CEDAR RAPIDS, IA (CNN) – Some employees at a medical clinic in Iowa claimed a supervisor used a baby monitor to eavesdrop on them.
According to a labor representative for the University of Iowa medical clinic employees, workers found the monitor sitting on a shelf near the reception area.
The employees think the monitor was placed there to pick up the conversations of five secretaries and clerical workers.
“If that monitor was there for even one day, that’s the potential for 100 HIPPA violations if that thing was being monitored the whole time, and that’s pretty egregious,” said union rep Jon Stellmach.
Managers of the office say the monitor was used to see if staff members were talking too much.
The supervisors say the monitor was removed after workers complained, and University of Iowa officials say the case is being handled by the human resources department.
NORFOLK —
A court-martial for a 22-year-old Navy sailor charged with attempted espionage while he was stationed at Fort Bragg has been set for May 19.
Navy Reserve Intelligence Specialist Petty Officer 2nd Class Bryan Minkyu Martin of Mexico, N.Y., is accused of attempting to sell classified documents to an undercover FBI agent in November shortly before he was set to deploy to Afghanistan in support of the Army.
Martin enlisted in the Navy in 2006 and received a top secret-level security clearance the following year.
He has been charged with four counts of attempted espionage and 11 counts of mishandling classified information. Martin’s attorneys did not enter a plea at an arraignment hearing Thursday at Naval Station Norfolk, where he is being held in the brig. They also did not immediately decide whether to have Martin’s case decided by a judge or jury.
According to a warrant, Martin accepted a total of $3,500 from an undercover agent in exchange for dozens of pages of documents that were classified as either secret or top secret.
By Tammy Joyner
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A Clayton County grand jury indicted a sheriff’s deputy Thursday on charges of invasion of privacy and obstruction of a law officer.
Alicia Parkes is accused of using a recording device to eavesdrop on another employee in a restroom late last year. In a separate 2008 incident, she is also accused of trying to prevent a police officer from arresting one of her relatives after Parkes called 911 emergency services. At the time of that incident, Parkes worked for the Clayton County Police Department.
If convicted, Parkes faces one to five years in jail and possible fines. About a half-dozen witnesses testified before the grand jury Wednesday. Parkes allegedly admitted during an internal affairs investigation to making the recording, according to testimony given during the grand jury hearing.
“It’s always a sad day when a law enforcement officer is indicted because it creates a little bit of a stain on all of us,” Sheriff Kem Kimbrough said Friday. “But we have an obligation to reserve final judgement on her until the court process works its way through.”
Parkes no longer serves as public information officer for the sheriff’s department, Kimbrough said. She is still employed by the department but is on administrative leave until Monday when Kimbrough said he will decide on her future with the department.
Parkes is expected to turn herself in, officials said. Parkes’ attorney, Ricky Morris, was unavailable for comment.
USANomad asked the Answer Line forum if people can eavesdrop on Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOID) phone calls.
Yes, they can.
But that’s true with cell phones and old-fashioned landlines, as well. From a technical point of view, phone companies and governments can pretty much listen to any wired or wireless conversation they want to. That’s why we need privacy laws requiring search warrants to protect us.
Of course, phone companies and governments don’t always follow the law. And even criminals without government or corporate connections can find a way to spy on your calls if they want to badly enough.
But these existing privacy issues get worse with VOIP calls, which have all of the security issues of the Internet and personal computing. If the person you’re calling has a conventional phone line, you’ve got both kinds of security threats.
The digital data of a VOIP call can be intercepted anywhere along the complicated path from your router through the multiple servers until it goes out to the analog phone network. Assuming your VOIP service doesn’t encrypt calls, whoever intercepts it can listen to it, as well.
Which raises the question: Does your VOIP service encrypt calls?
Skype does, with very strong, 256-bit AES encryption. You can read the details here.
But others are not as cautious. I know that Google Voice doesn’t encrypt their calls because a Google spokesperson told me so. Yahoo didn’t respond to my query, so I think it best to assume the Yahoo Voice (the service that USANomad uses) also lets their calls go out unprotected.
While encryption increases your safety, it doesn’t guarantee it. Your own computer may be the weak point in your VOIP security chain. If your PC is infected, whoever is controlling the malware may be able to monitor your phone calls and get useful information off of them. I have yet to hear of a malicious program that monitors transmitted audio data for key words like “credit card number,” but it’s certainly possible.
The best solution is to do what you’re probably already doing: Keep your security software up-to-date, scan weekly with another security program, avoid suspicious websites, and generally practice safe computing.
And, of course, your end is only half the problem. If the person you’re speaking to is also on a VOIP phone, they have the same security issues. If they’re using a cell or landline phone, their phones can still be tapped.
In the final analysis, there’s no such thing as a totally secure phone call, but unless you have reason to believe that someone powerful has it out for you, you can achieve a reasonable degree of privacy. For more on the issue, I suggest this excellent blog post by Bruce Schneier.
PARIS — A security agent for Renault has been charged with fraud and accused of inventing industrial espionage claims that led the French carmaker to wrongly suspect — and suspend — three executives, the state prosecutor said Monday.
Michel Balthazard, Bertrand Rochette and Matthieu Tenenbaum were suspended Jan. 11 after Renault said it had discovered signs of espionage, had proof the men received “funds from a foreign source” and accused them of selling “information strategic for the company.”
The executives had strongly denied the allegations and investigators could not verify them. Renault’s focus then shifted to a possible scam.
Preliminary charges of “organized fraud” were filed Sunday against Dominique Gevrey, once employed by the Defence Ministry intelligence service and now a member of Renault’s security service, prosecutor Jean-Claude Marin told reporters Monday.
Gevrey had been detained Friday at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport as he prepared to board a flight for Guinea, and has since been jailed.
“Renault is perhaps not a victim of indelicate employees but of fraud,” Marin said.
He said foreign accounts that were alleged to have been held by the three executives, notably in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, do not exist.
After Gevrey’s arrest, Renault quickly convened an extraordinary board meeting and sent a deep apology to the three wrongly accused employees.
Top company chiefs, CEO Carlos Ghosn, and Patrick Pelata, chief operating officer, “acknowledge the serious personal harm that they (the employees) and their families have suffered,” a company statement said, adding that “reparations (will) be made” and “their honour in the public eye (will) be restored.”
Investigators in the French intelligence service found a series of clues the prosecutor contends pointed to Gevrey — the only person in contact with an alleged source who furnished bank information implicating the three executives. That information turned out to be false.
Banking information Gevrey furnished in the 2009 firing of an executive in an unrelated case also was false, Marin said.
“Everything he provided is false or non-existent,” Marin said.
Gevrey’s lawyer, Jean-Paul Baduel, insisted that his client is innocent, saying in an interview that he is “nothing but a little soldier.”
Renault had launched an internal investigation into allegations the three executives had “deliberately and consciously threatened” company assets, after receiving an anonymous letter more than four months earlier denouncing the men. The allegations centred on Renault’s electric car program, in which Renault and partner Nissan had invested $4 billion.
The scandal, which Renault made public in January, led French Industry Minister Eric Besson to openly talk of “economic warfare” being waged on one of France’s leading industrial giants.
Renault filed a criminal complaint on Jan. 13 “against persons unknown” — for acts constituting organized industrial espionage, corruption, breach of trust, theft and concealment — after the carmaker said it had discovered “serious misconduct detrimental to the company” and in particular to its “strategic, technological and intellectual assets.”
The company’s chief operating officer, in an interview at the time with French newspaper Le Monde, had accused an “organized, international network” of obtaining information on its flagship electric car program, including its architecture, costs and economic model. Sensitive, proprietary technological information on Renault’s electric cars had not been compromised by the espionage, Pelata said in January.
Renault’s Ghosn said on the French TV channel TF1 on Jan. 23 that “we have the certitude” and “multiple” proofs of the alleged espionage, although Renault never disclosed any evidence to back up its complaint, saying such information was reserved for investigators.
But by early March, doubt was growing, and Pelata spoke of a possible “manipulation.” The course of the investigation changed dramatically Friday, with Gevrey’s arrest.
The Associated Press
