Lawyers for the Obama administration will argue next week that US authorities are not required to obtain a search warrant before attaching a GPS device to an individual’s car in order to keep tabs on them.
The case, set to be heard on Tuesday by the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, comes over a year after a US Supreme Court decision failed to convince the Department of Justice that warrantless GPS tracking is an infringement on Americans’ Constitutional rights.
“This case is the government’s primary hope that it does not need a judge’s approval to attach a GPS device to a car,” Catherine Crump, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) told Wired magazine.
In January 2012 the Supreme Court overruled an Obama administration assertion that police should be permitted to affix a GPS device to a personal vehicle without a search warrant. Questions were left, however, when the Court declined to answer whether that type of search was unreasonable and when justices could not reach a consensus on how police would need to monitor a suspect before requesting a warrant.
“We hold that the government’s installation of a GPS device on a target’s vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movement, constitutes a ‘search,’” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the five-justice majority last January. (more…)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cyber attacks and cyber espionage have supplanted terrorism as the top threats to the United States in an annual “worldwide threat” assessment released on Tuesday by theU.S. intelligence community.
However, in testimony prepared for a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, played down the likelihood of catastrophic attacks on the United States by either cyber attackers or foreign or domestic militants in the immediate future.
In what has become an annual ritual, Clapper presented to the Senate panel a 34-page paper that ran through a wide variety of threats covered by U.S. intelligence agencies.
These included high-profile issues such as North Korea’s belligerence and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, as well as regional and economic issues like continuing instability in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings. Also covered was a potential transition in Cuba and what is predicted to be China’s continuing domination of the world’s supply of rare earth elements.
On two of the most volatile global crisis points, the U.S. spy agencies’ assessment was restrained.
While Iran is improving its expertise in technologies, including uranium enrichment and ballistic missiles, that could be used in a nuclear weapons program, the intelligence community does not believe Iran’s leadership has decided to build a nuclear weapon and does not know if or when it might do so.
This assessment is consistent with a controversial 2007 finding, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, which declared Tehran had “halted its nuclear weapons program” in autumn 2003 and had not restarted it as of mid-2007, although it was keeping open the option of building nuclear weapons. (more…)
CHICAGO (AP) — A Utah-based company has agreed to pay $1 million to settle allegations that it hired convicted felons to sell security systems door to door in Illinois.
The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation announced the settlement Wednesday with Pinnacle Security of Orem, Utah. It’s the largest fine the department has issued against a security company.
The company admitted no wrongdoing in the agreement. State regulators alleged Pinnacle knowingly used deceptive practices and hire unlicensed sales people.
Investigators found that 700 of Pinnacle’s 1,100 employees were not licensed by the state as required. Some had been charged with or convicted of felonies, including larceny, robbery, theft and conspiracy to commit burglary.
The company agreed to stop sales and advertising in Illinois for two years.
Read Original Story Here: www.sfgate.com
PITTSBURGH (AP) — High-tech security? Forget those irksome digital eye scans. Meet the biometric shoe.
A new lab is working to perfect special shoe insoles that can help monitor access to high-security areas, like nuclear power plants or special military bases.
The concept is based on research that shows each person has unique feet, and ways of walking. Sensors in the bio-soles check the pressure of feet, monitor gait, and use a microcomputer to compare the patterns to a master file for that person. If the patterns match the bio-soles go to sleep. If they don’t, a wireless alarm message can go out.
“It’s part of a shoe that you don’t have to think about,” said Marios Savvides, head of Carnegie Mellon University’s new Pedo-Biometrics Lab, in Pittsburgh.
The lab, which has $1.5 million in startup funding, is a partnership with Autonomous ID, a Canadian company that is relocating to several U.S. cities. Todd Gray, the company president, said he saw the potential when his daughter was in a maternity ward decorated with representations of different baby feet all along a wall.
Autonomous ID has been working on prototypes since 2009, with the goal of making a relatively low cost ID system. Gray said they’ve already run tests on sample bio-soles, which are no thicker than a common foot pad sold in pharmacies, and achieved an accuracy rate of more than 99 percent. He said Carnegie Mellon will broaden the tests to include “a full spectrum of society: big, tall, thin, heavy, athletic, multicultural, on a diet, twins and so on.”
Gray wouldn’t speculate on what the system will cost or when it might reach the marketplace, but each worker at a site would have his or her own pair of bio-soles.
“Within the third step, it knows it’s you, and it goes back to sleep,” he said. “If I put on yours, it would know almost instantly that I’m not you.”
The idea may seem far-fetched, but scientists have known for centuries that individuals have unique ways of walking, and in recent years the U.S. Department of Defense has been funding millions of dollars of gait research, as has the Chinese government.
The Institute of Intelligent Machines is doing extensive research into gait biometrics, including reports of systems where a floor monitors footsteps without people’s knowledge.
One expert who is not connected with the CMU lab said the biometric sole seems promising.
“I must admit I find this news very exciting,” said John DiMaggio, an Oregon podiatrist who has worked with law enforcement to use foot information in forensic investigations. While it is too early to fully judge the CMU research plan, DiMaggio said using feet as a biometric identification source makes sense.
While researchers have noted that gait can vary with injuries, fatigue and other factors, Savvides said the bio-soles can detect signs of those things, too.
The bio-soles might also have medical uses. Several papers presented this month at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Vancouver suggest changes in how elderly people walk — such as a slowing pace or variable stride — can provide early warnings of dementia.
Gray said the technology is less invasive of privacy than eye scans and other biometrics, in part because the individual data stays inside the bio-soles. (more…)
Everyone is familiar with party crashers, but have you ever heard of anyone crashing high school sporting events just to get a piggyback ride?
A stocky man shows up in a basketball uniform for a game at Century High School in North Dakota. No one objects because the players and coaches assume he is a fan who had come with another team.
“He helped lay out uniforms, got water. He even gave a couple of kids shoulder massages. Creepy stuff like that,” said Jim Haussler - activities director for the Bismarck Public School District. Creepy is good word to describe this behavior, but it gets weirder.
When the game was over, the hefty man hung out with the winning team on the court and asked if he could get a piggyback ride. One player was caught off guard but gave him one.
“He makes himself appear as if he’s limited or handicapped. I think he plays an empathy card, so to speak,” Haussler said. “We didn’t realize what we were dealing with until several days later.”
They later learned that on that Feb. 4 evening, they had come in contact with the Piggyback Bandit. Sherwin Shayegan of Bothell, Wash., is a 28-year-old man who ingratiates himself with high school sports teams. He then hoists his hefty 5-foot-8, 240-pound frame onto the backs of the student athletes.
Shayegan’s strange acts reach back to 2008 and had been mainly confined to Washington and Oregon. Since last fall, he has taken his strange act east to Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota, leaving a trail of befuddled athletes in his wake.
Shayegan favors basketball games, but he also sprung himself onto hockey, soccer and football players. This guy either asks for piggyback rides, offers to pay for them or sometimes just springs himself onto some poor, unsuspecting player’s back.
Shayegan has also used the guise of pretending to interview athletes for a term paper, acting as a team manager or simply blending in with the group to get his piggyback thrills.
No one has been able to determine why he does these strange things or who coined the “Piggyback Bandit” nickname.
Shayegan, contacted on his cellphone Tuesday, politely declined to talk about the piggyback rides until he could talk to an attorney. “I’d prefer not to comment, if that’s OK,” he said.
Shayegan has a lengthy criminal rapsheet in Washington as well as nine outstanding warrants in one town in that state. His piggyback games caused him to be banned from high school sporting events in Washington, Oregon, Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota.
In October, Shayegan was arrested in Helena, Mont., for jumping on two high school soccer players during a state tournament.
Mark Beckman, executive director of the Montana High School Sports Association said, “What’s disturbing to me is that he is jumping on our young athletes, he is 240 pounds, and he can hurt someone.”
Shayegan pleaded guilty on Feb. 1 to two misdemeanor assault charges. He was fined $730, given a 360-day suspended prison sentence and told not to go to any more Montana high school events. “Go back to Seattle and behave,” Judge Bob Wood told him.
None of this stopped Shayegan. Three days later, he attended the Bismarck basketball game and received another piggyback ride. He also scored another piggyback ride from a hockey player after the game on that same day.
Surveillance video shows Shayegan dressed in a basketball uniform and hanging out with students in the hallway of the Century High School in North Dakota. This one-day spree caused him to be banned from sporting events by the North Dakota High School Activities Association.
Again, Shayegan was not deterred. He took his act to Minnesota that same week and appeared at three basketball games. He even attended one college game. At that Feb. 8 game, Shayegan sat near the St. Olaf bench. As in the Bismark game, everyone assumed he had come with the other team. (more…)
This is a story about a corrupt law enforcement official and his accomplices. So many individuals were involved and there were several witnesses. How did this man think he would never be caught?
For those of you who were not born and raised in Texas, you may not be familiar with a constable. A Texas constable is a law enforcement officer who is elected by the county residents they serve. A constable and the constable’s deputies are the enforcement officers for the local Justice of the Peace. They are peace officers who have a lot of authority. The constable and deputy constables can make arrests, issue citations and are authorized to investigate any crime or traffic offense that happens in their presence or that a citizen reports to them.
Texas constable Fred Walker told the FBI he secretly bugged other official’s offices after they were accused of illegally forcing motorists to forfeit their cash, according to a search warrant affidavit.
Based on interviews conducted by FBI agents and Texas Rangers, the affidavit quotes the Shelby County Constable as saying he authorized the installation of hidden surveillance cameras and digital recorders despite not having the legal authority to do so.
The affidavit also includes a statement from a witness who claims Walker helped organize a scheme to sell drugs seized from suspects.
It’s just another chapter in a longtime drama in Tenaha, a town of 1,160 near the Louisiana border. Fred Walker,53, was Tenaha’s city marshal at the time of the alleged bugging. He was elected as constable in 2010.
Nearly $800,000 in cash has been seized from motorists stopped for traffic violations along U.S. Highway 59 in this town leading to lawsuits and a federal criminal investigation of the county’s former district attorney and other officials. (more…)
Yesterday, I let our readers know that Chicago CBS local news would be covering a story about Valentine’s Day and cheating spouses/partners. CBS 2′s Mai Martinez spent the day with the staff at MSI Detective Services to talk about why Valentine’s Day is such a busy day for private detectives. Martinez also visited the U-Spy Store (owned and operated by MSI Detective Services) for those wishing to purchase their own spy equipment.
If you missed the segment, you can watch the video by clicking on the link to this story at the end.
We expect florists to be busy on Valentine’s Day and candy to fly off the shelves, but did you know it’s also a busy holiday for private investigators?
Forget flowers and chocolates, all some people want for Valentine’s Day is to know if their significant other is cheating.
This is where Perry Myers and his team of private investigators at MSI Detective Services come in.
Theresa Cheriachangel keeps busy with her case load at MSI Detective Services. She said, “A case that I have going on today, she’ll be meeting her … boyfriend for a Valentine’s lunch, and her husband around the same vicinity, actually, for Valentine’s dinner.”
Wow, that is one busy woman. I couldn’t juggle two men let alone keep a straight face. I am a horrible liar.
Private investigators say the above scenario is often the case, making Valentine’s Day one of the best days to catch cheaters.
“As soon as they leave their house, until they come back, we’ll keep an eye on them,” Cheriachangel said.
For those who would rather do the detective work themselves, you can buy some of the same gadgets the pros use such as GPS trackers. “You can actually see where the car is in real time,” said Perry Myers, private detective and owner of MSI Detective Services and the U-Spy Store. (more…)
Last night, I watched Dateline and learned of the Jon-Adrian Velazquez story. Today, his story had made the headlines.
Velazquez, 36, is serving a 25-to-life sentence for killing a retired cop during a botched robbery at an illegal gambling parlor. There was no physical or DNA evidence and Velazquez’s guilt rested largely on the identification of dubious eye-witnesses, one of whom has recanted.
Sadly, there are many stories like this one – innocent people serving time for crimes they did not commit. As one D.A. commented on last night’s program, once you are convicted, it is next to impossible to have that conviction overturned. Even when these cases are reviewed and it’s so obvious the system failed that person, the system does not devote its resources to correcting the wrong.
When Jon-Adrian heard the police wanted to talk to him about the killing of a retired police officer, Albert Ward, he knew there must be some mistake. He voluntarily went to the police station to clear up the confusion and he volunteered to participate in a police lineup. Velazquez was identified by witnesses and to this day is trying to clear up the confusion.
Police set their sights on Velazquez after one witness, Augustus Brown, identified him after spending hours going through 1,800 mugshots. Jon-Adrian was a family man attending school to become a computer programmer. In his younger days, he had been arrested on a minor drug charge. As a result, his picture was on record.
All of the witnesses said the man who killed the retired police officer was a black man with a light complexion and braids. This led police sketch artists to create a wanted poster. When you look at the picture, you can see that the suspect looks nothing like Velazquez. (more…)
How would you feel if you installed a security camera video system in your home for protection only to find out your private activities are being viewed live on the internet?
Video feeds from some home user’s Internet security cameras — including children’s rooms and bathroom scenes — are being seen by others around the world because of a coding error that is part of the camera’s software.
I would not want to be the programmer that has to explain this problem.
TrendNet security camera’s flaw was discovered after word of some shared footage spread on various message boards and blogs in the past month.
The BBC reported that messages about the flaw included the following:
“Someone caught a guy in Denmark (traced to ip) getting naked in the bathroom.” Another said: “I think this guy is doing sit-ups.”
One user wrote, “baby spotted,” causing another to comment, “I feel like a pedophile watching this.”
California-based TrendNet told the BBC that it’s in the process of releasing software updates to fix the problem, which it learned about on Jan. 12.
The company is also emailing those owners who registered their cameras. It’s not clear how many are affected. A company spokesman said it could be fewer than 1,000 consumers in the United Kingdom and globally “most likely less than 50,000.”
That’s a lot depending on how many people decide to file lawsuits. With The U.S. being such a litigious society, you can just see the lawsuits mounting now – depending on how many U.S. customers were affected.
Tech website The Verge wrote an extensive report about the exploit last Friday.
The vulnerability was first noted on a Jan. 10th blog said the BBC:
The author discovered that after setting up one of the cameras with a password, its video stream became accessible to anyone who typed in the correct net address.
In each case, this consisted of the user’s IP address followed by an identical sequence of 15 characters.
The writer then showed how the Shodan search engine (which specializes in finding online devices) could be used to discover cameras vulnerable to the flaw.
TrendNet plans to have revised firmware available this week. The company posted the following warning on its website on Monday informing users of the specific camera models and versions that have the flaw:
It is TrendNet’s understanding that video from select TrendNet IP cameras may be accessed online in real time. Upon awareness of the issue, TrendNet initiated immediate actions to correct and publish updated firmware which resolves the vulnerability.
“We are scrambling to discover how the code was introduced and at this point it seems like a coding oversight,” a company spokesman told the BBC.
This case is part of a series of recent theft allegations against TSA employees.
TSA Agent Clayton Keith Dovel was arrested last week on suspicion of stealing numerous iPads from passenger’s luggage at DFW’s airport.
Apparently, Dovel was lifting the iPads from his position where he screened passenger’s checked luggage by hand.
Dovel was caught because one of the theft victims had downloaded the “Find My iPhone” app onto her iPad. She was able to track her stolen iPad directly to Dovel’s house. Police found at least seven iPads at Dovel’s residence.
TSA placed Dovel on leave until officials can sort out the situation.
I would think installing video surveillance in the area where luggage is checked would be enough to discourage pilfering by TSA employees, who I am sure are usually honest hard working individuals.
Video surveillance is used in the screening area at John F. Kennedy International Airport and the video recently helped catch a TSA agent who stole $5,000 from a passenger’s jacket. Surveillance video showed TSA agent Alexandra Schmid taking the money from a jacket pocket, wrapping the cash in a plastic glove and taking it to a bathroom.
The money hasn’t been recovered. Police are investigating whether Schmid gave it to another person in the bathroom.
The 31-year-old Schmid was arrested on a charge of grand larceny and suspended pending an investigation. Her attorney’s name wasn’t immediately known.
It is best to never check items of value in your luggage and to check for your valuables after they have gone through the passenger screening area. If you must check your computers, there are software programs for Macs and PCs that will track your computer should it be lost or stolen.
