The ethics of industrial espionage, by Andrew Crane

….

As the examples and the discussion above attest, industrial espionage has become a
significant, and in many ways troubling, aspect of contemporary business practice. It
would seem that even companies with an ethical policy on intelligence gathering
might accidentally encourage, or even tacitly endorse, questionable behaviours on
the part of employees or contracted agents. In an increasingly knowledge-based
competitive environment, the incentives to overstep the mark in intelligence gathering
have increased significantly, and with advances in information and communication
technologies, the opportunities for doing so have multiplied accordingly. Moreover,
the boundaries for defining acceptable practice have also become increasingly
muddied, especially now that surveillance technologies and other ‘spying’ tools and
gadgets have become so easily available to companies.

….

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Intercepting Text Messages: More Fun than Unlawful

As hacking has reached professional levels in the fields of internet and computers, we have a new threat around. Interception of our phone calls and messages is the thing that’s ‘in’ among those who put eavesdropping first. The reasons can be political, social, security (by companies like Global Security Solutions and Homeland Security Strategies) or personal. What matters is how the task is achieved, or better, how the job is done. There are various methods that are used.

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Spy Agency Resorts to Wiretapping More Often

By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter

 

The National Intelligence Service (NIS), the country’s spy agency, is wiretapping more and more fixed-line phones and tracking the e-mail messages of Koreans. The Ministry of Information and Communication on Tuesday said the NIS traced a total of 8,440 phones or messages last year, up 4.4 percent from 8,082 in 2005.

This contrasts to other law enforcement agencies like prosecutors, police and military agencies, which substantially reduced the interception of telephone conversations.

The prosecution spied on just 43 phones last year from 100 in 2005. The annual tallies were 131 for the police, down 46 percent year-on-year, and 51 for military investigators, down 54 percent.

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Ten dangerous claims about smart phone security

posted by Kevin D. Murray, CPP at Kevin’s Security Scrapbook

Many common assumptions about the security and privacy of smart phones or other handheld converged devices are off-base or just flat-out wrong.

For any high-value target — whether that’s a political candidate or an organization with valuable financial or personal data — a little more thought ought to go into the process of selecting and deploying any device handling important data.

It makes sense, then, to challenge the more widespread assumptions, and consider how to handle oft-ignored risks. (highly summarized, more here)

1. It’s just a phone with cool features, right?
No, it’s not.
2. It’s stable, just like any other purpose-built appliance.
No, it’s not.
3. Communications are encrypted from end to end.
No, not entirely.
4. The connection’s secure unless I use Wi-Fi in a café.
Guess, again.
5. E-mails and messages are secure from prying eyes.
Not if you’re interesting.
6. Using a mobile phone constitutes out-of-band communication.
Who are you? No one knows for certain.
7. I trust the integrity of data and applications on a smart phone.
Not 100%, we hope.
8. Information deleted from a smart phone is gone, right?
No, just marked for overwrite.
9. Spying on my smart phone is hard.
I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
10. Abuse is minimal because the network and phones are constrained. :]

Mobile Phone Wiretapping Likely to Become Legal

The National Assembly is likely to pass a revision to the Protection of Communication Secrets Act that would permit wiretapping of mobile phones on April 2. Main opposition Grand National Party Rep. Joo Sung-young, the vice chairman of the National Assembly’s Legislation and Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday, “We’ve finished consultations with the ruling Uri Party, the National Intelligence Service and the Justice Ministry. The bill will be deliberated in a plenary session of the Legislation and Judiciary Committee on Friday and pass the current extraordinary session.”

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Optus glitch lets others listen in

Asher Moses
March 29, 2007 – 2:19PM

Optus is battling to find the cause of a fault in its network, which allows customers to eavesdrop on others’ phone calls.

The issue was originally thought to be limited to the Optus pre-paid mobile service, but smh.com.au readers have subsequently described the issue occurring in Optus’ landline network as well.

It has customers fearing their privacy has been compromised.

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