Once again, we find surveillance threats coming from within a company’s perimeters. Potted plants need to be checked carefully during any office sweep. They make an easy hiding place for eavesdropping devices. In this case, from Scotland, it was the chairman who actually approved the bugging.

Ultimo bra tycoon Michelle Mone’s firm accused of bugging pot plant in office of former director

By Sally Hind, DailyRecord.co.uk 9/24/2013

THE 35-year-old operations director claims he found a recording device in a plant pot containing artificial flowers at the headquarters in East Kilbride. 

A FORMER director of Michelle Mone’s bra firm yesterday told how he was horrified to discover his plant pot had been bugged after a row with the tycoon.  Scott Kilday described how he found a “covert recording device” wrapped around an artificial flower as he debated resigning from Michelle’s lingerie firm in the wake of her bitter […]

 Honesty is the best policy. Major document shredding firms were misrepresenting their capabilities in order to win contracts.

Articles from KNOE.com, the Boston Globe and Boston Business Journal

PHILADELPHIA, July 9, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — Two of the biggest document-shredding companies in America, Iron Mountain Corporation (“Iron Mountain”, NYSE “IRM”) and Shred-It USA (“Shred-It”), have agreed to pay a total of $1.1 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that they defrauded the government by failing to shred sensitive documents as required by their contracts with the United States government.

The settlement follows a multi-year investigation by the United States Department of Justice triggered by a lawsuit filed by Pennsylvania resident Douglas Knisely, owner of a family-operated document-shredding business.

A third Defendant, Cintas Corporation (“Cintas”, NASDAQ “CTAS”), a multi-billion company based in Cincinnati, Ohio, continues to contest allegations that it defrauded the federal government by failing to properly shred sensitive documents.

The qui tam lawsuit filed in federal district court in Philadelphia in 2010 by Mr. Knisely alleged […]

Excerpts from Foreign Policy magazine
BY ADAM RAWNSLEY | JULY 1, 2013

Sure, Paris is a hypocrite when it comes to spying. But it isn’t alone.

 If you buy the latest reporting out of Europe, France is outraged, simply outraged, at news that the National Security Agency has been eavesdropping on the European Union through its mission in New York and embassy in Washington. French political parties are now rumbling about offering asylum to Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor at the center of the leaks. The French government is demanding answers from the United States about its snooping. Monsieur Le Président himself, François Hollande, is calling for an end to the spying.

 All of which is pretty hilarious, given France’s penchant for stealing American defense technology, bugging American business executives and generally annoying U.S. counterintelligence officials. If you’ve been paying attention, you know that France is a proficient, notorious and unrepentant economic spy. “In economics, […]

Here is one reason regularly scheduled sweeps of offices are important…

Daily Mail
By HARRIET ARKELL PUBLISHED: 11:19 EST, 3 July 2013 | UPDATED: 11:19 EST, 3 July 2013

A hidden microphone has been found inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been living for the past year, the country’s foreign minister has said.

Ricardo Patino said the microphone was found inside the office of the Ecuadorian ambassador to the UK, Ana Alban, in Knightsbridge in central London.

The foreign minister did not say who was believed to be responsible, and the embassy made no comment today – Mr Assange’s 42nd birthday.

Mr Patino said the device was discovered during a brief visit he made to London last month when he met Assange and held talks with British Foreign Secretary William Hague.

‘We regret to inform you that in our embassy in London we have found a hidden microphone,’ Mr Patino […]

This article is from Cari Guittard from Huffington Post who recently interviewed Ira Winkler, President of Secure Mentem and the Internet Security Advisors Group (ISAG) regarding changes in corporate espionage and some simple countermeasures. Ira Winkler is an expert in computer security and penetration testing. His responses point to the need to pay attention to many overlooked internal threats. Full article can be read [here]. 

Ira points out that internal threats from employees are often overshadowed by the well publicized concerns over cyber warfare. It’s important to recognize that along with hacking and computer threats, the information leaked through other forms of electronic eavesdropping can be equally devastating to a corporation.  

Hacking Humans, Corporate Espionage and the Spies Among Us

By Cari E. Guittard, Principal, Global Engagement Partners; Professor of Global Management, Hult International Business School

I reconnected with Ira after his remarks at the SC eSymposium to get his take on […]

Editor’s comment: interesting to note, that in the story below, Mitch McConnell’s name is tied to this incident, but the alleged slanderous statements that were intercepted were made by someone else, not McConnell.  Politics aside,  if a meeting or board room is bugged, or if conversations are intercepted, this demonstrates that the PR problems created can easily affect much more than just the lone person who made the intercepted statements. Keep your meetings secure through professional technical countermeasures!

The Weekly Standard

10:39 AM, APR 9, 2013 • BY DANIEL HALPER

The top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, is asking the feds to investigate whether a closed campaign meeting was illegally wiretapped by his political opponents. The issue arises after the liberal outlet Mother Jones published “A recording of a private meeting between the Senate GOP leader and campaign aides.”

In a statement to the press, McConnell’s campaign manager, Jesse Benton, says the feds are getting […]

From China Digital Times 

Wire-tapping Wars: The World of Official Espionage

December 20, 2012: 11:13 AM ET; from CNN Money
By Omar Akhtar, reporter

Companies use a variety of methods to stay one step ahead of their rivals. Competitive intelligence is one of the fastest growing ways to pull this off.

FORTUNE — Corporate espionage may be illegal, but companies can still keep tabs on the competition. Some large corporations around the globe spend more than $2 million a year hiring outside firms or staffing internal departments to track and analyze the actions and strategies of their competitors. These companies pull this off with the help of public resources and investigative research, a practice collectively known as competitive intelligence (CI).

 British tribunal sees spying as a normal business expense…

Industrial espionage: It’s tax deductible

By Mark Halper | October 16, 2012, 3:48 AM PDT  
How do you soften the blow when you’ve had to pay a $100 million fine for spying on your business rival?
You deduct it from taxes.

That’s what British Formula 1 race car team McLaren is doing with a penalty it paid for secretly photocopying technical designs belonging to Italian rival Ferrari.

A British tax tribunal has even approved the maneuver. It agreed with McLaren that “spying on rivals is a normal business expense,” as BBC Radio 4 presenter John Humphrys phrased it on a recent news program (you can listen here until the link expires).

The fine was levied by Fomula 1’s French ruling body, the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile, and not via civil action.

Pssst! If you snap the […]