New Orleans Saints general manager Mickey Loomis Thursday denied eavesdropping on opposing coaches during NFL games or even knowing that he could have done so.
Loomis reacted to an ESPN report last week that said wiring in Loomis’s suite at the Superdome, the Saints‘ home stadium, allowed him to listen to opposing coaches, which would be a violation of federal law as well as NFL rules.
“I’m angry about it,” Loomis said. “It’s not true. I have a clear conscience.”
Loomis said he has not been contacted by the FBI or state officials about the eavesdrop report but would welcome such a probe to prove the claims were unfounded.
“In my 29 years in the NFL, I have never listened to an opposing team’s communications,” Loomis said. “I have never asked for the capability to listen to an opposing team’s communications.
“I have never inquired as to the possibility of listening in on an opposing team’s communications. And I have never been aware of any capability to listen in on an opposing team’s communications at the Superdome or any NFL stadium.”
The Saints, whose home stadium will host next year’s Super Bowl, have already been hit hard with sanctions for a bounty scheme that rewarded players for knocking opponents out of games.
NFL officials are still deciding upon punishments for players who were involved in the pay-for-injury system, but Saints coach Sean Payton was banned for the entire upcoming NFL season.
Loomis was suspended for eight games and assistant coach Joe Vitt for six games. Vitt will serve as Payton’s replacement once his suspension is completed.
“We will be a better league and the Saints will be a better team for having faced this,” Loomis said.
For now, Loomis said, the Saints’ top priority is signing a new contract with star quarterback Drew Brees, who last year had the greatest passing season in NFL history.
“It’s the most important contract we have to do,” Loomis said. “It will get resolved.”
Cyber Squared Inc. has released the results of a six month investigation âProject Enlightenment: An Overview of Modern Cyber Espionage in a Global Economyâ. This project demonstrated how Cyber Squaredâs response to a single incident uncovered a sustained espionage campaign against dozens of U.S. and international private sector companies and organizations across a variety of business verticals. The motivation behind the attack of these particular victims was likely to gain tactical and strategic advantage over large commercial transactions, and to collect information on issues such as international trade, commerce, legislation and human rights.
âThis story is unique, because of the diversity of the victim types all being compromised by the same adversary,â said Adam Vincent, Cyber Squaredâs CEO. âWhen considering the significance of the observed victims and their role within their respective industries, the compromises are especially worrisome.â
What initially appeared to be an isolated cyber-attack possibly associated with the Taiwan Airpower Modernization Act (TAMA)Â S.1539, unraveled the thread of a pervasive and coordinated military grade cyber espionage campaign. During the course of the investigation, technical intricacies emerged, such as how the attack was carried out and who the likely perpetrator was.
By applying real-time Security Intelligence, which required both a bottom-up victim approach along with a top-down technical assessment of the adversarial capability surrounding this single incident, Cyber Squared was able to discover the following types of victims were compromised by the same threat:
U.S. Public Policy Think Tanks and Research Organizations
International Steel, Gold and Copper Mining and Raw Materials Organizations
International Law Firms & Public Relations Organizations
East Asian Economic Policy and Diplomacy
âThis case underscores that many business leaders and policy makers are failing to adequately address the reality of cyber espionage,â said Richard Barger, Cyber Squaredâs Chief Intelligence Officer. âFrom a technical perspective, Project Enlightenment is another example of increasingly common cyber espionage activities. While the attack method was simple, it successfully compromised dozens of organizations and bypassed their existing security and detection measures. This project illustrates why better protection via real-time Security Intelligence is essential to protecting sensitive corporate information.â
By applying Security Intelligence to understand the adversary, what they are after, and how they get in, it is possible to proactively defend networks, protect the assets within, and maintain business continuity. It is Cyber Squaredâs Security Intelligence that transitions our clients from a state of reactive security to a proactive one through an intelligence-led, threat-focused approach to cyber security – an essential tool against cyber espionage.
The Project Enlightenment Case Study is available for download, and a whitepaper that includes technical details of the compromise is available from Cyber Squared under NDA.
Note that Cyber Squared has notified all victims identified during the course of our investigation, as well as the proper authorities.
Have you heard? A federal courtâs decision may provide the impetus to overhaul Illinoisâ ridiculously restrictive eavesdropping law.
Last week, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2010. The suit sought to block Cook County Stateâs Attorney Anita Alvarez from prosecuting ACLU staff members for recording police officers performing their duties in public places. Such recording has been one of the ACLUâs long-standing monitoring missions.
Illinoisâ eavesdropping law, which was enacted in 1961, makes it a felony for someone to produce an audio recording of a conversation unless all parties involved agree to it. The law sets a maximum punishment of 15 years in prison if a law enforcement officer is recorded. The law applies to audio recordings only.
In its opinion, the appeals court wrote, âThe Illinois eavesdropping statute restricts far more speech than necessary to protect legitimate privacy interests. As applied to the facts alleged here, it likely violates the First Amendmentâs free speech and free-press guarantees.â
We heard that.
The biggest problem with the stateâs law as it stands is that it was written in an era when technology was far less developed than it is today. In 1961, the law was meant to prevent illicit recording of conversations through the use of hidden microphones and wire-tapping devices.
But fast-forward to 2012, and itâs a whole new ballgame. Much of the citizenry is equipped with phones capable of recording video and audio. It has becoming increasingly common for everyday citizens to pull out their phones when they see something newsworthy and to record the events, often capturing conversations and other sounds.
Especially as this trend applies to law enforcement officers, these recordings sometimes have captured police doing illegal or objectionable things, such as beating, Tasing or pepper-spraying people. Just as the framers of the Constitution provided for a free press to expose such abuses, so-called âIâ reporters often have provided critical evidence of wrongdoing on the part of those charged with fighting crimes, not committing them.
Police often say that if citizens are not doing anything wrong, they shouldnât object to searches and other law enforcement techniques. We believe the same is true in reverse: If law enforcement officers are not doing anything wrong, they shouldnât object to audio recordings of their actions and words.
We believe there are enough laws on the books already that protect police officers in the case of citizens overstepping their boundaries and interfering with cops trying to do their lawful duty. And any rewrite of Illinoisâ eavesdropping law should make that distinction clear and include it in the statute.
But we also believe itâs time for the General Assembly to overhaul this outdated and overly restrictive law to reflect new technologies, as well as the longstanding constitutional rights of citizens and the press. And we hope lawmakers get that message loud and clear.
And why not? Spend some time here and you can feel as if youâd been admitted to the backstage preparations for a magic show. The difference is that in espionage, life or death and the fate of nations are at stake, rather than whether a woman can be successfully sawed in half or an ace of spades pulled from a shuffled deck. These magicians werenât performing; they were dueling.
Here, drawn from the immense private collection of the intelligence historian H. Keith Melton, and the collections of the C.I.A., the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Reconnaissance Office, are objects ranging from a poisoned needle, hidden inside a coin, to a fragment of the United States Embassy in Moscow that the Soviets riddled with bugs during its construction in the 1980s; two floors were razed and rebuilt.
There is a K.G.B. model of the umbrella that injected a poison ricin pellet into the Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov in 1978; a handmade pair of shoes made for a United States ambassador to Czechoslovakia in the 1960s that Czech intelligence officers bugged with a listening device in the heel; a Stasi-created molar that was hollowed out to allow microdots to be safely stored in a spyâs mouth; and a well-preserved rat with a Velcroed body cavity that was used by Americans in Moscow for exchanges of information without agentsâ actually meeting. The rodent, treated with hot pepper sauce to discourage scavenging cats, was easily tossed from a passing car for these âdead drops.â
But most of these objects, tools of the trade over a half-century, are not the stuff of the âMission Impossibleâ franchise; they are almost all deliberately mundane. They are not meant to startle; they are meant to fade into the background. They work like tricks sold in a magic shop. And they must be used with similar skill.
Something else is similar: once explained, the magic is gone. The objects used in espionage can almost seem silly. Really! Grown people sprinkling dust (nitrophenylpentadienal) on objects to track the movements of whoever touched them? Using a hat, glasses and a fake mustache as a disguise? Employing a hollowed-out nickel to hide top-secret microfilm? All of espionage can easily seem like a kidâs game, except for the trails of blood and insight that are invariably left in its wake.
And this show, produced by Base Entertainment, contains more than enough to make it resemble a childâs game: interactive screens on which you can disguise a photo of yourself; kiosks where your voice can be distorted and filtered; a mist-filled dark room with shifting laser beams that challenge you to make your way across, without breaking the circuit. (A password-oriented interactive game is too lame for its climactic position in the exhibition.)
There are also larger objects here that reveal, more dramatically, that technological sophistication is not a requirement, nor is it something that necessarily increases over time. Next to a collapsible motor scooter with which Allied spies parachuted behind enemy lines during World War II is a saddle, draped with an Afghan blanket, that was used by a C.I.A. officer riding across the forbidding terrain during the first months after the Sept. 11 attacks.
But the objects selected by Mr. Melton â whose collection of over 9,000 spy devices, books and papers has also helped stock the International Spy Museum in Washington â are not presented simply for sensationâs sake. There are very few weapons here, aside from the ice-climbing ax that was brutally smashed into Trotskyâs skull in Mexico â and we see it mounted near his assassinâs bloodied eyeglasses.
Mr. Melton also has stories behind his acquisition of such objects, though his reluctance to share his methods in too much detail suggests a firsthand experience with the world he is documenting. (How did an original K.G.B. model of the bugged American Embassy get into his hands?)
What happens along the way is that we gain an appreciation for the magic as well as the method; we end up glimpsing what these ordinary objects actually accomplished and what was at stake when they were used. The show could have been stronger if that context had been made clearer, but even with its gadget-centered focus, we learn that this great bag of tricks was no mere game.
âSpy: The Secret World of Espionageâ is on view through March 31, 2013, at Discovery Times Square, 226 West 44th Street; discoverytsx.com.
A long awaited meeting between school administration, the board of education and the public to air out details of the cameras found hidden in Valdez High School and Gilson Junior High will be held Monday night at 7:30 p.m. at the Valdez High School cafeteria.
âObviously we need to talk about some lessons learned,â Jacob Jensen, district superintendent, said during Monday nightâs school board meeting. âI think sooner would be better.â
School board member Anita Fannin, who appeared at the meeting telephonically, asked to hear a synopsis of the investigation surrounding the April 17 discovery.
Jensen declined, citing a need by administration to consult further with the districtâs legal council before issuing a final report.
Earlier during Monday nightâs meeting, teacher Kip Norris expressed frustration that the issue had not yet been address by the board.
âThis camera business started nearly a month ago nowâ he said, âThatâs in my workplace and Iâm concerned about that.â
Norris and other educators at Gilson Junior High were shocked and outraged to learn janitorial supervisors had planted a hidden camera in the ceiling tiles of the teacher lounge above a computer workplace, ostensibly in hopes of catching janitors goofing off on the computer rather than working. Outrage spread when a second camera hidden in a clock was discovered in a custodial closet at Valdez High School. It was later learned the same camera had been located in the teacher lounge at the junior high days before it was found at the high school.
âThe silence concerns me,â Norris said. âI think an open, frank discussion would be a beneficial thing.â
Norris expressed these concerns during the meeting when the board hears public comments on items not on its agenda and board members are allowed to respond to the comments at the time of testimony.
âItâs a big deal,â Norris said.
At least one parent was also concerned and frustrated by a lack of progress on the issue.
âI agree with Mr. Norris,â parent Ruth Black told the board. âI donât see you guys taking this seriously.â
Black expressed disappointment at the amount of time that has lapsed since the discovery of the cameras and a board response, and also criticized the district for not notifying parents of the discovery and instead allowing them to learn of the scandal from news sources.
âYou did not communicate directly with the parents at all,â Black said.
An investigation by Valdez police found no evidence of a crime or images of students on the numerous video discs and computer images. However, the fact that cameras had been hidden in the teacher lounge caused great concern amongst educators due to the fact that some state standards testing had occurred in the lounge.
The fact the board canceled its scheduled meeting of April 23 due to a lack of a quorum did little to reassure outraged faculty members and concerned parents that the privacy of teachers and students had not been violated.
Custodian Supervisor John Vergere and custodian Steve Winn tendered their resignations to Jensen Friday morning, April 20.
Valdez Star File Photo
GJH principal, Rod Morrison, points to where a clock that contained a hidden spy camera was positioned inside a VHS closet.
Further dismissals could be forthcoming according to sources close to the district that have not been authorized to discuss the matter in public.
Jensen said he was first shocked and then outraged when GJH principal Rod Morrison called him at home evening Tuesday, April 17 saying a custodian had called him reporting what she believed to be a camera lens hidden in a ceiling tile at the school.
The discovery of the second camera and the fact it had been placed in more than one location fueled speculation of a wider hidden-camera problem in the schools. The fact the computers that were hooked up to the cameras were in Jensenâs possession overnight before they were turned over to police did little to reassure outraged school staff.
The long awaited work session will be held at 7:30 p.m., Monday, May 21 at the cafeteria of Valdez High School.
