Anonymous hackers have posted a YouTube video of a candid and embarrasing conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard in which investigators talk about hacking suspects. One of the suspects is a 15-year-old which a UK-based law enforcement official called “a bit of an idiot” and a “pain in the butt.”

Ironically, this sensitive conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard was recorded by the very people they are investigating - the hacking group known as Anonymous.

The group released a nearly 17-minute-long recording of what appears to be a Jan. 17 conference call devoted to tracking and prosecuting members of the loose-knit hacking group (video link included in story link below).

The FBI stated that the information “was intended for law enforcement officers only and was illegally obtained” but that no FBI systems were breached. I am not sure what the FBI means when they say “systems” weren’t breached. Clearly they were or else the group would not have been able to eavesdrop on the call. The FBI says it’s not entirely clear how the hackers got their hands on the recording. Parts of the recording appear to have been edited to bleep out the names of some of the suspects being discussed.

If you listen to the recording, you can hear people entering their pass code to get into the call throughout the entire call. The first few people who called in identified themselves; however, after that, people continued to call in without identifying themselves (you can hear several beeps). Anonymous published an email purportedly sent by an FBI agent which gave details and a password for accessing the call. This sounds like the obvious way that Anonymous was able to gain information to access the call. “The FBI might be curious how we’re able to continuously read their internal comms for some time now,” the group gloated in a message posted to Twitter.

A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the matter is under investigation, told The Associated Press that authorities were looking at the possibility that the message was intercepted after a private email account of one of the invited participants was compromised.

On Friday, London police confirmed that one of its e-crimes specialist was on the intercepted conference call but said that “at this stage no operational risks” to the police service had been identified.

In the future, I think the investigators should start using handles instead of their real names. They used their first names in the call and identified their locations.

Graham Cluley, an expert with data security company Sophos, said that knowing the time, telephone number and passcode for the call meant it was all too easy to spy on the investigators.

“Even my ironing lady could have rung in and silently listened to the call just like Anonymous did,” Cluley said in an email, calling the fiasco “highly embarrassing for the cops.” Yes indeed!

The breach is likely to act as a wake-up call to law enforcement agencies globally, said Marcus Carey, who spent years securing communications for the NSA before joining security-risk assessment firm Rapid7.

The FBI says ”a criminal investigation is under way to identify and hold accountable those responsible.”

There was enough on the call to clearly hear the investigators talk about a 15-year-old who they say goes by the handle of Tehwongz, who one official said was arrested just before Christmas. The UK-based investigator said the teen was currently under the subject of a local police investigation and that his hard drive was in custody.

He said the teen had written a statement explaining how he came to become a hacker and what he has done, including hacking into a gaming site with access to 32,000 users and their financial information. The FBI might want to consider recruiting this kid.

British police say the intercepted phone call between cybercrime investigators from the FBI and Scotland Yard poses no immediate risk to operations.

Anonymous also made good on one of its promises on Friday. The group also claimed credit for defacing the Boston Police Department’s website, saying it was retaliating for police brutality against protesters at Occupy Wall Street. Anonymous has warned they were intending to go after any police officers who were caught on video pepper spraying or hitting protesters.

Anonymous, an eclectic group of hackers, pranksters and activists, has increasingly focused its attention on law enforcement agencies in general and the FBI in particular.

The group began with targeting the Church of Scientology, the music industry, and financial companies such as Visa and MasterCard. It then expanded its targets to include government, police and military targets.

Dozens of suspected members and supporters have been arrested across the world.

Read story and view video@ msnbc

Bugging Equipment

A search of several Mexican lawmakers’ offices turned up recording equipment, leading legislators to believe they have been spied on for years, a congressman said Wednesday.

Congressman Armando Rios said security personnel found microphones and other devices that seemed to have been installed years ago.

“Some of the equipment has newer technology, but other devices are from a long time ago, which leads us to believe they were installed years ago,” said Rios, a member of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD.

Offices of key committees and of several lawmakers from different political parties were bugged.

Congress president Guadalupe Acosta, also of the PRD, has filed a complaint with federal prosecutors, who have opened an investigation.

Acosta wouldn’t identify the lawmakers who were being spied on or who he thinks was behind the espionage. Rios blamed the government of President Felipe Calderon, who belongs to the conservative National Action Party, or PAN. Interior Secretary Alejandro Poire denied Rios’ accusations and said the government has done nothing illegal.

Mexico’s main intelligence agency allegedly spied on the government’s political opponents during the 71 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

After PAN candidate Vicente Fox won the 2000 presidential election, he announced that the agency, the Center for National Security and Investigation, would no longer spy on political opponents. However, in 2008, under Calderon, the agency hired a private company to monitor the activities of legislators.

Legislators complained they were being spied on but the government said it was simply collecting public information.

Several secretly recorded telephone conversations of government officials or politicians have been made public in Mexico in the last few years.

In 2006, the former governor of Puebla state, Mario Marin, was implicated in a revenge plot against a journalist after Mexican news media released a recorded telephone conversation. In it, he allegedly speaks with a businessman about punishing Lydia Cacho, who had written a book that accuses one of their acquaintances of being a child molester.

In 2010, a radio station broadcast a telephone conversation between then federal lawmaker Cesar Godoy and alleged drug trafficker Servando Gomez, known as “La Tuta.” In it, Godoy and Gomez express support for each other and discuss bribing a reporter.

Shortly after the recording was released, Godoy, who is now a fugitive, was charged with aiding drug trafficking and money laundering.

Sources: blogspot.com, philstar.com

New street lights called “Intellistreets” are coming to Chicago. These are not your average street lights. These lights also double as surveillance monitors. They can play music, direct traffic, monitor conversations, take pictures, and send emergency signals. The lights include “Homeland Security” applications and are being installed in a few cities, including Chicago, Pittsburgh and Detroit, with the aid of government funding. The first concept installation of the system was launched in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

Some say these lights should be called, “Spying Street Lights.”

The system detects movement and can identify whether the movement is a car, person or animal. If too much movement is detected, the police are notified.

As you can imagine, some view this as an invasion of privacy, “creepy” and the feeling that Big Brother is watching. Others see the system as a way to keep their neighborhoods safer. One example is that some believe such a system could have prevented a deadly shooting that took place in the Uptown area of Charlotte, NC, last May. The shooting is believed to have been gang related.

The Deputy of Charlotte, North Carolina Homeland Security chief was quoted as saying, “If the City installed street lights with surveillance abilities…you would never know.”

The founder of the system, Ron Harwood, said he came up with the idea after 911 and Hurricane Katrina. He is the president of the company that manufactures these lights – Illuminating Concepts. In an interview with Fox News, Harwood said that if speakers are installed in the poles, authorities could speak to people to tell them what to do if there is an emergency. He also said that access to pictures/images would not be available to just anyone. He said that a police officer, city official or city employee would have to “ask” to retrieve an image from a pole and that image would be in the form of a “picture.” It was after Harwood’s development that he began discussions with Homeland Security.

It seems to me that law enforcement or investigators would need more than a picture if they were trying to analyze a crime – who did what and when, etc. It would seem you would need active surveillance to determine what took place during a crime. When people don’t feel they are being told everything, they aren’t going to trust the system. If the system is capable of surveillance and monitoring conversations, why would one believe that only a picture would be released to authorities?

Using street lights as surveillance tools has already been advanced by several European countries. In 2007, leaked documents out of the UK Home Office revealed that British authorities were working on proposals to fit lamp posts with CCTV cameras that would X-ray scan passers-by and “undress them” in order to “trap terror suspects.”

Dutch police also announced last year that they are developing a mobile scanner that will “see through people’s clothing and look for concealed weapons.”

So-called ‘talking surveillance cameras’ that use a speaker system similar to the Intellistreets model are already being used in UK cities like Middlesborough to bark orders and reprimand people for dropping litter and other minor offenses.

According to reports, one of the most common phrases used to shame people into obeying instructions is to broadcast the message, “We are watching you.”

At $3,000 a piece, Intellistreets luminaries have the potential of lowering energy costs by adjusting brightness to match the appropriate atmosphere and location. Additionally, the company says it has an endless number of entertainment options and can serve as a public address system of sorts and offer advertisements up to passersby. That’s right — it records video, counts heads and spews propaganda! When you put it that way, it’s no wonder that Harwood is in cahoots with Homeland Security.

The transformation of street lights into surveillance tools for Homeland Security purposes will only serve to heighten concerns that the United States is fast on the way to becoming a high-tech police state, with TSA agents being empowered to oversee that control grid, most recently with the announcement that TSA screeners would be manning highway checkpoints, a further indication that security measures we currently see in airports are rapidly spilling out onto the streets.

According to the Illuminating Concepts Website, the Intellistreets system comprises of a wireless digital infrastructure that allows street lights to be controlled remotely by means of a ubiquitous wi-fi link and a miniature computer housed inside each street light, allowing for “security, energy management, data harvesting, and digital media.”

After the first installments took place in Michigan, a backlash began to hit Intellistreets and the company removed a YouTube video that offered an eerie insight into the surveillance capabilities. The video was also quick to once again note the Homeland Security features which have the potential to link up to government agencies. Infowars responded by asking, “If Intellistreets is such a cutting-edge concept that presents an array of wonderful benefits, as the promo video claims, then why remove it from You Tube?”  “Now that the company has tried to hide the video, it will only generate more suspicion about the true purpose behind Intellistreets and the level of involvement on behalf of Homeland Security,” read a blog post on the site.

Sources: Fox News, nowtheendbegins.com, forbiddenknowledgetv.com, rt.com, infowars.com

Have you ever wondered what a virus sounds like? Or what noise a bacterium makes when it moves between hosts? If the answer is yes, you may soon get your chance to find out, thanks to the development of the world’s tiniest ear. The “nano-ear,” a microscopic particle of gold trapped by a laser beam, can detect sound a million times fainter than the threshold for human hearing.

Looking at this from a completely scientific perspective, this is exciting news. But with the advent of new technology, sometimes there are downsides – like when the technology gets into the wrong hands.

It’s still at the experimental stage, but this could lead to far more sensitive surveillance microphones in the future. The required laser beam could be carried by a difficult-to-detect optical fiber strand to the sensor.  Combined with DSP and advanced acoustic signal processing algorithms, this could represent a major security threat.

We already know that listening and viewing devices can be planted in homes and offices or people can carry audio listening devices on their clothing, etc. However, all of this requires a bit of work or being within a reasonable range of proximity to your target. Even then, the listening/recording quality may not be perfect. Can you imagine what a scary world this would be if people’s ears could be devised to be listening devices – not to mention with superb hearing capability? This sounds like some espionage Sci-Fi movie to me.

The concept of the nano-ear began with a 1986 invention known as optical tweezers. The tweezers use a laser beam focused to a point with a lens to grab hold of tiny particles and move them around. They’ve become a standard tool in molecular biology and nanotechnology, helping researchers inject DNA into cells and even manipulate it once inside. Optical tweezers can also be used to measure minuscule forces acting on microscopic particles; once you’ve grabbed hold of your particle with the laser beam, instead of moving it yourself, you simply use a microscope or other suitable monitoring apparatus to watch whether it moves of its own accord. That’s where the nano-ear comes in.

Sound waves travel as a forward and backward displacement of the particles of the medium they pass through. So to detect sound, you need to measure this back-and-forth motion.

As well as having unprecedented sensitivity, their nano-ear could also calculate the direction the sound had come from. They suggest three-dimensional arrays of nano-ears working together could be used to listen in on cells or microorganisms such as bacteria and viruses, all of which emit very faint acoustic vibrations as they move and respire.

Biophysicist Lene Oddershede of the Optical Tweezer Laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen is impressed and suspects the paper will inspire others in the field to look for sound waves when studying microorganisms. “It’s a really interesting idea, and we could easily do that, but we have never made any attempt to do so,” she says. “I would say this paper’s very inspiring in that sense.” She cautions, however, that the experimental setup will need to be significantly refined to improve its ability to separate sound waves from random molecular movement before the suggested acoustic microscope can become a reality. But she is optimistic: “I do believe they can relatively quickly improve the equipment.”

Read story@ sciencemag