Tuesday, January 08, 2013

...at least, the ones who get caught.
"Software developed by the FBI and Ernst & Young has revealed the most common words used in email conversations among employees engaged in corporate fraud. The software, which was developed using the knowledge gained from real life corporate fraud investigations, pinpoints and tracks common fraud phrases like 'cover up,' write off,' 'failed investment,' 'off the books,' 'nobody will find out' and 'grey area'. Expressions such as 'special fees' and 'friendly payments' are most common in bribery cases, while fears of getting caught are shown in phrases such as 'no inspection' and 'do not volunteer information.'"


Were they ever?
Evan Brown writes:
Keller v. National Farmers Union Property & Cas. Co., 2013 WL 27731 (D. Mont. January 2, 2013)
A federal court in Montana has held that a plaintiff in an insurance dispute was protected from having to turn over all of her social media content to her litigation opponent. The court’s decision helps define the contours of discoverable information in cases involving social media evidence.
Plaintiff was injured in an auto accident and sued defendant insurance company after it refused to pay medical bills. Defendant served a production request seeking, among other things, “a full printout of all of [plaintiff's] social media website pages and all photographs posted thereon . . . from August 26, 2008 to the present.” Plaintiff objected to the request on grounds it was overly burdensome and harassing.
Read more on InformationLawGroup.
It’s a good decision in terms of helping to call a halt to overly broad fishing expeditions. But the outcome might have been very different if there was even one public post or public image that supported the insurance company’s request to get everything. I suspect it’s still prudent for us all to assume that if we’re involved in litigation, there’s a chance anything we’ve posted on social media platforms may become discoverable – even what we seek to protect as “private.”


We seem to be spending a lot of e-Ink on drones. How will they translate to “Officer Friendly?”
General McChrystal on Drones: 'They Are Hated on a Visceral Level'
General Stanley McChrystal cautioned about the use of drones in a recent interview with Reuters. While he applauded what they allowed him to do with his special forces troops, he told the news agency that the people of Afghanistan just hated drones.
Here's what he said in full. It's not the first time that he's sounded such warnings, but it's still remarkable coming from the man who ran the American war (aka counterinsurgency) in the country.

(Related) Where does a lawmaker get off thinking he can control the police?
Yes, I know it’s important to consider the source and any biases, but I reacted when I read a story on New American by Joe Wolverton II:
Wolverton writes that North Dakota State Representative Rick Becker (R-Bismarck), a first-term legislator, is proposing a state law that would limit the use of drones by law enforcement. Here’s the part that caught my attention:
Despite the legislative restrictions he wants to impose on the use of the drones, Becker says he isn’t trying to offend police, but to defend the Constitution.
“It’s a new technology that has really amazing capabilities and can be used in excellent ways for our communities. I don’t want to say that drones can’t be used,” Becker said. “But with the new technology there are also issues, primarily privacy issues, which can come into play.”
Cass County Sheriff Paul Laney resents Becker’s meddling in police business and argues that the new law would, as reported by the Huffington Post, “set a troublesome precedent.”
Yes, I can imagine how a warrant standard for drones used in criminal investigations could set a troublesome precedent for law enforcement. That’s exactly the kind of trouble we need.
Read more of Wolverton’s discussion and commentary on New American. According to a Huffington Post article, “similar legislation will be proposed in many states this legislative session, including California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, Oregon, Missouri, Michigan and Indiana. In Virginia, the ACLU/tea party-backed measure is expected to be unveiled this session.”


For my Ethical Hackers. Think of it as Steganography for Audio...
"A group of researchers from the Institute of Telecommunications of the Warsaw University of Technology have devised a way to send and receive messages hidden in the data packets used to represent silences during a Skype call. After learning that Skype transmits voice data in 130-byte packets and the silences in 70-byte packets, the researchers came upon the idea of using the latter to conceal the sending and receiving of additional messages."


Of interest to my Geeks...
"Every January it is traditional to compare the state of the languages as indicated by the TIOBE index. So what's up and what's down this year? There have been headlines that C# is the language of the year, but this is based on a new language index. What the TIOBE index shows is that Java is no longer number one as it has been beaten by C — yes C not C++ or even Objective C."

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