Federal Agents Quietly Using Social Media 171

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 16, 2010 @04:45PM from the friend-of-the-devil dept.

SpuriousLogic passes along this excerpt from the ChiTrib: "The Feds are on Facebook. And MySpace, LinkedIn, and Twitter, too. US law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that offers a tantalizing glimpse of issues related to privacy and crime-fighting. ... The document... makes clear that US agents are already logging on surreptitiously to exchange messages with suspects, identify a target's friends or relatives and browse private information such as postings, personal photographs, and video clips. Among other purposes: Investigators can check suspects' alibis by comparing stories told to police with tweets sent at the same time about their whereabouts. Online photos from a suspicious spending spree... can link suspects or their friends to robberies or burglaries." The FoIA lawsuit was filed by the EFF, which has posted two documents obtained from the action, from the DoJ and Internal Revenue (more will be coming later). The rights group praises the IRS for spelling out limitations and prohibitions on deceptive use of social media by its agents — unlike the DoJ. The US Marshalls and the BATFE could not find any documents related to the FoIA request, so presumably they have no guidelines or prohibitions in this area.

Comment Re:Ron Paul (Score 1) 475

by zionHopeful on Wednesday November 28, 2007 @02:16PM (#21507445) Attached to: Presidential Candidates and Online Privacy

Ron Paul !!! The others are Fed Reserve puppets working for the money. There's a great paper discussing privacy at: 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565 It talks about how privacy benefits society as a whole.

Feed Techdirt: Microsoft Can't Resist: Ramps Up FUD On Linux Patent Pressure Again (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed on Wednesday October 10, 2007 @12:52AM

Apparently, Microsoft's new strategy against open source is to keep repeating over and over again that open source software violates patents. This is a practice the company started years ago, and repeated earlier this year, with Microsoft execs ominously saying that open source products violate Microsoft patents. Of course, Microsoft has yet to show a single patent where this is true or actually do anything to prove it's true in a court of law. Perhaps that's because it knows the backlash would be a lot stronger than what was seen against SCO (who eventually failed in following a similar strategy). But, that won't stop Steve Ballmer from repeating the threats that Microsoft could sue the likes of Red Hat at any moment for patent infringement. This time, he lobbed in an extra suggestion as well: that open source providers may also face lawsuits from the likes of Eolas, the patent holder that Microsoft recently settled with. Folks from the open source community have asked Microsoft to put up or shut up before -- and it doesn't seem like the company plans to do either thing. Little surprise, really, since apparently the strategy of making people afraid works. The biggest reason companies avoid using open source software is an irrational fear of opening themselves up to patent liability. Still, this is another clear misuse of the patent system to hold back innovation in the market by making companies far and wide afraid of adopting innovation. That's not what the patent system was intended to do at all.

Submission + - Einstein's spooky action leads to quantum computer

Submitted by Stony Stevenson on Friday September 07, 2007 @12:25AM

Stony Stevenson writes: Physicists at the University of Michigan have demonstrated how two separate atoms can communicate with a sort of 'quantum intuition' which Albert Einstein referred to as "spooky". In doing so, the researchers have made an advance towards super-fast quantum computing and even a quantum internet.

The scientists used light to establish an "entanglement" between two atoms, which were trapped one metre apart in separate enclosures. "This link between remote atoms could be the fundamental piece of a radically new quantum computer architecture," said Professor Christopher Monroe, the principal investigator on the project who is now at the University of Maryland. "Now that the technique has been demonstrated, it should be possible to scale it up to networks of many interconnected components that will eventually be necessary for quantum information processing."

Submission + - Storm worm more powerful than top supercomputers

Submitted by Stony Stevenson on Friday September 07, 2007 @12:12AM

Stony Stevenson writes: Security researchers who are tracking the burgeoning network of Microsoft Windows machines that have been compromised by the virulent Storm worm, are saying it has now grown so massive and far-reaching that it easily overpowers the world's top supercomputers.

"In terms of power, the botnet utterly blows the supercomputers away," said Matt Sergeant, chief anti-spam technologist with MessageLabs, in an interview. "If you add up all 500 of the top supercomputers, it blows them all away with just 2 million of its machines. It's very frightening that criminals have access to that much computing power, but there's not much we can do about it." Sergeant said researchers at MessageLabs see about 2 million different computers in the botnet sending out spam on any given day, and he adds that he estimates the botnet generally is operating at about 10 percent of capacity.

Submission + - Testing Einstein's 'spooky action at a distance'

Submitted by smooth wombat on Wednesday July 18, 2007 @03:14PM

smooth wombat writes: Travelling to a time in the past is, as far as we know, not possible. However, Einstein postulated a faster-than-light effect known as 'spooky action at a distance'. The problem is, how do you test for such an effect? That test may now be here. If all goes well, hopefully by September 15th, John Cramer will have experimented with a beam of laser light which has been split in two to test Einstein's idea.

While he is only testing the quantum entanglement portion, changing one light beam and having the same change made in the other beam, his experiment might show that a change made in one beam shows up in the other beam before he actually makes the change.

An interesting sidenote is that the money for this project was raised not from the scientific community but from the public at large. His fans have sent him the money necessary to purchase the equipment to test Einstein's idea.

Feed Science Daily: Great Expectations: Why The Placebo Effect Varies From Person To Person (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed on Wednesday July 18, 2007 @03:13PM

Why do some people experience a "placebo effect" from a sham treatment they believe to be real -- while other people don't respond at all? A new study may help explain why. Using two different types of brain scans, researchers have found that the extent to which a person responds to a placebo is closely linked to how active a certain area of their brain becomes when they're anticipating something beneficial.

Journal Journal: Energy storage options

Journal by mdsolar on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @03:22PM

The closets of fossil energy are crammed full of skeletons. It is long past time to clean them out and as it turns out, renewable energy may need the storage space, not for skeletons, but rather to smooth the transition to full conversion to renewable energy.

Feed Engadget: Mercedes-Benz 'ignores' court order to activate suspect's GPS (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed on Monday July 16, 2007 @05:53PM

Filed under: GPS, Transportation

For all the tracking equipment that Mercedes-Benz crams in its motorcars, it's apparently mighty tough to get the company to tap into any of it if you're not the owner. Reportedly, the automaker has "refused to comply with a court order to activate a car's GPS" after authorities tried in vain to track down a hit-and-run suspect the easy way. Police were able to pinpoint the owner of a 2003 S430 as a "prime suspect" for striking and killing a 24-year old jaywalker in California, and while chasing him down the old fashioned way would seem a good bit more entertaining, Glendale police were looking M-B's way for a shortcut. Apparently, no comment has come from the firm, even as those involved with the case have continued to fume over the lack of assistance, and while we'd assume Mercedes-Benz is just looking out for the privacy of its customers, hasn't GPS tracking (much less the court ordered variety) been deemed legal anyway?

[Via GPSTrackingSystems]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Feed Engadget: TiVo announces most-watched commercials service (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed on Monday July 16, 2007 @05:52PM

Filed under: Home Entertainment

TiVo has announced a new service for advertisers and those interested in tracking commercial viewership, the Top Commercial Rankings reports, which is based on info gleaned using TiVo's StopWatch feature that tracks viewer behavior second-by-second. The feature has TiVo compiling reports for April and May on metrics like the top commercials watched overall (Disturbia and Ford trucks), or the least fast-forwarded campaigns (FedEx and Samsung Jitterbug). The report includes interesting insight into how viewers watch television, even timeshifted programs, and should provide advertisers more information about how to maximize their impact. Now to get this report to studio execs to keep them from blaming DVRs for the downfall of their industry.