Another fraudulent certificate raises the same old questions about certificate authorities
Earlier this year, an Iranian hacker broke into servers belonging to a reseller for certificate authority Comodo and issued himself a range of certificates for sites including Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo! Mail. With these certificates, he could eavesdrop on users of those mail providers, even if they use SSL to protect their mail sessions.
Article source: http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2011/08/earlier-this-year-an-iranian.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss
Council spying on staff
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Source: Supplied
The Advertiser has been told Port Adelaide-Enfield Council regularly uses the services of Dulwich-based Kingswood Investigations to monitor staff off site, which the council confirmed.
Mayor Gary Johanson defended the use of private investigators, saying only those with a guilty conscience should be concerned.
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Article source: http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/council-spying-on-staff/story-e6frea83-1226124924285?from=public_rss
Hidden Cameras – Spying More Common Than You Think
Asher Moses August 30, 2011 – 4:34PM
Hidden cameras in change rooms and toilets are far more common than people realise and advances in technology have made them so small that they are virtually impossible to detect, a Sydney counter-surveillance expert said.
Organisations are typically oblivious to the presence of hidden cameras and, on the odd occasions they do find them, are reluctant to come forward to police for fear of reputational damage, said Julian Claxton, a surveillance expert whose company, Jayde Consulting, conducts sweeps for recording devices.
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When can you eavesdrop on police? BlackBerry Spying
A Chicago woman was acquitted Wednesday of felony eavesdropping charges for recording two police officers on her BlackBerry phone without their consent.
The case points to a legal gray area, in which the recording was clearly against state law, but a jury acquitted Tiawanda Moore because it felt she was trying to expose wrongdoing within the department. The two internal affairs investigators were allegedly trying to pressure her to drop a complaint she had filed against a Chicago police officer who she said had fondled her and given her his personal phone number after he responded to a domestic disturbance call in her home.
>> Continue reading “When can you eavesdrop on police? BlackBerry Spying” »
Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/eavesdrop-police-chicago-case-exposes-legal-gray-area-230129920.html
The NYPD’s domestic spying program
The AP reports that New York City police, with the help of the CIA, skirt domestic surveillance laws to snoop on Americans in minority neighbourhoods
It is no secret that the New York Police Department launched its own global intelligence unit after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But it’s news to almost everyone that the NYPD, in close and “extraordinary” collaboration with the CIA, might have bent domestic surveillance and civil rights laws by sending undercover agents to monitor Muslim enclaves and mosque services, according to a months-long investigation by the Associated Press. Here’s a look at the “astounding” NYPD “domestic CIA” operation:
What does the NYPD spy unit do?
Its goal is to gather and analyze intelligence about terrorist threats to New York. The unit has officers stationed in 11 foreign cities, and its operatives have been caught operating in New Jersey and Boston. Its most controversial initiatives, according to the AP, include the use of undercover officers (dubbed “rakers”) to troll New York’s Muslim neighborhoods looking for suspicious people and shops, and “mosque crawler” informants who report on what clerics are saying to their followers.
Where does the CIA fit in?
The unit was set up, and is still headed, by David Cohen, a retired CIA officer. Cohen brought aboard CIA agent Larry Sanchez, who stayed on the agency payroll while training police agents from his NYPD office — an unusual arrangement that appears to have breached “the wall that’s supposed to keep the CIA out of the domestic intelligence business,” the AP says. Also “blurring the lines between police work and spying,” the NYPD sent an officer to the CIA training farm to learn the agency’s tradecraft, and a senior CIA operative is currently working undercover in the top ranks of the NYPD unit.
Did any of this raise eyebrows?
NYPD lawyers raised concerns about the “raking” operations, and the intelligence unit got embroiled in an ongoing civil-liberties lawsuit after Cohen’s undercover agents infiltrated anti-war groups before the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. The FBI also has turf issues with Cohen’s unit, and thinks it might be illegal. In fact, “senior FBI officials in New York ordered their own agents not to accept any reports from the NYPD’s mosque crawlers,” the AP says. But the authorities with oversight — the New York City Council and the federal government, which gives the unit millions in aid — have asked few questions.
Is any of this illegal?
Let’s put it this way, says John Cook at Gawker: “When the FBI’s lawyers are so concerned about your ethnic profiling that they won’t rely on your reports, you know you’re in trouble.” Throw in CIA dabbling in domestic spying, and these operations are “probably illegal.” The NYPD is evidently worried enough that it routinely shreds documents, says Adam Serwer at The American Prospect. But most of the unit’s work doesn’t “appear to violate the letter of the law,” says Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway. Still, ”ethnic harassment” and spying on mosques and anti-war protesters is “not what the NYPD is supposed to be about.”
Sources: AP, NPR, Gawker, American Prospect, Outside the Beltway
Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/nypds-astounding-domestic-spying-program-153000477.html