Boston Police Consider Using Linux to be Ground for Suspicion
This is pretty awful. More war on the unexpected.
EDITED TO ADD (4/16): On further analysis, this seems more reasonable than I first thought.
Entries Tagged "law enforcement"
Page 24 of 46
UK Terrorism Arrests
Details of the arrests made in haste after this inadvertant disclosure.
How Not to Carry Around Secret Documents
Here’s a tip: when walking around in public with secret government documents, put them in an envelope.
A huge MI5 and police counterterrorist operation against al-Qaeda suspects had to be brought forward at short notice last night after Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism chief accidentally revealed a briefing document.
[…]
The operation was nearly blown when Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick walked up Downing Street holding a document marked “secret” with highly sensitive operational details visible to photographers.
The document, carried under his arm, revealed how many terrorist suspects were to be arrested, in which cities across the North West. It revealed that armed members of the Greater Manchester Police would force entry into a number of homes. The operation’s secret code headed the list of action that was to take place.
Now the debate begins about whether he was just stupid, or very very stupid:
Opposition MPs criticised Mr Quick, with the Liberal Democrats describing him as “accident prone” and the Conservatives condemning his “very alarming” lapse of judgement.
But former Labour Mayor of London Ken Livingstone said it would be wrong for such an experienced officer to resign “for holding a piece of paper the wrong way”.
It wasn’t just a piece of paper. It was a secret piece of paper. (Here’s the best blow-up of the picture. And surely these people have procedures for transporting classified material. That’s what the mistake was: not following proper procedure.
He resigned.
Police Powers and the UK Government in the 1980s
I found this great paragraph in this article on the future of privacy in the UK:
One of the few home secretaries who dominated his department rather than be cowed by it was Lord Whitelaw in the 1980s. He boasted how after any security lapse, the police would come to beg for new and draconian powers. He laughed and sent them packing, saying only a bunch of softies would erode British liberty to give themselves an easier job. He said they laughed in return and remarked that “it was worth a try”.
DNA False Positives
A story about a very expensive series of false positives. The German police spent years and millions of dollars tracking a mysterious killer whose DNA had been found at the scenes of six murders. Finally they realized they were tracking a worker at the factory that assembled the prepackaged swabs used for DNA testing.
This story could be used as justification for a massive DNA database. After all, if that factory worker had his or her DNA in the database, the police would have quickly realized what the problem was.
Why People Steal Rare Books
Interesting analysis:
“Book theft is very hard to quantify because very often pages are cut and it’s not noticed for years,” says Rapley. “Often we come across pages from books [in hauls of recovered property] and we work back from there.” The Museum Security Network, a Dutch-based, not-for-profit organisation devoted to co-ordinating efforts to combat this type of theft, estimates that only 2 to 5 per cent of stolen books are recovered, compared with about half of stolen paintings.
“Books are extremely difficult to identify,” Rapley continues. “That means they can be sold commercially at near to market value rather than black-market value.” Thieves know that single pages cut from books to be sold as prints are easier to steal and even harder to trace, so they are often even more desirable than books themselves.
Most thieves simply cut out pages with razor blades and then hide them about their person. High bookshelves, quiet stacks or storage areas, or any lavatories located within reading rooms, are obvious places for such nefarious activities.
Regular users will have noticed that libraries have tightened up security in recent years. Among the strategies employed are CCTV cameras, improved sightlines for librarians, ID and bag checks at entrances and exits, and more floorwalking by security, uniformed or otherwise.
The "Broken Windows" Theory of Crimefighting
Evidence of its effectiveness:
Researchers, working with police, identified 34 crime hot spots. In half of them, authorities set to work—clearing trash from the sidewalks, fixing street lights, and sending loiterers scurrying. Abandoned buildings were secured, businesses forced to meet code, and more arrests made for misdemeanors. Mental health services and homeless aid referrals expanded.
In the remaining hot spots, normal policing and services continued.
Then researchers from Harvard and Suffolk University sat back and watched, meticulously recording criminal incidents in each of the hot spots.
The results, just now circulating in law enforcement circles, are striking: A 20 percent plunge in calls to police from the parts of town that received extra attention. It is seen as strong scientific evidence that the long-debated “broken windows” theory really works—that disorderly conditions breed bad behavior, and that fixing them can help prevent crime.
[…]
Many police departments across the country already use elements of the broken windows theory, or focus on crime hot spots. The Lowell experiment offers guidance on what seems to work best. Cleaning up the physical environment was very effective; misdemeanor arrests less so, and boosting social services had no apparent impact.
EDITED TO ADD (3/13): The paper.
Man Arrested by Amtrak Police for Taking Photographs for Amtrak Photography Contest
You can’t make this stuff up. Even Stephen Colbert made fun of it.
This isn’t the first time Amtrak police have been idiots.
And in related news, in the U.K. it soon might be illegal to photograph the police.
EDITED TO ADD (2/10): The photographer’s page about the incident has been replaced with the words “No comment!” Anyone have a link to a copy? In the meantime, here’s an entry about the incident on a photo activist’s blog.
EDITED AGAIN: Thanks to Phil M. in comments for finding these Google Cache links from Duane Kerzic’s site:
- letter to Amtrak’s CEO
- Amtrak’s acknowledgement of receipt of a query about their rules
- New Jersey Transit’s acknowledgement of an e-mail he sent (which quotes his message to them)
- response from NJT
Phil adds: “The main Amtrak page on his site has since been crawled, so Google now has the ‘no comment’ note cached.”
Confessions Corrupt Eyewitnesses
People confess to crimes they don’t commit. They do it a lot. What’s interesting about this research is that confessions—whether false or true—corrupt other eyewitnesses:
Abstract
A confession is potent evidence, persuasive to judges and juries. Is it possible that a confession can also affect other evidence? The present study tested the hypothesis that a confession will alter eyewitnesses’ identification decisions. Two days after witnessing a staged theft and making an identification decision from a lineup that did not include the thief, participants were told that certain lineup members had confessed or denied guilt during a subsequent interrogation. Among those participants who had made a selection but were told that another lineup member confessed, 61% changed their identifications. Among those participants who had not made an identification, 50% went on to select the confessor when his identity was known. These findings challenge the presumption in law that different forms of evidence are independent and suggest an important overlooked mechanism by which innocent confessors are wrongfully convicted: Potentially exculpatory evidence is corrupted by a confession itself.
More:
When asked to explain their change, subjects revealed they were actually convinced by the confessor, and not simply complying with it, saying, “His face now looks more familiar than the one I chose before.”
Friday Squid Blogging: Safe Quick Undercarriage Immobilization Device (SQUID)
New security device:
But what if an officer could lay down a road trap in seconds, then activate it from a nearby hiding place? What if—like sea monsters of ancient lore—the trap could reach up from below to ensnare anything from a MINI Cooper to a Ford Expedition? What if this trap were as small as a spare tire, as light as a tire jack, and cost under a grand?
Thanks to imaginative design and engineering funded by the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Office of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate (S&T), such a trap may be stopping brigands by 2010. It’s called the Safe Quick Undercarriage Immobilization Device, or SQUID. When closed, the current prototype resembles a cheese wheel full of holes. When open (deployed), it becomes a mass of tentacles entangling the axles. By stopping the axles instead of the wheels, SQUID may change how fleeing drivers are, quite literally, caught.
Of course, there’s a lot separating a cool idea from reality. But it is a cool idea.
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.