from KTVB.com Boise, ID

Tools for covert audio and video interception are available everywhere. Manufacturers need to pay attention, not just at trade shows, but in the design office, in the conference room, anywhere their new designs are stored or revealed. We regularly sweep offices and boardrooms to help insure that no eavesdropping or electronic surveillance is taking place. Performing TSCM sweeps also helps establish trade secret status for the information discussed or shared in those locations. Theft of trade secrets is a much more serious, prosecutable offense than just loss of general information. ~Charles

Fox13 News, Salt Lake City July 31, 2013, by Ben Winslow

SALT LAKE CITY — The Outdoor Retailer’s Summer Market has brought thousands of people to Utah to showcase innovative new designs and technology in outdoor merchandise.

But exhibitors are also trying to guard against counterfeiters, thieves and industrial espionage at this expo, to […]

From IEEE Spectrum Eliza Strickland, Jul 2 2013

The Chinese wind power company Sinovel will be keeping its legal team busy. In addition to the intellectual property charges against the company in Chinese courts, which Spectrum covered last year, the company now faces criminal charges of corporate espionage brought by the U.S. Justice Department. 

In the new charges, prosecutors allege that Sinovel stole trade secrets from the Massachusetts-based company AMSC (formerly American Superconductor Corp.), which sells software and systems to control wind turbines. According to the indictment, AMSC’s alleged losses exceed $800 million.  

The prosecution is part of efforts undertaken by the Justice Department’s IP Task Force, which was recently created to “safeguard the nation’s economic security against those who seek to profit illegally from American creativity, innovation and hard work.”

The various cases against Sinovel have attracted widespread attention, as theWall Street Journal notes:

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, while in his capacity […]

Pirelli chairman Marco Tronchetti Provera has been sentenced to jail for twenty months.

The Financial Times reports that a Milan court found him guilty, but suspended his jail sentence, in an industrial espionage case involving Telecom Italia.

Provera, who denies the charges, was also ordered to pay € 900 000, ”I will appeal, [I am] convinced that the truth will emerge,” he said in a statement.

According to FT the trial was linked to a broader case of suspected industrial espionage and phone-tapping that led to the arrests in 2006 of 20 people, including Giuliano Tavaroli, a former head of security at Telecom Italia and Pirelli.

They were accused of operating a spy network that collected private information about many prominent Italians, including two prime ministers, Silvio Berlusconi and Romano Prodi. (GMM-Apex)

Marco Tronchetti Provera with Paul Hembery

[Read more]

7/13/2013 Payvand Iran News

Ali Motahari, Iranian MP

Iranian conservative MP Ali Motahari says his offices were wiretapped and illegally videotaped. 

Motahari said in a statement that surveillance equipment was accidentally discovered in the air conditioning ductwork, and his own video surveillance shows that up to nine intruders had entered the premises at night.

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This news report points to the need for multiple levels of security.  Motahari’s security video recordings revealed intruders who were planting their own video surveillance devices.  If you suspect possible intrusion to your premises, even if nothing was taken, ESPECIALLY if nothing was taken, it could have been an attempt at planting bugs or eavesdropping equipment and may require a proper TSCM inspection to maintain security.

 Published time: July 01, 2013 16:08 RT.com

The European Union has ordered a worldwide security sweep of all its premises following reports US intelligence has bugged its offices in Washington, Brussels and the United Nations.

Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the EU’s Executive Commission, “has instructed the competent commission services to proceed to a comprehensive ad hoc security sweep and check” in light of the most recent spying allegations leveled at the US, spokeswoman Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen told reporters. 

The sweep follows a report by German weekly Der Spiegel, based on revelations by fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden, that the National Security Agency [NSA] bugged EU offices and gained access to EU internal computer networks. 

Ahrenkilde said allegations of US spying were “disturbing” and demanded “full clarification.” 

“Clarity and transparency is what we expect from our partners and allies and this is what we expect from the United States,” she continued.   

By The Associated Press 
on July 01, 2013 at 10:20 PM, updated July 01, 2013 at 10:33 PM

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama brushed aside sharp European criticism on Monday, suggesting that all nations spy on each other as the French and Germans expressed outrage over alleged U.S. eavesdropping on European Union diplomats.

…

Obama, in an African news conference with Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, said the U.S. would provide allies with information about new reports that the National Security Agency had bugged EU offices in Washington, New York and Brussels. But he also suggested such activity by governments would hardly be unusual.

“We should stipulate that every intelligence service — not just ours, but every European intelligence service, every Asian intelligence service, wherever there’s an intelligence service — here’s one thing that they’re going to be doing: They’re going to be trying to understand the world better, and what’s going on in world […]

Omni Hotels were recording phone calls for “service observation”, that is having the ability monitoring or record calls for quality assurance, as we have all often heard announced at the beginning of a call.  In this case Omni was not making that announcement and a class action suit was made against them.   

Law360, Los Angeles (June 24, 2013, 5:04 PM ET) — By Matthew Heller

Omni Hotels Management Corp. urged a California federal judge Monday to toss a putative class action alleging it has illegally recorded telephone conversations between customers and its employees, saying California’s wiretapping law did not apply to the “routine” business practice of “service-observing.”

Omni’s attorney David Farkas said the luxury hotel operator could not be sued for violating the California Information Privacy Act by taping calls without first telling the guests or getting their approval because the law included an exemption for recording equipment “furnished and used […]

Forbes.com  This article is by George Westerman, a research scientist in the MIT Sloan School of Management’s Center for Digital Business. He is co-author of IT Risk: Turning Business Threats Into Competitive Advantage.  [Read Original Article]

A few years ago I was working with a small consulting firm, and one of our up and coming salespeople left for a competitor. No big deal. It happens. But several months later, the management team noticed a disturbing trend. The company kept losing bids for new business to this very same competitor. It had happened four times in a row when finally we realized that we’d forgotten to turn off the former employee’s network access. He had been logging into our network, stealing our information, and then undercutting us. 

As cybercrime reporting goes, this may be small potatoes.  But it wasn’t small to this company. It illustrates a […]