An expensive problem, a cheap solution

I saw this while watching the news yesterday (CP24 in case anyone's wondering)

Vaughan mayor's counter surveillance-measures cost taxpayers nearly $3,000

Linda Jackson, the besieged mayor of the city of Vaughan, is coming under scrutiny again after it was found that she spent nearly $3,000 to sweep her office for spying devices, a published report says.

Gino and Mary Ruffolo -- two Vaughan residents -- discovered that the mayor's office paid Protech Consult Services $2,730 for "manual and electronic counter surveillance," the Toronto Star reports.

The Ruffolos uncovered the information through a Freedom of Information request. The newspaper also reports that having the mayor's office swept for bugs was a practice used by Jackson's predecessor, Michael Di Biase, as well.

But it appears Vaughan is on its own when it comes to having the mayor's office checked for bugs. The mayors of Toronto, Brampton and Mississauga, among others, told the Star that they have not had similar checks, and they didn't even think about it.

Reports also say the company that performed the security check has links to a company cited for a possible conflict of interest due to links to a city staffer.

Mayor Jackson sent an email to the Star where she acknowledged that her office was checked for bugs, but she wouldn't say why.

Well, While I was flipping through The Star this morning, I came across this article....

$50 solves Vaughan mayor's 'bug' worry

Ursula Lebana has a $50 solution to Vaughan Mayor Linda Jackson's political problems – and 2 cents worth of advice.

"People never believe it, but 90 per cent of the time, it's the person you trust the most," says Lebana, who opened Canada's first "spy shop" back in 1991 and can attest to the fact that Cold Wars are still being waged in offices, marriages and even babies' bedrooms around the world.

And for $50, the embattled Jackson, who spent $3,000 in taxpayers' money last year to have her office swept for listening devices, could have rented one of Lebana's do-it-yourself bug detectors.

Lebana has armed everyone from entrepreneurs to parents with electronic surveillance gadgets since she hung a few Bond posters on the walls of her Yonge St. Spy Tech store and created the first Teddy cam to help parents keep an eye on their child's nanny.

But she's never been asked to sweep for bugs in a mayor's office.

"That's strange, now that I think about it," says Lebana, her thick German accent dropping to a perplexed whisper. "Maybe it's because they're only around for four years and then they're gone."


The revelation about Jackson is bound to be good for business at Lebana's shop, where stories of stalkings, break-ins or bad caregivers always seem to fuel paranoia that translates into the sales of more spy paraphernalia.

In fact, one of her most popular items – next to the $59 CheckMate Infidelity Test Kit – are DIY bug detectors, ideal for almost any office, which sell for $500 or rent for $50 a day.

Even in bad times, business is booming in the surveillance business, as a steady stream of customers line Spy Tech's two glass-enclosed display cases, trying out everything from pen recorders ($99 plus taxes) to baseball caps with hidden cameras ($295 plus the cost of a tiny video recorder).

Surprisingly, only one guy is wearing a trench coat. (let's hope that's not all he's wearing?.. just saying it all...don't tell me you weren't just thinking that!)

Lebana takes the business of spying seriously – well, seriously enough that the door of her cluttered office features two-way glass. Her son Hans, who manages the Ottawa store, walks in wearing Men in Black sunglasses, even on a grey day.

On the other side of the office door, things get decidedly more high-tech, with steady demands for the latest digital devices from business owners looking to crack down on employee theft or spouses launching sting operations against husbands or wives they suspect of cheating.

There's also a fairly constant stream of people seeking hidden cameras that let them keep an eye, right from their office computers, on how their children or elderly parents are being cared for when they aren't around.

When the big boys call – i.e. the banks – Lebana has a secret weapon, retired RCMP security expert Doug Ralph, a good-natured guy with more than $250,000 worth of counter surveillance equipment. The latest is a $38,000 gadget that can sweep a bookshelf-lined room in under 20 minutes and detect a bug hidden in a binding. He admits he's made that rare find just "a few times."

Ralph has seen both sides of bugs, having planted them for the RCMP as part of organized-crime cases, and now hunting for them when corporations suspect competitors of trying to crack into their phone lines or computers.

"I try to stay away from the domestic issues. They can get pretty messy."

But sometimes trouble just finds him, like when he was driving downtown recently. His monitoring devices picked up voices coming from a Bay Street bank.

"It was a financial planner talking to clients, discussing their assets and where to direct (investments), their names, phone numbers and all this other information. I made sure that what I overheard got back to the director of security so that he would know that one of his employees was using a wireless (headset) so he wouldn't have to stay saddled to his desk – and I was hearing it a block away with my equipment."

(Note: When you use a wireless headset, the base keeps transmitting even when you're not using the phone. Ralph drove by City Hall late one night and could hear a cleaner vacuuming an office.)

Lebana considers what she does "regular things for regular people," and laughs that her German accent – she was born in East Germany but grew up near Frankfurt – is always a big hit with first-time visitors to the shop.

"A lot of them joke that I'm KGB or Mossad, because of the accent."

About 50 per cent of the time, when people think they are being spied on, they really are, Lebana contends. And almost always it's by the person they least suspect.

She's got lots of stories to prove her point, the most telling about a women who was terrified after months of stalking and scratching at her apartment door that escalated into death threats. The frightened woman took her brother-in-law to Spy Tech and he helped her install a peephole camera that turned up no suspects, although the harassment continued.

It was only when Lebana's staff installed a tiny surveillance camera in an exit sign down the hallway that the culprit was outed.

It was the brother-in-law. Seemed he quite liked getting her panicked calls for help and rushing in like a white knight.

in case any of you were curious or wondering, Spy Tech is located at:

Spy Tech
2005 Yonge St
Toronto, ON M4S 1Z8
(416) 482-8588
Get Directions from where you are

Canadian researchers uncover a vast computer spying operation

A cyber spy network based mainly in China has tapped into classified documents from government and private organizations in 103 countries, including the computers of Tibetan exiles, Canadian researchers said Saturday.

The work of the Information Warfare Monitor initially focused on allegations of Chinese cyber espionage against the Tibetan community in exile, especially the Dalai Lama, who is frequently denounced by Chinese officials.

The research eventually led to a much wider network of compromised machines, the Internet-based research group said.

Information Warfare Monitor is a joint effort of the SecDev Group in Ottawa and the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto.

The group said in a news release Sunday that investigators conducted field research in India, Europe and North America, including in the private office of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan government-in-exile and several Tibetan NGOs.

Investigator Greg Walton said: "We uncovered real-time evidence of malware that had penetrated Tibetan computer systems, extracting sensitive documents from the private office of the Dalai Lama."

During the second phase of the investigation, the data led to the discovery of insecure, web-based interfaces to four control servers. The interfaces allow attackers to send instructions to and receive data from compromised computers.

"What we found is not so much unprecedented in scope and sophistication," said Nart Villeneuve, a senior IWM analyst.

"But the relatively small size of the network and concentration of high-value targets is significant. It does not fit the profile for a typical cyber crime network."

Principal investigators Ron Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski said: "This report serves as a wake-up call."

"At the very least, the large percentage of high-value targets compromised by this network demonstrates the relative ease with which a technically unsophisticated approach can quickly be harnessed to create a very effective spynet."

The compromised computers included, among many others, the ministry of foreign affairs of Iran; the embassies of India, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, Portugal, Germany and Pakistan; the ASEAN Secretariat; the Asian Development Bank; news organizations and an unclassified computer located at NATO headquarters.

The research group said while its analysis points to China as the main source of the network, it has not conclusively been able to detect the exact identity or motivation of the hackers.

A spokesman for the Chinese Consulate in New York dismissed the idea that China was involved.

The researchers said they have notified international law-enforcement agencies of the spying operation.

The F.B.I. declined comment on the operation.

The full report of the investigation entitled, "Tracking GhostNet: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network," was released online Sunday.

FBI planting spies in U.S. mosques, Muslim groups say

Ten U.S. Muslim organizations threatened this week to cease working with the FBI, citing "McCarthy-era tactics" by the agency, including efforts to covertly infiltrate California mosques.

The groups claim the FBI has sent undercover agents posing as worshippers into mosques, pressured Muslims to become informants, labeled civil rights advocates as criminals and spread misinformation.

The FBI declined to comment on specific allegations but called the proposed move unproductive.

"Limiting honest dialogue, especially when complex issues are on the table, is generally not an effective advocacy strategy," spokesman John Miller said in a statement. "The FBI has continued our outreach efforts, across the board, with a number of concerned groups and where we agree -- or disagree -- most have concluded the best results are achieved through continued conversation. We believe that, too."

The group's statement, dated Tuesday, said several incidents of the FBI "targeting Muslim Americans lead us to consider suspending ongoing outreach efforts."

The statement was issued by the American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections, whose director, Agha Saeed, couldn't immediately comment because of a family emergency.

The FBI has sent "agents provocateur" into California mosques, according to the statement, which says an FBI agent threatened to make one mosque member's life a "living hell" if he did not become an informant.

Though the statement does not name the mosque member, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said last month it would seek an investigation into the February 21 arrest of Ahmadullah Niazi, an Afghanistan native.

"Mr. Niazi previously reported to [CAIR's Los Angeles office] and other community members that, during a raid of a friend's house, an FBI agent urged Mr. Niazi to work with the agency, saying that if he refused to cooperate his life would be made a 'living hell,' " a news release said.

Niazi, a member of the Islamic Center of Irvine, told CAIR his arrest was retaliation for his refusal, the release said.

The FBI directed questions about Niazi's arrest to the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles, California, which declined comment.

Niazi, 34, was indicted last month on charges of perjury, procuring naturalization unlawfully, using a passport procured by fraud and making false statements. A search warrant for Niazi's Tustin, California, home said Niazi became a naturalized citizen in 2004 and made false statements about his past aliases and international travel.

He also made false statements about contact with his brother-in-law Amin ul-Haq, the indictment said. Ul-Haq is said to be Osama bin Laden's security coordinator and has been labeled a "specially designated global terrorist" by the U.S. government, the indictment said.

An FBI agent said in open court that Niazi also had discussed terrorist plots with an undercover informant, according to media reports. Niazi has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.

CAIR's problems with the FBI began before Niazi's arrest. Last year, the FBI discontinued its "formal contact" with CAIR.

The Tuesday statement said the FBI unjustly designated CAIR and other organizations as "unindicted co-conspirators" in the Holy Land Foundation case. A jury convicted Holy Land Foundation leaders last year of conspiring to support terrorism and launder money for a terrorist group.

"Making this unjust designation public violates the Justice Department's own guidelines and wrongly implies that those listed are somehow involved in criminal activity," the statement said.

The FBI's Miller declined to comment on specifics, but said the FBI wants to avoid "formally constructed partnerships" with CAIR.

"Our concerns relate to a number of distinct narrow issues specific to CAIR and its national leadership," Miller said.

Before the FBI severed formal ties, CAIR officials had met with the FBI to discuss hate crimes targeting Muslims. On occasion, CAIR offered assistance in investigations. The group also held training sessions for FBI agents on Islamic culture and ways to improve interactions with the Muslim community.

CAIR this week called the FBI allegations a "campaign of smears and misinformation," a remnant of the Bush administration.

"It is not surprising that we would be targeted in a purely political move by those in the previous administration who sought to prevent us from defending the civil rights of American Muslims," said a statement from the group's national communications director, Ibrahim Hooper.

Tuesday's group statement also mentioned "a flourishing of anti-Muslim activity" during the previous administration and expressed fear that "counterintelligence programs are quelling lawful dissent."

Unless the FBI affords fair treatment to all mosques, Muslims and Muslim groups, the statement said, Muslims should consider suspending ties to the agency.

"This possible suspension, of course, would in no way affect our unshakable duty to report crimes or threats of violence to our nation,"