Wednesday, 9 November 2011
Busted! Two New Fed GPS Trackers Found on SUV
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comAs the Supreme Court gets ready to hear oral arguments in a case Tuesday that could determine if authorities can track U.S. citizens with GPS vehicle trackers without a warrant, a young man in California has come forward to Wired to reveal that he found not one but two different devices on his vehicle recently.
The 25-year-old resident of San Jose, California, says he found the first one about three weeks ago on his Volvo SUV while visiting his mother in Modesto, about 80 miles northeast of San Jose. After contacting Wired and allowing a photographer to snap pictures of the device, it was swapped out and replaced with a second tracking device. A witness also reported seeing a strange man looking beneath the vehicle of the young man’s girlfriend while her car was parked at work, suggesting that a tracking device may have been retrieved from her car.
Then things got really weird when police showed up during a Wired interview with the man.
The young man, who asked to be identified only as Greg, is one among an increasing number of U.S. citizens who are finding themselves tracked with the high-tech devices.
The Justice Department has said that law enforcement agents employ GPS as a crime-fighting tool with “great frequency,” and GPS retailers have told Wired that they’ve sold thousands of the devices to the feds.
But little is known about how or how often law enforcement agents use them. And without a clear ruling requiring agents to obtain a “probable cause” warrant to use the devices, it leaves citizens who may have only a distant connection to a crime or no connection at all vulnerable to the whimsy of agents who are fishing for a case.
The invasive technology, for example, allows police, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies to engage in covert round-the-clock surveillance over an extended period of time, collecting vast amounts of information about anyone who drives the vehicle that is being tracked.
“A person who knows all of another’s travels can deduce whether he is a weekly church goer, a heavy drinker, a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups — and not just one such fact about a person, but all such facts,” wrote U.S. Appeals Court Judge Douglas Ginsburg in a recent ruling that the Supreme Court will be examining this week to determine if warrants should be required for use with trackers.
Greg says he discovered the first tracker on his vehicle after noticing what looked like a cell phone antenna inside a hole on his back bumper where a cable is stored for towing a trailer. The device, the size of a mobile phone, was not attached to a battery pack, suggesting the battery was embedded in its casing...
Continue reading
Kim Zetter @'Wired'
Reflections on the Oral Argument in United States v. Jones, the GPS Fourth Amendment Case
Anonymous hacktivists claim attack on neo-Nazis
Ulla Pyysalo, who worked for the True Finns MP Juho Eerola, said she would resign after her name apeared on the list last week, according to the Finnish broadcaster YLE.
"We have successfully and easily hacked [the neo-Nazi] website and published the database of its membership application database containing personal datas of some applicants from all around the country," a statement posted online on Monday and attributed to Anonymous Finland said.
"We have no tolerance for any group based on racial, sexual and religion discrimination as well as for all the people belonging to them and sharing their ideologies, which is the reason why we decided to carry out last Monday's attack."
The collective also said it was behind a series of attacks on websites unrelated to political extremism that exposed the personal details of 16,000 people. The data published online included social security numbers, addresses, telephone numbers, street addresses, and email addresses.
Authorities are investigating the security breaches, which took place last week, according to an online message attributed to Anonymous Finland.
The National Bureau of Investigation warned those affected to contact their local police station for guidance on avoiding online scams that might seek top exploit their personal information.
Anonymous Finland said it mounted the attacks “to see whether Finnish authorities, companies and institutions offer their users a proper security and safely treat and store their info”.
“Sadly, we found out they never did,” it said.
“Getting into websites and databases was as easy as cutting butter with a knife.”
Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer of the Finnish internet security firm F-Secure, branded the release of the data “irresponsible”.
Finland’s communications regulator said it appeared the data was stolen from education groups, which it did not name.
Anonymous styles itself as a leaderless collective to which anyone can claim membership.
Christopher Williams @'The Telegraph'
The National Bureau of Investigation warned those affected to contact their local police station for guidance on avoiding online scams that might seek top exploit their personal information.
Anonymous Finland said it mounted the attacks “to see whether Finnish authorities, companies and institutions offer their users a proper security and safely treat and store their info”.
“Sadly, we found out they never did,” it said.
“Getting into websites and databases was as easy as cutting butter with a knife.”
Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer of the Finnish internet security firm F-Secure, branded the release of the data “irresponsible”.
Finland’s communications regulator said it appeared the data was stolen from education groups, which it did not name.
Anonymous styles itself as a leaderless collective to which anyone can claim membership.
Christopher Williams @'The Telegraph'
Barrett Brown cashes out on Anonymous
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
