Advocacy group Free Press is alleging that a Californian company has been helping the Egyptian government inspect the contents of email, Twitter and Facebook messages.
IP network traffic intelligence company Narus – owned by Boeing –Â counts Telecom Egypt amongst its customers. And Free Press claims that it’s been using Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) to help the government eavesdrop on communications and even track cellphone users via GPS coordinates and SMS messaging.
Using DPI, it’s possible to reconstruct emails and attachments, see what web pages a user has clicked on and reconstruct voice-over-IP phone calls.
“What we are seeing in Egypt is a frightening example of how the power of technology can be abused,” says Free Press campaign director Timothy Karr.
“Commercial operators trafficking in Deep Packet Inspection technology to violate internet users’ privacy is bad enough; in government hands, that same invasion of privacy can quickly lead to stark human rights violations.”
Narus’ NarusInsight system is used by the US National Security Agency for surveillance of internet communications. And Free Press is calling for the US Congress to establish transparent standards for the use of DPI technology in order to preserve human rights.
“The harm to democracy and the power to control the internet are so disturbing that the threshold for the global trafficking in DPI must be set very high,” says Karr.
LONDON – British police revealed Wednesday it would contact thousands of people whose cell phones may have been targeted by the News of The World tabloid, an indication of the scale of the scandal at the heart of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.
Police have long insisted only a small number of people were believed to have been have been spied upon by the tabloid, which employed a private detective to break into the voice mail boxes of the paper’s targets and eavesdrop on their private messages.
But that contention has been challenged by lawmakers, fellow journalists and former employees of the News of The World, who have claimed that the practice was widespread. There have also been allegations that police were hiding the full scale of the phone hacking operation for fear of jeopardizing its relationship with the politically powerful tabloid.
The police have denied those claims, but the force has long been cagey about who exactly was targeted — and how many individuals were involved. Alleged victims of the hacking include model Elle MacPherson and actress Sienna Miller, and some have complained that police only gave them evidence reluctantly — fueling allegations of a cover-up.
Police said they were taking a “fresh approach” to informing people whose names appeared in documents taken from The News of The World’s private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire.
“With this new investigation, we will be as open as we can be and will show them all the information we hold about them, while giving them the opportunity to tell us anything that may be of concern to them,” Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers said.
Police have previously said around 3,000 cell phone numbers were recovered over the course of their investigation into the hacking, although police cautioned that did not necessarily mean that they were all targeted. Akers made clear that every one of the people connected to those numbers would be informed.
“In time, we will … make contact with everyone who had some of their personal contact details found in the documents,” Akers said.
John Prescott, a former deputy prime minister who believes the tabloid used phone hacking to get a story about his extramarital affair, said that in a meeting with Akers Wednesday he was told police now had “significant new evidence” relating to his claim that he had been a hacking victim.
“I now look forward to the police finally uncovering the truth,” he said in a statement.
NEW YORK – Bugging by Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid even reached a former deputy prime minister. Clive Irving on how Scotland Yard investigators messed up—and the wider ethical concerns.
In London the firestorm over telephones being bugged by reporters from Rupert Murdoch’s saucy tabloid, the News of the World, just escalated. This is becoming one of those scandals where the more the perpetrators want to bottle it up the more it won’t stay bottled.
The News of the World hacking raises wider concerns than just the ethics of tabloid journalism and the complicity of executives at Murdoch’s papers.
Two previous inquiries by the Yard were suspiciously casual, and in view of what has since emerged were more like white washes than investigations.
The latest investigation is led by a feisty woman, deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers, who seems determined to clear up the mess left by her male predecessors—no matter who gets embarrassed in the process.
Wednesday night she sent out an email to people whom she now suspects had been targets—as many as 20 of them. (Previously the Yard had put the number at 10 or 12). She even said that some public figures had been misled by the Yard when seeking assurance they had not been bugged.
The case of John Prescott is particularly poignant.
This larger-than-life rumbustious politician was Tony Blair’s essential lifeline to the working class roots of the New Labour party. Blair himself had a famously tin ear for the old-time grass roots faction. Prescott flaunted the perks of office, being dubbed “Two Jags Prescott” because he owned two Jaguar luxury sedans. And in 2006 he admitted to having an affair with one of his secretaries.
The new evidence turned up by the Yard apparently shows that Prescott’s phone was hacked in the month that he confessed to this affair.
Politicians I have spoken to here in London now believe that the News of the World hacking raises wider concerns than just the ethics of tabloid journalism and the complicity of executives at Murdoch’s papers.
First, there is the issue of Scotland Yard’s serial bungling—or, worse, of its self-restraint for fear of annoying a powerful media baron. And second there is the issue of how secure the phone conversations of senior ministers are. Tabloid reporters are not particularly regarded as masters of technology. If they can bug the mighty so easily, what about the real pros working for foreign governments or terrorist groups?
HERRIMAN, Utah (ABC 4 News) – Someone could be eavesdropping on you using something as simple as a $99 baby monitor.
In just three hours wandering the streets of Herriman, we picked up 15 video and audio signals. We used just two brands of monitors.
At one house, we knocked on the door and invited Ranie to come see for herself. “Does that look familiar?” I asked pointing at a picture of a crib on a small black and white TV. “Yes,” Ranie answered, “That’s my crib.”
“It is very scary because I don’t even have the receiving monitor on right now, I just happened to forget to turn off the camera part and you have it on your monitor … so that makes me scared.”
We had picked up her signal more than a block away and had knocked on only one other door before finding the right house.
Ranie said she got the monitor as a baby gift. She likes it because it provides a measure of safety and peace of mind. “If you hear a sound, you don’t have to come in to see how he’s doing.”
Prior to our visit, she had no idea that when the crib camera was on neighbors or even strangers could be watching and listening. Still, when she thought about it, she remembered a family story that should have been a warning to her. “My sister, actually, heard her neighbors having an argument through a monitor.”
It’s not all that hard. In a block and a half of another street, we picked up three signals showing empty cribs.
Patrea and Shaun actually have cameras in two of their kids’ rooms. They were surprised to see the pictures of both rooms on our monitor. All we had to do was flip a switch on the back to change channels. “You would think they (the manufacturers) would try to make it a little more secure so maybe you have a certain frequency that maybe only yours would pick up.”
Another father, Brett, wondered, “How would you block that so that nobody’s watching your kid sleeping and doing whatever else?
Blocking the signal is really not practical, but parents do have options to secure their baby monitors:
– The best way is the most expensive. Use security cameras that can be routed through an encrypted, home wifi network. The cost of such systems start around $500.
– For about $300, parents can buy a digital baby monitor. Their signals are more secure than the cheaper analog models we used in our investigation.
– To be 100-percent secure, ditch the broadcast signal. Instead, hardwire a camera to a monitor with coaxial cable. It is a hassle, especially if you want to hide the cable, but there is no signal to be intercepted.
– The cheapest option is to keep the gear you have, just make sure you turn off your camera when you take your baby out of the crib. That would not stop a video voyeur, but would limit the exposure.
Speaking of the options, Ranie said, “I’m thinking about it!”
That is the point of this investigation. Most of the parents we talked to had no idea their cameras broadcast a signal well beyond their homes let alone that it could be easily picked up.
Now that they know their cameras are not secure, Ranie and others can make informed decisions that balance privacy and peace of mind.
During the shadow of Communist Russia, Estonia was once home to a major contingent of KGB secret police. Now free, the Estonians are taking the opportunity to display Soviet hardware used by the KGB to monitor transmissions and eavesdrop.
The exhibition – called “Viru Hotel and the KGB” – remembers a time when the hotel was a hub for eavesdropping on foreigners.
The exhibition shows in a once-secret “radio room” where operatives relayed information from the hotel in Tallinn, Estonia to Helsinki, Finland across the Baltic Sea. From there, the intel would go to Moscow.
“All we have here now is the room as they left it one night in 1991 when Estonia was getting close to restoring its independence,” said Peep Ehasalu, spokesman for the Viru, now run by Finnish hotel chain Sokos.
In 1975, the radio room became a hotline for Soviet leaders between Moscow and Helsinki during the European Security and Disarmament Conference held in Helsinki. Again the room went into high use in 1980 when Tallinn was the venue for the yachting competition for the Olympic Games hosted by the Soviet Union.
“In the Soviet times I was not afraid of losing my job because of my professional skills, and jobs were available for everybody and no one was sacked even if they came to work drunk,” said Enn Palmets, the hotel’s technical manager, who has been at the Viru since it opened.
“There was a threat of getting dismissed because of telling the wrong kind of stories or talking to foreigners. In fact, everybody was forced to sign a document saying that they promise not to contact foreigners.”
One visitor, Tiia Raudma, who visited Estonia frequently in the 70s said that foreigners weren’t allowed to stay anywhere else.
“Everyone knew the Viru was bugged and that the KGB people sat on the second and third floors near the hard currency bar, so people would just be careful in what they said on the telephone or while in the hotel.”
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Bugging by Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid even reached a former deputy prime minister. Clive Irving on how Scotland Yard investigators messed up—and the wider ethical concerns.