Newly released documents reveal the TSA wants to body scan pedestrians, train passengers.

Giving Transportation Security Administration agents a peek under your clothes may soon be a practice that goes well beyond airport checkpoints. Newly uncovered documents show that as early as 2006, the Department of Homeland Security has been planning pilot programs to deploy mobile scanning units that can be set up at public events and in train stations, along with mobile x-ray vans capable of scanning pedestrians on city streets.

The non-profit Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) on Wednesday published documents it obtained from the Department of Homeland Security showing that from 2006 to 2008 the agency planned a study of of new anti-terrorism technologies that EPIC believes raise serious privacy concerns. The projects range from what the DHS describes as “a walk through x-ray screening system that could be deployed at entrances to special events or other points of interest” to “covert inspection of moving subjects” employing the same backscatter imaging technology currently used in American airports.

The 173-page collection of contracts and reports, acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request, includes contracts with Siemens Corporations, Northeastern University, and Rapiscan Systems. The study was expected to cost more than $3.5 million.

TSA documents: http://epic.org/privacy/body_scanners/Body_Scan_FOIA_Docs_Feb_2011.pdf


http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/03/02/docs-reveal-tsa-plan-to-body-scan-pedestrians-train-passengers/

A smartphone App. downloaded by 1.5 million people sends user data to an advertising company.

A smartphone application that gathers information on the location of its users was downloaded by more than 1.5 million people, and the data was sent to an advertising company in the United States, according to experts.

The application in question is a goldfish catching game that does not require any information about the user's location to play.

As the GPS data makes it possible to identify a user's location with a margin of error of several meters, it would be possible to presume the user's home or office address if such information was accumulated, they said.

An image showing what type of information is collected appears on the screen before installation, but only a small number of users correctly understand the explanations, the experts said.

There have been no guidelines available on information gathering for smartphones despite the rapid spread of the devices. This seems to have aggravated the situation.

According to an analysis by KDDI R&D Labs in Fujimino, Saitama Prefecture, at the request of The Yomiuri Shimbun, the free application released on the Internet last month was designed to send Global Positioning System information from smartphones to a U.S. advertising firm at a rate of about once per minute.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T111129005172.htm

DHS wants to create a single database to spy on Americans.

Information sharing (or lack thereof) between intelligence agencies has been a sensitive topic in the U.S. After 9/11, there was a push to create fusion centers so that local, state, and federal agencies could share intelligence, allowing the FBI, for example, to see if the local police have anything in their files on a particular individual. Now the Department of Homeland Security wants to create its own internal fusion center so that its many agencies can aggregate the data they have and make it searchable from a central location. The DHS is calling it a “Federated Information Sharing System” and asked its privacy advisory committee to weigh in on the repercussions at a public meeting in D.C. last month

The committee, consisting of an unpaid group of people from the world of corporate privacy as well as the civil liberty community, were asked last December to review the plan and provide feedback on which privacy protections need to be put in place when info from DHS components (which include the TSA, the Secret Service, and Immigration Services, to name a few) are consolidated. The committee raised concerns about who would get access to the data given the potentially comprehensive profile this would provide of American citizens.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/11/29/department-of-homeland-security-wants-all-the-information-it-has-on-you-accessible-from-one-place/

Security App. on millions of phones records peoples keystrokes.

In a YouTube video posted on Monday, Trevor Eckhart showed how software from a Silicon Valley company known as Carrier IQ recorded in real time the keys he pressed into a stock EVO handset, which he had reset to factory settings just prior to the demonstration. Using a packet sniffer while his device was in airplane mode, he demonstrated how each numeric tap and every received text message is logged by the software.

Ironically, he says, the Carrier IQ software recorded the “hello world” dispatch even before it was displayed on his handset.

Eckhart said he chose the HTC phone purely for demonstration purposes. Blackberrys, other Android-powered handsets, and smartphones from Nokia contain the same snooping software, he claims.

The 17-minute video concluded with questions, including: “Why does SMSNotify get called and show to be dispatching text messages to [Carrier IQ]?” and “Why is my browser data being read, especially HTTPS on my Wi-Fi?”

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/30/smartphone_spying_app/

Carrier IQ cellular phone intelligence software training materials 2009

http://info.publicintelligence.net/CarrierIQ-Training.pdf

Malls cancel plans to track shoppers by monitoring their cell phone signals.

Two malls are axing their plans to track shoppers' cell phones, after a U.S. senator raised privacy concerns over the weekend.

As CNNMoney first reported last week, the Promenade Temecula in southern California and Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, Va., launched a survey on Black Friday, tracking shoppers' movements by monitoring the signals from their cell phones.

The original plan was for those malls to continue the survey through New Year's Day, but after receiving a phone call from Sen. Charles Schumer's office over the weekend, they put the survey on hold.

In a press conference on Sunday, Sen. Charles Schumer said the malls should have given shoppers the choice to opt-in.

"A shopper's personal cell phone should not be used by a third party as a tracking device by retailers who are seeking to determine holiday shopping patterns," the New York senator said in a statement. "Personal cell phones are just that -- personal. If retailers want to tap into your phone to see what your shopping patterns are, they can ask you for your permission to do so."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/technology/chi-malls-retreat-on-plans-to-track-shoppers-cell-phones-20111128,0,6644526.story

FAA says drones could soon be patrolling the skies in the U.S.

Police agencies want drones for air support to spot runaway criminals. Utility companies believe they can help monitor oil, gas and water pipelines. Farmers think drones could aid in spraying their crops with pesticides.

"It's going to happen," said Dan Elwell, vice president of civil aviation at the Aerospace Industries Association. "Now it's about figuring out how to safely assimilate the technology into national airspace."

Drone maker AeroVironment Inc. has developed its first small helicopter drone that's designed specifically for law enforcement. If FAA restrictions are eased, the company plans to shop it among the estimated 18,000 state and local police departments across the United States.

Police departments in Texas, Florida and Minnesota have expressed interest in the technology's potential to spot runaway criminals on rooftops or to track them at night by using the robotic aircraft's heat-seeking cameras.

AeroVironment engineers have been secretly testing a miniature remote-controlled helicopter named Qube. Buzzing like an angry hornet, the tiny drone with four whirling rotors swoops back and forth about 200 feet above the ground, capturing crystal-clear video of what lies below.

The new drone weighs 5 1/2 pounds, fits in the trunk of a car and is controlled remotely by a tablet computer. AeroVironment unveiled Qube last month at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Chicago.

"This is a tool that many law enforcement agencies never imagined they could have," said Steven Gitlin, a company executive.

http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/11/29/1677472/drones-could-patrol-in-us-faa.html

Hacker attacks on smart phones are increasing.

Employees have begun using their smartphones to download coupons and price-comparison apps and to make online purchases. This puts consumers and their companies at elevated risks, say technologists and security experts.

"In our bring-your-own-device to work culture, people are using smartphones for both personal and business use — and attacks on these devices are on the rise," says Harry Sverdlove, chief technology officer at network security firm Bit9.

Smartphone attacks are in their infancy compared to PC hacks. They mostly come in the form of malicious apps for games, music and ringtones that phone users get enticed to download, says Armando Orozco, mobile threats analyst at Webroot.

"When installed, these apps gain control of your device to transmit your personal information, control search results and send text messages to premium numbers," Orozco says.

Android phones, so far, are the biggest target because of Google's open approach to letting third-party apps run on its operating system. Bit9 recently released a report showing the Top 12 smartphone handset models most vulnerable to being hacked. All 12 were Android models, led by the Samsung Galaxy Mini, HTC Desire and Sony Ericsson Xperia X10.

Apple's iPhone isn't immune. Websites, like Jailbreakme.com, offer free programs to iPhone owners who wish to circumvent Apple's tight restrictions on which apps they can load on their phones. Hackers could use similar techniques to slip malicious apps onto Apple products, says Matthew Prince, CEO of website security firm CloudFlare.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2011-11-22/bring-your-own-devices/51438324/1

Private investigators are being hired to trawl social-media websites.

Increasingly, corporations are hiring private investigators to trawl social-media sites for intelligence about competitors and to watch for insider leaks, product complaints and evidence of employee misconduct.

Investigators still use the old-fashioned ways -- snapping secret photos, slapping global positioning devices onto cars, tunneling through criminal files. But today's corporate sleuths spend more time mining the mass of information people put online about themselves.

"We use social media primarily to research people," said Avon Lake native Kristin Wenske, an investigative analyst in New York City with Corporate Resolutions Inc., an intelligence service. Wenske's clients are mostly private-equity firms and hedge funds, and before they plow hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars into a company, they want to make sure its management team is clean.

Private investigator Tom Pavlish of Cleveland also has been assigned to check into chief executives of companies targeted for acquisition. In one case, the CEO had a favorable public image, but research unearthed sexual harassment accusations from two sources. Pavlish's client decided not to keep the executive when the deal closed because of the potential exposure and liability if the manager repeated his conduct.

"Remarkably, I've developed negative information even from LinkedIn references," Pavlish said.

More than 82 percent of companies use social media to find out information about their competitors, according to a Forrester Research survey last year of more than 150 companies.
http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2011/11/northeast_ohio_businesses_are.html

Dept. of Justice report: More than half of arrest-related deaths are homicides by law enforcement.

The country saw a reported 4,813 arrest-related deaths between 2003 and 2009, according to new data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Over 60 percent of all the deaths were classified as homicides committed by law enforcement personnel, BJS found.

About 98 million arrests took place in the U.S. during those years. While men accounted for about 76 percent of all arrests, they made up 95 percent of the deaths.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/ard0309st.pdf

If you post on Facebook recent rulings say your posts are discoverable.

Even without appellate case law in Pennsylvania to provide guidance on the discoverability of information on Facebook, the standard is becoming clear: Post at your own risk.

Three courts in this state have now decided that, if a party in a civil case posts information on his or her Facebook page, and that information appears to contradict statements in discovery or testimony, then the party's Facebook page falls within the scope of discovery.

In the most recent case, Largent v. Reed, a Franklin County judge ordered plaintiff Jennifer Largent to turn over her Facebook username and password to defendant Jessica Rosko, who allegedly caused an auto accident that left plaintiffs Jennifer and Keith Largent with "serious and permanent physical and mental injuries."

The decision came in Common Pleas Court Judge Richard J. Walsh's 14-page opinion, the beginning of which reads like a Sunday driver's debriefing on the world's most popular website. According to Walsh, Jennifer Largent's Facebook page brought up questions about the extent of her injuries.

According to the opinion, the page reveals Jennifer Largent posted about going to the gym, despite testifying that she needed to walk with a cane. Pictures on the website show Largent "enjoying life with her family." Walsh pointed to these examples from the "public" profile that helped satisfy the slight relevancy standard the defense needed to probe the rest of her page. The plaintiffs filed negligence and loss of consortium claims.

Walsh said there can be "little expectation of privacy" on a social networking site.
Largent v. Reed Ruling: http://druganddevicelaw.net/Opinions%20in%20blog/Largent.pdf

http://www.law.com/jsp/lawtechnologynews/PubArticleLTN.jsp?id=1202533320095&slreturn=1


Judge orders plaintiff to give defendant her Facebook username and password so defendant can access plaintiff’s account as part of discovery

http://volokh.com/2011/12/01/judge-orders-plaintiff-to-give-defendant-her-facebook-password-so-defendant-can-access-plaintiffs-account-as-part-of-discovery/

Do police need a warrant to read your email?

Do the police need a warrant to read your email? Believe it or not, two decades into the Internet age, the answer to that question is still "maybe." It depends on how old the email is, where you keep it — and it even depends on whom you ask.

A warrant means police have to show probable cause — it's a higher level of oversight, the kind of court order that cops need before they come into your home and, say, rummage through your desk.

The thing is, search warrants take more time and effort, so police sometimes point to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986; it says they don't need a warrant for older emails. Salgado admits that's true — and it's a problem.

"I think that your average user would be very surprised to hear the federal privacy statute that governs cloud computing would allow the disclosure of their emails with nothing more than an administrative subpoena," he says.
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/24/142755551/how-private-is-your-email-it-depends

Malls to begin tracking shoppers cell phones, where is the public outcry?

Attention holiday shoppers: your cell phone may be tracked this year.

As i'm posting this story, i'm dumbfounded this isn't headline news across the country. If the "Occupy" movements needed something to protest this story is surely something we should all protest. It won't be long before authorities subpoena a mall's cell phone records to track Americans.

Starting on Black Friday and running through New Year's Day, two U.S. malls -- Promenade Temecula in southern California and Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, Va. -- will track guests' movements by monitoring the signals from their cell phones.

While the data that's collected is anonymous, it can follow shoppers' paths from store to store.

The goal is for stores to answer questions like: How many Nordstrom shoppers also stop at Starbucks? How long do most customers linger in Victoria's Secret? Are there unpopular spots in the mall that aren't being visited?

While U.S. malls have long tracked how crowds move throughout their stores, this is the first time they've used cell phones.


The tracking system, called FootPath Technology, works through a series of antennas positioned throughout the shopping center that capture the unique identification number assigned to each phone (similar to a computer's IP address), and tracks its movement throughout the stores.


The system can't take photos or collect data on what shoppers have purchased. And it doesn't collect any personal details associated with the ID, like the user's name or phone number. That information is fiercely protected by mobile carriers, and often can be legally obtained only through a court order.


Now, U.S. retailers including JCPenney and Home Depot are also working with Path Intelligence to use their technology, Biggar said.

Home Depot has considered implementing the technology but is not currently using it any stores, a company spokesman said. JCPenney declined to comment on its relationship with the vendor.

If you wish to voice your displeasure here are the Mall's contact information:

Forest City Commercial Management Company owns both malls:
50 Public Square
Cleveland, OH 44113
(216) 621-6060

The Promenade in Temecula
40820 Winchester Road
Temecula, CA 92591
Phone # 951-296-0975

Short Pump Town Center
Mall Management Office
11800 West Broad Street
Richmond, Virginia 23233
Phone # 804-360-1700
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/blackfriday/chi-malls-track-shoppers-cell-phones-on-black-friday-20111122,0,2668219.story

http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/22/technology/malls_track_cell_phones_black_friday/index.htm

Weapons manufacturing companies increasing role in marketing non- lethal options to police.

When Lt. John Pike pepper sprayed Occupy protesters at the University of California-Davis last week, many were outraged at a clearly disproportionate use of force in a nonviolent situation. Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore cop turned academic, wrote that even though he'd been trained to pepper spray noncompliant suspects, actually doing so would be "dumb-ass." In nonviolent situations, police officers should simply step in and haul away protesters, he argued: "Trying to make policing too hands-off means people get Tased and maced for noncompliance. It's not right. But this is the way many police are trained. That's a shame." The Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal found Pike's actions unsurprising considering that "our police forces have enshrined a paradigm of protest policing that turns local cops into paramilitary forces."

But that shift isn't just about police departments buying body armor and tanks. It's also reflected in their increasing reliance on "less-lethal" weapons such as pepper spray, weapons designed to ensure submission while minimizing the chance of deadly injuries to both suspects and officers (as well as reducing departments' legal exposure). One industry analyst predicts that the global market for these kinds of weapons will triple by 2020; more than half of the current market is for "disperse" weapons such as pepper spray.

Naturally, police are the major target for this market, and weapons manufacturers peddle a wide array of less-lethal tools to departments large and small.

Police Ordnance Co. is an example of the types of companies which sell non- lethal weapons to police:
http://192.139.188.71/index.asp

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/11/less-lethal-weapons-pepper-spray-uc-davis

MA- A State police captain suspected of drunk driving was arrested in his unmarked police cruiser but not given a breathalyzer or a field sobrierty test.

A state police captain who led Saugus cops on a chase Saturday night, veering over the center yellow line “numerous times” before finally stopping, apparently was not given a Breathalyzer or field sobriety test, even though town police reported smelling alcohol, a state police supervisor reported signs of intoxication, and he had an empty beer bottle in his cruiser, police said.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/2011_1123statie_takes_offto_florida_after_saugus_chase/

Saugus police went to the Saville Street home of Capt. Tom McCarthy’s girlfriend at about 10:30 p.m. Saturday after an alarm alert.

McCarthy, 47, and his girlfriend had a dispute at the house, and the veteran officer left in his personal unmarked cruiser, police said.

A few minutes later, a Saugus officer saw the vehicle commit a marked lanes violation on Central Street, near the intersection with Main Street, State police said. The Saugus officer turned on his blue lights and stopped the black Ford Crown Victoria.

When the officer asked McCarthy to turn off the car, he drove away, according to police. The Saugus officer, eventually joined by two other Saugus cruisers, followed McCarthy onto the Main Street overpass and down onto Route 1 southbound. McCarthy pulled over in the parking lot outside the Sears Automotive Center at the Square One Mall, where he was arrested, police said.

The officer could smell alcohol on McCarthy's breath, and, when asked to shut off his car, allegedly replied, "you've got to be kidding me, I'm out of here."

Police say McCarthy led them on a chase down route one before finally stopping in the Sears parking lot at Square One mall. He allegedly resisted arrest again, having to be forcibly taken down to the ground. Police say officers found three beer bottles in his cruiser. A state police commander who went to the barracks to speak to McCarthy shortly after his arrest said he appeared to be intoxicated, Procopio said.

State police said it appeared McCarthy had been drinking, but he was not given a Breathalyzer test by local police.
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/mostpopular/29831969/detail.html

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/2011_1122state_police_captain_accused_of_leading_saugus_cops_on_chase/srvc=home&position=recent

License plate readers in the U.S. and how it affects our privacy.

Police can also plug any license plate number into the database and, as long as it passed a camera, determine where that vehicle has been and when. Detectives also can enter a be-on-the-lookout into the database, and the moment that license plate passes a detector, they get an alert.

It’s that precision and the growing ubiquity of the technology that has libertarians worried.

Even though they are relatively new, the tag readers, which cost about $20,000 each, are now as widely used as other high-tech tools police employ to prevent and solve crimes, including surveillance cameras, gunshot recognition sensors and mobile finger­print scanners.

License plate readers can capture numbers across four lanes of traffic on cars zooming up to 150 mph.

With virtually no public debate, police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras, building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles.

Nowhere is that more prevalent than in the District, which has more than one plate-reader per square mile, the highest concentration in the nation. Police in the Washington suburbs have dozens of them as well, and local agencies plan to add many more in coming months, creating a comprehensive dragnet that will include all the approaches into the District.

“It never stops,” said Capt. Kevin Reardon, who runs Arlington County’s plate reader program. “It just gobbles up tag information. One of the big questions is, what do we do with the information?”

Police departments are grappling with how long to store the information and how to balance privacy concerns against the value the data provide to investigators. The data are kept for three years in the District, two years in Alexandria, a year in Prince George’s County and a Maryland state database, and about a month in many other suburban areas.

“That’s quite a large database of innocent people’s comings and goings,” said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union’s technology and liberty program. “The government has no business collecting that kind of information on people without a warrant.”

Should someone access the database for something other than a criminal investigation, they could track people doing legal but private things. Having a comprehensive database could mean government access to information about who attended a political event, visited a medical clinic, or went to Alcoholics Anonymous or Planned Parenthood.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/license-plate-readers-a-useful-tool-for-police-comes-with-privacy-concerns/2011/11/18/gIQAuEApcN_story.html

In the last decade the homicide rate declined to levels last seen in the mid-1960s.

A new report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows homicides have fallen to record lows in the U.S.

The nation’s homicide rate fell to 4.8 homicides per 100,000 U.S. residents in 2010, its lowest level in four decades, the Bureau of Justice Statistics announced today. Much of the decline was in the nation’s largest cities, those with a population of one million or more, where the homicide rate dropped dramatically from 35.5 homicides per 100,000 residents in 1991 to a low of 11.9 per 100,000 in 2008.


The homicide rate doubled from the early 1960s to the late

1970s, increasing from 4.6 per 100,000 U.S. residents in 1962

to 9.7 per 100,000 by 1979.

The homicide rate declined sharply from 9.3 homicides per

100,000 in 1992 to 4.8 homicides per 100,000 in 2010.

 Between 1999 and 2008, the number of homicides remained

relatively constant, ranging from a low of 15,552 homicides in

1999 to a high of 17,030 homicides in 2006. These homicide

numbers were still below those reported in the 1970s, when the

number of reported homicides first rose above 20,000 (reaching

20,710 in 1974).

 The Bureau of Justice Statistics Report:

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf

Tampa, FL- The police department's recent purchase of an armored personnel carrier (tank).

One of the many disturbing trends in America in the post-September 11^th, 2001 era is the steady militarization of domestic police forces who are supposed to “protect and serve” not “intimidate and attack” the people of the United States.

A glaring example of this steady march toward de-facto martial law in which police are so militarized there is little to no difference between them and the military itself occurred at Occupy Tampa recently.

It is essentially a way for the government to bypass the Posse Comitatus act and 1878 by simply militarizing the police to the point where they are indistinguishable from the actual armed forces, effectively eliminating the need to even declare martial law.

For reasons which remain unclear, the Tampa Police Department in Tampa, Florida’s Tactical Response Team, or TRP, rolled out what some have been calling a “tank” to Curtis Hixon Park in downtown Tampa.

As it turns out, the menacing vehicle isn’t technically a tank; instead it is an “Amphibious Rescue Vehicle” which is designed for transporting personnel in extreme conditions.

The Rescue 2 is a massive “12-ton Armored Personnel Carrier (APC)” according to the official city of Tampa website, but the question remains, why on Earth does a domestic police force need a 12-ton APC at a small-scale peaceful protest?

The behemoth vehicle is bullet resistant and “virtually unstoppable,” can drive through five feet of water, handle winds up to 130 miles per hour, carry 13 passengers, and reach 60 miles per hour.

http://theintelhub.com/2011/11/20/militarization-of-police-exemplified-by-%E2%80%9Cvirtually-unstoppable%E2%80%9D-apc-at-occupy-tampa/

Is Facebook holding back your personal data even if you request it?

Facebook has reduced the amount of personal data it releases to users as required by European Union law despite an ongoing audit by Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner.

The agency is auditing Facebook to see if it complies with the country's Data Protection Acts of 1988 and 2003, which transpose the E.U.'s Data Protection Directive, known as 95/46/EC. The laws allow people to request to see their personal data held by a company.

Twenty-two complaints have been filed with the Irish agency by Europe v. Facebook, a group run by Max Schrems, a law student at the University of Vienna. The group contends Facebook is withholding personal data that it should disclose to users on request, in violation of the law.

Since those complaints were filed, the Irish agency has received 150 additional complaints about Facebook's response to data requests and 10 complaints over the company's approach to data protection, wrote Lisa McGann, a senior investigations officer, in an e-mail to IDG News Service on Tuesday.

Facebook may not be confident that it will escape the Irish audit without criticism.

Schrems said he has exchanged e-mails with Richard Allan, Facebook's director of European public policy. Allan has indicated that Facebook is looking into modifying its systems into providing a more in-depth batch of information if the agency finds fault in the company's current strategy, Schrems claimed. Facebook did not comment on Schrems' claim.

Schrems said in recent weeks Facebook is disclosing even less personal information than when he and others began asking the company to view the information it held on them months ago.

When just a few people were making requests to Facebook for their data, the company would send a CD with 57 categories of data, Schrems said in an interview on Tuesday. He said there are at least 19 more data categories, and maybe as many as 24 more that are unknown.

Due to the volume of requests since Europe v. Facebook began its campaign, Facebook is no longer sending CDs to people. Facebook said in a statement that the CD mailout "contains a level of detail that is less useful for the average user -- it is a much rawer collection of data."
http://www.itworld.com/it-managementstrategy/224345/despite-audit-facebook-holds-back-personal-data?page=0,0

New documents reveal how governments are spying on its citizens.

Documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal open a rare window into a new global market for the off-the-shelf surveillance technology that has arisen in the decade since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.


The techniques described in the trove of 200-plus marketing documents, spanning 36 companies, include hacking tools that enable governments to break into people's computers and cellphones, and "massive intercept" gear that can gather all Internet communications in a country. The papers were obtained from attendees of a secretive surveillance conference held near Washington, D.C., last month.

Many technologies at the Washington-area show related to "massive intercept" monitoring, which can capture vast amounts of data. Telesoft Technologies Ltd. of the U.K. touted its device in its documents as offering "targeted or mass capture of tens of thousands of simultaneous conversations from fixed or cellular networks." Telesoft declined to comment.

Among the most controversial technologies on display at the conference were essentially computer-hacking tools to enable government agents to break into people's computers and cellphones, log their keystrokes and access their data. Although hacking techniques are generally illegal in the U.S., law enforcement can use them with an appropriate warrant, said Orin Kerr, a professor at George Washington University Law School and former computer-crime attorney at the Justice Department.


The Surveillance Catalog:
http://projects.wsj.com/surveillance-catalog/#/

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203611404577044192607407780.html

Some police departments are encrypting their radio communications but at what cost to public transparency?

WASHINGTON (AP) – Police departments around the country are moving to shield their radio communications from the public as cheap, user-friendly technology has made it easy for anyone to use handheld devices to keep tabs on officers responding to crimes.

The practice of encryption has become increasingly common from Florida to New York and west to California, with law enforcement officials saying they want to keep criminals from using officers' internal chatter to evade them. But journalists and neighborhood watchdogs say open communications ensure that the public receives information as quickly as possible that can be vital to their safety.

The transition to encryption has put police departments at odds with the news media, who say their newsgathering is impeded when they can't use scanners to monitor developing crimes and disasters. Journalists and scanner hobbyists argue that police departments already have the capability to communicate securely and should be able to adjust to the times without reverting to full encryption. And they say alert scanner listeners have even helped police solve crimes.

Rick Hansen says he's been listening to police communications since he was 13 or 14 and considers efforts to shut them off a way to make government less transparent. The Silver Spring, Md., man says they should use technology to keep sensitive information of the airwaves on a selective basis.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2011-11-20/police-encrypted-radios/51319598/1?loc=interstitialskip

Search Facebook & Twitter messages without logging in.

Kurrently searches Facebook & Twitter
http://www.kurrently.com/

Open Status searches Facebook
http://www.openstatussearch.com/

Medco report finds one in five Americans turn to medications to treat mental disorders.

Medications to treat mental health disorders is soaring among U.S. adults, according to data released Wednesday by Medco Health Solutions, a pharmacy benefit manager.

Twenty percent of all adults said they took at least one medication to treat a mental disorder. Among women, 25% said they took such medication and 20% said they were using an antidepressant.

The survey analyzed prescription drug trends among 2.5 million insured Americans from 2001 to 2010.

Medco researchers also found that adults ages 20 to 44 had the greatest uptick in use of anti-anxiety medications, atypical antipsychotics and drugs to treat ADHD. The number of women on ADHD medications was 2.5 times higher in 2010 than in 2001.
Medco Report "America's State of Mind": http://medco.mediaroom.com/

The number of children under 10 taking antipsychotic medication, which is reserved for the most severe mental illnesses, doubled from 2001 to 2010.
http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb-mental-health-20111116,0,6275462.story

Law enforcement guidelines for 1st. Amendment-protected events.

Taken from the Dept. of Justice Report:

As articulated in the United States Constitution, one of the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment is the right of persons and groups to assemble peacefully. Whether demonstrating, counterprotesting, or showing support for a cause, individuals and groups have the right to peacefully gather. Law enforcement, in turn, has the responsibility to ensure public safety while protecting the privacy and associated rights of individuals.

To support agencies as they fulfill their public safety responsibilities, the Criminal Intelligence Coordinating Council (CICC) developed this paper to provide guidance and recommendations to law enforcement officers in understanding their role in First Amendment-protected events. This paper is divided into three areas, designed to provide in-depth guidance for law enforcement.

The purpose of this paper is to provide greater awareness and understanding of the appropriate role of law enforcement in events and demonstrations where First Amendment rights are involved. This paper provides guidance and recommendations to law enforcement officers as they prepare for, respond to, and follow up with events, activities, and assemblies that are protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America.

As officers address these types of events, the three-stage process identified in this paper should be incorporated into agency policies, manuals, and/or directives. This process, while focusing on law enforcement’s response to First Amendment events and activities, is not designed to limit the ability of officers to engage in normal criminal investigations or public safety missions. A law enforcement agency may have special rules and procedures governing the levels of review and approval required to engage in preliminary or full investigations or other activities discussed herein; as such, officers should be aware of and understand these rules and procedures.
http://info.publicintelligence.net/DoJ-FirstAmendment.pdf

US Dept. of Justice investigates shootings by the Miami police department.

The U.S. Justice Department will investigate whether Miami police violated the constitutional rights of seven black men who were shot to death by officers over an eight-month span, raising tensions in the inner city and sparking demands for an independent review.

The civil investigation — known as a “pattern and practice’’ probe — will examine Miami police policies and training involving deadly force. The goal: to determine if systemic flaws made shootings of black men more likely, rather than unfortunate, last-choice actions, as the officers’ supporters maintain.

A source close to the investigation confirmed Wednesday night that Thomas E. Perez, head of Justice’s civil rights division, and Miami U.S. Attorney Wifredo Ferrer will announce the investigation during a press conference in downtown Miami Thursday morning.

The impending investigation marks the second time in a decade that federal authorities have conducted an investigation into alleged systemic violations of constitutional rights by Miami police officers.

The Justice Department will not conduct criminal investigations into the seven shootings, which are under review by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office. But Justice will look into the Miami Police Department’s training methods, leadership and practices. Any adverse findings could lead to court-enforced reforms, but more frequently, Justice works with a police department to iron out any problems.

 The Justice Department will not conduct criminal investigations? Why bother investigating them at all?
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/11/16/2505941/us-justice-department-to-investigate.html

TX- District Court Judge rules law governing warrantless cellphone tracking is unconstitutional.

In a succinct one-page ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Lynn N. Hughes of the Southern District of Texas declared that the law authorizing the government to obtain cellphone records without a search warrant was unconstitutional. 
Ruling: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/hughesorder1116.pdf

“The records would show the date, time, called number, and location of the telephone when the call was made,” Judge Hughes wrote in the decision, dated Nov. 11. “These data are constitutionally protected from this intrusion.”

Judge Hughes’ decision comes as the U.S. government is facing increasing judicial challenges to its practice of obtaining information about the location of individuals without a search warrant. Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case where the government placed a GPS tracking device under a vehicle and monitored the driver’s movements for a month without a search warrant.

During the argument, Chief Justice John Roberts said to Michael Dreeben, deputy solicitor general of the Justice Department: “If you win this case then there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movement of every citizen of the United States.” The Justice Department argues that people have no expectation of privacy on public roads.

The district court ruling was short, but declarative. It affirmed Magistrate Judge Smith’s decision on constitutional grounds. “When the government requests records from cellular services, data disclosing the location of the telephone at the time of particular calls may be acquired only by a warrant issued on probable cause,” Judge Hughes wrote. “The standard under the [existing law] is below that required by the Constitution.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/11/16/judge-declares-law-governing-warrantless-cellphone-tracking-unconstitutional/

DNA evidence exonerates the accused so why do DA's continue to prosecute?

Hundreds of people in the United States have been cleared by DNA evidence over the last two decades, in some cases after confessing to crimes, often in great detail. Juveniles, researchers have found, are more likely to make false confessions. Four of the five teenagers who were convicted in the brutal 1989 rape of Trisha Meili, known as the Central Park jogger, for example, confessed to the rape but were later exonerated when DNA evidence confirmed another man’s involvement.

For most prosecutors, the presence of post-conviction DNA evidence is enough to prompt action. An examination of 194 DNA exonerations found that 88 percent of the prosecutors joined defense lawyers in moving to vacate the convictions. But in 12 percent of the cases, the prosecutors opposed the motions, and in 4 percent, they did so even after a DNA match to another suspect.

Brandon L. Garrett, a professor of law at the University of Virginia, who studied the exonerations last year, said that many of the cases in which prosecutors dispute the significance of DNA evidence involve defendants who initially confessed to the crimes.       
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/us/dna-evidence-of-innocence-rejected-by-some-prosecutors.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all?src=tp

Texas- DNA Exonerations Continue, but Not for One Man:
http://www.texastribune.org/texas-dept-criminal-justice/hank-skinner/dna-tests-bring-freedom-not-skinner/


Morton Investigator, Medical Examiner Testimony Public:

The former sergeant who led the investigation that resulted in Michael Morton's wrongful conviction in 1987 told lawyers last week that then-District Attorney Ken Anderson wanted to see every report that investigators made as they tried to determine who brutally murdered Christine Morton. If there was information in the file about leads that could have indicated someone else was the killer, retired Williamson County Sheriff's Office Sgt. Don Wood indicated, Anderson would have had access to those details.

Wood provided testimony as part of an ongoing investigation into whether Williamson County officials intentionally withheld information that could have prevented Morton's conviction and life sentence. His statements indicate that Anderson, who is now a Williamson County district judge, would have known about clues that indicated Morton was not the killer. Wood's transcript was made public Friday, along with a statement from the medical examiner in the case refuting allegations that prosecutors made during trial about scientific evidence that proved Morton was the killer.
http://www.texastribune.org/texas-dept-criminal-justice/court-of-criminal-appeals/morton-investigator-medical-examiner-testimony-pub/

The New York City ACLU filed a lawsuit defending the public's right to take pictures in the subway.

The New York Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal lawsuit defending the public’s right to take photographs in the New York City subway system without fear of being arrested or having to show identification to police.

The lawsuit was filed Monday afternoon in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York on behalf of plaintiffs Steve Barry and Michael Burkhart, railroad enthusiasts and photographers who were unlawfully arrested in August 2010 while taking photos of subway trains at the Broad Channel subway stop in Brooklyn. At the time, they were awaiting the arrival of a vintage subway train on display by the New York Transit Museum. They both were charged with unlawful photography, and Barry was handcuffed and charged with failing to produce ID in violation of a Transit Authority rule.

“People cannot be arrested for taking pictures in public places, including the subway, and they cannot be required to carry identification documents,” said NYCLU Associate Legal Director Christopher Dunn, lead counsel on the case. “The police harassment of photographers must stop.”

The lawsuit argues that the arrests violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights. It also maintains that a Transit Authority’s rule requiring people using the city’s transit system to carry ID documents is unconstitutional. The City of New York, the Transit Authority and the NYPD officer who detained the photographers are named as defendants.
http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/nyclu-lawsuit-defends-right-take-photos-nyc-subway-system

ACLU Lawsuit Pdf
http://www.nyclu.org/files/releases/Sub_Photo_ID_Complaint_11.14.11.pdf

Cincinnati protestor charged with disorderly conduct after taking pictures of a covert police vehicle.

When did it become illegal to take pictures of police vehicles?

One individual, 36-year-old Lloyd Jordan, of Clifton, was charged with disorderly conduct while intoxicated and obstructing official business after police officers said he took photographs of a covert police vehicle, including the license plate. His arrest sheet does not address why officers believed Jordan to be intoxicated.
http://communitypress.cincinnati.com/article/AB/20111116/NEWS010701/311160147/16-Occupy-Cincinnati-protesters-arrested?odyssey=nav|head

TX- Police to begin using an unmanned aerial drone to spy on citizens.

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office is weeks away from launching an unmanned aerial asset to help deputies fight crime. The ShadowHawk helicopter is six-feet long, weighs fifty pounds and fits in the back of an SUV.

“We can put it over a fire, put it over ahazmat spill, put it over a house with a suspect barricaded inside and literally give the incident commander the ability to look at the entire scene with a bird’s eye view, ” Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel said.

It’s equipped with an infrared camera that can clearly read a license plate from an elevation of twelve hundred feet. The helicopter cost upwards of $300,000 and was purchased with a grant from the federal government.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/11/16/drone-gives-texas-law-enforcement-birds-eye-view-on-crime/

CA- City council ok's plan to use an unmanned plane to spy on it's citizens.

Lancaster will soon begin filming its citizens from above, as a camera-equipped plane circles over the city under a controversial plan to track potential criminal activity.

The program, unanimously approved by the City Council this week, will utilize a Cessna 172 fixed-wing aircraft equipped with a recording device.

The plane will fly 10 hours a day, from altitudes of 1,000 to 3,000 feet as its pilot watches for robberies, drug deals, car accidents and other incidents. The footage will be sent in real time to the local Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department station.

The plane will cost about $1.3 million to launch, while operating costs will run about $90,000 a month.

http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_19319734

Big Brother in your automobile, how your high-tech car can testify against you.

Today’s high-tech automobiles increasingly rely on computers to maximize performance and monitor operating systems. But while the under-the-hood computers are doing that, they may also be recording data about your driving.

Typically, that information is collected by a vehicle’s “event data recorder,” or EDR, a computer module that is often compared to the “black box” on a commercial airliner. Among other things, EDRs are capable of recording a number of driver behaviors, including brake application, steering, speed at time of impact in the event of a crash and whether the driver and passengers were using seatbelts.

“Essentially, vehicles nowadays are a huge conglomeration of computer chips and modules,” said Mike McCullough, a retired Phoenix police detective who investigated serious crashes for many years. “And the electronic data they collect is going to become more and more common as evidence down the road.”

The rules do not require EDRs – already in use in more than 85 percent of U.S. vehicles – but they mandate that in cars that have them, the devices must capture and preserve at least 15 types of crash data, including pre-crash speed, engine throttle, changes in forward velocity and airbag deployment times. And one day, the agency noted in its final rule, they may even play a role in getting emergency medical service quickly dispatched to the scene of an accident by automatically sending a 911 alert.

“Electronic evidence is admitted in almost every trial in America, whether it’s a phone bill or electric bill or a document that’s created, stored or transmitted electronically,” said Mark D. Rasch, director of cybersecurity and privacy consulting at the technology services company CSC and former head of the Justice Department’s computer crime unit. “… When you think about it, even a crime scene photograph is electronic evidence now.”
http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/11/8743687-digital-evidence-becoming-central-in-criminal-cases

Opt-out of Google's wireless database.

From tagging a post with your location, to checking in to a restaurant, to simply finding out where you are, location-based services have become some of the most popular features of today’s Internet. One of the key ways technology companies are able to determine a location for these services is through a location database, which matches publicly broadcast information about local wireless networks with their approximate geographic location. By looking for wireless access points that are close to a user’s phone, location providers can return the approximate location you need. In addition, this method is a good alternative to other approaches, like GPS, because it’s faster, it works indoors, and it’s more battery-efficient.

The wireless access point information we use in our location database, the Google Location Server, doesn’t identify people. But as first mentioned in September, we can do more to address privacy concerns.

We’re introducing a method that lets you opt out of having your wireless access point included in the Google Location Server. To opt out, visit your access point’s settings and change the wireless network name (or SSID) so that it ends with “_nomap.” For example, if your SSID is “Network,” you‘d need to change it to “Network_nomap.”

To get started, visit this Help Center article to learn more about the process and to find links with specific instructions on how to change an access point’s SSID for various wireless access point manufacturers.

As we explored different approaches for opting-out access points from the Google Location Server, we found that a method based on wireless network names provides the right balance of simplicity as well as protection against abuse. Specifically, this approach helps protect against others opting out your access point without your permission.

Finally, because other location providers will also be able to observe these opt-outs, we hope that over time the “_nomap” string will be adopted universally. This would help benefit all users by providing everyone with a unified opt-out process regardless of location provider.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/greater-choice-for-wireless-access.html

Facebook admits it tracks anyone who visits its website even if you're not a member.

Facebook officials are now acknowledging that the social media giant has been able to create a running log of the web pages that each of its 800 million or so members has visited during the previous 90 days. Facebook also keeps close track of where millions more non-members of the social network go on the Web, after they visit a Facebook web page for any reason.

To do this, the company relies on tracking cookie technologies similar to the controversial systems used by Google, Adobe, Microsoft, Yahoo and others in the online advertising industry, says Arturo Bejar, Facebook's engineering director.

Facebook's efforts to track the browsing habits of visitors to its site have made the company a player in the "Do Not Track" debate, which focuses on whether consumers should be able to prevent websites from tracking the consumers' online activity.

Rather than appease its critics, Facebook's public explanations of how it tracks and how it uses tracking data have touched off a barrage of questions from technologists, privacy advocates, regulators and lawmakers around the world.

"Facebook could be tracking users without knowledge or permission, which could be an unfair or deceptive business practice," says Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., co-sponsor with Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, of a bill aimed at limiting online tracking of children.

The company "should be covered by strong privacy safeguards," Markey says. "The massive trove of personal information that Facebook accumulates about its users can have a significant impact on them — now and into the future."

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2011-11-15/facebook-privacy-tracking-data/51225112/1?loc=interstitialskip

Why don't Americans stand up for their privacy and civil rights?

Jonathan Turley:

"Below is my column today in The Washington Post. The article explores the famed Katz test and whether, in trying to save privacy in America, the Supreme Court may have laid the seeds for its destruction. The test ties our privacy protections to our privacy expectations. Thus, as our expectations falls, warrantless surveillance rises — causing our expectations again fall and in turn allowing warrantless surveillance to rise further. It becomes a face to the bottom of privacy. The terrible truth is that the death of privacy in America will not be accompanied by thunderous applause, but a collective yawn from an indifferent people.

In Katz, the court was dealing with decades of increasing surveillance under the “trespass doctrine,” established in 1928, which allowed the government to conduct warrantless surveillance so long as it did not physically trespass on the property of a citizen. When the court created the ill-conceived doctrine, technology was already making the trespass test meaningless. With new devices, agents could listen to conversations without entering a home or office. This is why the court’s pronouncement that the Constitution “protects people, not places” was such a victory for civil liberties. But what if the people don’t care?

Under the Katz test, warrants would be needed when there is a “reasonable expectation of privacy” by a citizen. But that standard laid the foundation for the demise of privacy. As we come to expect less privacy, we are entitled to less of it.

As warrantless surveillance rises, our expectations fall, allowing such surveillance to become more common. The result is a move toward limitless police powers. Those declining expectations are at the heart of the Obama administration’s argument in Jones, where it insists that the government is free to track citizens without warrants because citizens expect to be monitored.

The problem is not with the government but with us. We are evolving into the perfect cellophane citizens for a new transparent society. We have grown accustomed to living under observation, even reassured by it. So much so that few are likely to notice, let alone mourn, privacy’s passing."
http://jonathanturley.org/2011/11/13/what-much-privacy-do-you-expect-the-death-of-privacy-in-america/

The FBI can shield its terrorism-investigation data from the public.

  Mamhattan, NY - The FBI can shield its terrorism-investigation data from the prying eyes of New York Times investigative journalist Charlie Savage, a federal judge ruled.

Savage repeatedly sought FBI data through the Freedom of Information Act for a series of articles exposing how federal authorities vigorously probed thousands of people without reasonable suspicion.

 The first request, placed in November 2009, demanded:
 "Statistics on the aggregate results of assessments the FBI has conducted using the new authorities provided by the AG Guidelines that were put into effect in December 2008. Breaking down the numbers into each of the six types of assessments, how many were converted into predicated investigations (preliminary or full investigations) based upon the information developed in those assessments and how many were closed? How many are still ongoing? Please provide the most up to date numbers available at the time the reply to this request is provided.

  On March 7, 2011, the FBI gave Savage the unredacted Senate letter containing the assessment statistics, which stated:
"The FBI has initiated 11,667 Type 1 and Type 2 assessments, 3,062 of which are ongoing. 427 preliminary and full investigations have been opened based upon information developed in these Type I and Type 2 assessments. 480 Type 3, 4, 5, and 6 assessments have been initiated, of which 422 remain open."
http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/11/10/NYT%20FBI%20FOIA.pdf

Why the militarization of our nation's police force should concern everyone.

Police forces throughout the country have purchased military equipment, adopted military training, and sought to inculcate a "soldier's mentality" among their ranks. Though the reasons for this increasing militarization of American police forces seem obvious, the dangerous side effects are somewhat less apparent.

 Experts in the legal community have raised serious concerns that allowing civilian law enforcement to use military technology runs the risk of blurring the distinction between soldiers and peace officers.

There are more than 50,000 police paramilitary raids in the United States each year – more than 130 every day. Virtually all are for prosecution of drug warrants, the vast majority involving marijuana. Many jurisdictions use SWAT teams for execution of every search warrant for drugs.

The extent of this weapon "inflation" does not stop with high-powered rifles, either. In recent years, police departments both large and small have acquired bazookas, machine guns, and even armored vehicles (mini-tanks) for use in domestic police work.

To assist them in deploying this new weaponry, police departments have also sought and received extensive military training and tactical instruction. Originally, only the largest of America's big-city police departments maintained S.W.A.T. teams, and they were called upon only when no other peaceful option was available and a truly military-level response was necessary. Today, virtually every police department in the nation has one or more S.W.A.T. teams, the members of whom are often trained by and with United States special operations commandos. Furthermore, with the safety of their officers in mind, these departments now habitually deploy their S.W.A.T. teams for minor operations such as serving warrants. In short, "special" has quietly become "routine."

The shock-and-awe drug enforcement tactics now employed almost a thousand times each week have needlessly injected a high risk of violence into the prosecution of what are almost always non-violent, consensual crimes.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/11/cops-with-machine-guns-how-the-war-on-terror-has-militarized-the-police/248047/#

SWAT Teams, Flash-Bang Grenades, Shooting the Family Pet: The Shocking Outcomes of Police Militarization in the War on Drugs:
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/153048/why_the_increasing_militarization_of_the_war_on_drugs_is_terrible_for_america

Federal Appeals Court in VA. rules police can break into your house without a warrant.

The US Supreme Court ruled 27 years ago that police could not forcibly enter someone's home over suspected drunk driving. The Fourth District US Court of Appeals in an unpublished decision is looking to change the precedent. A three-judge appellate panel considered the case of Alan J. Cilman who had filed a false arrest lawsuit after Officer M.A. Reeves busted down his door, without a warrant, on October 3, 2004.

Earlier that day, Cilman had left Neighbors Restaurant where he watched a football game and had dinner and drinks. Reeves claimed Cilman drove out of the Neighbors parking lot at a "high rate of speed." Reeves followed, noting that Cilman had run a stop sign, failed to signal and accelerated quickly in turns. Accounts differ over whether Reeves turned on his police lights before Cilman made it to the driveway of his home, which was not far away. Reeves got out of his cruiser as Cilman was walking briskly to the door. Reeves told Cilman to stop, but he did not say the man was under arrest. Cilman told the officer to get off his property as he went inside and locked the door.

Reeves waited for backup, then kicked in Cilman's door and arrested him for being drunk in public and evasion without force -- not driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI). Prosecutors later dropped those charges. The US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia agreed that kicking in Cilman's door without a warrant was a violation of the Fourth Amendment, but a jury awarded Cilman $0 in damages as compensation. Officer Reeves appealed the judge's finding that he had violated the Constitution, because under state law he would be forced to resign if found guilty of a second constitutional violation.

In the 1984 US Supreme Court case Welsh v. Wisconsin, the high court ruled that "police may not make a warrantless entry into a home to make an arrest for DUI." The US Court of Appeals panel ruled this precedent did not apply because Virginia imposes a higher fine and longer jail sentence than Wisconsin for DUI.

"No controlling Supreme Court or Fourth Circuit precedent speaks to a person's right to be free from a warrantless entry into his home in circumstances like those in the case at hand," the appellate judges ruled in a per curiam decision.

Cilman charged that Vienna's police exhibited a pattern of Fourth Amendment violations, but the appellate panel dismissed this by calling the reports "isolated, unprecedented incidents." The judges reversed every judgment in Cilman's favor and ordered the case dismissed in its entirety.
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/36/3638.asp
Climan v. Reeves Ruling:
http://www.thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/2011/us-duientry.pdf

MelonCard allows you to remove personal online information using one website.

Founders Robert Leshner and Geoff Hayes came up with the idea for MelonCard purely by fate. While the pair was working on their first project – Drawn.to – they stumbled across researching how to remove personal information from the web.

“After looking around, we found it’s a really cumbersome and time consuming process,” explained Leshner. “You have to send faxes all over saying please stop selling my information. The process is broken so we took 24 hours and dedicated ourselves to building this really rough prototype of MelonCard.”

Once a MelonCard account is set up, members click on the Dashboard and select which sites remove information from. The type of information removed varies from basics like phone numbers to interests and views on politics. A tally on the dashboard shows how many sites have been expunged and a grade level of privacy.

The prototype was shared among friends that later found the tool’s automated system to be much simpler and more practical than current solutions. It took care of a big concern for avid Internet users. The initial site, which had an automatic way for information to be removed from six or seven companies, has expanded since then.
https://meloncard.com/

NY- The Border patrol's transportation raids show a disturbing disregard for our Bill of Rights.

American democracy was founded on the idea that people possess certain inalienable rights, among them the right to privacy and the right to move freely about the country. Throughout this nation’s history, Americans have never been required to carry identification papers proving their citizenship. “Show me your papers” is a statement posed to people living under oppressive regimes, not those residing in the world’s oldest democracy.

Anyone who has traveled on trains and buses through upstate New York in recent years has cause to question the federal government’s fealty to these core democratic values. Throughout central and western New York, armed Border Patrol agents routinely board trains and buses nowhere near the border to question passengers about their citizenship. They force certain people to produce documents proving their citizenship or immigration status. Passengers who cannot produce documentation to an agent’s satisfaction are subjected to arrest, detention and potential deportation.

These “transportation raids” occur many miles from the Canadian border or any point of entry into the United States. They do little to protect the border, but they threaten constitutional protections that apply to citizens and immigrants alike, invite racial profiling, tear apart families and burden taxpayers with the cost of detaining individuals who were arrested while innocently going about their business.

The transportation raids also serve as a window into the practices of an agency that, although charged with policing the border, abuses its authority through its unprecedented reach into the interior of the United States and the use of aggressive search and seizure procedures that do not comport with standards and expectations for domestic policing or interior immigration enforcement. While the full extent of the Border Patrol’s interior enforcement practices remains unknown, community groups have documented abuses of power that extend beyond the transportation system and into our state’s towns and villages. These concerns include complaints of Border Patrol agents wrongfully stopping, questioning and arresting individuals, including United States citizens, and engaging in improper enforcement practices in close collaboration with state and local police.

The report extends beyond transportation raids to other Border Patrol practices as well, raising serious concerns about an agency that appears to be driven by the belief that the regular rules of the Constitution do not apply to it.
http://www.nyclu.org/files/publications/NYCLU_justicederailedweb.pdf

A disturbing article about "Intellistreets" or spying street lights.

Charlotte, NC- They can entertain, save energy, and the designer says they could save your life.

 But some say “Intellistreets” should really be called "spying street lights." 

The designer says the lights aren't some type of spook technology. But, they can detect movement and determine whether it's a person, car, or even an animal. Late at night, if there's too much movement, the light will notify police.

 "A city official, city employee, or police office could ask to retrieve an image. But they have to ask to retrieve an image in the form of a picture of what was going on at that pole or two poles or at the intersection," said Ron Harwood, president of Illuminating Concepts.

We talked to the deputy chief of homeland security in Charlotte.

He says if the city installed street lights with surveillance abilities... you would never know.

http://www.foxcharlotte.com/news/local/Street-Lights-Double-As-Surveillance-133411623.html

Update from the "GPS" Supreme Court arguments.

Kashmir Hill, Forbes Staff:

Justice Anthony Scalia, meanwhile, who is known as a privacy skeptic, focused on the "trespass”  involved in the cops actually going up to a car and attaching a device to it. He argued it was okay, though “sneaky,” for cops to get someone to put a beeper in Knotts’s car surreptitiously, but that by doing this themselves in the Jones case, that they had violated the Fourth Amendment protection of his “house, papers and effects.” Sticking to that line of reasoning would likely not be very reassuring to those people who are worried about the applicability of this case to tracking people using the GPS device we all hold near and dear to our hearts, literally: our cell phones.

Justice Anthony Kennedy started pushing in that direction, asking Dreeben whether it would be okay for the Gov to put a tracking device on someone’s coat to follow their movements. Dreeben demured at that, saying that would track someone in a private residence, not just their public movements on a road, so that would be a violation of privacy.

Chief Justice Roberts then posed a hypothetical: “Would it be okay for the government to put GPS trackers on the cars of all of us without a warrant, and track our movements?” he asked, gesturing at his fellow justices. The government’s attorney replied that it would be, since their movements would only be tracked on public streets. They looked understandably put off by this line of reasoning.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/11/08/supreme-court-justices-concerned-about-pervasive-technology-enabled-government-surveillance/

Collision magazine is another useful tool PI's can use when looking into automobile accidents.

Collision Publishing is pleased to offer the number one publication for accident reconstruction and traffic investigation: "Collision: The International Compendium for Crash Research".

Over the course of the last 6 years, Collision Magazine has become the preeminent crash reconstruction print publication providing subscribers with access to timely, reliable and fresh research, thought-provoking reconstruction related studies and meaningful crash test data from multiple sources.

  A semi-annual publication, Collision serves crash reconstructionists from the government and private sectors internationally.  Included with every issue is a DVD compendium of the proceedings of either the ARC-CSI Crash Conference or the CDR User's Summit including presentations, reference material, crash data, videos, photos, and much more.

http://www.collisionpublishing.com/

Insurance companies use investigators to spy on your Twitter account & your Facebook page.

Los Angeles, CA -The next time you post something on Facebook or Twitter, ask yourself: who else is looking at this besides my friends?

That's because your insurance company could be monitoring your accounts, looking for information that could raise your premium or even deny your claim.

Kurt Nordland never dreamed photos he posted on his Facebook page would create huge problems. The pictures show him drinking a beer and relaxing with his friends at the beach.

But his friends weren't the only ones checking out his Facebook status.

Investigators from the insurance company paying his worker's comp benefits were watching his Facebook account too.

And soon after the photos were posted, the insurance company canceled his payments, cut off his medical benefits and Nordland had to delay surgery to repair torn cartilage in his shoulder.

"I was extremely surprised they could just go on your Facebook and pull these pictures out," Nordland said.

What Nordland experienced is a trend happening all over the country: insurance companies snooping on social media sites.

Depending on your privacy settings, they can conceivably see tweets, photos and updates on what you're doing.
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/consumer&id=8422388&cmp=fb-kabc-article-8422388

California man finds two GPS trackers on his SUV.

As the Supreme Court gets ready to hear oral arguments in a case Tuesday that could determine if authorities can track U.S. citizens with GPS vehicle trackers without a warrant, a young man in California has come forward to Wired to reveal that he found not one but two different devices on his vehicle recently.

The 25-year-old resident of San Jose, California, says he found the first one about three weeks ago on his Volvo SUV while visiting his mother in Modesto, about 80 miles northeast of San Jose. After contacting Wired and allowing a photographer to snap pictures of the device, it was swapped out and replaced with a second tracking device. A witness also reported seeing a strange man looking beneath the vehicle of the young man’s girlfriend while her car was parked at work, suggesting that a device may have been retrieved from her car.

Then things got really weird when police showed up during a Wired interview with the man.

The young man, who asked to be identified only as Greg, is one among an increasing number of U.S. citizens who are finding themselves tracked with the high-tech devices.

The Justice Department has said that law enforcement agents employ GPS as a crime-fighting tool with “great frequency,” and GPS retailers have told Wired that they’ve sold thousands of the devices to the feds.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/11/gps-tracker-times-two/

The U.S. Supreme Court will address the ‘Reasonable Expectation of Privacy’ issue on Nov. 8th.

One of the most difficult, and potentially most important cases of the U.S. Supreme Court term will be argued on Nov. 8. United States v. Jones involves the question of whether it is a search or seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when the police plant a GPS device on a person’s vehicle and monitor it for 24 hours a day, for 28 days.

Since Katz v. United States, decided in 1967, the Supreme Court has defined the protections of the Fourth Amendment in terms of the “reasonable expectation of privacy.” But how does that apply in this situation?

People have the expectation that police are not planting a device on their car to monitor their every move. As technology develops, police are gaining more ability to follow anyone at any time. A great deal of personal information can be learned by following someone for weeks.

Yet, said Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, “There is something creepy and un-American about such clandestine and underhanded behavior.” Kozinski, dissenting from denial of en banc rehearing in the 2010 case, United States v. Pineda-Moreno, added, “To those of us who have lived under a totalitarian regime, there is an eerie feeling of déjà vu.”

This case involves Antoine Jones, whom the police suspected of cocaine trafficking. The investigation included visual surveillance of Jones and the area around his nightclub, the installation of a fixed camera near the nightclub, a pen register that showed phone numbers of people called or receiving calls from Jones’ phone, and a wiretap for Jones’ cellular phone.

Additionally, the police obtained a warrant authorizing them to install and monitor covertly a GPS tracking device on a Jeep Grand Cherokee registered to Jones’ wife, but used extensively by Jones. The warrant required that the device be installed within a 10-day period and only in the District of Columbia.

But police installed it on the 11th day while the car was in Maryland. Both sides agreed that this was a warrantless planting. This could turn out to be very relevant in the Supreme Court’s decision: it shows that the police can easily get warrants for the use of such tracking devices.
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/keeping_up_with_the_joneses_how_far_does_the_reasonable_expectation_of_priv/