A 27-year-old man was arrested for allegedly trying to pick up a 15-year-old middle school student, Salinas police said today.
The man, Andrew Gaytan, was allegedly following girls near La Paz Middle School as he cruised around in a charcoal colored Mazda, officials said.
A passerby called to report the incident to police at 9:22 a.m. Wednesday. The caller told officers that they were trying to follow Gaytan and last saw him on Moreno Street talking to the 15-year-old.
Officers said that when they arrived, they found Gaytan trying to talk the girl into his car.
Their investigation revealed that Gaytan had contacted the girl three different times, police said. Officers, believing Gaytan was drunk, gave him a field sobriety test, which officials said he failed.
Gaytan was three times over the legal limit, police said.
Police booked Gaytan into Monterey County Jail on suspicion of driving under the influence and three counts of annoying a child.
Internet phones sold by Cisco Systems ship with a weakness that allows them to be turned into remote bugging devices that intercept confidential communications in a fashion similar to so many Hollywood spy movies, SC Magazine reported.
The publication quoted consultants from Australia-based HackLabs, who said customers had lost $20,000 a day from exploits, which also included attacks that forced the devices to make calls to premium phone numbers. The consultants said the underlying weaknesses were present in the default settings and could be fixed only by making changes to the phones’ configuration settings.
“The book says to shut off web services,” HackLabs’ Peter Wesley was quoted as saying, referring to the manual that shipped with the phones. “Who’s going to read all that.”
SC Magazine said that a Cisco spokesman advised users to “apply the relevant recommendations in manuals to secure their systems. There was no explanation why phones are by default open to the attacks described in the article. A more sensible policy might be to ship the phones with the features disabled and allow customers who have a specific need for them to turn them on.
The magazine didn’t name the specific make of phone, which is also susceptible to denial of service attacks. The article is here. ®
NEW YORK – 
Bugging by Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid even reached a former deputy prime minister. Clive Irving on how Scotland Yard investigators messed up—and the wider ethical concerns.
In London the firestorm over telephones being bugged by reporters from Rupert Murdoch’s saucy tabloid, the News of the World, just escalated. This is becoming one of those scandals where the more the perpetrators want to bottle it up the more it won’t stay bottled.
Wednesday night Scotland Yard, which was put in charge of investigating the case, was forced to admit that the paper had targeted the phones of many more people than it first thought—including a former deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott. In fact, Scotland Yard itself is becoming as much a part of the story as the News of the World.
The News of the World hacking raises wider concerns than just the ethics of tabloid journalism and the complicity of executives at Murdoch’s papers.
Two previous inquiries by the Yard were suspiciously casual, and in view of what has since emerged were more like white washes than investigations.
The latest investigation is led by a feisty woman, deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers, who seems determined to clear up the mess left by her male predecessors—no matter who gets embarrassed in the process.
Wednesday night she sent out an email to people whom she now suspects had been targets—as many as 20 of them. (Previously the Yard had put the number at 10 or 12). She even said that some public figures had been misled by the Yard when seeking assurance they had not been bugged.
The case of John Prescott is particularly poignant.
This larger-than-life rumbustious politician was Tony Blair’s essential lifeline to the working class roots of the New Labour party. Blair himself had a famously tin ear for the old-time grass roots faction. Prescott flaunted the perks of office, being dubbed “Two Jags Prescott” because he owned two Jaguar luxury sedans. And in 2006 he admitted to having an affair with one of his secretaries.
The new evidence turned up by the Yard apparently shows that Prescott’s phone was hacked in the month that he confessed to this affair.
Politicians I have spoken to here in London now believe that the News of the World hacking raises wider concerns than just the ethics of tabloid journalism and the complicity of executives at Murdoch’s papers.
First, there is the issue of Scotland Yard’s serial bungling—or, worse, of its self-restraint for fear of annoying a powerful media baron. And second there is the issue of how secure the phone conversations of senior ministers are. Tabloid reporters are not particularly regarded as masters of technology. If they can bug the mighty so easily, what about the real pros working for foreign governments or terrorist groups?
Clive Irving is senior consulting editor at Conde Nast Traveler, specializing in aviation—find his blog, Clive Alive, at CliveAlive.Truth.Travel.
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A federal judge in Omaha has ordered a woman and her father to pay $120,000 for bugging a teddy bear so they could spy on her ex-husband.
The judge ruled that Dianna Divingnzzo and Sam Divingnzzo violated wiretapping laws from January to June 2008.
Court documents say Dianna Divingnzzo put a recording device inside her daughter’s teddy bear in an attempt to gather information for the divorced couple’s custody case. A state judge has ruled the recordings couldn’t be used in court.
The ex-husband, William Lewton, and five others recorded by the teddy bear filed a federal lawsuit in 2009. A jury trial had been set for April, but the judge granted the plaintiffs’ request for summary judgment. Each was awarded $20,000.
Eau Claire (WQOW) – Investigators believe a woman bugged a child’s car seat to keep tabs on her ex-boyfriend.
Jamie Mesang is accused of duct taping a digital recorder underneath a car seat that belongs to her ex. Police say he became suspicious when Mesang started texting him about things she shouldn’t have known about.
Eventually, he took apart his son’s car seat and found the recorder. She’s been charged with a felony and will be in court in March.
