Entries Tagged "police"

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Update on Computer Science Student's Computer Seizure

In April, I blogged about the Boston police seizing a student’s computer for, among other things, running Linux. (Anyone who runs Linux instead of Windows is obviously a scary bad hacker.)

Last week, the Massachusetts Supreme Court threw out the search warrant:

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Associate Justice Margot Botsford on Thursday said that Boston College and Massachusetts State Police had insufficient evidence to search the dorm room of BC senior Riccardo Calixte. During the search, police confiscated a variety of electronic devices, including three laptop computers, two iPod music players, and two cellphones.

Police obtained a warrant to search Calixte’s dorm after a roommate accused him of breaking into the school’s computer network to change other students’ grades, and of spreading a rumor via e-mail that the roommate is gay.

Botsford said the search warrant affidavit presented considerable evidence that the e-mail came from Calixte’s laptop computer. But even if it did, she said, spreading such rumors is probably not illegal. Botsford also said that while breaking into BC’s computer network would be criminal activity, the affidavit supporting the warrant presented little evidence that such a break-in had taken place.

Posted on June 2, 2009 at 12:01 PM • View Comments

No Warrant Required for GPS Tracking

At least, according to a Wisconsin appeals court ruling:

As the law currently stands, the court said police can mount GPS on cars to track people without violating their constitutional rights—even if the drivers aren’t suspects.

Officers do not need to get warrants beforehand because GPS tracking does not involve a search or a seizure, Judge Paul Lundsten wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel based in Madison.

That means “police are seemingly free to secretly track anyone’s public movements with a GPS device,” he wrote.

The court wants the legislature to fix it:

However, the District 4 Court of Appeals said it was “more than a little troubled” by that conclusion and asked Wisconsin lawmakers to regulate GPS use to protect against abuse by police and private individuals.

I think the odds of that happening are approximately zero.

Posted on May 15, 2009 at 6:30 AM • View Comments

Cell Phones and Hostage Situations

I haven’t read this book on the Columbine school shooting and massacre, but the New York Times review had an interesting paragraph about cell phones in a hostage situation:

Fuselier is one of the people Cullen spotlights in his retelling in order to clear up the historical record. Some of the confusion generated by Columbine was inevitable: Harris and Klebold started out wearing trench coats, for instance, but at some point removed them, giving the illusion that they were four people rather than two. The homemade pipe bombs they were tossing in all directions—down stairwells, onto the roof—only seemed to further the impression that there were more of them. And then there were the SWAT teams: students trapped inside the building would hear their rifle fire, assume it was the killers and report it to the media by cellphone, complicating the cops’ efforts to keep them safe. “This was the first major hostage standoff of the cellphone age,” Cullen notes. The police “had never seen anything like it.”

Posted on April 27, 2009 at 6:57 AM • View Comments

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.

Posted on April 10, 2009 at 7:06 AM • View Comments

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”.

Posted on April 8, 2009 at 1:25 PM • View Comments

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.

Posted on April 2, 2009 at 2:54 PM • View Comments

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:

Phil adds: “The main Amtrak page on his site has since been crawled, so Google now has the ‘no comment’ note cached.”

Posted on February 10, 2009 at 6:19 AM • View Comments

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.

Posted on January 30, 2009 at 4:34 PM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.