It’s a good thing Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World reporters are out of business, because they would have loved the hacking opportunity recently uncovered by two security professionals.
HD Moore and Mike Tuchen of Rapid7 discovered that they could remotely infiltrate conference rooms in some of the top venture capital and law firms across the country, as well as pharmaceutical and oil companies and even the boardroom of Goldman Sachs — all by simply calling in to unsecured videoconferencing systems that they found by doing a scan of the internet.
“These are literally some of the world’s most important boardrooms — this is where their most critical meetings take place — and there could be silent attendees in all of them,” Moore told the New York Times.
Moore found he was able to listen in on meetings, remotely steer a camera around rooms as well as zoom in on items in a room to discern paint flecks on a wall or read proprietary information on documents.
Despite the fact that the most expensive systems offer encryption, password protection and the ability to lock down the movement of cameras, the researchers found that administrators were setting them up outside firewalls and failing to configure security features to keep out intruders. Some systems, for example, were set up to automatically accept inbound calls so that users didn’t need to press an “accept” button when a caller dialed into a videoconference, opening the way for anyone to call in and eavesdrop on a meeting.
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A woman found not guilty of secretly recording Chicago Police officers who allegedly tried to discourage her from filing a complaint against an officer who groped her filed a federal lawsuit Friday against the city and the officers.
Tiawanda Moore, 21, claims Chicago Police responded to her home for a domestic dispute and one of the officers groped her breasts and buttocks while interviewing her in a bedroom, according to a suit filed in U.S. District Court.
Before leaving the bedroom, the suit claims the officer wrote his home phone number on a piece of paper and told Moore to call him because they should “hook up.”
The suit claims Moore called police to report the officer’s misconduct, and met with a lieutenant and an Internal Affairs Division officer, who discouraged her from filing a complaint.
Moore began secretly recording her conversation with the lieutenant and IAD officer on her Blackberry, according to the suit. Police then arrested her and charged her with violating the Illinois Eavesdropping Statute, which prevents people from secretly recording conversations.
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Do you watch the Supreme Court hearings on CPAC? No? Well I do.
I find it rather peculiar that the same Conservatives who were so concerned with the removal of the gun registration law are not at all concerned about warrantless wiretapping (intercept).
Warrantless means no judicial warrant obtained from a Judge, meaning no accountability to the Solicitor General through the checks and balances of recording and review. The authorization to establish and conduct a warrantless wiretap (Criminal Code s.184.4) can now be granted by a peace officer. (The definition of peace officer is not defined in the sections language and has a very wide range in the Criminal Code).
The argument by the Crown in the appeal that concerns warrantless emergency wiretaps (Criminal Code s.184.4 – Supreme Court Challenge -18 Nov 2011) was the need by peace officers to be able to initiate a warrantless wiretap if a threat to persons or property transpired and the threat level does not allow for Judicial authorization in a timely manner. The Crown used an example of an abduction where victims and suspects phones may be tapped without consent, warrant and notification.
Some would say this is an acceptable in an emergency situation – a valid argument if the law was defined in its language to indicate clear parameter in which the peace officer can authorize and conduct an emergency warrantless wire tap. The length of time the warrantless intercept can be in place, judicial review requirements, reporting procedures to the solicitor general, and the collection, distribution and deletion of data should be mentioned. But that language is just not there.
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Canadian police have apparently used BlackBerry communications to arrest murder suspect Raynald Desjardins in a move seen as an unprecedented use of intercepted data.
However, it is unclear whether or not the data was really intercepted or whether it was provided to cops via wiretap warrants.
The cuffed bloke has been charged with the murder of Salvatore Montagna, who was killed in November last year and was heavily involved in the New York criminal fraternity according to the Global Montreal. The raid involved searching 14 locations and the arrest of three other suspects, but it’s the interception of BlackBerry data that has attracted most attention.
RIM is making the usual noises about respecting users’ privacy and working with law enforcement, but anyone familiar with how RIM’s network operates shouldn’t be surprised by the abilities of prying detectives.
The Canadian police seized at least one BlackBerry during the raid, and once one has possession of the handset then extracting the onboard data is relatively easy, especially if the plod remember not to turn it off, and secure it in a radio-proof bag, as they’re supposed to.
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A federal appeals court on Thursday reinstated a closely watched lawsuit accusing the federal government of working with the nation’s largest telecommunication companies to illegally funnel Americans’ electronic communications to the National Security Agency without court warrants.
While the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived the long-running case brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the three-judge panel unanimously refused to rule on the merits of the case, or whether it was true the United States breached the public’s Fourth Amendment rights by undertaking an ongoing dragnet surveillance program the EFF said commenced under the Bush administration following 9/11.
The San Francisco-based appeals court reversed a San Francisco federal judge who tossed the case against the government nearly three years ago. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, now retired, said the lawsuit amounted to a “general grievance” from the public, and not an actionable claim.
Walker also presided over the only case that found the Bush administration illegally spied on American citizens when it unleashed the NSA on Americans’ conversations, ruling that the government violated the rights of two American lawyers for al-Haramain, a now defunct Islamic charity. The government is appealing that ruling.
Writing for the majority on Thursday, Judge Margaret McKeown ruled (.pdf) that the EFF’s claims “are not abstract, generalized grievances and instead meet the constitutional standing requirement of concrete injury. Although there has been considerable debate and legislative activity surrounding the surveillance program, the claims do not raise a political question nor are they inappropriate for judicial resolution.”
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Citing a federal appeals court ruling, a Goffstown District Court judge dismissed a charge of unlawful wiretapping against a Weare man who used his cell phone’s voice mail to record a traffic stop by a police officer.
Judge Edward Tenney cited a First Circuit Court of Appeals order in August in the case Glik v. Cunniffe in making his ruling. “The Glik holding makes it perfectly clear that First Amendment protections apply to both audio and video recording.”
William Alleman of 140 Helen Dearborn Road, Weare was charged in February with violating the state’s felony wiretapping law when he recorded his traffic stop by a Weare police officer. The traffic stop occurred in July 2010; Alleman was not cited for any violation until last February.
When he was charged, Weare police said Alleman made an audio recording of the police officer without his consent.
Alleman was one of three people charged over an 18-month period by Weare police for either video- or audio-taping arrests by police. The charges against the two other people were dropped.
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Walking by the Boston Common one afternoon in October 2007, Simon Glik saw three police officers forcing a young man face down on a park bench and heard a bystander say, “You’re hurting him.”
Concerned that officers were using unreasonable force to arrest the man, Glik, a young lawyer, used his cell phone to film the incident from 10 feet away.
After placing the suspect in handcuffs, an officer told him he’d taken enough pictures. Glik responded, “I am recording this. I saw you punch him.”
An officer asked Glik if his cell phone recorded audio. Glik said yes. The officer cuffed Glik, and arrested him on a charge of violating Massachusetts’s wiretap law, aiding in the escape of a prisoner, and disorderly conduct.
They also erased some of the recording, according to news accounts.
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How many telephones do you think are listened into by the political police? I asked a man who once worked for state intelligence and who now is just one more private citizen. I ventured a three-digit number, a modest count that provoked gales of laughter across his wrinkled face. “Up to the mid-90s about 21,000 lines were tapped, and now it must be double that with the addition of cellphones.” Another gentleman confirmed the number; his work had once been nosing around in other people’s conversations and installing microphones in the homes of dissidents, state officials and even inconvenient artists. I spent the day I heard such a bloated number feeling Big Brother’s eye on every tree, in every corner of my house, thinking about the indiscreet ear stationed in that little gadget with a screen and a keyboard that I carry in my pocket.
ETECSA, the only phone company in the country, uses its status as a state monopoly over communications to provide listening services to the Ministry of the Interior. This is not a delusion of my fevered brain. I have tried taking apart my phone, even removing the battery and leaving town; the nervousness of the “shadows” who guard my house is immediately evident. Sometimes, just to amuse myself — I freely admit it — I use my cellphone to invite several friends to participate in some presentation of an official book or an event organized by a state institution. The resulting operation would seem almost comical, if it weren’t for the evidence of the excessive resources — which should be contributing to the well-being of the people — that the government devotes to such things.
The watchers, however, can also become the watched. ETECSA employees leaked a data base through the alternative networks with many details about the country’s telephone numbers. Without a doubt a violation of the discretion any company should exercise over its information about its clients. But this has served to unmask the phone numbers of those who watch and denigrate us. From journalists working for the newspaper Granma, to members of the Central Committee, to senior police officials, their data appeared with their identity card numbers and even their home addresses. Brief acronyms show which phones are paid for by government agencies and which are private. This exposes the official links of many who call themselves independent. For once, the detailed inventory they’ve made on every citizen has served for us to know about “them,” to know that those who are listening on the other end of the line have names, not just pseudonyms. Now, anyone can call them, send them a message, something as short and direct as a text saying “Enough already!”
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A Mississippi woman has accused Facebook of violating federal wiretap statutes by tracking her internet browsing history even when she wasn’t logged onto the social networking site.
In a lawsuit filed on Wednesday in federal court in the northern district of Mississippi, Brooke Rutledge of Lafayette County, Mississippi, also asserted claims for breach of contract, unjust enrichment, trespassing, and invasion of privacy.
The complaint, which seeks class-action status so other users can join, comes three weeks after Australian blogger Nik Cubrilovic published evidence that Facebook “Like” buttons scattered across the web allowed Facebook to track users’ browsing habits even when they were signed out of their accounts.
“Leading up to September 23, 2011, Facebook tracked, collected, and stored its users’ wire or electronic communications, including but not limited to portions of their internet browsing history even when the users were not logged-in to Facebook,” the 17-page complaint stated. “Plaintiff did not give consent or otherwise authorize Facebook to intercept, track, collect, and store her wire or electronic communications, including but not limited to her internet browsing history when not logged-in to Facebook.”
The complaint claims the behavior violated provisions of Facebook’s own privacy policy that state: “If you’re logged out or don’t have a Facebook account and visit a website with the Like button or another social plugin, your browser sends us a more limited set of information. For example, because you’re not logged in to Facebook, we don’t receive your User ID.”
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Two journalists who allege the Sarkozy regime directed interference in their lives and work construct an unflattering portrait of the French president in their new book
Towards the end of July last year, as Paris was winding down for the August holiday exodus, the journalist Fabrice Lhomme took a call from Yves Bertrand, a former head of France’s secret service. Bertrand said he had something to tell him, but, as usual, he was reticent on the phone. They arranged to meet in a cafe near Parc Monceau, a short walk from the Élysée Palace.
Lhomme, an investigative journalist for more than 15 years, had known Bertrand for a long time. The ex-spy chief was a close ally of the former president Jacques Chirac and was no friend of Chirac’s successor, Nicolas Sarkozy. But Bertrand still had good contacts in the intelligence community, so Lhomme listened when he told him about “worrying noises” he had been hearing. According to Bertrand’s sources, journalists driving coverage of sensitive stories, notably at Le Monde and the investigative website Mediapart, were “in the sights of the president”.
“Be very careful,” Bertrand warned. “It’s not a joke. The Élysée is very wound up.” Lhomme felt Bertrand wasn’t bluffing, but it was a vague and not-too-surprising piece of information, so there wasn’t much to pursue. It was only months later, he says, that he thought again about that summer’s day near Parc Monceau.
That July, France was gripped by one of the most dramatic political stories in years. A bitter inheritance battle involving the country’s richest woman, the L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, had grown into a sensational party-funding scandal that threatened to damage Sarkozy and his UMP party badly.
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Facebook’s use of tracking cookies has landed the company in the middle of two class action lawsuits. Facebook has been sued by six Facebook users in federal courts in California and Missouri.
The users allege that Facebook was tracking their activity even after they logged off the site.
One lawsuit claims that Facebook violated federal wiretap and electronic communications laws. The plaintiffs are requesting that Facebook stop installing tracking cookies on their site. And they’re asking for damages.
Under federal wiretap laws like the Wire and Electronic Communications Interception and Interception of Oral Communications Act, a court order is usually required. A judge has to decide if there is probable cause that a crime is about to be committed before a wiretap can be issued.
Traditionally, wiretap laws were applied to surveillance on phone lines. But with new technology comes new ways for the government (and companies like Facebook) to monitor individuals. Most wiretapping laws have been expanded to electronic communications.
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The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the espionage conviction of Shamai Leibowitz, and Israeli-American who was sentenced to 20 months in jail for intelligence offences in 2010, was linked to FBI wiretapping of the Israeli Embassy in Washington.
According to the report, Leibowitz – who worked as a Hebrew translator for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, leaked transcripts of material derived from the wiretaps to a blogger, as part of his efforts to diminish what he believed to be Israel’s influence in Congress.
Leibowitz’s trial was shrouded with mystery – so much so that after he pleaded guilty as part of a plea bargain, even the case judge was quoted as saying he did not know exactly what kind of information Leibowitz had disclosed.
“All I know is that it’s a serious case. I don’t know what was divulged other than some documents, and how it compromised things, I have no idea.” Judge Alexander Williams Jr., of the US District Court in Maryland, said at the sentencing in May 2010.
The reason for the extraordinary secrecy has now become clear, as it seems that Leibowitz leaked transcripts of FBI wiretaps of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, according to the blogger Richard Silverstein.
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