PA - Debuts pilot to remotely monitor sex offenders’ computers

Original Article

05/08/2013

By Alex Wigglesworth

The Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole on Wednesday announced a pilot program to monitor computer usage of sex offenders under court supervision, according to a release from chairman Michael Potteiger.

Through Securus software, parole agents will be able to log into a secure server from any computer and view screenshots of convicts’ emails, as well as review the chat rooms, games, social media sites and websites that have been accessed and keep abreast of the programs that have been installed on offenders’ computers.

“The board is increasing public safety by testing software that will allow parole agents to know when a sex offender may be engaging in inappropriate behavior,” Potteiger said in statement.

“The technology monitors words and phrases, both online and offline, on an offender’s home computer, captures a screen image, creates a log of all websites visited and saves this information on a central server.”

The six-month pilot program out of the board’s Pittsburgh District Office will include 20 to 30 sex offenders.

“The new software is designed to send the board alerts about behavior that may indicate a risk to re-offend,” Potteiger said.

“The software provides for a more effective use of a parole agent’s time through remote access of information that is automatically gathered through electronic means.”

See Also:

• Pennsylvania parole officers use spy ware to track sex offenders online moves

---

Canada kills controversial internet surveillance bill, US should follow suit

Original Article

Now the USA needs to follow suit, and stop trampling on peoples privacy, freedom of speech, and other constitutional issues, but, the US government doesn't care what the American people think.

02/12/2013

The Conservative Canadian government is abandoning its much-criticized internet surveillance bill, which would have allowed the government to keep tabs on its citizens and was disguised under the cloak of fighting child pornographers.
- Any time the government wants to pass a bill to "protect the children," you'd better read the bill, because you can almost always guarantee that it will affect you.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson announced that Bill C-30, which caused public ire over privacy, is dead.

“We’ve listened to the concerns of Canadians,” Nicholson told reporters. “We will not be proceeding with Bill C-30 … including the warrantless mandatory disclosure of basic subscriber information, or the requirement for telecommunications service providers to build intercept capabilities within their systems”.

Bill C-30 or otherwise known as the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act was introduced in Parliament less than a year ago, and it was presented as a choice that Canadians must make: to either support the bill or be on the side of child pornographers.
- It's called "For the children politics," and has been used by America and others for many years, and needs to stop, things are not always black or white!

"He can either stand with us or stand with the child pornographers," argued Public Safety Minister Vic Toews in Parliament while attacking the opposition last February.

This comment led to public outrage, raising privacy concerns across the nation.

What made the legislation dangerous was that it forced Internet service providers to have systems that allowed police to intercept and track online communications.

Also, it would have permitted authorities to have warrantless access to Internet subscriber information, including name, address, telephone number, email address and Internet protocol address.

But, activists viewed the proposed bill as a huge infringement on privacy.

“This is a great day,” critic of the bill, Ontario Privacy Commissioner Ann Couvukian told The Globe and Mail, “This is a victory for privacy and for freedom.”

International hacktivist movement Anonymous also hailed the killing of the bill.

The killing of the bill in Canada is a major win for Canadians supporting privacy and internet freedom.

But, the battle over internet surveillance and wiretapping continues inside the country, with Bill C-12 still remaining before Parliament and if passed it would allow Internet service providers, email hosts and social media sites to voluntarily share personal information about their clients with the police.

Also, as was announced on Monday, Canadian authorities will be permitted to tap people’s phones without warrants in emergency circumstances or imminent harm such as in bombings or kidnappings.

Nicholson said that under the new guidelines, people whose phones were tapped in emergency situations would be notified within 90 days.

US’ similar privacy concerns still stand

The US is facing similar privacy debacle with the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA).

The bill is supposed to help the US government investigate cyber threats and ensure the security of networks against cyber attack.

Opponents say it would allow companies to hand over a user’s private browsing information to the government, allowing authorities to spy on American citizens rather than simply track down cyber threats.

Unable to reach a deal with Congress, President Obama plans to use his power to exert executive actions against the will of lawmakers.
- Of course he will, that is what dictators do.

The order is a direct response to Congress’ refusal to pass CISPA last year, as members of Congress who opposed the legislation cited serious privacy concerns over giving the government greater access to Americans’ personal information that only private companies and servers might have access to.

---

Now you can encrypt your calls, texts to protect them from being spied on

Original Article

02/06/2013

By Liz Klimas

There are those who might be concerned about spying — by the government, hackers or someone else — on their phone calls and text messages. Well, now there’s an app for that.

According to Slate, the firm Silent Circle has released a smartphone app that encrypts data. As Ryan Gallagher for Slate puts it, “that means photographs, videos, spreadsheets, you name it—sent scrambled from one person to another in a matter of seconds.”

The company’s press release stated the Silent Phone app is available for both Apple and Android devices. It is described as the first peer-to-peer encryption tool for smartphones and tablets, which means information doesn’t pass through a third-party.

“Senior corporate executives and government officials are using work-issued smartphones and their own personal devices under BYOD for sensitive discussions, despite their increasing susceptibility to eavesdropping and other surveillance threats across all communication mediums,” Silent Circle CTO, co-founder and former PGP Corporation co-founder Jon Callas said in a statement . “Silent Phone is an easy to use, yet powerful smart phone application that leverages state of the art technology and is now available for iOS and Android, the two most popular smart phone platforms.”

Read the entire article here

---

Which Websites Are Sharing Your Personal Details?

Original Article

To identify what personal information gets passed to other companies when you log in to popular websites, The Wall Street Journal tested 50 of the top sites (by U.S. traffic) that offer registration, excluding sites that required a real-world account, such as banking sites. The Journal also tested 20 selected other sites that focus on sensitive subjects such as dating, politics, health, or children’s issues, and our own site, WSJ.com. Click here to read more about the methodology. Results for each site are below. Sites are ranked by popularity, based on comScore's numbers. Sites not in comScore's top 1,000 are marked with a "*".

---

How Facebook catches would-be child molesters by analyzing relationships and chat content (i.e. Spying without a warrant!)

Original Article

If they have this technology and they are using it, it's basically like entering your home and searching without a warrant! If it was found constitutional by the SCOTUS, then use it, stop deny ex-offenders from using your site because of some perceived danger? Stop discriminating against people! If someone is doing something they should not be, report them!

07/16/2012

By Lisa Vaas

Law enforcement is hailing Facebook for using its little-known data monitoring technology to spot a suspicious conversation about sex between a man in his early thirties and a 13-year-old girl from Florida.

According to Reuters, Facebook software on March 9 raised the red flag when it picked up on a conversation about sex between the man and the girl.

The two had only a loose relationship on the network.

The man was chatting about sex with the girl and planned to meet her after middle-school classes the next day, according to Reuters.

The conversation was automatically flagged for Facebook employees, who read it and quickly notified the police.

Police took over the girl's computer and arrested the man the following day, Special Agent Supervisor Jeffrey Duncan of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement told Reuters.

The alleged predator has pleaded not guilty to charges of soliciting a minor.

Facebook doesn't talk much about this technology, which scans postings and chats for criminal activity.
- Imagine if, while on the streets, you had someone following you around monitoring everything you do and say.  This is no different, it's just being done in cyberspace where no warrant is needed!  Maybe we should bring the laws up to date and require someone to have a warrant before entering someone's online home?

In what Reuters called the company's "most expansive comments on the subject to date", Facebook Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan said that the monitoring software analyzes relationships to find suspicious conversations between unlikely pairings, i.e., between people of widely varying ages who only have loose and/or newly formed relationships, for example.

The technology also relies on archives of real-life chats that preceded sexual assaults, Sullivan told Reuters.

It's easy to see why Facebook doesn't talk about it much: the last thing the company wants is for its users to feel like they're being eavesdropped on, Sullivan said:
- Well, they are, and all without a warrant!

We've never wanted to set up an environment where we have employees looking at private communications, so it's really important that we use technology that has a very low false-positive rate.

- Then why did you set it up?

To avoid coming off as eavesdroppers, Facebook also avoids probing what it interprets as pre-existing relationships, Sullivan said.
- You expect us to believe anything they say?

Reining in its monitoring technology is understandable in light of not wanting to be perceived as Big Brother, but as Reuters pointed out, a low false-positive rate has the serious downside of letting many dangerous communications go through unflagged.

Duncan estimates that for every predator the police intercept due to tips from Facebook and other companies, another ten get through the system undetected.

And while Facebook limits how visible children are to its adult users - minors don't show up in public searches, only friends can chat with them, and only friends' friends can send them messages - children are all too capable of lying about their age and pretending to be adults.

The converse is true: adults can lie about their birth dates and pretend to be minors.

One example can be found in Skout, a location-based social networking mobile app and website that in June barred minors from using its service, following three separate incidents in which children were allegedly sexually assaulted by adults posing as teenagers.

At the time, the New York Times reported that Skout was fully aware that minors were using its site.

Skout had, in fact, put safeguards in place to protect those minors. Last year, after noticing minors using its service, Skout put together a separate service for 13- to 17-year-olds with safety features such as parental controls.

In addition, Skout devoted a quarter of its staff to monitoring activity to flag nudity, and to check chats for inappropriate sexual messages, profanity, spamming, copyright infringement and violent behavior. The service also banned tens of thousands of infringing devices every month.

In spite of Skout's efforts, three children were allegedly targeted, raped or molested.
- No amount of spying or passing of draconian laws will prevent someone from committing a crime.

There's no lack of security to protect against the type of age falsification that creates problems on Facebook and sites such as Skout.

Reuters pointed to one such provider, Aristotle International Inc., which offers methods such as having a parent vouch for a child with a token credit card payment.

The problem is, nobody's buying.

The downsides of such technology: it bleeds away sites' profits because it costs money, and it drives away children who crave unfettered freedom of communication.

Children's natural development includes the need to break away from their families as they seek independence.

Tragically, there are no end of online venues that have the look and feel of sanctuaries where it's safe to do that in the presence of peers.

It's crucial to somehow get through to them that those sanctuaries can be smoke and mirrors, and that those supposed peers can all too easily be dangerous predators.

Parents, law enforcement, you have my sympathy. The task seems overwhelmingly daunting.

---

UK - Big Brother is coming and all in the name of "protecting children!"

Video Link

---

CANADA - Government wants total warrantless surveillance of your cell & Internet activity

This is typical for politicians, they think everything is black or white. Either you allow us to spy on you, or you are pro-child porn. Come on, give me a friggin' break!

Update: The Internet strikes back against Tory surveillance bill

Video Description:
"You Can Either Stand With Us Or With The Child Pornographers" Canadian Lawmaker. Public Safety Minister Vic Toews is acting "very very crazy!"

The Harper Regime plans to introduce Bill C-51 on Monday Feb 13, 2012 that will allow Police to spy on ALL Canadians with no warrants.

The Harper Regime is about to kill your internet privacy, The plan is to force every phone and Internet provider to surrender our personal information to "authorities" without a warrant.

ALL Canadians contact your MP here via phone or email by postal code, and visit our web site: http://stopspying.ca/.

Video Link

---

MI - If the blinds were open, was it a crime to look?

Original Article

12/01/2011

By Brian Dickerson

Can you be a peeping Tom without leaving your own house?

Dr. Howard Weinblatt is about to find out.

Weinblatt is a 65-year-old Ann Arbor pediatrician whose life, until last week, was unblemished by allegations of criminal or ethical wrongdoing of any kind.

But on Tuesday, the Free Press and other news organizations reported that the Washtenaw County prosecuting attorney had accused Weinblatt of watching through a window as a 12-year-old girl undressed.

I happened to be on the phone with my wife when the news of Weinblatt's arrest appeared on my computer screen, and I read her the first couple of paragraphs of the story.

"Creep," she muttered.

And what parent wouldn't second that emotion, armed with the same cursory facts? We have a 10-year-old daughter of our own. And the image that conjured itself in my wife's head, and my own, was of a depraved old man lurking in bushes outside his victim's house, his silhouette invisible against the darkness as she prepared to bathe or go to sleep in her brightly illuminated room.

Except that Weinblatt apparently wasn't in anyone's bushes on the four occasions last month when he is alleged to have "surveilled an unclothed person," a felony punishable by up to two years in prison. He was in his own home looking out his own window and into a window of his neighbor's house.

And if merely looking into somebody's house from somewhere outside the owner's property is a crime, then it's one I (and every other man who ever walked a dog, went for a bike ride, or slipped out for a smoke after dark) have committed, probably more than once.

Where's the beef?

I know what you're thinking: Surely there's more to the Weinblatt case than that. And I and a lot of other dog owners certainly hope you're right.

But neither the Washtenaw prosecutor's office nor the Ann Arbor police are saying much about the case beyond the boilerplate criminal complaint prosecutors issued last week.

On Wednesday, I asked Washtenaw Prosecutor Brian Mackie's spokesman, Steve Hiller, to confirm that Weinblatt was being charged for surveilling that took place from his own home, without the aid of a telescope, binoculars, or a still or video camera.

"We don't want to comment beyond what we say in the complaint," he said.

Well, I continued, where does the complaint say the defendant was standing when he allegedly spied on his neighbor?

"It doesn't," Hiller said. (Mackie didn't respond to my voicemail seeking elucidation of this cryptic response.)

Larry Margolis, an Ann Arbor lawyer retained by Weinblatt, insisted in an e-mail that all the prosecutor's allegations "are limited solely to conduct allegedly occurring within the confines of his personal residence." Nor, he added, has anyone asserted that his client used a scope or camera to spy on his neighbor.

A new frontier?

Neither Margolis nor Mackie's spokesman could cite a previous case in which an alleged peeping Tom was successfully prosecuted for taking in the view from his own house. "We're researching that very question," Margolis said.

Not that any of this matters much: How many people are going to lead their children into the examination room of a pediatrician who has been charged with ogling naked little girls, even if those allegations are ultimately debunked, reduced or abandoned?

Still, it seems preposterous on its face to suggest a man should or could go to prison for watching anything that unfolds in the next door neighbor's window, absent some evidence that he choreographed it himself.

Although, just to be on the safe side, I'm going to talk to the dog about walking herself.

---

Parental Dilemma: Should You Spy on Your Kids?

Original Article

09/05/2011

By Christopher Santarelli

In the 21st century, parenthood and paranoia often walk hand in hand.

For some, the blessed event is followed by high-tech surveillance — a monitoring system tracks the baby’s breathing rhythms and relays infrared images from the nursery. The next investment might be a nanny cam, to keep watch on the child’s hired caregivers. Toddlers and grade schoolers can be equipped with GPS devices enabling a parent to know their location should something go awry.

To cope with the uncertainties of the teen years, some parents acquire spyware to monitor their children’s online and cell phone activity. Others resort to home drug-testing kits.

Added together, there’s a diverse, multi-billion-dollar industry seeking to capitalize on parents’ worst fears about their children — fears aggravated by occasional high-profile abductions and the dangers lurking in cyberspace. One mistake can put a child at risk or go viral online, quickly ruining a reputation.

“There’s a new set of challenges for parents, and all sorts of new tools that can help them do their job,” said David Walsh, a child psychologist in Minneapolis. “On the other hand, we have very powerful industries that create these products and want to sell as many as possible, so they try to convince parents they need them.”

Some parents need little convincing.

In New York City, a policeman-turned-politician recorded a video earlier this year offering tips to parents on how to search their children’s bedrooms and possessions for drugs and weapons.

Read the rest of the article here

Video Link


Video Link


Video Link

---

CONSUMER ALERT - Aarons Rent to Own Stores Spy on Customers

---

Cool spy device to record those compliance checks or when you register.

Click the image to view more details

Spy Pen ($39.99)

Key Chain ($39.99)

---

PA - Follow-up: District took 56,000 photos of students

Original Article

04/20/2010

Early this year, the school district of sleepy Lower Merion, a Philadelphia suburb, made headlines it would probably have rather been left out of. After generously issuing laptops to high schoolers, the district came under fire because the devices' tracking software secretly photographed some students — at school and at home.

When one student was disciplined because webcam images allegedly revealed he was using a controlled substance in his bedroom — Mike and Ike candy, his family says — a hellstorm broke loose. Parents accused the school of spying on the students.

Resolution has been slow in coming. Lower Merion had claimed that it remotely activated the cameras only on laptops that had gone missing, in an attempt to determine their whereabouts. The FBI has even gotten in on the case.
- Why not equip them with GPS?

Now more information has come to light, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports, about how widespread the amateur spy operation was. District investigators found that 56,000 photos were snapped by student webcams and transmitted back to district headquarters, the newspaper says.

The district continues to assert that it activated cameras only when computers went missing, and that it did so a total of about 80 times in the last two years. But the district also admits to botching the program: At least five times, it says, it accidentally left the tracking software running after a computer had been located, sometimes for weeks.

The district says that its investigation is ongoing but that in a review of the 56,000 images, none show "salacious or inappropriate" content — a prime worry among teens and parents, who have been concerned that bedroom-situated computers might have grabbed shots of kids out of their Hot Topic threads.

It's a little difficult to believe that none of the material captured is scandalous: Attorneys for student Blake Robbins, who initiated a class-action lawsuit, allege that hundreds of photos of the boy show him in various stages of undress, awake and asleep.

So far, the investigation has found that the tracking system was run with lax attention to detail, to put it mildly, with the district admitting that it didn't have any real policies in place for how the system should be used. In some cases it says it can't even figure out why the program was even turned on in the first place.

The district's full report on the matter is due in two weeks, the Inquirer says.

---

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin

---

NM - Cameras give sex offenders 'the eye'

Original Article

Sounds like illegal surveillance to me.

03/31/2010

Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department shares an inside look to how some registered sex offenders are tracked by the use of surveillance cameras around the county.

Deputies say many times offenders don't tell the truth about where they're living. They'll report one address but actually live at another, which is illegal.

Deputies say they then get permission from neighbors, landlords, or business owners to put up cameras to see if they can spot an offender. Detectives will go back and watch the footage and have warrants written based on not seeing an offender at home.

The cameras can end up in different places. BCSO Detective Pat Burke says even a bush or a tree can be used for surveillance.

Deputies say in one example, cameras were put in a pet cemetery to make sure a homeless offender was living there as he reported. The cameras ended up spotting him there.

The cameras were paid for by a Federal Department of Justice grant.

BCSO wouldn’t say how many cameras are up, but confirm at least eight are somewhere in the county.

Video Link

---

"The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly." - Abraham Lincoln

---

Shadow Government Full Length Movie

Part 2 talks about tracking criminals, sex offenders, etc, and also your children. Some scary stuff.

Playlist Link

---

"The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly." - Abraham Lincoln

---

FBI wants records kept of Web sites visited

Original Article

02/05/2010

WASHINGTON - The FBI is pressing Internet service providers to record which Web sites customers visit and retain those logs for two years, a requirement that law enforcement believes could help it in investigations of child pornography and other serious crimes.

FBI Director Robert Mueller supports storing Internet users' "origin and destination information," a bureau attorney said at a federal task force meeting on Thursday.

As far back as a 2006 speech, Mueller had called for data retention on the part of Internet providers, and emphasized the point two years later when explicitly asking Congress to enact a law making it mandatory. But it had not been clear before that the FBI was asking companies to begin to keep logs of what Web sites are visited, which few if any currently do.

The FBI is not alone in renewing its push for data retention. As CNET reported earlier this week, a survey of state computer crime investigators found them to be nearly unanimous in supporting the idea. Matt Dunn, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in the Department of Homeland Security, also expressed support for the idea during the task force meeting.

Greg Motta, the chief of the FBI's digital evidence section, said that the bureau was trying to preserve its existing ability to conduct criminal investigations. Federal regulations in place since at least 1986 require phone companies that offer toll service to "retain for a period of 18 months" records including "the name, address, and telephone number of the caller, telephone number called, date, time and length of the call."

At Thursday's meeting (PDF) of the Online Safety and Technology Working Group, which was created by Congress and organized by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Motta stressed that the bureau was not asking that content data, such as the text of e-mail messages, be retained.

"The question at least for the bureau has been about non-content transactional data to be preserved: transmission records, non-content records...addressing, routing, signaling of the communication," Motta said. Director Mueller recognizes, he added "there's going to be a balance of what industry can bear...He recommends origin and destination information for non-content data."

Motta pointed to a 2006 resolution from the International Association of Chiefs of Police, which called for the "retention of customer subscriber information, and source and destination information for a minimum specified reasonable period of time so that it will be available to the law enforcement community."

Recording what Web sites are visited, though, is likely to draw both practical and privacy objections.

"We're not set up to keep URL information anywhere in the network," said Drew Arena, Verizon's vice president and associate general counsel for law enforcement compliance.

And, Arena added, "if you were do to deep packet inspection to see all the URLs, you would arguably violate the Wiretap Act."

Another industry representative with knowledge of how Internet service providers work was unaware of any company keeping logs of what Web sites its customers visit.

If logs of Web sites visited began to be kept, they would be available only to local, state, and federal police with legal authorization such as a subpoena or search warrant.

What remains unclear are the details of what the FBI is proposing. The possibilities include requiring an Internet provider to log the Internet protocol (IP) address of a Web site visited, or the domain name such as cnet.com, a host name such as news.cnet.com, or the actual URL such as http://reviews.cnet.com/Music/2001-6450_7-0.html.

While the first three categories could be logged without doing deep packet inspection, the fourth category would require it. That could run up against opposition in Congress, which lambasted the concept in a series of hearings in 2008, causing the demise of a company, NebuAd, which pioneered it inside the United States.

The technical challenges also may be formidable. John Seiver, an attorney at Davis Wright Tremaine who represents cable providers, said one of his clients had experience with a law enforcement request that required the logging of outbound URLs.

"Eighteen million hits an hour would have to have been logged," a staggering amount of data to sort through, Seiver said. The purpose of the FBI's request was to identify visitors to two URLs, "to try to find out...who's going to them."

A Justice Department representative said the department does not have an official position on data retention.

---

"The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly." - Abraham Lincoln

---

IL - Senger's sexual predator bill approved

View the article here

Just more illegal spying!

05/21/2009

A bill introduced by state Rep. Darlene Senger (R-Naperville) to make it easier for police departments to catch sexual predators targeting children has been approved in the House and Senate and now heads to the governor's office for approval.

When House Bill 1348 is signed into law, police departments will be able to secure recorded phone conversations of child sexual predators easier and faster than they can today. Currently, Illinois law enforcement officials must wait up to two weeks to obtain a signed overhear order from a judge.

"As a parent, I believe providing law enforcement with every possible tool to track down sexual predator before they reach our children is so important," Senger said in a press release. "I am confident that when this bill is signed into law, many more children will be saved from potential tragedies."

Senger worked with Rich Wistocki of the Naperville Police Department Computer Crimes Unit to craft the legislation. Wistocki, who works on the Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce, deals with hundreds of child exploitation cases and said Illinois is one of 12 states that ties the hands of law enforcement on these cases due to its two-party consent statute.

According to Wistocki, sexual predators often seek children out through social networking Web sites like MySpace and Facebook where they can hide or fake their identity. Then, the predator seeks to call the child on a cell phone in order to arrange a meeting.

"This movement toward protecting children will be huge for Internet investigators and advocacy centers who are involved in conducting child exploitation cases throughout the state," Wistocki said in the release.

Senger also co-sponsored House Bill 1314 which makes it a Class 4 felony for a registered sex offender to access social networking Web sites.

This legislation was also approved by the Legislature and is awaiting the governor's signature.

"We cannot allow the Internet to be a playground for sexual predators," Senger said. "In today's day and age, it's crucial that we continue to adopt laws to keep up with emerging technology."

---