via windowsitpro.com
Q. I’m a boss who tricked my workers into adding me as Xbox Live friends. How can I spy on them when they’re “working” from home to make sure they’re not playing Xbox?
A. One of the great features of the Xbox and its online service is the integration with the xbox.com website. It lets you easily see all your Xbox friends. It can be abused by mean bosses to quickly, in table form, see the last time the friends were on XBOX and what they were doing.
Just perform the following:
Go to www.xbox.com and select “Sign In” in the top right of the xbox.com site.
• Sign in with the Live ID associated with your XBox Live ID.
• Click on your own profile.
• Select View All Friends under Friends.
You can see who’s online, who’s offline, when they were last online, and what everyone is or was doing. (more)
During the Middle Ages, eavesdropping was illegal in England, but overheard conversations could be used as evidence in court. Today, the internet, cell phones and reality TV make it difficult not to pry into the conversations and private lives of friends or strangers. In a new book
, linguistics professor John Locke
argues that eavesdropping is actually a good thing. Prying has helped humans stay away from danger, find food, identify mate mates, and assured us that we are not alone. (New Hampshire Public Radio audio report)
Australia – A Tasmanian cleaner who stole State Government documents, and leaked them to the Opposition and the media, has been sentenced to 84 hours of community service… Outside court, Nigel John Jones maintained his innocence and said he will appeal against the conviction. (
more)
Real Life
• The Georgian special services arrested 15 people today accused of spying for Russia. (more)
• The highest-ranking CIA officer ever convicted of espionage was expected to plead guilty to additional charges that he tried to collect money from old contacts in Russia while in prison, a newspaper reported Thursday. (more)
• Freed U.S. hiker Sarah Shourd says she doesn’t know if she’ll return to Iran to face espionage charges with her two companions still held in prison there. (more)
• Authorities in Norway have launched an investigation into whether the United States conducted illegal surveillance in the Nordic country, the Ministry of Justice told CNN Thursday. (more)
• Officials of the US embassy in Copenhagen may be illegally collecting data about Danish citizens, they find suspicious, the Politiken newspaper reports. (more)
• Taiwan got another spy shock recently when they arrested two men who were spying for China. The shock part came from the fact that one of the men, Lo Chi Cheng was an army colonel. The other was an unnamed Taiwanese businessman who had business in China and spied on China. Then came another shock. The other guy was really a double agent, who had recruited the colonel, who obtained classified information that was then delivered to China. (more)
• Northrop Grumman’s ginormous experimental spying blimp is progressing rapidly… The Army awarded Northrop a $517 million contract in June to develop a trio of unmanned, seven-story, football-field sized mega-blimps called Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicles. If successful, the blimp will stay in the air for up to three weeks at a time, using 2500 pounds’ worth of “
sensors, antennas, data links and signals intelligence equipment” to capture still and video images of civilians and adversaries below and send the pictures to troops’ bases. (
more)
Art Imitates Real Life
• Though based on a true story with a well-known outcome, Doug Liman’s “Fair Game” is as suspenseful as any fictional thriller — and considerably more tragic. Based-in-truth thriller about CIA spy Valerie Plame. With Naomi Watts, Sean Penn. Director: Doug Liman (1:44). PG-13: Language. At area theaters. (more) (trailer)
• NBC is scrapping J.J. Abrams’ spy series “Undercovers…” …middling reviews and declining ratings made the show increasingly destined for the chopping block. Wednesday night’s airing delivered only 5.8 million viewers. Three more episodes will air in the coming weeks. (more)
• Like Aaron Eckhart? Spy dramas? Then perhaps you’ll like THE EXPATRIATE. Former Bat villain Aaron Eckhart (THE RUM DIARY, RABBIT HOLE) has been cast as an ex-CIA agent in the spy drama from German director Philipp Stölzl (NORTH FACE, BABY) and newcomer scribe A.E. Amel. xists, his coworkers are gone, and his assistant is really a trained operative out to kill him. Production begins next year Belgium and Montreal. (more)
Sprint Nextel is excluding Chinese telecommunications-equipment makers Huawei Technologies and ZTE from a contract worth billions of dollars largely because of national security concerns in Washington. The Defense Department and some U.S. lawmakers have been increasingly concerned about the two companies’ ties to the Chinese government and military, and the security implications of letting their equipment into critical U.S. infrastructure. Some officials argue China’s military could use Huawei or ZTE equipment to disrupt or intercept American communications. (
more)
