Intelligence Implications.

The ongoing British tabloid scandal seems to just keep growing and growing.  The list of victims of cell phone hacking includes former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and may include Prince Charles on top of several lesser members of the Royal Family.  But in the reports that I've been exposed to I have yet to encounter any discussion of the possible espionage implications of all this.  If unscrupulous journalists, reportedly with the help of British criminals, can hack people's voice mail then what can professionals from the various intelligence agencies or the more sophisticated terrorist groups do?  The growing number of capabilities of cell phones and their cousins bring to mind all sorts of possible tricks that could be done by pro hackers, like say accessing camera functions to take pictures of secure locations, or tracking the movement of targets by GPS data.  But even access to voice mail could allow all sorts of mischief with proper analysis, especially if the target or those that contact them are less than careful with what they say.

Conversely the members of some organisations may not be happy with this scandal.  It has revealed the vulnerability of these technologies, and their current targets may as a result become more cautious with their phone use.  

No Withdrawal Symptoms.

One of the places I regularly visit online is Harmony Central's web forums. Unfortunately the whole site has been offline since Tuesday due to an intrusion by unauthorised visitors who managed to get access to some of the adminstration functions. Fortunately I haven't experienced any physical symptoms because of their absense. But it's still rather annoying that its offline. And I have to wonder about the seriousness of the situation given that they have been offline for several days, with no indication when they'll be active again.

You Can Call Me Reverend Gueguen.

I was just checking out my e-mail, and noted a message with the subject line "GOOD DAY Dear REVEREND." It turned out to be another scam letter, this one claiming to be from the son of Jonas Savimbi. The text of the letter indicates that its not a case of the writer not knowing what the term reverend means, as it talks about the supposed money in question being used to build places of worship and winning souls to the Lord, and their desire to find a suitable clergyman to work with. Why the scammer decided to try the reverend schtick is beyond me. Is there someone out there in cyberland who has the utterly mistaken impression I'm a man of the cloth? I just hope some naive pastor doesn't let visions of expanding his congregation short circuit his common sense and end up in big trouble because of these guys.

It may be Christmas Day, but the con artists are still at work. I've checked my e-mail a couple of times today, and the fake eBay messages and so forth continue. I guess they don't want to miss a single chance at ripping someone off.

The Internet allows criminals to expand their activities to places they've never actually been. But sometimes it does the same for police officers. Joshua Hardman of Acworth, Georgia has found this out the hard way. He's currently facing charges of possessing and transmitting child porn. The charges result from what Hardman alledgedly thought was a conversation with a preteen girl in an online chat room, a girl who he then sent child porn pictures to. Unfortunately for him the "girl" was actually a Saskatoon vice cop. The Saskatoon Police Service contacted US authorities, and Hardman was arrested in February.

While we're on the subjecting of law enforcement it will be interesting to see if this week's America's Most Wanted makes any mention of last week's RCMP shooting tragedy. There was no mention of it on the Mar. 5 broadcast, but given the apparent production cycle of the show thats no surprise. AMW has been involved in Canadian cases in the past, so a mention wouldn't be a surprise.