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More Evidence The X-37B Spaceplane May Actually Be Spying On China Robert Johnson Jan. 5, 2012, 9:26 AM Image: Air Force Responding to a report in Spaceflight magazine, Jonathan Amos at the BBC reports the U.S. Air Force's classified X-37B spaceplane is likely spying on China. Launched into orbit last March, the X-37B had its trip extended nine months in December without any explanation, leading to endless speculation about the ship's mission. Amateur space trackers have concluded that the X-37B is closely following the path of the Chinese spacelab, Tiangong-1. China has been reaching into space at breakneck speeds as...

The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court extended by five days on Tuesday the remand of Yitzhar resident Akiva Hacohen. Hacohen is one of several men who were given restraining orders by police last August and were forced to leave their homes. Since being deported he, his wife and their four children have been residing in an apartment in Jerusalem’s French Hill neighborhood. He is now being accused by police of espionage, because he warned Jews residing in communities in Judea and Samaria of impending demolitions of homes. Hacohen’s wife, Ayelet Hashachar Hacohen, criticized the police and the State of Israel on Tuesday...

The Transportation Security Administration isn't just in airports anymore. TSA teams are increasingly conducting searches and screenings at train stations, subways, ferry terminals and other mass transit locations around the country... The TSA's 25 "viper" teams — for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response — have run more than 9,300 unannounced checkpoints and other search operations in the last year. Department of Homeland Security officials have asked Congress for funding to add 12 more teams next year. According to budget documents, the department spent $110 million in fiscal 2011 for "surface transportation security," including the TSA's viper program, and is asking...

Over 100 million smartphones are tracking their owners’ every step, Android developer Trevor Eckhart claimed, thanks to software that comes preinstalled on phones from most major carriers. During a security demonstration revealed on Monday, Eckhart showed how software developed by Carrier IQ tracks virtually everything a user does -- going as far as logging individual keystrokes and button presses. The company claims it helps its customers improve quality and performance “by counting and measuring operational information in mobile devices.” Security experts call it spyware.

Maybe it's your brother-in-law, who has a new Mercedes and likes to quip that only fools pay all their taxes. Or else a contractor who overcharged for a home renovation and then demanded you make the check payable to "cash." The agency has two whistleblower programs... the reward can go as high as 30%.

This ought to instill an appropriate level of fear, then The above photo by Ronnie Miranda appeared various places following the Stanley Cup riot in Vancouver in mid-June. But the original is not just any wide-angle shot, for what he captured was actually a massive 1.0 gigapixel (one billion) digital image.Such technology offers astonishing detail that is obviously useful to anyone working in law enforcement or security/intelligence -how useful? Simply click on the pic above and then zoom right down by double-clicking on anybody in the crowd... pretty scary. One can clearly see the faces of almost every single individual (prior to the trouble breaking-out) with just...

The House Judiciary Committee just approved a bill (H.R. 1981) requiring Internet service providers to spy on their users and retain 12 months of data -- data that could be used to identify where you surf and what you post online. From the Electronic Frontier Foundation, quoting their Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston: The data retention mandate in this bill would treat every Internet user like a criminal and threaten the online privacy and free speech rights of every American, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have recognized. Requiring Internet companies to redesign and reconfigure their systems to...

Internet providers would be forced to keep logs of their customers' activities for one year--in case police want to review them in the future--under legislation that a U.S. House of Representatives committee approved today. The 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans, who made data retention their first major technology initiative after last fall's elections, and the Justice Department officials who have quietly lobbied for the sweeping new requirements, a development first reported by CNET. A last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers' names, addresses,...

The Hamas government in the Gaza Strip hanged a father and son at dawn Tuesday for collaborating with Israel, a government spokesman said. The two were found guilty of helping Israel target a top Hamas leader and identify other militants who were later killed by Israeli forces, said Ihab Ghussein, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry in Gaza. (Snip) In a statement, the human rights group condemned the hangings, saying the Palestinian judicial process was so flawed that it would have not been possible to conclusively prove the two men were involved in spying.

Eight months after the Lower Merion School District thought it had settled the furor over secret monitoring of students' laptops, the district faces a new legal battle on the issue. On Monday, a 2009 graduate of Harriton High School sued the school district, claiming it violated his civil rights by capturing nearly 8,000 webcam photos and screen-shots from his laptop between September 2008 and March 2009.

Google Inc.’s “Don’t Be Evil” slogan is seductive but misleading. It is the lowest business ethics standard ever devised, excusing everything Google does short of evil. Google isn’t evil – but neither is it ethical. While perceptions of the world’s erstwhile No. 1 brand remain exceptionally strong, Google’s ethical blind spots regarding privacy and property rights are beginning to erode the public’s trust and eventually could threaten the company’s market domination. Anyone who follows Google closely knows that the company is a serial scandal machine. One of the world’s most powerful companies, with its vainglorious mission to “organize the world’s...

The U.S. Secret Service launched an official Twitter account this week, with plans to use the social media site to promote its visibility and investigative work. The federal agency charged with protecting the nation’s highest government officials will use the account to “highlight the investigative missions, press releases, and distribute information to communities hosting national special security events, to explore Secret Service history and and promote any recruiting opportunities,” said Secret Service spokesman Max Milien. For example, the agency plans to use the account during the APEC conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, in November to spread the word about roads and...

To All, Attached, please find a copy of an addendum to the employee handbook, that regulates audio/video recording in the workplace. We will add this to the handbook and have new employees sign the sheet when they come on. Please print, date and sign, have your supervisor or ***** sign as a witness and give to ***** for your employee file. (Commcenter can give to myself or ***** as we have your folders in here) Any questions, please ask *****, *****, ***** or myself. AUDIO/VIDEO RECORDING WHILE AT WORK Effective March 31, 2011 ***Company Name***. being in the Security/CCTV/Computer Security...

An interesting discussion started on tor-talk about Iran cracking down on "web dissident technology" before Cryptome posted, "TOR Made for USG Open Source Spying Says Maker." There is an interesting post on Cryptome, TOR Made for USG Open Source Spying Says Maker, in which one of Tor's creators, Michael Reed, says to look at why the government created Tor from a common sense point-of-view instead of as conspiracy theory. The Tor Project is free software that lets people be anonymous online but it's not an invisibility cloak that's meant to protect privacy. People use Tor to be anonymous for all...

SolveClimateNews.com blessed us with an article telling how Google "has brought together a team of 21 climate researchers to improve the way the science of global warming is communicated using new media". This, no doubt in response to widespread reports of a Gallup poll showing ever-decreasing concern by the public about global warming, which must also explain why the GOP-controlled US House is moving forward with actions to thwart greenhouse gas regulations. Ignorance run amok, thus Google's experts are here to save the day. If only that were the case. The enormous irony here is the very service Google itself...

While the recently flaunted Chinese J-20 stealth fighter prototype caught the world offguard with a seeming quantum-leap in technological prowess, it's similarities to the Russian T-50 made it appear to have been produced with the Kremlin's help- and indeed it was. But now we hear that back in the Balkans in 1999, when a USAF F-117 Nighthawk was downed by a SAM missile over Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic allowed Chinese agents to fan-out into the countryside to purchase or otherwise obtain pieces of the top-secret stealth fighter from villagers -some as large as a small car- to be sent back to...

The WikiLeaks website last week leaked a secret State Department cable from October 31, 2008, directing United States officials to spy on Israel. The cable, dated only days before the 2008 American presidential elections, was signed by then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The recently leaked cable reveals former U.S. President George W. Bush’s foreign policy czar instructing American diplomats in Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as the Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA, to conduct a massive espionage operation against the Jewish state. The sought-for information covered all aspects of Israel’s political system, society, communications infrastructures...

A WSJ Investigation finds that iPhone and Android apps are breaching the privacy of smartphone usersFew devices know more personal details about people than the smartphones in their pockets: phone numbers, current location, often the owner's real name—even a unique ID number that can never be changed or turned off. These phones don't keep secrets. They are sharing this personal data widely and regularly, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found. An examination of 101 popular smartphone "apps"—games and other software applications for iPhone and Android phones—showed that 56 transmitted the phone's unique device ID to other companies without users'...

It's possible that someone could listen to your conversations -- even when you're not on the phone.

Fort Bragg, N.C. — A special agent based at Fort Bragg is accused of trying to sell secret military documents, according to search warrants released Friday. Bryan Minkyu Martin, who is assigned to the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, is accused of accepting money from an undercover FBI agent in exchange for folders containing military information, some of which was classified as top secret, according to the warrant. Authorities applied for a warrant to search Martin's hotel room at the Landmark Inn, 1208 Glider St. in Fort Bragg, his vehicle, financial records and electronic equipment, including cell phones...

The federal government has repeatedly violated legal limits governing the surveillance of U.S. citizens, according to previously secret internal documents obtained through a court battle by the American Civil Liberties Union. In releasing 900 pages of documents, U.S. government agencies refused to say how many Americans' telephone, e-mail or other communications have been intercepted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act - or FISA - Amendments Act of 2008, or to discuss any specific abuses, the ACLU said. Most of the documents were heavily redacted.

China's Culture of Secrecy Brands Research as Spying By JAMES T. AREDDY SHANGHAI—As a "scout" for IHS Inc., a U.S. petroleum industry research firm, geologist Xue Feng won plaudits from his managers for obtaining a trove of rare data on 30,000 Chinese oil wells. Enemy of the State IHS databases are populated with such information about every country in the world. The data help oil companies decide where to explore and give traders a sense of energy price trends. Among subscribers to the IHS databases are Chinese oil companies that drill in Africa and buy natural gas from Australia. But...

President Obama's spokesman is labeling as "ridiculous" an assertion by the founder of WikiLeaks that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton should resign if she was involved in asking U.S. diplomats to gather intelligence at the United Nations. In an online interview with Time magazine from an undisclosed location, founder Julian Assange on Tuesday called on Mrs. Clinton to resign "if it can be shown that she was responsible for ordering U.S. diplomatic figures to engage in espionage in the United Nations" in violation of international agreements. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday that Mr. Assange's statements "are...

Huang Kexue, federal authorities say, is a new kind of spy. For five years, Mr. Huang was a scientist at a Dow Chemical lab in Indiana, studying ways to improve insecticides. But before he was fired in 2008, Mr. Huang began sharing Dow’s secrets with Chinese researchers, authorities say, then obtained grants from a state-run foundation in China with the goal of starting a rival business there. Now, Mr. Huang, who was born in China and is a legal United States resident, faces a rare criminal charge — that he engaged in economic espionage on China’s behalf. Law enforcement officials...

The White House is denying allegations that President Obama's top economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, broke tax privacy laws when he discussed during an August press briefing the tax status of oil giant Koch Industries, the mega-conglomerate that has bankrolled numerous Republican campaigns. The denial comes after a Treasury Department watchdog launched an investigation into the allegation at the request of Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa and six other Republican senators.

We must send Obama -- and any Democrat or Republican who supports his "big brother" mentality -- back into private life is the change we must believe in to get our basic freedoms back.

  A major Internet company is under investigation by more than 30 state attorneys-general for alleged wiretapping violations. In Europe and now Texas that same company faces anti-trust inquiries on whether it unfairly penalizes its competitors, and its operations face criminal wiretapping inquiries throughout Europe, as well as in Australia and South Korea.Yet, inside the Beltway, it’s business as usual. The Obama Administration plans to award the company a sweetheart, no-bid contract for satellite imagery and access to classified data. After protests, the Administration backtracks, allowing other companies to bid, but still intends to award the contract to the...

A veteran public-schools superintendent resigned yesterday after being outed for having a two-year affair with a subordinate. Queens High Schools Superintendent Francesca Peña -- who has worked for the city's public schools for 28 years, was snared in a probe of her illicit flame, Randolph HS Assistant Principal Milciades "Mayo" Pepin. School investigators found that Pepin had used hidden software to spy on the e-mails and smartphones of Peña and three male principals whom he apparently viewed as competition -- including his supervisor, Randolph HS Principal Henry Rubio. Their probe also showed that Pepin had helped Peña install similar spyware...

The Pentagon demanded on Thursday that WikiLeaks “do the right thing” and remove from its Web site tens of thousands of classified documents about the war in Afghanistan, and return to the military thousands of others that it had not yet made public. Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said the Web site’s disclosure last week of a six-year archive of some 77,000 documents gave the Taliban and other militant groups insights into American military tactics and techniques, showed how the United States protects its troops in war zones and revealed the names of Afghan informants and how the military...

Per Beck: This change of 4 words is to be voted on TODAY. W.House proposal would grant FBI access to Internet activity records without court order 29 Jul 2010 The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation. The administration wants to add four words -- "electronic communication transactional records" -- to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval. Government...

Korean spying in Tripoli upsets Libya, strains ties Deported agent was reportedly snooping on Qaddafi’s son’s charity July 28, 2010 Libya’s fury over a Korean intelligence agent’s alleged spying on its leaders has precipitated a crisis in relations between the two countries, officials in Seoul said yesterday. According to the sources, an intelligence agent at the Korean Embassy in Libya was detained, questioned and deported last month. Complaining that the agent posed a threat to the national security of Libya, Libyan authorities detained and questioned him earlier last month, diplomatic sources said. Tripoli informed Seoul on June 15 of its...

A young Michigan man was quietly arrested last month and charged with lying on a CIA job application about his connection with Chinese intelligence, a case that drew virtually no attention outside his home state. Glenn Duffie Shriver, 28, of Georgetown Township, Mich., tried to conceal $70,000 in payments from the Beijing government and denied his “numerous” meetings with Chinese intelligence officials, according to the government’s indictment. The indictment doesn’t say what kind of work he was seeking at the CIA. It could not be learned if Shriver had yet entered a plea. His mother, Karen Chavez, declined to comment...

A man has been arrested for spying on more than 150 girls in their bedrooms by hacking into their computers and using their webcams to watch them, provoking warnings that others will be doing the same thing. The hacker, from the Rhineland area, is suspected of having infected computers with a program enabling him to manipulate webcams, a spokesman for the Aachen state prosecutor confirmed on Friday. Thomas Floß from the association of data protection advisors, discovered the case, according to a report in the Westfalenblatt newspaper. He often visits schools to talk with children about data protection and sensible...

US Cyber Command … “Perfect Citizen” or Big Brother? A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet The Daily Mail, of the United Kingdom, is reporting on a US government program named “Perfect Citizen.” According to the report: “The US plans to install a Big Brother-style monitoring system on the computer systems of private companies and government agencies to prevent cyber-attacks from abroad. The program, named Perfect Citizen, will rely on sensors that will be deployed in networks running critical infrastructure such as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants. It will be able to detect any attempt by foreign saboteurs to launch...

Lebanese judicial officials say a military court has convicted a man of spying for Israel during the 2006 summer war and sentenced him to death. Ali Manstash, who has been in custody since April 2009, was convicted of giving Israel locations of military and civilian targets bombed during the war and resulting in deaths, the officials said on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. Lebanon and Israel are technically at war. In 2006, a war between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah group left 1,200 Lebanese and 165 Israelis dead.

I was targeted by the infamous Russian spy ring. Maybe that's too dramatic. How about - accused Russian spy Mikhail Semenko handed me his business card. Not exactly the basis for a novel.... The Russian spy ring reportedly was targeting think tanks, a repeat of KGB operations from the 1960s. It is hard to understand what Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) hopes to gain from infiltrating public-policy organizations that it cannot comb from their websites. Perhaps it thinks some have secrets not discussed publicly, but of course in Washington, no secret is really important until you tell it.

David Heathfield, an Ontario resident, said yesterday that the alleged Russian spy known as Donald Heathfield stole the identity of his younger brother who died when he was 6 weeks old. “When we first heard about it, we thought it was a joke,’’ David Heathfield said. “Then it was a shock to us. How can somebody get away using our family name as an alias for so long and not be detected?’’ He said his mother, Shirley, is distressed by the discovery that the child she lost to crib death has had his name stolen. David Heathfield, 51, said he...

She's a "practiced deceiver." Those are the words prosecutors used to describe Anna Chapman, a red-headed 28-year-old accused of spying for Russia. Chapman, a divorcee who appeared in a white T-shirt and designer jeans, stood before magistrate judge Ronald Ellis in a Manhattan federal court Monday evening along with four others arrested on charges of conspiring to act as "unregistered agents of a foreign government." Chapman's attorney, Robert M. Baum, asked the judge to dismiss the charge of conspiracy, saying his client committed no crime by communicating with a member of a foreign government and called the acts listed in...

For those of you who thought the Talon domestic surveillance system was dead... it's back! Talon 2.0 coupled with the recent legislation giving the Feds the power to seize control over private networks = not a pretty picture.

INDIAN police are holding a pigeon under armed guard after it was caught on an alleged spying mission for arch rival and neighbour Pakistan. The white-coloured bird was found by a local resident in India's Punjab state, which borders Pakistan, and taken to a police station 40km from the capital Amritsar. The pigeon had a ring around its foot and a Pakistani phone number and address stamped on its body in red ink. Police officer Ramdas Jagjit Singh Chahal told the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency that they suspected the pigeon may have landed on Indian soil from...

WASHINGTON — An already strained relationship between the White House and the departing spymaster Dennis C. Blair erupted earlier this year over Mr. Blair’s efforts to cement close intelligence ties to France and broker a pledge between the nations not to spy on each other, American government officials said Friday. The White House scuttled the plan, officials said, but not before President Nicolas Sarkozy of France had come to believe that a deal was in place. Officials said that Mr. Sarkozy was angered about the miscommunication, and that the episode had hurt ties between the United States and France at...

A leading Arab Israeli political activist and a second man were arrested in recent weeks by the Shin Bet [Israel Security Agency] on suspicion of spying for Hizbullah and conspiring with enemy agents, the Israel Police revealed on Monday. The two suspects have been named as Ameer Makhoul, 42, head of Ittijah (the Union of Arab Community-Based Associations) - an umbrella group for Arab NGOs in Israel - of Haifa, and Omar Said Abdo, 40, of Kfar Kana, an activist for the Balad Arab political party.

Today has been a rough day for the already embattled Lower Merion School District, the well-to-do suburban Philadelphia school district accused of spying on students in their own homes through school-issued, webcam-enabled laptop computers. First, Friday morning brought with it a report in The Philadelphia Inquirer that, despite repeated assertions to the contrary by the district, the program designed to remotely access the cameras on the laptops reported lost or stolen had indeed captured “a substantial number of webcam photos” of a number of different students, and that school district officials marveled over e-mail at the access they had to...

(04-08) 18:15 PDT BERKELEY -- Iran appears to have hardened its position on three UC Berkeley graduates who have been held in the country since last summer, accusing them of having links to U.S. intelligence. The charge, made by Iran's intelligence minister in an interview on state television, elicited strong denials Thursday from the U.S. State Department and the families of the prisoners, who were arrested after hiking across the border from Iraq. It also struck experts as an orchestrated move in a high-stakes chess game between Iran and the United States over nuclear ambitions and other issues. Read more:...

With virtually zero debate - or media attention - President Barack Obama has signed a one-year extension for what many considered the most crucial and controversial aspects of the USA PATRIOT Act. The provisions, set to expire Sunday without the signature of Obama, include extensions to allow: -1) "roving" wiretaps, permitting surveillance on multiple phones and e-mail addresses. -2) court-approved seizures of records and property in anti-terrorism operations.

He says "They don't even realize we are watching," "I always like to mess with them and take a picture," and "9 times out of 10, THEY DUCK OUT OF THE WAY."

Webcams can be a window to the world. But a lawsuit filed this week claims they are also a one-way window being used by school officials to peek in on students and their families at home. A federal lawsuit filed Wednesday by the parents of a Harriton High School student alleges that the Lower Merion School District has been remotely spying on students inside their homes through their webcam-enabled district-issued computers. According to the suit filed by Mark S. Haltzman with the firm Lamm Rubenstone, Lindy Matsko, an assistant principal at Harriton, told a minor student in November that the...

The parents made a mistake in this situation, and they don’t even know it. The main point is this; they let the government give them something. And as we all know, government assistance of any kind comes with strings attached. Every level of assistance has a cost attached to it. Requirements, limitations, stipulations, and mandates are universally part of government programs. When people fail to recognize that fact, they are made victims. Some will say that citing this situation is splitting hairs. It is not. The schools, especially since they are part of the government indoctrination machine, are based on...

Lower Merion School District officials brag that they give every one of their 1,800 high-schoolers laptop computers to "ensure that all students have 24/7 access to school-based resources." Instead, they ensured they got a 24/7 sneak peek into students’ private lives by secretly monitoring webcams embedded in the laptops to spy on teens and their families at home, according to a federal, class-action lawsuit filed this week in Philadelphia. The suit alleges the remotely controlled covert cameras violate everything from the Fourth Amendment to wiretapping, electronic communications and computer fraud laws.....

PHILADELPHIA — A Pennsylvania school district accused of secretly switching on laptop computer webcams inside students' homes is under investigation by federal authorities, a law enforcement official with knowledge of the case told The Associated Press. The FBI will look into whether any federal wiretap or computer-intrusion laws were violated by Lower Merion School District officials, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the investigation, told the AP on Friday.