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Posts tagged Technology
A key quote on the possible future domestic use of drones emerged today during testimony given by General Charles Jacoby of the North American Aerospace Defense Command to the House Armed Services Committee. While being pressed by Democrat Hank Johnson of Georgia to answer questions about the issue, Jacoby offered up this statement:
We would provide defense support to another civil authority or a lead federal agency upon request.
Using a cheap handset and easily available open-source software, someone could monitor your cell phone’s location or even block it from receiving calls without you knowing about it, according to the University of Minnesota’s College of Science and Engineering.
The hacking collective Anonymous proved recently that their list of victims would not be limited to simple websites and databases. It managed to intercept and post online a 17-minute conference call between the FBI and the U.K.’s Scotland Yard in which the two agencies discussed strategies for investigating Anonymous itself.
Telecom towers track cell-phone subscribers so they “know” where to broadcast when someone dials up your phone. Law enforcement agencies can already access cell phone location information from the towers with a subpoena.
But that broadcast is also vulnerable to others who are not police investigators or cell-phone service providers, and the Minnesota researchers proved it by monitoring a test subject within a 10-block area of Minneapolis. They used “readily available equipment and no direct help from the service provider,” states a report of their findings:
Agents from an oppressive regime may no longer require cooperation from reluctant service providers to determine if dissidents are at a protest location. Another example could be thieves testing if a user’s cell phone is absent from a specific area and therefore deduce the risk level associated with a physical break-in of the victim’s residence.
It’s worth mentioning that hackers are not limited to groups like Anonymous. Anyone can hack for a variety of reasons, including university researchers, government employees, private investigators, burglars or any number of other people.
Image: Stock.xchng/Alfonso Diaz
Signing up for an online dating site isn’t always our proudest moment. But many of us have full-time schedules, and meeting people isn’t easy. So the lonely among us try out Zoosk, eHarmony, OkCupid, or one of the many other popular online dating sites. Unfortunately, many such sites are less-than-transparent about what’s happening to your personal data, even after you’ve shuttered the account.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently examined the privacy policies and user agreements for eight dating sites and found that five of them offered up only vague explanations or none at all about what happened to your data after an account was closed. The advocacy group also concluded that most of the sites didn’t observe adequate security practices to protect your information from being intercepted when you use open networks in public places like coffee shops:
The most pressing concern is that information about you may be exposed to future legal requests that might involve a criminal investigation, a divorce case, or even a legal tussle with an insurance company. … Last October, researcher Jonathan Mayer discovered that OkCupid was actually leaking personal data to some of its marketing partners. Information such as age, drug use, drinking frequency, ethnicity, gender, income, relationship status, religion and more was leaked to online advertiser Lotame.
Not much I can add here, folks. Story pretty much speaks for itself. Breathtaking.
Source 
What if the way you type on a keyboard, how you move a mouse, the way your eyes shift, how you surf the Web and the speed with which you respond to an email could all be used for unique identification purposes? The sci-fi minds at DARPA are exploring that very question to determine if such behavior could be used to secure a computer. We’ve already told you before at Perilous about the possibility of your butt having a unique biometric identity.
George Friedman of the Austin-based security consultancy Stratfor appears in a new video to discuss the recent massive hack his firm endured. After discussing it with the FBI, he says, “the matter remains under active investigation.”
Source stratfor.com
Capitalizing on one of the fastest-growing trends in law enforcement, a private California-based company has compiled a database bulging with more than 550 million license-plate records on both innocent and criminal drivers that can be searched by police.
The technology has raised alarms among civil libertarians, who say it threatens the privacy of drivers. It’s also evidence that 21st-century technology may be evolving too quickly for the courts and public opinion to keep up. The U.S. Supreme Court is only now addressing whether investigators can secretly attach a GPS monitoring device to cars without a warrant.
A ruling in that case has yet to be handed down, but a telling exchange occurred during oral arguments. Chief Justice John Roberts asked lawyers for the government if even he and other members of the court could feasibly be tracked by GPS without a warrant. Yes, came the answer.
Meanwhile, police around the country have been affixing high-tech scanners to the exterior of their patrol cars, snapping a picture of every passing license plate and automatically comparing them to databases of outstanding warrants, stolen cars and wanted bank robbers.
But when a license plate is scanned, the driver’s geographic location is also recorded and saved, along with the date and time, each of which amounts to a record or data point. Such data collection occurs regardless of whether the driver is a wanted criminal, and the vast majority are not.The units work by sounding an in-car alert if the scanner comes across a license plate of interest to police, whereas before, patrol officers generally needed some reason to take an interest in the vehicle, like a traffic violation.
See the rest of my story published this morning here.
Image: Steve Reed, Arden Fair Mall
