If you think your passwords are safe, you should checkout this blog: "How I'd Hack Your Weak Passwords."

Hackers, and I’m not talking about the ethical kind, have developed a whole range of tools to get at your personal data. And the main impediment standing between your information remaining safe, or leaking out, is the password you choose. (Ironically, the best protection people have is usually the one they take least seriously.)

One of the simplest ways to gain access to your information is through the use of a Brute Force Attack. This is accomplished when a hacker uses a specially written piece of software to attempt to log into a site using your credentials. Insecure.org has a list of the Top 10 FREE Password Crackers right here.

1.Your partner, child, or pet’s name, possibly followed by a 0 or 1 (because they’re always making you use a number, aren’t they?)
2.The last 4 digits of your social security number.
3.123 or 1234 or 123456.
4.“password”
5.Your city, or college, football team name.
6.Date of birth – yours, your partner’s or your child’s.
7.“god”
8.“letmein”
9.“money”
10.“love”

Link:http://onemansblog.com/2007/03/26/how-id-hack-your-weak-passwords/

Biometric scans for traffic stops in Milwaukee!

It is no longer acceptable enough to the statists that you must, under penalty of law, present your state issued driving license, personal motor vehicle insurance, and state issued vehicle registration. Now, in order to move “freely” about Milwaukee they desire your biological identity to match the information in their database. And, of course, the newscast provides substantial reason for your compliance: only the guilty don’t do it, you need your identity protected, you do it unless you’re hiding something, and it’s already helped us catch bad guys and so on ad infinitum. Yet the reasons against totalitarian methodologies like this are just as infinite and in fact, quite a bit more powerful and meaningful to society. In point of fact, this type of police state dragnet has been shown to violate our basic natural rights; as the Supreme Court has held:

That fingerprints are subject to the requirements of the Search and Seizure Clause of the Fourth Amendment , Davis v. Mississippi, supra.

With total disregard for our fundamental law and most treasured values, the statists push ever forward in the surge to biometrically identify and catalog every person in America. As evidenced by Senators Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) proposal for biometric ID cards intended for immigration reform, which will require such identification on any persons obtaining any sort of job whatsoever, they will seize at any innocuous justification to push forward on biometric identification legislation. The Department of Homeland Security is already admittedly maintaining the biometrics-based immigration records database and has now implemented the Secure Communities (LINK: http://media-newswire.com/release_1115135.html ) information-sharing program designed to comprehensively link nationwide local law enforcement agencies to the FBI and DHS biometric systems.

Link: http://www.infowars.com/biometric-scans-for-traffic-stops/

Phishing cell phone scam in Boise, Idaho will soon be coming to a city near you.

A new phishing scam is hitting the Treasure Valley and now the Better Business Bureau is warning people before they fall victim.

The scam comes in the form of a text message saying, "BOTC Alert: Your card starting with 4266 has been deactivated. Please contact us at (208) 473-2643 to reactivate your card."

"Technology makes it so easy for the scam artist to set up what looks like a local number," said Dale Dixon, President of Idaho Better Business Bureau, serving Southeast Idaho and Eastern Oregon. "It's important for folks to realize the Bank of the Cascades, or any bank, is not going to send a text message saying 'your account has been closed or deactivated and that you need to call in to reactivate it'."

Dixon says if you got the message just delete it.

But if you got the message and you entered your information, call your bank right away


Link:
http://www.ktvb.com/news/local/Phishing-scam-hits-the-Treasure-Valley-89340832.html

If you're pregnant in Seattle, Washington and refuse to sign a traffic ticket, you can be tasered legally!

Three Seattle police officers were justified when they used a stun gun on a pregnant mother who refused to sign a traffic ticket, a federal appeals court ruled Friday in a case that prompted an incredulous dissent.
Malaika Brooks was driving her son to Seattle's African American Academy in 2004 when she was stopped for doing 32 mph in a school zone. She insisted it was the car in front of her that was speeding, and refused to sign the ticket because she thought she'd be admitting guilt.

Rather than give her the ticket and let her go on her way, the officers decided to arrest her. One reached in, turned off her car and dropped the keys on the floor. Brooks stiffened her arms against the steering wheel and told the officers she was pregnant, but refused to get out, even after they threatened to stun her.
But in a 2-1 ruling Friday, a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. Judges Cynthia Holcomb Hall and Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain held that the officers were justified in making an arrest because Brooks was obstructing them and resisting arrest.

The use of force was also justified because of the threat Brooks posed, Hall wrote: "It seems clear that Brooks was not going to be able to harm anyone with her car at a moment's notice. Nonetheless, some threat she might retrieve the keys and drive off erratically remained, particularly given her refusal to leave the car and her state of agitation."

Link:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hY3TQyq2-oF_rmAAf_TuzN0PzQ7wD9EMJ3HG0

The Perscription Project informs the public of physicians receiving gifts and money from drug and medical manufacturers.

The Pew Prescription Project is an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts to promote consumer safety through reforms in the approval, manufacture and marketing of prescription drugs, as well as through initiatives to encourage evidence-based prescribing. The Pew Prescription Project conducts rigorous nonpartisan research related to federal oversight of drug safety to better illuminate problems and potential solutions.

The Pew Prescription Project builds on the accomplishments of The Prescription Project, a two-year campaign created in 2007 by The Pew Charitable Trusts and led by Community Catalyst in partnership with the Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP) to advance policies to address conflicts of interest created by pharmaceutical marketing and increase physician reliance on independent evidence of drug effectiveness. The Project’s work contributed to the creation of new conflict-of-interest policies at numerous academic medical centers and professional medical associations, as well as to new physician-industry disclosure measures adopted or proposed through state and federal legislation.

Links: http://www.prescriptionproject.org/
http://www.prescriptionproject.org/tools/sunshine_docs/files/Sunshine-fact-sheet-3.23.10.pdf

The government wants to track people in airports usings their cell phones, what could possibly go wrong?

Today's smartphones and PDAs could have a new use in the nation's airports: helping passengers avoid long lines at security checkpoints.
The Transportation Security Administration is looking at installing devices in airports that home in and detect personal electronic equipment. The aim is to track how long people are stuck in security lines.

Information about wait times could then be posted on websites and in airports across the country.

But civil-liberties experts worry that such a system enables the government to track people's whereabouts. "It's serious business when the government begins to get near people's personal-communication devices," said American Civil Liberties Union privacy expert Jay Stanley.

Link: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/wireless/2010-03-23-cellphones_N.htm

On a lighter note, this woman won't need a private investigator.

Police in Oklahoma said a woman was arrested for drug possession after she mistakenly text messaged a Drug Task Force agent about her stash.

A police report said Chris Counts, an agent with the District III Drug Task Force, received an apparent wrong-number text message from Mindy Lynn Neugebauer, 26, of Magnum, Okla., offering a "hit of this stuff," referring to illegal drugs, the Altus (Okla.) Times reported Thursday.

Link:
http://www.globe-democrat.com/news/2010/mar/21/police-woman-texted-agent-about-drugs/

CORI reform in MA will it be a reality?

Despite years of protests, chatter, executive orders, and legislative proposals, Massachusetts remains a lousy place to be a former criminal offender. And despite a lot of talk emanating from the State House, there is no guarantee that this will change in the hothouse of an election year. Reform of the state’s Criminal Offenders Record Information law, better known as CORI, is stalled even though the governor, House speaker and Senate president all support it.

How could a law with such high-powered support be trapped in a committee? Well, because that committee is chaired by the honorable Eugene O’Flaherty, a Chelsea Democrat who has never seen a CORI proposal he could support. He has killed every attempt at meaningful reform for several years.

The proposal O’Flaherty now has bottled up is designed to strike a reasonable balance between access and disclosure. Under the plan, felony records would be sealed after 10 years and misdemeanor records after five. Unlike the current incoherent system in which some employers have access to criminal information while others don’t, most prospective employers would be able to get the information, which would be stored online.


Link:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/03/20/the_wait_is_also_a_crime/

A new tool for private investigators Accurint Killer is set to be unveiled this month.

Accurint® is the most widely accepted locate-and-research tool available to government, law enforcement and commercial customers. Its proprietary data linking and analysis technology, LexisNexis® Link ID™, securely and intelligently analyzes billions of partial and complete records, and then filters and links that information based on relevance to provide a complete picture of an individual—all in a matter of seconds.

Hank Asher says the new database "product'' he is developing — AK, for Accurint Killer — will revolutionize the businesses of assessing risk and investigating fraud. He plans to introduce AK in March at a conference of private investigators in Dallas, where he and John Walsh will be featured speakers.

Asher acknowledges that AK could be very profitable.

"Half-a-trillion dollars of fraud has come to us looking for remedies,'' he says. "I've never seen financial opportunities like this in my life. I think it will do several billion dollars a year.''

Could it also flag potential terrorists, like the Nigerian who got on a U.S.-bound flight Christmas Day despite many signs he was up to no good? Asher, whose MATRIX technology sparked such privacy concerns after 9/11, hints that it could.

"Our new systems have the capacity to address tomorrow's risks and threats. We have built the next generation of what I built before. It's going to be much less safe to be dangerous.''


Links: http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/article1064010.ece
http://www.accurint.com/

Federal Court documents are more widely available and at a lower cost.

At its closed-door meeting at the Supreme Court today, the Judicial Conference approved measures aimed at making federal court documents and courtroom audio recordings more widely available and at lower cost.

The conference, the policy-making arm of the federal judiciary, voted to increase the number of documents members of the public can obtain free through the PACER system. Currently, users can get up to $10 worth of free documents annually, but now they can get $10 free per quarter. Anthony Scirica, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit and chair of the conference's executive committee, said that based on past usage patterns, the change would mean that 75 per cent of PACER users would pay nothing for a year of use. Scirica held a press conference at the Court following the conference meeting.

Public access advocates have been pressuring the judiciary to make access to court documents free, but Scirica said that Congress has also made it clear that "it doesn't want tax dollars to pay for this access," so some charges for high-volume requesters were retained. He said the PACER system received 360 million document requests last year.
The conference also moved to expand on a successful two-year pilot program that has made digital audio of court proceedings available through PACER at a handful of district and bankruptcy courts nationwide. The cost of obtaining the recordings will go from $26 to $2.40, and all federal courts will be encouraged to make recordings available if they already digitally record their proceedings. "It was well-received, and got high marks," said Scirica. Several appeals courts already bypass PACER by posting free audio of hearings on their Web sites, and that will not change.

Link:
http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2010/03/federal-courts-move-toward-more-public-access.html

The EFF posts information on how law enforcement agencies use social networking sites to gather information.

EFF has posted documents shedding light on how law enforcement agencies use social networking sites to gather information in investigations. The records, obtained from the Internal Revenue Service and Department of Justice Criminal Division, are the first in a series of documents that will be released through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case that EFF filed with the help of the UC Berkeley Samuelson Clinic.

The Justice Department released a presentation entitled "Obtaining and Using Evidence from Social Networking Sites." The slides, which were prepared by two lawyers from the agency's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, detail several social media companies' data retention practices and responses to law enforcement requests. The presentation notes that Facebook was “often cooperative with emergency requests” while complaining about Twitter’s short data retention policies and refusal to preserve data without legal process. The presentation also touches on use of social media for undercover operations.

Over the next few months, EFF will be getting more documents from several law enforcement and intelligence agencies concerning their use of social networking sites for investigative purposes. We'll post those files here as they arrive.

Link:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/eff-posts-documents-detailing-law-enforcement

Dallas police want your blood if you're accused of an OUI.

Dallas police want to join a growing national trend by making all suspected drunken drivers take a blood test, but the price tag for such a program may be too high for now.

Under a proposed policy, the Breathalyzer would become a thing of the past. And police would seek a search warrant to get blood from any suspected DWI driver who refused to take the blood test.

Arizona has implemented an intensive program to train officers as blood technicians, and the program is becoming the national standard.

Many of the state's larger police agencies, including Phoenix, Mesa, Scottsdale, Tucson and the state highway patrol, have gone to an all-blood DWI testing program, said Phoenix Detective Kemp Layden, who supervises his department's program.

In Phoenix, any person arrested on suspicion of DWI is asked to voluntarily take a blood test. If the person refuses, officers obtain a warrant.


Link:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/yahoolatestnews/stories/031510dnmetdwi.4387980.html

Forensic Science in need of reform, claims Clifford Spiegelman.

Clifford Spiegelman is a distinguished professor of statistics at Texas A&M, where he has been on faculty for 23 years. He is also a senior research scientist at the Texas Transportation Institute. His applied research interests include chemometrics, transportation statistics, environmetrics, and statistical forensics.

"As currently constructed, however, the practice of forensic science should largely get a no-confidence vote, with the possible exception of DNA evidence (even though the scientific community has yet to be allowed access to the DNA database.) Indeed, Michael Saks and Jonathan Kohler, in a 2005 Science review article, name forensic science testing errors as a contributing factor in 63% of the wrongful convictions in 86 DNA cases studied by the Innocence Project. False or misleading statements by forensic examiners contributed to 27% of the false convictions studied.

The painful truth is that nearly all forensic procedures have been developed without much involvement from the statistical community or enough involvement from the independent, university-based scientific community or federal research labs.

As a result, forensic results are typically stated with uncertainty statements that cannot be supported. For example, it is typical in firearm toolmark identifications to state that, to a practical certainty, the defendant’s gun fired the bullets found in a decedent. Two recent National Research Council (NRC) reports (Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States:A Path Forward and Ballistic Imaging) conclude there is no statistical foundation for such an absolute statement. Also, some federal and state jurisdictions recently ruled that firearm toolmark examiners may only testify that it is more likely than not that the defendant’s gun fired the bullets found in a decedent. (See State of Ohio v. Anderson (pdf) and U.S. v. GLYNN.) That is, the courts require only a better than 50-50 chance of a match."


Link: http://magazine.amstat.org/2010/03/scipolmar10/

Guide on how to erase information from your hard drives and thumb drives.

Sure, you could erase the contents of the drive, but keep this in mind: the act of erasing a file does not remove it from a storage device.
I recommend using a hammer!

When you erase/delete a file from your computer, it's not really gone until the areas of the disk it used are overwritten by new information. If you use the normal Windows delete function, the "deleted" file is sent to the Recycle Bin until the space it uses is required by other files. If you use Shift-Delete to bypass the Recycle Bin, the space occupied by the file is marked as available for other files. However, the file could be recovered days or even weeks later with third-party data recovery software. As long as the operating system does not reuse the space occupied by a file with another file, the "deleted" file can be recovered.

Link:
http://gizmodo.com/5489933/leave-no-trace-how-to-completely-erase-your-hard-drives-ssds-and-thumb-drives

Lifelock admits to misleading the public and ordered to pay $12 Million.

LifeLock agreed to pay $12 million Tuesday to settle claims brought by the Federal Trade Commission and 35 states that the identity security company overstated its ID theft protection services and exaggerated consumer risk.
One of the largest joint FTC-state settlements on record, the final judgment in San Diego Superior Court prohibits LifeLock from overstating its services or inflating consumers' risk of identity theft.

According to the joint investigation, LifeLock falsely advertised that it could remove personal information from criminal Web sites if the information had been obtained illegally. But in reality, investigators say, LifeLock only notified consumers when their information had been compromised.
LifeLock further agreed to stop promising customers that they were protected against all forms of identity theft, that they would be reimbursed for losses if their identities were stolen, and that they would receive phone calls before any new credit accounts were opened in their names.
LifeLock also said it would no longer promise to constantly monitor customers' consumer reports or prevent unauthorized changes to their address information.

The FTC’s complaint charged that the fraud alerts that LifeLock placed on customers’ credit files protected only against certain forms of identity theft and gave them no protection against the misuse of existing accounts, the most common type of identity theft. It also allegedly provided no protection against medical identity theft or employment identity theft, in which thieves use personal information to get medical care or apply for jobs. And even for types of identity theft for which fraud alerts are most effective, they do not provide absolute protection.

Links: http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/03/09/25398.htm
http://www.databreaches.net/?p=10553

Medical identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in the country.

While you're probably well aware of identity theft and its impact on your credit, you may not be aware of a type of identify theft that can be even more harmful to you personally -- medical identity theft. You may not only end up with bills incurred by the person who steals your identity, but the crime can even prove fatal.

Medical identity theft is a crime that can cause great harm to its victims. Yet despite the profound risk it carries, it is the least studied and most poorly documented of the cluster of identity theft crimes. It is also the most difficult to fix after the fact, because victims have limited rights and recourses. Medical identity theft typically leaves a trail of falsified information in medical records that can plague victims’ medical and financial lives for years.

When someone uses your identity, incorrect information gets into your medical files. When you seek care you can end up with the wrong medical history, wrong blood type, wrong allergies and other errors that could end up being deadly for you.
In many cases the ID thieves steal your personal information to make money by filing fraudulent claims against your own health policy. Medical ID thieves often get your personal information, such as your health-insurance number and Social Security number, from employees at medical facilities. The information is then resold on the black market. Another way they get the information is to hack into medical databases. For example, at one medical clinic in Weston, Florida, a front desk clerk downloaded information of more than 1,100 Medicare patients and gave it to a cousin who made $2.8 million in false Medicare claims.

Many times you'll never know you are a victim of Medical ID theft, which can cost you thousands of dollars, unless you check your medical records closely. In most case you won't even know of the fraud until after the damage has been done.

As many as 500,000 Americans have been victims of medical identify theft, according to the World Privacy Forum. Medical identity theft is growing rapidly . The Federal Trade Commission received almost 19,500 reports of medical ID theft between January 1992 to April 2006. About one every four reports were received in 2006.

There are a number of ways Medical ID thieves steal your identity:

Bill your health plan for fake or inflated treatment claims. Often these crooks are doctors or other medical personnel who know how the insurance billing system works. Organized theft rings also are involved. Using stolen information they buy on the black market, they set up fake clinics to file bogus claims. They use your identity to buy prescription drugs. They then sell these prescriptions or use them to feed their own addictions. For example, dishonest pharmacists might bill your policy for narcotics or nurses may call in prescriptions in a patient's name but pick it up themselves or they get free treatment. Medical ID thieves who don't have their own health coverage can use your identity to get free medical treatment based on your policy. They sign into a hospital or clinic using your identity and your policy receives the bills.




Links:
http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/01/02/medical-identity-theft-fastest-growing-fraud-can-be-deadly/
http://www.worldprivacyforum.org/medicalidentitytheft.html

Is organized crime behind your local shoplifting?

Last year, police arrested a Polk County, Florida woman named Blanca Sevilla after she was caught walking out of a grocery store with her purse stuffed with $90 worth of Good Start Soy Baby Formula that she hadn’t paid for.

A classic case of petty shoplifting? Not exactly. After interviewing Sevilla and another baby formula booster named Jessie Lopez as they sat in the county jail, authorities learned that the thieves were part of a 21-member ring of shoplifters headed by Eli Nimrod Castillo-Almendarez, who was arrested in March 2009.


The ring, based in Georgia, was allegedly paid between $100 to $300 a day to methodically steal cans of baby formula in six Florida counties for eventual sale on the black market in North Carolina. The ring’s take in one year totaled $2.5 million, police said, adding that over the ring’s seven-year period of activity, it could have netted $17.5 million.
It wasn’t the first time that Polk County was victimized by what law enforcement and retail industry experts call “Organized Retail Crime” (ORC). In 2008, 18 people were arrested and charged with the theft of $100 million in cosmetic products over the span of five years.

ORC may not fit most people’s image of organized crime. And that may be one reason why it hasn’t received the attention it deserves. Such large-scale theft is often hard to detect from the thousands of shoplifting incidents reported around the country each year, but it “is an extremely sophisticated, coordinated crime, ” Frank Muscato, the ORC investigations supervisor at Walgreens, told Congress during a hearing on the subject in 2008. “It is not opportunistic theft where merchandise like food, clothing, sundries or music are stolen for personal use.”

Link:http://thecrimereport.org/2010/03/04/shoplifting-inc/

Do the New Mexico state police officers have to reach a quota for writing citations?

The information was found after an anonymous tip led us to file a records request for a patrol plan given to some state police officers last year.

The record says, "Santa Fe officers are mandated to average a minimum of 100 citations and three DWI arrests per month, along with any other activity."

The same goes for officers patrolling Pecos.

According to the patrol plan, the consequences for failing to reach that quota include: "lower evaluations ratings," "loss of overtime privileges," and "loss of the ability to switch shifts."

Eyewitness News 4’s Jeremy Jojola asked Chief Faron Segotta about the mandate.

Jojola: “That sounds like a quota."

Segotta: “Well, it's not a quota. I can understand where the public may think it's a quota. It's just like anybody who works out (of) the government sector or the private sector. You're expected to put a work product out."

Chief Segotta calls it a “minimum performance standard.” He says all 12 state police districts in New Mexico have different standards depending on crime levels. Segotta says officers have other work to do that could sometimes prevent them from meeting monthly standards, which he says is fine. But Segotta is adamant; he says there isn't quota.


Link:http://www.kob.com/article/stories/s1448033.shtml?cat=516

In New York the police admit to making arrests to fill a quota, how many other police departments have similar quota's?

An Eyewitness News investigation talks to a police officer who reveals the pressure they are under to make quotas.

When Officer Adil Polanco dreamed of becoming a cop, it was out of a desire to help people not, he says, to harass them.

"I'm not going to keep arresting innocent people, I'm not going to keep searching people for no reason, I'm not going to keep writing people for no reason, I'm tired of this," said Adil Polanco, an NYPD Officer.

Officer Polanco says One Police Plaza's obsession with keeping crime stats down has gotten out of control. He claims Precinct Commanders relentlessly pressure cops on the street to make more arrests, and give out more summonses, all to show headquarters they have a tight grip on their neighborhoods.
Our primary job is not to help anybody, our primary job is not to assist anybody, our primary job is to get those numbers and come back with them?" said Officer Polanco.

Eyewitness News asked, "Why do it?"

"They have to meet a quota. One arrest and twenty summonses," said Officer Polanco.


Link:
http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/investigators&id=7305356

Are Mexican drug cartels active in every state?

Testifying at a Feb. 24 hearing on the Department of Homeland Security 2010 budget before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said Mexican drug cartel operations are widespread in the United States.

“I was in Mexico City again just last week,” Napolitano said. “We must continue a concerted and sustained effort against these cartels. Ciudad Juarez, a city of 1.5 million people, is right over a bridge from our border, and the rule of law has effectively been lost there.

“The cartels, in essence, have fingertips in the communities across the United States, and so you will see, in different places in the budget, but we are very, very concerned about the situation in Mexico, but we are very, very energized by the effort we are seeing across our federal government and across the Mexican federal government in that regard,” Napolitano said.

According to an April 2008 National Drug Intelligence Center report, Mexican drug cartels are operating in 195 U.S. cities.

“Mexican DTOs [Drug Trafficking Organizations] are the most pervasive organizational threat to the United States,” the report said. “They are active in every region of the country and dominate the illicit drug trade in every area except the Northeast.


Link: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/62109