iTunes in 2008, according to Brian Krebs, a security writer, but did not patch the software until earlier this month, a delay of more than three years.

“A prominent security researcher warned Apple about this dangerous vulnerability in mid-2008, yet the company waited more than 1,200 days to fix the flaw,” he said in a blog post.

"The disclosure raises questions about whether and when Apple knew about the Trojan offering, and its timing in choosing to sew up the security hole in this ubiquitous software title."

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I spy... something beginning with adultery

telegraph.co.uk

The woman in her early forties staring at the laptop couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. Live pictures beamed to her computer showed her husband having a romantic meal in a restaurant in Esher in Surrey with another woman.

The images, recorded by a hidden camera placed in an unmarked white van, were transmitted live back to the married couple’s drawing room deep in the Surrey stockbroker belt. The private investigator sat with the spurned spouse as they stared at the screen, surrounded by expensive antiques and original artworks. “Give him a call,” said the investigator. The woman – let’s call her Claire – picked up her phone.

“Darling,” she said, “I was just wondering where you were?” Her husband, a senior executive in the City, who by now had stepped out of the restaurant and was standing on the pavement, in clear view of the camera, replied: “I’m stuck in the office. I’ll be home late.”

The wife’s worst fears had been confirmed. Like increasing numbers of husbands and wives, Claire had turned to a private investigator to discover if her partner was cheating. The surveillance, which had lasted a week and culminated in her husband being caught red-handed, had cost her £3,000. She told the investigator later that it was money well spent. One firm that sells tracking devices told The Sunday Telegraph it had seen a huge spike in sales, mainly to suspicious wives.

The use of private detectives and the hi-tech methods they employ to catch out unfaithful spouses is a subject rarely discussed in the polite circles of suburban Britain but it emerged out of the murky shadows last week. Dr Diletta Bianchini, 35, a doctor working at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, hired a detective agency to place a GPS tracking device beneath the car of her husband William Sachiti, convinced that rather than working late he was conducting an illicit liaison.

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Suspicious wife causes bomb scare after bugging husband's car

Note: Don't try this at home...;-)  ~JDL

 nzherald.co.nz
 A suspicious wife's attempt to prove her husband was having an affair backfired spectacularly when a tracking device fitted to his car was mistaken for a bomb.
Diletta Bianchini had employed a private detective after her husband William Sachiti began working unusual hours.
Unbeknown to her the investigator fixed a tracker, roughly the size of a cigarette packet, to the petrol tank of Mr Sachiti's £40,000 silver Lexus using magnets.
And when the husband - a security consultant and entrepreneur - spotted the device flashing he feared the worst.
He rushed to alert police, who blocked off a busy high street, evacuated a coffee shop and scrambled the bomb squad, fire engines and ambulances.
Mr Sachiti, who as an entrepreneur once appeared on BBC programme Dragons' Den, said: "When I first saw the device it was after I had my car washed. It was in Morrisons' car park. At first I didn't know what to do.
"I called a friend and they were concerned it could be something dangerous.

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Olive Branch Man Caught Peeping with 'Spy Pen'

myfoxmemphis.com

OLIVE BRANCH, Miss. - An Olive Branch man is accused of using a hidden camera to videotape a woman in the shower, and she's not the only victim.

Sam Allen Nuckolls of Olive Branch was a recent house guest of a woman and her husband who live in Gosnell, Arkansas. According to the woman, she had noticed that when she went to take a shower, her house guest had several items laid out on a bathroom counter, including a pen.

On closer inspection, it turned out to be a lot more than an ink pen. It's sold by the name "Video Spy Pen," and it can shoot HD video and audio or high resolution still pictures. It even writes, just in case someone gets suspicious. However, a small flashing light on the side of the pen shows that it is recording. If you open the pen, you will see the USB input device that plugs into a computer for downloading.

That's what tipped off this victim.

She said she left the bath room, then Nuckolls re-entered the bathroom and took his belongings, including the spy pen. Later, when Nuckolls left her home, the woman took the suspicious pen, plugged it into her computer and saw the video that had been recorded in her bathroom.

Her house guest was arrested by Gosnell police. He admitted he had set up the spy cam pen and also admitted he had done it before in Olive Branch, Mississippi, and even gave names of the victims.

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Hudson Woman Charged With Felony in Alleged Eavesdropping Incident

hudson-wi.patch

A Hudson woman has been charged with a felony in an alleged eavesdropping incident at the St. Croix County Government Center on May 2, 2011.

Patt A. Colten of Hudson was formally charged on Friday, Sept. 30, with intercepting wire/electronic communication, a Class H felony. Her initial appearance was Oct. 27 and she posted a $1,000 signature bond.

The charge stems from a May 2 incident at the St. Croix County Government Center in which two individuals allege that Colten was listening to and recording a conversation they were having with an attorney in one of the building's conference rooms, according to the criminal complaint.

Colten and the two complainants have been involved in a property dispute over their lot boundaries for at least two years, and on May 2, all three of them were in court for a pretrial conference with Judge Edward Vlack. After the conference, the complainants met with an attorney in a conference room just outside the courtroom to discuss the case's developments. That's when Colten allegedly eavesdropped on their conversation, according to the criminal complaint.

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Spouse Spy’s on the case

scpr.org

Tailing a philandering mate used to be so messy, complicated – and expensive. Private detectives aren’t cheap, after all, and someone always seems to end up dead – at least in the movies. But nowadays, suspicious spouses don’t need to call on Philip Marlowe. You can shadow your significant other just by installing Spouse Spy, or one of many similar apps, onto his or her cell phone.

A simple download lets you track comings and goings, read text messages, ogle photos, even listen in on conversations – all in real time. And of course, it’s all on the Q-T. – these apps are designed to be undetectable. But are they legal? A bipartisan group of senators, led by Al Franken (D-Minnesota) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has asked the Department of Justice to look into whether these so-called “stalking apps” violate any laws.

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Simon Cowell admits 'The X Factor' uses hidden cameras to expose contestants

examiner.com

"The X Factor" U.S. is inevitably getting compared to "American Idol," but Simon Cowell (who is an executive producer/judge on "The X Factor" U.S.) says that his show is doing something that "American Idol" doesn't do: use hidden cameras to expose contestants' true personalities.

In an exclusive Q&A with ReelzChannel, Cowell was interviewed by his older half-brother Tony Cowell, who is ReelzChannel's special "X Factor" U.S. correspondent. Simon said in part two of the interview (which aired on September 29, 2011):

"We put cameras in all the makeup mirrors, and we didn't tell them [the contestants]. I've worked with contestants who, on camera, are the nicest, most beautiful people you'd ever meet. [With the] cameras off, they are absolute horrors. On this show, you see everything. Otherwise, it's not real."

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Appeals Court OKs Challenge to Warrantless Electronic Spying

wired

A legal challenge questioning the constitutionality of a federal law authorizing warrantless electronic surveillance of Americans inched a step closer Wednesday toward resolution.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, for the second time, rejected the Obama administration’s contention that it should toss a lawsuit challenging the 2008 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act. Among other things, the government said the plaintiffs — Global Fund for Women, Global Rights, Human Rights Watch, International Criminal Defence Attorneys Association, The Nation magazine, PEN American Center, Service Employees International Union and others — don’t have standing to bring a constitutional challenge because they cannot demonstrate that they were subject to the eavesdropping or suffered hardships because of it.

The lawsuit, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, was lodged within hours of the FISA Amendments Act (.pdf) being signed into law by President George W. Bush in July 2008. The legislation is being challenged because it allows the National Security Agency to electronically eavesdrop on Americans without a probable-cause warrant if one of the parties to the communication resides outside the United States and is suspected of a link to terrorism.

“It is the glory of our system that even our elected leaders must defend the legality of their conduct when challenged,” (.pdf) Judge Gerard Lynch wrote.

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OnStar Begins Spying On Customers’ GPS Location For Profit

zdziarski.com

I canceled the OnStar subscription on my new GMC vehicle today after receiving an email from the company about their new terms and conditions.

While most people, I imagine, would hit the delete button when receiving something as exciting as new terms and conditions, being the nerd sort, I decided to have a personal drooling session and read it instead. I’m glad I did.

OnStar’s latest T&C has some very unsettling updates to it, which include the ability to sell your personal GPS location information, speed, safety belt usage, and other information to third parties, including law enforcement. To add insult to a slap in the face, the company insists they will continue collecting and selling this personal information even after you cancel your service, unless you specifically shut down the data connection to the vehicle after canceling.

The complete update can be found here. Not surprisingly, I even had to scrub the link as it included my vehicle’s VIN number, to tell OnStar just what customers were actually reading the new terms and conditions.

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How 9/11 Completely Changed Surveillance in U.S.

wired

Former AT&T engineer Mark Klein handed a sheaf of papers in January 2006 to lawyers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, providing smoking-gun evidence that the National Security Agency, with the cooperation of AT&T, was illegally sucking up American citizens’ internet usage and funneling it into a database.

The documents became the heart of civil liberties lawsuits against the government and AT&T. But Congress, including then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Illinois), voted in July 2008 to override the rights of American citizens to petition for a redress of grievances.

Congress passed a law that absolved AT&T of any legal liability for cooperating with the warrantless spying. The bill, signed quickly into law by President George W. Bush, also largely legalized the government’s secret domestic-wiretapping program.

Obama pledged to revisit and roll back those increased powers if he became president. But, he did not.

Mark Klein faded into history without a single congressional committee asking him to testify. And with that, the government won the battle to turn the net into a permanent spying apparatus immune to oversight from the nation’s courts.

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Electronic skin tattoo has medical, gaming, spy uses

breitbart.com

A hair-thin electronic patch that adheres to the skin like a temporary tattoo could transform medical sensing, computer gaming and even spy operations, according to a US study published Thursday.

The micro-electronics technology, called an epidermal electronic system (EES), was developed by an international team of researchers from the United States, China and Singapore, and is described in the journal Science.

"It's a technology that blurs the distinction between electronics and biology," said co-author John Rogers, a professor in materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

"Our goal was to develop an electronic technology that could integrate with the skin in a way that is mechanically and physiologically invisible to the user."

The patch could be used instead of bulky electrodes to monitor brain, heart and muscle tissue activity and when placed on the throat it allowed users to operate a voice-activated video game with better than 90 percent accuracy.

"This type of device might provide utility for those who suffer from certain diseases of the larynx," said Rogers. "It could also form the basis of a sub-vocal communication capability, suitable for covert or other uses."

The wireless device is nearly weightless and requires so little power it can fuel itself with miniature solar collectors or by picking up stray or transmitted electromagnetic radiation, the study said.

Less than 50-microns thick -- slightly thinner than a human hair -- the devices are able to adhere to the skin without glue or sticky material.

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US cannot say how many had communications watched

(AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Like its predecessor, the Obama administration says it cannot count how many people in the U.S. have had their telephone calls and emails monitored by government agents in national security investigations under federal surveillance law.

The national intelligence office said in a letter this week to two Senate Democrats that it was "not reasonably possible to identify the number."

The senators, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, worry that the government may be monitoring communications of law-abiding citizens with inadequate justification.

"We're not asking these questions to embarrass the administration or make the intelligence community's job more difficult," Wyden said in a statement Thursday. "Congress needs to know if the laws it writes are being interpreted and implemented as intended before it is asked to extend them, and failing to assure the public that government agencies aren't violating the rights of law-abiding Americans erodes public confidence and makes it harder for intelligence agencies to do their jobs."

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Espionage: Russia's traitor is CIA's mascot

boston.com
The CIA isn’t supposed to brag about its successes, but it can take great pride in a Russian military court’s decision to sentence Aleksandr Poteyev in absentia to 25 years in prison. Poteyev, a former colonel in Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, tipped off the CIA in 1999 about 10 Russian sleeper agents who were planted in Cambridge, New York City, and northern Virginia to imitate plain-vanilla Americans and harvest information about US policy and weapons.

Thanks to the tip from double agent Poteyev, the FBI had the Russian sleeper operatives under surveillance from the start. “As a result,’’ a Russian military judge explained last week, “their work yielded few results.’’ The judge clearly made this observation to castigate a traitor and justify his harsh sentence. But he also made it clear why the 10 Russian agents rounded up last year were not charged with espionage in the United States. As it turns out, their trackers never let them get in position to acquire classified information.

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Battle Brews Over FBI’s Warrantless GPS Tracking

wired
Kathy Thomas knew she was under surveillance. The animal rights and environmental activist had been trailed daily by cops over several months, and had even been stopped on occasion by police and FBI agents.

But when the surveillance seemed to halt suddenly in mid-2005 after she confronted one of the agents, she thought it was all over. Months went by without a peep from the FBI surveillance teams that had been tracking her in undercover vehicles and helicopters. That’s when it occurred to her to check her car.

Rumors had been swirling among activists that the FBI might be using GPS to track them — two activists in Colorado discovered mysterious devices attached to their car bumpers in 2003 — so Thomas (a pseudonym) went out to the vehicle in a frenzy and ran her hands beneath the rear bumper. She was only half-surprised to find a small electronic device and foot-long battery wand secured to her metal fender with industrial-strength magnets.

“I think I must have found it right after they put it on, because there was no grime on it at all,” she told Threat Level recently.

The use of GPS tracking devices is poised to become one of the most contentious privacy issues before the Supreme Court, if it agrees to hear an appeal filed by the Obama administration last month. The administration is seeking to overturn a ruling by a lower court that law enforcement officials must obtain a warrant before using a tracker.

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10 Most Notorious Acts of Corporate Espionage

businesspundit.com
There’s no end to the skullduggery that businesses will get involved in with the aim of making a quick buck, or trying to keep up with their competitors. Of course, their fellow companies aren’t beyond their schemes, either. There’s a war going on out there, folks, and spying is part of the game – criminal or not. Corporate espionage was a normal way of doing business back in days gone by, before copyright and patent protection brought the long arm of the law into play, but some companies still engage in the practice of acquiring trade secrets and business information by any means necessary. Here are 10 infamous cases of industrial espionage.

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When Wiretapping Runs Wild

wsj.com

Despite voluminous restrictions on when they can and can’t be used, government wiretaps are still a blunt instrument.

While they can be used to land powerful evidence against insider-trading suspects, recent case have raised fresh questions about when government surveillance crosses a line into unwarranted invasion of privacy.

The WSJ’s Michael Rothfeld provides a look at the issues in this story, out Friday.

It seems that more than 40 secret recordings played for jurors at the trial of Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam, which will head to the jury on Monday, have contained stretches of dialogue that appear exclusively personal.

Yes, personal. In other words: snippets of dialogue that focus on marriages and alleged extramarital affairs, social visits and vacations.

There’s a limit, it seems, to just how much personal information a judge will allow the government to tape. In a ruling on Wednesday, a judge overseeing a different but related insider-trading case excoriated the government for monitoring intimate calls between trader Craig Drimal and his wife about their marriage, which had nothing to do with the case.

The FBI is supposed to stop monitoring conversations that aren’t relevant to an investigation or involve relationships that legally are privileged, such as those with a spouse, attorney, doctor or clergy member. They are allowed, however, to tune back in periodically to make sure the discussion hasn’t changed.

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CIA reveals invisible ink recipes used by WWI spies

bbc.co.uk
World War I spies engraved messages on toe-nails and used lemon juice to write invisible letters, classified documents released by the CIA reveal.

The six documents, amongst the oldest secret papers to be held by the agency, disclose a number of spying techniques.

The nearly century-old records include instructions "to suspect and examine every possible thing".

Recent advancements in technology have made it possible to release the documents, the CIA said.

One document suggests soaking a handkerchief, or any other starched substance, in nitrate, soda and starch, in order to make a portable invisible ink solution.

Putting the treated handkerchief in water would release a solution that could then be used to write secret messages, the records say. A document written in 1914 in French, exposes a German formula for making secret ink, suggesting that French spies had managed to crack the enemy's code.

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Competitive Intelligence: How to Spot a Liar

inc.com

"Deception detection" experts—often former CIA agents—are used by banks and hedge funds to assess the honesty of CEOs. In his recent book, Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy, Eamon Javers shares some tricks of the trade:

1. Fidgeting
Aside from true sociopaths, people aren't natural liars, and saying one thing while thinking something else can actually cause physical discomfort. That's what causes people to squirm.

2. Weasel Words
Expected to, probably, basically, should be... These kinds of qualifiers crop up when someone is trying to obscure doubts or worries.

3. Detour Phrases
Think, As I said before. Liars try to circumvent a direct answer by referencing past answers to different questions.

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DOJ To Congress: We Shouldn’t Need A Warrant To Snoop Through Gmail

For years, privacy advocacy groups have been trying to make sure digital data has the same kinds of search and seizure protections that physical documents have. In recent times, even some major companies like Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and AT&T (NYSE: T) have joined together in the Digital Due Process coalition, which wants to modernize the nation’s out-of-date wiretapping laws. Those corporations want law enforcement agents to get a warrant issued by a judge before they are able to tap into sources of data stored in the cloud, such as web email. It’s been an uphill fight—to say the least—and today, the Department of Justice took a position that’s going to make their quest even harder.

According to a report from CNET, a DOJ lawyer told a Senate committee that if cops are required to get a search warrant to tap into email stored online, it could have an “adverse impact” on investigations. “Speed is essential,” he said. “If Congress slows down the process, this would have real-life consequences, particularly where human life is involved.”

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