Bugged.com's Chief Technician and CEO was trained by CIA eavesdropping expert Glenn Whidden . Watch this very interesting piece on the history of tapping and bugging during the Cold War.
Eavesdroppers can listen in with gadgets 007 would love!
Jacquin Sanders - December 8, 1988
It's a cozy, well-scrubbed little shop, within easy electronic bugging distance of Pinellas Square Mall.
If you think someone is eavesdropping on you (and it's inconvenient to call the police), Privacy Electronics, at 4472 Park Blvd., has a formidable stock of anti-bugging equipment. These include delicious little specialties of the art: devices that tell you someone is eavesdropping, but don't let him know you know.
For $795, you can buy an instrument that lies motionless in your pocket until your visitor begins bugging or taping your conversation. Then, ever so discreetly, the device starts to vibrate.
TAMPA -- It was December 1997, just days after Sabrina Aisenberg disappeared, and Hillsborough sheriff's detectives suspected her parents.
They sent prosecutors to Hillsborough Chief Circuit Judge F. Dennis Alvarez with an extraordinary request: They wanted to put a bug in a Hillsborough County home connected to a possible kidnapping.
Records show that Alvarez granted the request, issuing an order on Dec. 12, 1997, authorizing the planting of a micro-eavesdrop device.
The order, filed with the Administrative Office of the United States Courts in Washington, does not specify the Aisenberg home by name or address. It notes that the device would be placed in a single-family home in Hillsborough County to gather evidence in a kidnapping case. It was the only such order entered in either 1997 or 1998 in Hillsborough County.
Alvarez's initial order granted authorities permission to eavesdrop for 30 days. He extended it twice for a total of 90 days, ending in mid-March 1998. Based on recordings of their conversations, federal authorities Thursday charged the Aisenbergs with making false statements about their daughter's disappearance.
The micro-eavesdrop bug that Alvarez authorized was the kind that picks up conversations from inside someone's house. According to Michael Peros, chief technician at Privacy Electronics in Pinellas Park, the bug works this way:
Surveillance cameras in the workplace have become so commonplace that they've spawned a series of popular Fox Network television specials: Busted on the Job. Clips from this modern-day Candid Camera show an office worker swiping supplies, a legal secretary photocopying her private parts, and a hotel maid donning a guest's negligee. Danny Wolf, the show's producer, says the maid had been suspected of stealing, so the hotel set up cameras in five rooms. The maid was subsequently fired.
Wolf acknowledges that when a company spies on its workers, customers may inadvertently be taped. Says Wolf: "Who's going to scare customers by letting them know you'll be taping in their room?" Felice of the Counter Spy Shop says that last year his company concealed cameras in the clocks, lamps, and exit signs of various guest rooms in 50 hotels in Manhattan alone. Is there any place where these gumshoes won't install a "private eye"? Yes, they say--in bathrooms--but not for lack of opportunity. "I get several requests each week," says Peros. "In the majority of restaurant and club jobs, people ask for them."
Those, like Peros, who sell cameras defend their business by pointing to cases in which videotape caught baby sitters abusing children and elder-care workers neglecting their charges. Well-intentioned family members also use the cameras to monitor the drinking, drug use, or even overeating of a loved one. One woman, worried about the health of her 340-pound husband, hired private investigator Gary Miles in Ottawa to plant a camera in the refrigerator. Miles cut a hole large enough for a camera in the side of a Tupperware container, then filled it with brussels sprouts, which the husband hated. "That night we caught him taking out leftover chicken, returning a few minutes later for several cans of Pepsi, then eating Jell-O right out of the bowl," says Miles. "And he was looking around to see if anyone was watching."
Peeping. But the motive for much of today's surreptitious taping is lust, rather than love. The rise in "video voyeurism" has sparked recent state legislation regarding hidden cameras. In several cases, law enforcement officials discovered there was no video equivalent to "peeping Tom" laws. For example, in Cheshire, Conn., a 16-year-old boy allegedly tricked schoolmates into changing into their swimsuits before a hidden camera at pool parties. When he was caught, prosecutors could charge him only with breaching the peace, a misdemeanor. Connecticut has since made video voyeurism a felony. Privacy advocates say lawmakers' reluctance to ban the practice is political. "Most secret taping isn't done by perverts, it's done by good guys--employers, landlords, police," says Lewis Maltby, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's task force on workplace rights. "When legislators discover their powerful constituents are taping, they back off." That's not to say that the perverts aren't out there--carrying cameras hidden in bags and setting them down on escalators, for instance, with the lens pointing up to tape under women's skirts. Dozens of lawsuits making such allegations have recently been filed, along with others alleging that landlords taped tenants in their bedrooms and tanning salon owners filmed clients undressing. In one pending civil case, over 1,000 college athletes from dozens of universities were filmed naked in locker rooms. The plaintiffs contend that men disguised as referees and coaches secretly recorded the students, mostly wrestlers, with cameras hidden in gym bags. The videos were then sold on porn Web sites under such titles as Straight off the Mat and Shower Time. "This is the tip of the iceberg," says Dennis Berkson, an attorney representing the athletes. "Where are we safe?" The possibility that seminude images of her, too, could appear on the Internet weighs heavily on the mind of Hofstetter, the St. Louis bookkeeper. "That's my biggest fear," says the 61-year-old grandmother. "That I'm a big joke on somebody's computer screen."
U.S. Delegation Brings President's Prayer to Western Wall
JERUSALEM -- At the heart of the Jewish faith is the city of Jerusalem. The focal point is the Western Wall, part of the foundation stones and the only remaining part of Solomon's Temple. Jews worldwide come to pray at the close-fitted stones of this remnant of Solomon’s Temple.
A group from America brought a very special prayer when they arrived in Israel, the last week of September this year. The prayer was from the President of the United States of America.
Long ago, when Solomon dedicated the Temple, he asked God to listen to the prayers prayed in it. Because of that request, people write their prayers on slips of paper and put them in the thin spaces between the stones of the Western Wall.
This week a delegation from the U.S.A. brought a prayer request from President George W. Bush.
Ruth Mizell, a personal friend of the family, brought the prayer from the White House. Mizell said, "They felt like the prayer they wanted to pray was The Lord’s Prayer -- that that would just meet all needs."
Michael Peros, of the American Christian Trust, and a member of the delegation, along with his son, read aloud the prayer on behalf of President Bush and delivered it to and slipped it in between the stones of the Western Wall.
Computer security: Fear and fascination in Las Vegas
Robert Lemos - August 3, 1998
(Editor's note: ZDNN reporter Rob Lemos was holed up in Las Vegas for three days of fun and games at DEF CON, the mother of all hacker and computer security conventions. Considering how in its six years of existence, DEF CON has never been invited back to any of the hosting hotels, this promised to be a reporter's paradise. And so it was.)
LAS VEGAS -- If information is a virus, DEF CON 6 attendees were a crowd looking to get infected.
From breaking smart card codes to taking over Windows 9x machines, from knowing your rights when face-to-face with law enforcement to picking mechanical locks, DEF CON 6 offered something to everyone. And very few of the attendees matched the renegade stereotype inspired by notorious tales of hacking carried out by the likes of Kevin Mitnick, Robert Morris and others.
This crowd varied from "legitimate" hackers in the know to kids looking for pointers to security professionals and government officials watching from the sidelines.
Same hotel, tame DEF CON. Despite a crowd close to 2,000, the conference was fairly tame this year -- the hotel is even considering asking them back, according to the manager of Jackie Gaughan's Plaza Hotel.
"There were a few pranks, but nothing malicious," he said. At one point, a few attendees found the hotel security radio frequency and were harassing the guards over the air. "It wasn't a bad group," said the manager on Monday.
Last year, the activities leaned more towards vandalism, when several kids from the conference stole one of the hotel satellite dishes from the roof of the Aladdin. Two other hackers, who became embroiled a fistfight arising out of a professional disagreement, got booted from the event. Needless to say, that hotel didn't invite DEF CON back.
If the Plaza decides to again roll out the welcome wagon, it will mark a signal event in the history of DEF CON. For the last six years, the conference has worn out its welcome and has had to change venues.
Hacking in public Many of the actual hackers were clustered around local area network connections attempting to break into six servers that the DEF CON über hackers had set up for that purpose.
This "capture the flag" contest would go to the team that took control of the largest number of servers. None of them knew which servers had which operating systems beforehand.
Hacker culture and techniques are becoming more popular. But, what do you think about the security concerns? Add your comments to the bottom of this page.
Other groups traded information, access and techniques away from the main conference room and the clusters of media and government workers.
While speakers occasionally stabbed at the media, the hackers recognized their love-hate relationship with publicity.
"We hope they can get it right this time," said one member of the Cult of the Dead Cow, a media-oriented hacker group that released a program that has the potential to control remote Windows 9x computers.
Poke fun at MIBs On the other hand, digs at the government were the rule.
The best way to win instant recognition was to "Spot the Fed" -- an annual game in which contestants attempted to find federal officials who came to DEF CON to observe. When found, the agents were brought up on stage and asked to prove they are not federal agents.
Employees from the low-profile National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Defense all suffered from jeers after being unmasked.
The usually packed conference room was also overflowing with government-wary paranoia.
Ian Goldberg, a graduate student at University of California at Berkeley who analyzed the shortcomings of the encryption on GSM cell phones, found that one company's system used 54 bits rather than the full 64 bits that it could have used. This significantly weakened the security of the cell phone system.
His loaded question: "Someone had an interest in undermining the crypto -- I wonder who that was?"
Another speaker, Michael Peros, a Florida-based electronics counter-surveillance consultant, told attendees of a case of illegal wiretapping by police and state officials involving more than 65,000 individual incidents of wiretapping.
His warning: "You had a situation where the government had no accountability for their actions." After intense interest from the attending hackers, Peros plans to post the evidence shown during his presentation on his company's Web site.
