FutureWatch – The Privacy Party is Over
Corporate Espionage in India
An increasing number of companies are also hiring private detectives to keep tabs on both their employees and business partners. Detective agencies says they are flooded with strange requests from companies to plant spies in rival firms, to fish for confidential data, engineering designs, software codes or to manipulate rate contracts to favour their clients.
“An entire gamut of corporate espionage is happening around us and it is a huge industry by itself,” says cyber law expert and supreme court advocate Pavan Duggal. On an average, detective agencies get 5 to 10 requests a day for such services. The fee could range from Rs 30,000 to a few lakh of rupees, depending on the complexity of the job.
“Such things are rampant and we get a lot of requests, though we do not entertain it as a matter of policy,” says Ravi Kapoor, chairman of ACE Detectives. He says that usually a person is hired for the job who has access to passwords and other information. It could be a data entry operator, security personnel or even a driver.
“Hiring spies is prevalent in IT firms, especially where big tenders are underway ,” confirms Manpreet Sidhu, head of Top Secret Detective Agency. (more)
Eavesdropping Suit Settled During Secret Phone Call
CA – After meeting in closed session by teleconference with attorney Susan Trager, Bighorn-Desert View Water Agency directors announced Tuesday night that litigation had been settled in an unlawful eavesdropping case brought by former director Maryan Barkley. The amount of the settlement was not made public. (more) 
"Ruff, ruff, I’m going to get tutored!"
Laser Eavesdropping – 50 year old technology…
“Here’s a surprisly (sic) simple way to build yourself a laser-based listening device. It consists of two modules, a transmitter and a receiver. The transmitter is a set of lasers, one is visible red for aiming, and the other is infrared for measuring the vibration of a surface. Point the transmitter at the window of the room you want to listen in on and the laser can be reflected back to the receiver. The receiver module has a phototransistor to pick up the infrared laser light, and an LM386 audio amplifier to generate the audio signal sent to a pair of headphone. The need to be well-aligned which is easy enough using a pair of tripods. Check out the demo.” (more) (more)
