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Facebook 'monitored by Al Qaeda' say Canadian military

Wired’s always diverting Danger Room military tech blog carries an unlikely but fascinating report about an internal Canadian Armed Forces memo warning serving personnel about social networks like Facebook.

According to the report, which was made public by Canada’s CBC news agency, the Canadian Defence Department is advising troops not to post personal photos or information on social networking websites because of security concerns.

It warns soldiers not to mention their military service in profiles or to appear in uniform in online photos because the networks are regularly monitored by Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Brigadier-General Peter Atkinson warned of the dangers of logging on from a war zone. General Atkinson said that while sites like Facebook can be invaluable for keeping soldiers in touch with their families, seemingly innocuous photos, videos and news reports can be the source for as much as 80 per cent of the intelligence that insurgents gather on operations.

And you thought you had problems with your boss finding those terrible stag night pictures.

Unsettling discovery shows thousands of web sites at risk

Security specialists at Finjan report today they have stumbled upon what may be the biggest cache of stolen website details ever amassed by cyber-crooks. FTP server details -- including the user name, password and server addresses -- from thousands of large sites were contained in the database, Finjan said, no doubt meant to be sold off to scam artists. The 8,700 stolen FTP accounts found include some of the world’s top hundred domains, Finjan added.

The discovery appears to be another piece of evidence pointing to a new trick favoured by cyber fraudsters: infecting large websites with malware. Over the past six months, there has been an alarming increase in the number of sites that are unknowingly hosting malicious code, infecting their visitors with an errant click. Sure enough, Finjan reports, "these stolen  (FTP server) credentials enable criminals to compromise servers and automatically inject crimeware to infect users visiting them".

"You could pick any server you wanted in the list, pay for it" and launch an attack with very little effort, Finjan CTO Yuval Ben-Itzhak told Computer World.

Super Mario and the back-seat gamers

I have two young sons aged 4 and 2 who are both obsessed with video games, but although they want to hold the controller, neither actually likes playing the games. Instead they love to watch me play and are happy to shout advice, and the instructions get louder and shoutier if I'm not doing quite as instructed. To all intents and purposes, they are back-seat gamers.

This might seem like a perfect situation, letting me play video games and spend time with the kids at the same time, but there is a massive downside. I got Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii in early December. There is a great two-player option where one person controls Mario while the second collects stars and stuns enemies and the like. My eldest son loves doing this as long as I control Mario.

The problem arose when we finished the game. He didn't think that finishing was a good enough reason to stop playing, so we have had to replay lots of the levels. It's now mid-February and several times a week I’m still having to play the levels where Mario wears a bee suit. I've played these levels so many times it must be approaching triple figures and I'm starting to hate the game.

I once heard a story in which a man who loved fishing dies and wakes up on a river bank with fishing rod in hand. He believes he must be in heaven and, casting his line into the water, he immediately catches a fish. He keeps repeating this and the same thing happens each time, until he realises that he is actually in hell and is doomed to catch fish repeatedly for ever more.

That's how I feel about Super Mario Galaxy. To combat this, I thought that getting a game the boys can play on their own would be the ticket, so I picked up Big Brain Academy, a game that tests children with various problem-solving activities. Fantastic. I thought that they could get on with playing a game on their own and I could feel slightly smug in the probably misdirected knowledge they were being educated by a game. In retrospect, it was a mistake to I mention that it was a "learning" game – my eldest son cried and proceeded to tell me he that didn't want to learn and wouldn’t play it.

In a desperate bid to avoid starting up Mario again I discovered that if I left my son with the controller and put the Wii on the starting screen of the original Sonic The Hedgehog, downloaded from Nintendo's online game shop, it loops through several game level demos. My son thinks it's him playing and will happily 'play' Sonic for long enough for me to get some breakfast and have a shower on a Saturday morning. I can't help but think that a learning game really might be in order for the little fellow.

PlayStation veteran steps down

The Briton who was in charge of computer game development at Sony and played a significant role in the release of the company's PlayStation 3 console two years ago has resigned after more than 15 years service.

Phil Harrison will step down as president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios - a role in which he oversaw all of Sony's game development globally - on February 29. No reason has been given for his departure, though Mr Harrison is known to have expressed frustration at Sony's games strategy in recent weeks.

Kazuo Hirai, the chief executive of Sony's game operations, will take over Mr Harrison's responsibilities. "As one of the founding members of [Sony Computer Entertainment], Phil played a key role in the development and growth of the PlayStation business and our industry," Mr Hirai said in a statement.

Mr Harrison said: "The past 15 years at Sony Computer Entertainment has been the defining journey of my life so far. I am grateful to all the PlayStation family for their incredible support, guidance and friendship."

Mr Harrison joined Sony in 1992 - before the launch of the first PlayStation - and was appointed head of the company's game development division in 2005. He oversaw the game development platform for the PS3, which has faced tough competition from the Nintendo Wii since its launch in late 2006, but which has now sold more than ten million units.

Last month - for the first time in two years - Sony's game division announced it had made a profit after cutting prices in a bid to increase demand.

At the Games Developers Conference in San Fransisco last week, Mr Harrison was quoted as saying: "Our Japanese colleagues said that there is no such thing as social gaming in Japan - people do not play games on the same sofa together in each other's homes. It will never happen. And then out comes the Wii."

Nokia's new flexi-phone

Nokia has (again) seen the future of handsets - and this time they mould to fit the contours of your palm.

Only weeks after it demonstrated a phone made from recycled rubber tyres, the Finnish manufacturer has shown off a new 'concept handset' which relies on nanotechnology to give it flexible properties.

The Morph, which has been developed by the Nokia Research Centre and the University of Cambridge, was unveiled as part of the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York.

It is a largely transparent device - a little like the early Swatch watches, with built-in solar cells to make the battery smaller, and a flexible frame made possible by the principles of nano-science, the company said.

"We hope that this combination of art and science will showcase the potential of nanoscience to a wider audience," Dr Tapani Ryhanen, head of Nokia's labs in Cambridge, said.

'Showcase' remains the operative word for now, though. Nokia said it would be seven years before 'elements of Morph' are integrated into commercial handsets, and even then it will be "only at the high end."

What's the penalty for creating a fake Facebook page?

Three years in the clink if you happen to live in Morocco, and the target of your gag is the King's brother. On Friday, a Moroccan judge  sentenced Fouad Mourtada, a 27-year-old computer engineer, to three years in prison and a fine of 10,000 dirhams (about £660 pounds, a big chunk of a techie's salary in Morocco) for creating a fictional Facebook identity for King Mohammed VI's brother, Prince Moulay Rachid.

Amnesty International told AFP that they were "shocked by such a heavy verdict", and the civil rights group has already begun questioning the veracity of the evidence, which they say was extracted from Mourtada under duress.

The news is already rippling through the Facebook community. A host of groups critical of King Mohammed VI have been created plus "Help Fouad" petition groups in multiple languages. As one erratically spelt Facebook petition reads, "There are on Facebook 41 Nicolas Sarkozy, 10 prince William of England, Many Jackes Chirac (Former France president), Roger Federer, Georges Bush, Osama Benladen and so on...Fouad's initiative was a pure innocent act without any personal gain or harmful intent. Since Facebook Launch on 2004, a big number of young adults in many countries profile public figures and stars on Facebook for reasons of admiration or entertainment, without malicious intent."

There are now 2,720 members, including a "Prince Moulay Rachid" who says: "This is truly a farce. I am deeply ashamed by this."

At least one Prince Moulay Rachid is.

Inflated piracy and the silver lining

Nintendo, along with its publishers and developers, claims that it lost $975 million (£498 million) last year due to piracy. Is this an accurate figure for real cash losses? Companies like to talk about all the money piracy is costing them, despite their immense profits. That’s not to say that they shouldn't complain – it is theft, after all, but it may be a form of theft that comes with a silver lining.

I know several people who download films illegally online. They often download movies they would never think of going to see at the cinema, buy on DVD or even renting. So in reality the film company was never going to get their money anyway.

But when somebody plays a game or watches a film or listens to music illegally, it may well open them up to genres they wouldn't otherwise have tried. A pirated copy could actually increase interest in the game and other future games like it. The people who download media online are often large legal media consumers as well. This means the illegal download may convert into a legal purchace where before there was no chance of one.

When record labels sue a 16 year old for downloading music, it doesn’t make people fear they may be next – it encourages resentment of the company and erodes sympathy for their losses. It also makes people lose sight of the knock-on effect of the musicians losing money and therefore struggling to continue making music.

The companies can come across like bullies complaining that they've skinned their knuckles after knocking you out, and nobody likes a bully. Games companies trying to reduce the effects of piracy should avoid going down the route of the music and film industries, which just leads to people feeling justified in stealing their products. Instead they need to make people understand that in the long term, piracy equals no money to invest in new games.

And if they want to go after anyone, I think it should be Johnny Depp. He was the one who made piracy cool with the kids again.

Toshiba plans to stay away from Blu-ray

Toshiba has "no plans" to develop Blu-ray players after losing the high-definition format war to Sony, according to Olivier Van Wynendaele, Toshiba's deputy general manager of HD-DVD in Europe.

Speaking at the unveilling of the company's new products, Mr Van Wynendaele said that Toshiba had not yet made a decision regarding its future strategy in high-definition discs, but insisted that "the mass market opportunity for HD remains untapped."

The gap left by HD-DVD in Toshiba's product line-up for 2008 means the company will fall back on its core businesses of laptop PCs, LCD televisions and DVD players, all of which continue to sell well. New models in all categories should start to filter into UK stores by early March.

Nigel Kendall

Violent games: Unreal means just that

Feature: The Manhunt II ban

With excitement about the forthcoming Unreal Tournament III building and other chart-topping games like Call Of Duty 4 doing incredibly well, the question of whether you can pick up real battle skills from these games - and what effect that has on a gamer - is back on the agenda. I'm still on the fence about the effects of violence, but a painful experience shattered any illusion that I was learning real-world skills.

Several years ago I worked in an office full of twenty-something geeks. We managed to network all of our computers together so we could play the original Unreal Tournament against each other. Unreal is a first person shooter (an FPS as the kids say), where you pick up big guns and try to kill everybody else or just the other team, depending on what style of game you are playing. We ended up playing this every lunchtime and every evening after work for a couple of months as obsession took hold.

One of the people I worked with had been a Marine before he went on to the natural next thing of selling online ads. You would expect somebody that previously had a career in the art of killing would be fantastic at a computer game that was all about guns. He was terrible, really terrible. You would find him in a corner looking the wrong way while you crept up on him and 'fragged' his character. He once managed to kill himself with the sniper rifle, a feat that none of the rest of us could reproduce, even when we tried.

We mocked him about being being so very bad at Unreal depite having been in the Marines. One day this changed: the day a load of us went to play paintball. This fellow managed to show a large number of us that computer games are definitely not real and nor do they give you real-world abilities. Many of us believed that the hours spent playing Unreal would give us the advantage in what is essentially a live version of the game. They didn't, and the paintball welts served as a reminder of two important lessons. One: game skills do not equal real skills. Two: never mock an ex-Marine. The very name of Unreal Tournament should have given us a clue.

Un-convert the converted

Why is the latest Simpsons game so bad? It's a huge brand with loads of money behind it, yet they have produced a game that plays so terribly in places, you suspect it must be on purpose. It's the same with lots of other TV shows and films that make the jump over to games. The Golden Compass got reviews so terrible you were left with the impression that playing it was an act of masochism.

I do love The Simpsons TV show and think the game has lovely graphics, funny cut scenes and some good ideas, but the gameplay is frustrating and executed in a way that smacks of too much time spent on the concepts and jokes and not enough on the actual game.

Fortunately there is a ray of blocky golden light at the end of the tunnel and it comes from the Danes. The Lego Star Wars series of games is a perfect example of how it should be done. The games are easy enough for a six year old to play but well scripted and fun enough for an adult to enjoy too. The cut scenes have often made me laugh out loud and the way they blends the two brands of Lego and Star Wars seamlessly is perfection.

So why do the film and TV companies feel that it's OK to fob off fans with games that are simply not good enough? Given that games make more money than movies you would think it would be in their interest to make a game that really can compete with the likes of Mario and Call Of Duty. At least games sometimes can get their own back, as anyone who remembers the classic 1993 film Super Mario Bros featuring Bob Hoskins will remember.

Is Toshiba pulling out of the high-stakes high-definition format war?

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Toshiba is preparing to pull the plug on its support of the HD-DVD format in the coming weeks, attributing the report to "reliable industry sources." We could see this day coming for several weeks now.

Following last month's jarring decision by Warner Bros to jump camp to the Sony-led Blu-ray format, Toshiba and its main development partner, Microsoft, were left with minimal studio support and little choice but to consider its options.

Toshiba officials have been trying to put a brave face on the situation, but with no access to 75 per cent of the new cinema releases, the format is all but sunk. Speaking to Hollywood Reporter, Toshiba acknowledges it has few options. "Given the market developments in the past month," Jodi Sally, VPof marketing for Toshiba America Consumer Products, told Hollywood Reporter, "Toshiba will continue to study the market impact and the value proposition for consumers, particularly in light of our recent price reductions on all HD DVD players."

Evidently, consumers have already given up on HD DVD. Quoting sales figures from NPD, in the week following the Warner Bros announcement, 93 per cent of all U.S. sales of high-definition players were Blu-Ray players. Toshiba responded by slashing prices and sales did rebound, but is still being outsold two-to-one.

A camera with a built-in smile sensor

Somewhat adrift after the "megapixel war" ended, digital camera manufacturers are now turning to features which help amateur snappers take the best possible pics.

The latest play in the game of “my camera is better than yours” – following on from red-eye reduction and others - is a feature which works out whether all the subjects are smiling before taking a photo.

Foto Nation's technology locks onto the faces in a picture using so-called Face Detection software, and measures details such as the shape of the mouth and whether a person's eyes are shut or not.

“Think of it as a blink warning,” Foto Nation's technical manager, Valentin Mocanu, said.

There's also scope for a new type of self-timer, where instead of being taken after a set interval, the picture is simply snapped when everyone is smiling.

The problem, of course, is shutter lag. “There is a chance a person's facial expression may have changed by the time the photo is taken, but that depends on the camera, not our technology,” Mr Mocanu said. “Some cameras certainly have longer delays.”

So far Foto Nation, which is based in California, has only licensed its software to Samsung and Fujitsu, and even then only for use in cameras, but it hopes to convince the likes of Nokia that the feature will become popular on phones too.

Predictive text gets smart

People who use predictive text might be with “of “ when I say that the it is not very intuitive.

Broadly speaking, predictive text relies on the general frequency of words in the language in order to rank suggestions when presented with a given combination of letters. (Because "of" is more common than "me", it is suggested first. "On" comes before "no" etc.)

Adaptxt is trying to make the technology smarter by incorporating a semantic element, meaning that a phone should, in theory, know what comes next based on context.

Adaptxt´s algorithm also recommends whole phrases rather than words – "Do" might immediately prompt “you want”, for instance – in order to cut down on the number of keystrokes, and tailors suggestions according to a user´s personal vocabulary. It can also convert a fully typed text message into "txt" – ie shorten words to save space – and "learn" vocabulary from files which have been sent to the phone, so that the owner doesn´t have to painstakingly enter more specialised vocabularies into their dictionary.

"A lot of people are turned off predictive text because it so often gets words wrong,"Andrew Glen, the marketing manager of KeyPoint Technologies, which developed the software, said. "There's a whole new language among teenagers now where they say "This is book" (instead of cool) and "I'll be good soon" (home)

Halitosis-detecting phone

From the school of products that remind you of your inadequacies (and hopefully prompt you to buy stuff) comes this phone that measures the smelliness of your breath.

All you do is hold the handset up to your mouth, blow briefly on a sensor at one end, and in ten seconds it rates your halitosis on a scale of one to ten – based on the sulphur content in your breath.

After a morning coffee, I scored a six, which was accompanied by the message “You're still fine to talk to people, but you should be a little bit worried.”

The phone, which is still a prototype and is not expected to come out until 2009 at the earliest, also measures heart rate, body fat, and can be used as a pedometer. (You put it in your pocket and it senses your leg movement, so the theory goes.)

"You have no new messages"

It’s a simple idea – as the best ideas often are – but they thought of it first, and now they’re reaping the rewards.

Spinvox takes your voice mail messages, converts them into text and sends them to you as an SMS message.

According to research (conducted, admittedly, by Spinvox), calls which result in a voicemail message are only returned 20 per cent of the time, but when they’re converted to text, the figure rises to 87 per cent.

This is, naturally, of interest to operators, one of whose options for raising revenue is to make more connections.

On average, people leave voicemails of between 35 and 40 seconds, which, once the “umms” and “aahs” are taken out, fit neatly into two text messages.

Spinvox, which is based in Maidenhead, says it strives to generate the “meaningful text equivalent” of a voicemail message. “But we’re not the taste or grammar police,” the company’s marketing director, James Robins, adds.

Spinvox says it has already has contracts with nine operators, including Vodafone in the UK, and that by the end of the year it will have 28 contracts. It does not sell its service direct to consumers, but rather provides it to networks which offer it as an “add on” to a regular monthly plan.

The company has 60 patents either approved or pending, most connected with its voice-recognition software which can already translate four languages – French, German, English and Spanish – and has to be “voice independent.”

“We’re hoping to do for voicemail what BlackBerry did for e-mail,” Mr Robins said.

Apple has made much of the ‘visual voicemail’ service on its iPhone, but that function only lists voicemails in an easy-to-use format – so you don’t have to play back all your messages to find just one – rather than transcribing them, Spinvox points out.

Survey: Some Britons spend 12 hrs per week on social networks

Britain's addiction to its daily social networking fix appears to be intensifying. Social network fanatics in the UK spend an average of 12 hours per week on these sites, while a particularly avid minority (12 per cent of those surveyed) remaining logged on for at least six hours per day, making social networks a bigger draw than that classic time-waster, the telly.

The survey was sponsored by Badoo.com, yes, a social network site. But the findings certainly jibe with other recent pieces of research into Britain's love affair with sites like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Flickr and, evidently, Badoo (which claims 12.9 million registered users). The addiction has its costs.

Last month, a survey of corporate IT specialists concluded that social networks are a threat to UK competitiveness. According to leading tech executives, social networks cost companies £6.5 billion per annum, calculated in lost productivity and questionable bandwidth usage required to keep our friends and contacts informed on our latest mood swings and whereabouts.

Badoo is calling it the "social itch," in which users are "repeatedly drawn to check their social online status". Only 25 per cent of respondents said they could go an entire day without checking in on their online status.

An expensive itch, indeed.

The Wii60: a perfect family console

I've got an Xbox 360 and a Nintendo Wii, and I like them both for different things. The Nintendo for the pretty colours and odd games that appeal to my inner child. The Xbox for it's online capabilities that allow me to download demos and kill pixelated versions of friends, which appeals to my inner sociopath.

The problem I have with the 360 is the limited style of games. It seem to me that there is a huge amount of first person shooters and car racing games and very little else that's any good. Running around armed to the teeth is great, but sometimes I want something else. It's aimed squarely at the adult male market, which is a shame as the graphics are great and the ability to chat online to the person you are playing against is also brilliant.

The Wii suffers from the opposite problem. Loads of games for kids and adults but nothing great for the large 'kill them all and let God sort out the rest' market. What's the best recommendation for a family? I think getting both consoles and calling it a Wii60 is the answer. If this seems an expensive option you could always just get the Xbox 360 and send the kids outside to play. After all, they need the fresh air and you've got some killing to do.

Isabella Rossellini's 'animal porn' films

Isabella Rossellini has always been comfortable in European films, but her latest role may be her most avant-garde yet: playing a sexually charged bee in a series of 'animal porn' flicks.

The Italian actress has written, directed and starred in 'Green Porno', a series of short films which explain the reproductive habits of a variety of creatures, including flies, spiders, snails and bees.

Part nature documentary, sex education tool, and children's television programme, the films last a minute each, and show Ms Rossellini, 55, in a series of puffy costumes explaining the ins and outs of insect copulation.

The films are reminiscent of Woody Allen's Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask, only adapted for the animal kingdom, and with a more graphic script.

"If I were a male bee, I would just want to have sex," Ms Rossellini, appearing in the first of many large, squishy animal outfits - in this case as a bee, says. "I would mate (the female bee) in flight. My penis would break off, and would get stuck in her vagina like a cork in a bottle. I would die without my penis."

Nokia´s rubber tyre telephone

Nokia today gave a tantalising glimpse of the first handset to be made entirely of recycled waste materials, including rubber tyres.

The handset  - a sleek, silver device with tinges of green, unsurprisingly - counts among its component parts bits of recycled plastic bottles and "upcycled" metal cans. (The difference between "upcycled" and recycled remained unclear.)

The Nokia "Remade" is still a prototype - "You can´t make calls on it yet - it´s still a concept, but it gives you an insight into the way we´re thinking" the company´s chief executive, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo told an audience in Barcelona, after showing a brief video. Even the electronic components in the device were "non-toxic", Mr Kallasvuo said.

Click here for full coverage of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

Why just sit when you can hover?

Everyone who has ever seen Star Wars, and that’s most people, will have been favourably impressed by Luke Skywalker’s hovering sports car. It’s one of the key features of science fiction that anything that can hover should hover, but to date maglev technology has made very few inroads into British homes.

That may be set to change though with the advent of the Hoverit hovering lounger. A transparent acrylic chaise longue that’s suspended in mid air by the applied magic of Really Big Magnets. Directors Keith Dixon and Steve Wild are launching the product at the 100th Ideal Home Show in London next month with an anticipated price of £5,875.

The powerful magnets may possibly provide some spinoff health benefits to humans, but will definitely do strange things to nearby TVs, phones, and heart pacemakers. It’s worth putting the TV a little further away, though, for the inarguable benefit of lying in mid-air, feeling for all the world like the main villain in an episode of Blake’s 7.

A hive of inactivity

I keep seeing reports of the Nintendo Wii's amazing ability to keep you fit, illustrated with action shots of OAPs wildly waving their arms around to emphasise the benefits of new non-drug wonder drug. I, however, have been using the Wii to bring myself to ever-higher states of laziness.

Many of the games require you to throw yourself around gesturing vigourously to get the ball rolling/plumber jumping/fists flying, but there are plenty of games placed firmly in the realm of rapid digit movement and little else. And while the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 controllers have to be operated with both hands together, the Wii's remote controller and nunchuck can be held separately, one in each hand. So instead of having to lie on the sofa with both of my hands on the controller in front of me. I can lie back with my arms at my side, moving only my thumbs and index fingers. I have to be honest, I'm actually quite proud of the fact I have found a way of having a leisure activity that is purely the former and none of the latter.

It seems to me that as a society we are being made to feel guilty about spending our spare time in ways that don't increase our cardio fitness or reduce our blood pressure. I feel that embracing the joy of being motionless is, while not the way forward, certainly not a step in the wrong direction either. After all, if my video game character is running around, why should I have to as well?

I am searching for a game that only requires me to blink.

Britons spend £5.4 billion online, but still miss expectations

We can today finally put Christmas 2007 behind us as we get our last report from card payment processing association, APACS, tallying UK online holiday sales. It makes for interesting reading. Online credit and debit card sales (which would represent the vast majority of all online sales) in December jumped a very respectable 50 per cent year-on-year to £5.4 billion, particularly significant when you consider that Britons' overall spending on plastic was £32.2 billion overall in the month, up a paltry 4 per cent, one of the slowest growth rates yet.

But online retailers shouldn't be congratulating their performance too quickly.

Apple boosts memory for iPhone and iPod touch

Apple has added new models to the iPhone and iPod touch range, doubling the maximum memory.

The 16GB iPhone will cost (£319), compared with £269 for the 8GB model, which will remain on sale. The 32GB iPod touch will cost £329, compared with £269 for the 16GB version and £199 for the 8GB. The new models are available from today.

The O2 mobile network recently added extra free minutes to its iPhone packages, leading to speculation that sales of the phone have been slower than expected.

Egypt: web outage wasn't caused by a ship

The plot thickens in the biggest net outage ever recorded. It was not a ship recklessly dragging an anchor along the sea floor that snapped a vital underwater data cable off the coast of Egypt last week, triggering a net outage that spanned across the Middle East as far as India, Egypt's Communication Ministry cryptically reported over the weekend.

What was it then? Alas, the good people at the ministry are not saying. For now, the focus of the investigation appears to be on ruling out earlier press reports that a wayward ship was to blame. And a clever bit of sleuthing has been employed to back up their assertions.

Spy games: surveillance and countersurveillance on the web

In an early Bond film, 007 was impressed by a reel-to-reel tape deck small enough to be hidden inside a camera. Forty-five years later, anyone with a few hundred pounds to spare can buy a credit-card sized bug that will sit dormant for months, then spring to life and start transmitting as soon as it hears a voice.

The claim that MI5 listened in on an MP’s conversations has focused attention on the security services and their rules of engagement, but the online trade in surveillance equipment reveals a flourishing community of unregulated freelancers.

Websites such as Spycatcher of Knightsbridge and Eyetek Surveillance sell Bond-style recording devices hidden in watches (£175, pictured), pens (£279) and computer mice (£575). For those wanting pictures too, Spy Equipment UK provides wireless video camera transmitters disguised as clocks (£280), air fresheners (£319, scent included), smoke alarms (£319) or bowls of pot pourri (£250).