law enforcement Archives - Page 18 of 46

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Page 18 of 46

Status Report on the War on Photography

Worth reading: Morgan Leigh Manning, “Less than Picture Perfect: The Legal Relationship between Photographers’ Rights and Law Enforcement,” Tennessee Law Review, Vol. 78, p. 105, 2010.

Abstract: Threats to national security and public safety, whether real or perceived, result in an atmosphere conducive to the abuse of civil liberties. History is littered with examples: The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, the suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, the Palmer Raids during World War I, and McCarthyism in the aftermath of World War II.Unfortunately, the post-9/11 world represents no departure from this age-old trend. Evidence of post-9/11 tension between national security and civil liberties is seen in the heightened regulation of photography; scholars have labeled it the “War on Photography” – a conflict between law enforcement officials and photographers over the right to take pictures in public places. A simple Google search reveals countless incidents of overzealous law enforcement officials detaining or arresting photographers and, in many cases, confiscating their cameras and memory cards, despite the fact that these individuals were in lawful places, at lawful times, partaking in lawful activities.

This article examines the so-called War on Photography and the remedies available to those who have been unlawfully detained, arrested, or have had their property seized for taking pictures in public places or private places open to the public. It discusses recent incidents that highlight the growing infringement of photography rights and the magnitude of the harm that law enforcement officials have inflicted, paying particular attention to the themes these events have in common. It explores the existing legal framework surrounding photography rights and the federal and state remedies available to those whose rights have been violated. It examines the adequacy of each remedy including: (1) declaratory and injunctive relief, (2) Section 1983 and Bivens actions, and (3) state tort remedies. It discusses the obstacles associated with each remedy and the reasons why these obstacles are particularly hard to overcome in the context of photography. It then argues that most, if not all, of the remedies discussed are either inadequate or altogether impractical considering the costs of litigation. Lastly, this article will discuss the reasons why people should be concerned about the War on Photography and possible ways to reverse the erosion of photography rights.

Posted on June 14, 2011 at 1:45 PM • View Comments

25% of U.S. Criminal Hackers are Police Informants

I have no idea if this is true:

In some cases, popular illegal forums used by cyber criminals as marketplaces for stolen identities and credit card numbers have been run by hacker turncoats acting as FBI moles. In others, undercover FBI agents posing as “carders” —hackers specialising in ID theft —have themselves taken over the management of crime forums, using the intelligence gathered to put dozens of people behind bars.

So ubiquitous has the FBI informant network become that Eric Corley, who publishes the hacker quarterly, 2600, has estimated that 25% of hackers in the US may have been recruited by the federal authorities to be their eyes and ears. “Owing to the harsh penalties involved and the relative inexperience with the law that many hackers have, they are rather susceptible to intimidation,” Corley told the Guardian.

But if I were the FBI, I would want everyone to believe that it’s true.

Posted on June 8, 2011 at 3:46 PM • View Comments

Security Risks of Running an Open WiFi Network

As I’ve written before, I run an open WiFi network. It’s stories like these that may make me rethink that.

The three stories all fall along the same theme: a Buffalo man, Sarasota man, and Syracuse man all found themselves being raided by the FBI or police after their wireless networks were allegedly used to download child pornography. “You’re a creep… just admit it,” one FBI agent was quoted saying to the accused party. In all three cases, the accused ended up getting off the hook after their files were examined and neighbors were found to be responsible for downloading child porn via unsecured WiFi networks.

EDITED TO ADD (4/29): The EFF is calling for an open wireless movement. I approve.

Posted on April 26, 2011 at 6:59 AM • View Comments

Software as Evidence

Increasingly, chains of evidence include software steps. It’s not just the RIAA suing people—and getting it wrong—based on automatic systems to detect and identify file sharers. It’s forensic programs used to collect and analyze data from computers and smart phones. It’s audit logs saved and stored by ISPs and websites. It’s location data from cell phones. It’s e-mails and IMs and comments posted to social networking sites. It’s tallies from digital voting machines. It’s images and meta-data from surveillance cameras. The list goes on and on. We in the security field know the risks associated with trusting digital data, but this evidence is routinely assumed by courts to be accurate.

Sergey Bratus is starting to look at this problem. His paper, written with Ashlyn Lembree and Anna Shubina, is “Software on the Witness Stand: What Should it Take for Us to Trust it?”

We discuss the growing trend of electronic evidence, created automatically by autonomously running software, being used in both civil and criminal court cases. We discuss trustworthiness requirements that we believe should be applied to such software and platforms it runs on. We show that courts tend to regard computer-generated materials as inherently trustworthy evidence, ignoring many software and platform trustworthiness problems well known to computer security researchers. We outline the technical challenges in making evidence-generating software trustworthy and the role Trusted Computing can play in addressing them.

From a presentation he gave on the subject:

Constitutionally, criminal defendants have the right to confront accusers. If software is the accusing agent, what should the defendant be entitled to under the Confrontation Clause?

[…]

Witnesses are sworn in and cross-examined to expose biases & conflicts—what about software as a witness?

Posted on April 19, 2011 at 6:47 AM • View Comments

New French Law Reduces Website Security

I didn’t know about this:

The law obliges a range of e-commerce sites, video and music services and webmail providers to keep a host of data on customers.

This includes users’ full names, postal addresses, telephone numbers and passwords. The data must be handed over to the authorities if demanded.

Police, the fraud office, customs, tax and social security bodies will all have the right of access.

The social benefits of anonymity aside, we’re all more secure if these websites do not have a file of everyone’s plaintext password.

EDITED TO ADD (4/12): Seems that the BBC article misstated the law. Companies have to retain information they already collect for a year after it is no longer required. So if they’re not already storing plaintext passwords, they don’t have to start.

Posted on April 11, 2011 at 1:20 PM • View Comments

Optical Stun Ray

It’s been patented; no idea if it actually works.

…newly patented device can render an assailant helpless with a brief flash of high-intensity light. It works by overloading the neural networks connected to the retina, saturating the target’s world in a blinding pool of white light. “It’s the inverse of blindness—the technical term is a loss of contrast sensitivity,” says Todd Eisenberg, the engineer who invented the device. “The typical response is for the person to freeze. Law enforcement can easily walk up and apprehend [the suspect].”

Posted on April 7, 2011 at 6:29 AM • View Comments

FBI Asks for Cryptanalysis Help

Could be interesting.

Posted on March 30, 2011 at 1:48 PM • View Comments

FBI and the Future of Wiretapping

Last month I posted Susan Landau’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security on government eavesdropping. In fairness to the other side, here’s testimony of Valerie Caproni, General Counsel of the FBI.

Posted on March 11, 2011 at 6:06 AM • View Comments

Pickpockets are a Dying Breed

Pickpockets in America are dying out. This is the bit I found interesting:

And perhaps most important, the centuries-old apprenticeship system underpinning organized pickpocketing has been disrupted. Pickpocketing has always perpetuated itself by having older hooks—nicknamed “Fagins,” after the crime boss in Oliver Twist—teach younger ones the art, and then absorbing them into canons. But due to ratcheted-up law enforcement measures, including heftier sentences (in some states, a pick, defined as theft from the body of another person and charged as a felony regardless of the amount taken) and better surveillance of hot spots and known pickpockets, that system has been dismantled.

This is not the case in Europe, where pickpocketing has been less of a priority for law enforcement and where professionals from countries like Bulgaria and Romania, each with storied traditions of pickpocketing, are able to travel more freely since their acceptance into the European Union in 2007, developing their organizations and plying their trade in tourist hot spots like Barcelona, Rome, and Prague. “The good thieves in Europe are generally 22 to 35,” says Bob Arno, a criminologist and consultant who travels the world posing as a victim to stay atop the latest pickpocketing techniques and works with law enforcement agencies to help them battle the crime. “In America they are dying off, or they had been apprehended so many times that it’s easier for law enforcement to track them and catch them.”

Posted on March 3, 2011 at 6:35 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.