HTC Sneaks Spying App into Android 2.3.4 Phones

hothardware.com

Looks like HTC has quietly slipped its users a spying app that tracks an alarming amount of user behavior and sends that data off to itself and perhaps others via a mysterious service in the cloud. The snooping app came nestled with the 2.3.4 Android update pushed out to some of its smartphones such as the Sensation 4G and EVO 4G.

TrevE and Team Synergy of the InfectedROM site (and XDA fame), discovered the app. HTC includes an application called Carrier IQ and Carrier IQ recently added a user-behavior logging feature called IQ Insight Experience Manager.

According to the Carrier IQ website: "IQ Insight Experience Manager uses data directly from the mobile phone itself to give a precise view of how users interact with both their phones and the services delivered through them, even if the phone is not communicating with the network. ... Identify exactly how your customers interact with services and which ones they use. See which content they consume, even offline."

But wait there's more. Turns out that after HTC collects these stats, CIQ isn't the only app with access to them.



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Phone hacking: News of the World reporter's letter reveals cover-up

guardian.co.uk

he News of the World's former royal correpsondent, Clive Goodman, who was jailed over phone hacking. A letter from him claims phone hacking was widely discussed at the paper. Photograph: Carl De Souza/AFP/Getty Images

Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch and their former editor Andy Coulson all face embarrassing new allegations of dishonesty and cover-up after the publication of an explosive letter written by the News of the World's disgraced royal correspondent, Clive Goodman.

In the letter, which was written four years ago but published only on Tuesday, Goodman claims that phone hacking was "widely discussed" at editorial meetings at the paper until Coulson himself banned further references to it; that Coulson offered to let him keep his job if he agreed not to implicate the paper in hacking when he came to court; and that his own hacking was carried out with "the full knowledge and support" of other senior journalists, whom he named.

The claims are acutely troubling for the prime minister, David Cameron, who hired Coulson as his media adviser on the basis that he knew nothing about phone hacking. And they confront Rupert and James Murdoch with the humiliating prospect of being recalled to parliament to justify the evidence which they gave last month on the aftermath of Goodman's allegations. In a separate letter, one of the Murdochs' own law firms claim that parts of that evidence were variously "hard to credit", "self-serving" and "inaccurate and misleading".

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DAS wiretap witness murdered

colombiareports.com

A former official at intelligence agency DAS, who was due to give evidence regarding illegal wiretapping carried out by the agency, was assassinated Thursday afternoon in Medellin, reports Caracol Radio.

David Antonio Ballen Garcia, a former DAS detective who left the agency three years ago, was shot by unknown gunmen on motorcycles while on his way to work, riding in a vehicle in the Patio Bonito area of El Poblado in Medellin. The driver of the vehicle and two other passengers, a woman and another former DAS employee, were injured.

Ballen Garcia appears on a list of witnesses made by the Prosecutor General's Office in the case of illegal wiretapping carried out by DAS against political opponents, journalists and human rights activists. He was allegedly about to supply key information in the case to authorities.

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Sarkozy and the secret tapes: more twists in L'Oreal scandal

independent.co.uk

France's convoluted L'Oréal family fraud scandal became even more convoluted and even more gripping yesterday. Tapes of bugged conversations involving the L'Oréal owner, Liliane Bettencourt, 87, implied that President Nicolas Sarkozy had meddled in legal proceedings in which a society photographer is accused of defrauding France's richest woman of almost a billion euros.

The tapes, leaked to a French investigative website, also suggest that the supposedly senile billionairess was involved in elaborate schemes to hide some of her money abroad. There are cryptic references to campaign payments to ensure the "friendship" of two cabinet ministers, including the employment minister, Eric Woerth.

Ms Bettencourt's former butler was arrested yesterday and faces charges of "invasion of privacy", for allegedly bugging conversations between the L'Oréal heiress and her financial adviser. He has not been named. Tapes of the conversations were sent last week to Ms Bettencourt's only daughter, Françoise, who sent them to the police.

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Police Wiretapping Jumps 26 Percent

wired.com

The number of wiretaps authorized by state and federal judges in criminal investigations jumped 26 percent from 2008 to 2009, according to a report released Friday by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

Courts authorized 2,376 criminal wiretap orders in 2009, with 96 percent targeting mobile phones in drug cases, according to the report. Federal officials requested 663 of the wiretaps, while 24 states accounted for 1,713 orders.

Not one request for a wiretap was turned down.

Each wiretap caught the communications of an average of 113 people, meaning that 268,488 people had text messages or phone calls monitored through the surveillance in 2009, a new record. Only 19 percent of the intercepted communications were incriminating, the same as in 2008. The report attributes some of the rise in the numbers to better reporting by the nation’s courts.

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Dutch prosecutors stop tapping lawyers' phones

nrc.nl
For years, Dutch law enforcement officials have been listening in on conversations between lawyers and their clients. The prosecutor’s office itself now wants to put an end to the practice once and for all.

What do a miracle doctor, a shrink, a lawyer and an imam have in common? Their professions are all on a list of words compiled by the Dutch public prosecutor for what is its biggest inquiry ever. All over the Netherlands, millions of transcripts of phone taps are currently being screened for phone calls between suspects and their lawyers, doctors or psychiatrists. A list of search terms has been compiled that could indicate a confidential conversation has taken place.

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10 Ways Wall Street's Corporate Spies Steal Information From Your Company

businessinsider.com
Right now, some of your most sensitive corporate data is being stolen by corporate spies.

These spies work for the competition, looking to get the edge over you, and they work for investors

, hoping to get ahead of the market.

A new book by Eamon Javers, Broker, Trader Lawyer, Spy: The Secret World Of Corporate Espionage, reports that such companies as Goldman Sachs, SAC Capital, and KPMG have employed these spies.

In digging for information on a company, the spies look for sources who usually come in one of two flavors:

• The first is a "male in his mid 20s who is somewhat bored, likes to party, needs money, likes women, sports and risk, is disrespectful to his managers, and is patriotic."

• The second is a young woman who is insecure, overweight, and bitchy. She doesn't have a boyfriend and except for a strong relationship with her mother, has only fake friends.

But it's not enough to get just the profile of the potential sources inside your company. We've gone through Javers' book and identified the 20 common tactics used in corporate espionage.

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FBI probe: Did DMV exec wiretap workers?

charlotteobserver.com

Telephone technician says he told grand jury that 2 former leaders' phones let them listen.

RALEIGH Federal authorities are investigating whether the former commissioner of the state Division of Motor Vehicles illegally wiretapped the phone calls of agency employees.

George Tatum, who resigned in 2007 amid a corruption scandal, had a special telephone in his office that allowed him to listen in on the calls of his subordinates without their knowledge, according to current DMV officials. Greg Lockamy, who retired unexpectedly last year after serving as the agency's internal affairs director, also had a phone set up for secret eavesdropping.

State law forbids intercepting phone calls without a warrant unless at least one person in the conversation is aware the monitoring is taking place.

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