Spy cameras land man in court

A man from Guangdong Province was given a suspended three-month jail sentence yesterday for selling illegal spy cameras.

Sun Yupeng, 34, who ran a security surveillance business in the downtown Cyber Mart, sold two spy cameras for 3,450 yuan ($444) and 3,800 yuan ($489) on November 22, 2006, and January 17, according to the Shanghai Luwan District People's Court. He was arrested following the sale of the second camera.

The cameras, with lens of 1 millimeter, are concealed in briefcases. They can be remote controlled and pictures transmitted to other video equipment.

The State Security Administration categorized them as spy equipment.

Sun said that someone from Guangdong Province contacted him last year trying to sell the cameras. This person told him the cameras were very popular in Beijing.

Sun said that he contacted the Guangdong man when Zhu Xumin, one of the two buyers, came to him late last year looking for such a camera. No details about the Guangdong man were given.

Zhu testified he bought the camera to help him in his driving. He said that he placed the camera at the back of his car to see the road more clearly when reversing. Pictures were transmitted to his dashboard.

The second buyer Zhu Min testified he bought the camera to film manufacturers who use his company's trademark illegally.

Both cameras have been confiscated.

After hearing the verdict, Sun told the court he would not have sold the cameras had he known he was breaking the law.

According to a CCTV programme, secret filming is no longer just for celebrities. Videos of normal people in toilets, changing rooms or bathrooms are widely seen on the Internet.

Experts said there is no law in the country that punishes this sort of conduct.
In 1999, a couple at a local university was filmed having sex and the video was later put on the Internet. They were expelled from the university, and the girl later committed suicide.

Hi-tech surveillance

Jon Ralph
ONE of Australia's leading private eyes says hi-tech spying and surveillance is alive and well in Australian football.
Warren Millard, the managing director of Lyonswood Investigations and Forensic, says AFL clubs can gather significant advantages from using spy tactics on match day and during opposition training sessions.

They range from using lip readers or directional microphones to tape or capture quarter-time speeches and coaches' box instructions, to observing rivals' game-plan tactics with hi-tech binoculars during training sessions.

Millard's warning comes after the AFL was this week forced to investigate allegations a Bulldogs runner was electronically wired up and delivering messages to trainers.

Rumours swept AFL clubs that spies were using advanced technology to gather information and get the jump on opposition coaching tactics and instructions.

Sydney-based Millard would not confirm which football code the technology was being used in, but said it would be naive to think AFL clubs had not considered it.

"I can guarantee you that spying in the footy industry does happen. We call it a competitive advantage. You need reliable information on your competitors so you can make competitive decisions," he said.

"In The Art of War, Sun Tzu said if you do not know the plans of your competitors you cannot make informed alliances."

While AFL clubs have long played ducks and drakes over late team changes and injury reports, forward scouting has been taken to new levels in recent years.

Clubs have banned rival scouts from training sessions and are preventing video cameras being used to ensure sensitive tactics and stop-play manoeuvres are not uncovered.

In America's National Football League, head coaches cover their lips when speaking into headsets to ensure lip readers do not discover which set play they are calling for their team.

While AFL clubs say it is unlikely they would go to those lengths, Millard says the technology is readily available.

"Lip reading is common. Whilst it is unlawful to record a conversation with a listening device there is nothing to prevent you from overhearing it. And a person who lip reads overhears it in a different way."

Millard says directional, or parabolic microphones, are often used in surveillance that pick up conversations up to 2km away.

But rivals in the surveillance field, including Mark Muratore from Spyquip World, said yesterday the background noise from a football crowd would cause too much interference.

"If you tried to use something like a shotgun mike at a football game, you would be hard pressed to get any clarity," he said.

Richmond has been prevented from using its Motorola headsets at certain games in recent years because rivals using the same brand of headsets can tap into the audio channels.

Victorian clubs setting up audio equipment before games while Adelaide trains at AAMI Stadium have unwittingly tapped into Adelaide's advanced set-up, which has coaches and players wired for sound.

Millard said it was no problem for clubs to capture opposition training sessions despite safeguards in place.

"You can easily take a camera that is disguised in the form of binoculars. They are specialised, like most spy equipment, but you can set up a camera in a theodolite (surveying machine), or a camera can be built into a tree stump. Cameras are so tiny nowadays, they are only limited to your imagination."

NSA 'spy room' at AT&T exposed

Iain Thomson, vnunet.com 13 Jun 2007
Agency can spy on email and web use with impunity

Documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) claim to show that US telco AT&T allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) to set up a 'secret room' in its offices to monitor internet traffic.

The documents were handed over as part of an EFF legal case against AT&T for alleged violation of user privacy. The US government has asked the courts to dismiss the case, claiming that the lawsuit could expose state secrets.

"The district court rejected the government's attempt to sweep this case under the rug," said EFF senior staff attorney Kurt Opsahl.

"This country has a long tradition of open court proceedings, and we are pleased that, as we present our case to the Court of Appeals, the millions of affected AT&T customers will be able to see our arguments and evidence and judge for themselves."

The room, described as secret and secure, houses surveillance equipment used to spy on AT&T customers. Investigations could include web use, email and voice communications.

"This is critical evidence supporting our claim that AT&T is cooperating with the NSA in the illegal dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans," said EFF legal director Cindy Cohn.

"This surveillance is under debate in Congress and across the nation, as well as in the courts.

"The public has a right to see these important documents, the declarations from our witnesses and our legal arguments, and we are very pleased to release them."

SPY EQUIPMENT - Software Key Logger

Software key loggers lets you know EXACTLY what others do on your PC while you are away. It allow you to secretly monitor and record all activities on your computer, and this is completely legal. My favorite software key logger (there is also hardware key loggers) is the Power spy.

In Stealth Mode, Power Spy software is completely invisible to computer users - No trace in Add/Remove Programs, Start menu, Applications, Windows Task Manager, and no icons, shortcuts or other items. However, it is easy for you to unhide its main program Control Panel with your hotkey, view the record secretly from the CP on the monitored computer directly, or receive all logging records via a pre-set email! These reports can be sent as often as you wish, such as every sixty minutes. Power Spy software can be password protected to prevent others from terminating or uninstalling them.

Possible usages of Power Spy software include: monitoring employees, children, spouse, acquire others' passwords, chat records, websites visited and investigating crimes. While Power Spy software is the perfect tool for catching a cheating spouse, it is also perfect for long-term child monitoring.

Key Features
Record keystrokes typed
Record screenshots
Record websites visited
Record windows opened
Record applications run
Record documents opened
Record emails read in MS OE, MS Outlook 2K/XP/2003 /2007, Windows Vista WinMail and IncrediMail
Record Skype chatting conversation
Record Windows Live Messenger 8.X chatting conversation
Record Windows Messenger 5.X chatting conversation
Record MSN Messenger 6.X-7.X chatting conversation
Record Yahoo! IM 6.X-7.X chatting conversation
Record ICQ 5.X chatting conversation
Record AIM 5.X - 6.X Triton chatting conversation
Record Clipboard activities
Record Windows username
Record Power Spy software administrator activities
Record real time of activities
Support Windows 98 / ME / 2000 / XP sp2-4 / 2003 / Vista
Hide program installation folder
Hide uninstall entry in Add/Remove Programs list
Hide Start menu entry
Hide program name in Windows Task Manager
Hide program title on Taskbar
Hide program window on desktop
Stop screenshot when user is inactive
Compress image size in JPEG format
Set maximum images stored on computer
Easy step by step cofiguration wizard
Monitoring task schedule
Send logging report to a pre-set email
Upload report to a pre-set FTP
HTML format log
Uninstall directly from program interface
Remove program trace at uninstallation
Logging records overview
View screen shot images in slide show viewer
Activate from Stealth Mode by user defined hotkey
Password protected program access
Pause and resume monitoring manually
Automatically monitor at program startup
Automatically start at Windows startup
No entry in Windows Registry

Reliable detecting of 2-way spy mirrors

With the recent advancements in miniaturized electronics, it's hard for any of us to know we're not being spied upon these days; cameras and transmitters can now be made so small and unobtrusive that most of us wouldn't be able to find them even if we knew where to look for them. Many would-be peeping toms still resort to less technologically-advanced methods such as peepholes and two-way mirrors, though, hence this warning which began circulating on the Internet in April 1999.
First off, we should clear up some confusing terminology. The subject this message addresses are panels which look like mirrors on one side but work like tinted windows from the other side that is, if you're on one side of such a panel, it appears to be mirror in which you can see your reflection; if you're on the other side, it serves as a window through which you can see everything (and everyone) on the other side. These panels are confusingly referred to as both "one-way mirrors" and "two-ways mirrors," so to avoid additional confusion we will henceforth call them "transparent mirrors."
The fingernail test described above is a method for determining the difference between first-surface mirrors and second-surface mirrors, both of which are ordinary mirrors glazed in a different fashion. With a first-surface mirror, any object you put up against it will touch its reflection because the reflective part of mirror is laid in right at the surface. With a second-surface mirror, a gap between the object and its reflection will be visible because a layer of clear glass has been incorporated over the reflective part of the mirror to better protect it. First-surface looking glasses are quite expensive and are generally used only for specialized applications such as fine optical instruments or lasers, in which a protective layer of glass would interfere with the path of light or diminish precision. As such, you're unlikely to ever encounter one being used as an ordinary mirror in a home or a dressing room; for those applications much cheaper second-surface mirrors are nearly always used.
Therefore, if you discover what appears to be a first-surface mirror (i.e., an object you place up against its touches its reflection) in a dressing room, the chances are good it's a transparent mirror. However, the fingernail test isn't necessarily a very good one judging whether an object placed up against such a mirror is touching its reflection can be affected by factors such as the size of the mirror, the angle of the mirror, the amount of lighting present, and the type of object used to conduct the test, and an unpracticed observer might easily mistake an ordinary mirror for a transparent one this way. (Ascertaining "the nature of the suspect surface by hurling an object at it" could be quite embarrassing and costly should it prove to be an ordinary mirror.) There are better tests based on some of the more obvious physical features of transparent mirrors.
What we call transparent mirrors are laminated coated glass products which have been treated with Mirropane on the first surface of the glass. They're also known as "observation mirrors" and are commonly used in settings (such as police stations, schools, and businesses) where there is a need to conduct unobtrusive monitoring for safety and security purposes. (Think of the interrogation room as shown in the police station of the television drama Law & Order : suspects inside the room see a panel which looks like a mirror, but from the hallway outside the panel functions as a window through which detectives can monitor the proceedings unobserved.)
Transparent mirrors are most obviously distinguishable from ordinary mirrors in that they're not hung on walls as ordinary mirrors are, but they're set into walls (or doors) as windows are. In other words, if there's a wall behind a mirror, the mirror is almost certainly an ordinary one a transparent mirror would be part of the wall itself. Also, the lighting in front of a transparent mirror must be much brighter than the lighting on the other side (where the hidden observers are) for it to work effectively, and some light leaks through from the brighter side to the dimmer side.
According to the folks in Mirropane's technical support group, you can use these factors to your advantage by pressing your eyes up against the mirror and cupping your hands around them (to block out the light from the room you're in): if you're truly dealing with a transparent mirror, you should be able to see at least a little something of the open area behind it. Also, rapping on the mirror should provide an aural clue: ordinary mirrors have backings and are usually placed against walls, so rapping on them will generally produce dull thuds; transparent mirrors and set into walls with open areas behind them, so rapping on them should produce much more open, hollow sounds. These methods of detection are more reliable than the fingernail test and should be preferred to taking a chance on getting arrested for property damage after tossing a chair through a perfectly normal mirror misjudged via less accurate means.

The first hand-held, portable lie detector

Imagine the fun you’ll have when you show off the deFIBulator at your next party. Use it for a game of truth or dare and you’ll see who’s being honest and who’s not. The DeFIBulator is destined to be the most talked about new novelty product this year. After extensive research and development in labs in Singapore, Spion has developed the first generation of the DeFIBulator hand-held voice tension detector. The DeFIBulator utilizes voice tension technology to measure varying degrees of vibration in the voice. These vibrations are caused by the user going from a state of calm, to being a little nervous as you would when you lie. Even an F.B.I. polygraph isn’t 100% accurate but after extensive testing, the DeFIBulator was shown to have a 65% accuracy rate. It can even be connected to your cell phone! As a matter of fact, because of the digital connection it will actually be much more accurate.

To train the DeFIBulator to the human voice, ask your subject 3 yes/no questions and then record the voice to establish a baseline. Then ask the real yes/no questions and watch the figure on the screen. “Demonochio’s?nose will grow and his horns will appear. The greater the tension in the voice, the longer his nose and horns will be. The DeFIBulator is to be used for amusement only and is guaranteed to be the life of the party.