You gotta get the publicity while the story's hot. You never know when you might run for office!
http://www.databreaches.net/?p=6776
Gonzalez’s lawyer criticizes federal prosecutors
August 19, 2009 by admin Filed under Breach Incidents, Business Sector, Financial Sector, Hack, Malware
Albert Gonzalez, a suspect in several hacking cases, was close to reaching a comprehensive plea agreement with federal prosecutors in Massachusetts and New York when federal prosecutors in New Jersey indicted him on Monday on a new raft of computer crimes, said Mr. Gonzalez’s lawyer, Rene Palomino Jr.
[...]
Mr. Palomino said the settlement would have ended all active investigations, including New Jersey’s. He charged that New Jersey prosecutors moved up their indictment to short-circuit the settlement talks. “I guess so they could bask in the glory of all the publicity they are getting from this,” he said. [Good guess. Bob]
[...]
Mr. Palomino also shed some light on some mysteries in Monday’s announcement. He said “P.T.,” an unindicted co-conspirator named in the new indictment, was Damon Patrick Toey, one of the 11 people charged last August as part of the data thefts at T.J. Maxx stores, which are owned by TJX. Mr. Toey has pleaded guilty and received a reduced sentence in exchange for cooperation in the government’s case against Mr. Gonzalez.
Mr. Palomino said that he was prepared to argue that Mr. Toey, not Mr. Gonzalez, took the lead in the data thefts in the New Jersey indictment.
He also said that one of the “unnamed Russian conspirators” named in the indictment was Maksym Yastremski, who is currently serving a 30-year sentence in a Turkish prison.
Read more in The New York Times.
Do you think the details of the hack will ever come out? Perhaps a tell-all book?
http://www.databreaches.net/?p=6763
Gonzalez: The Al Capone Of Cyber Thieves?
August 19, 2009 by admin Filed under Commentaries and Analyses, Of Note
Evan Schuman and Fred J. Aun have a well-written commentary on the recent indictment of Albert Gonzales and two unnamed co-conspirators that highlights the questions left unanswered by the indictment, and the apparent contradictions between statements made. As one example, they write:
For example, 7-Eleven is a new name in the breach circle, and the indictment said that the $54 billion convenience store chain’s POS network files were directly—and successfully—attacked. In August 2007, “7-Eleven was the victim of a SQL injection attack that resulted in malware being placed on its network and the theft of an undetermined number of credit and debit card numbers and corresponding card data,” the indictment said.
But a statement that 7-Eleven issued on Tuesday (Aug. 19) tells a very different story. The 7-Eleven statement said that “affected transactions were limited to customers’ use of certain ATMs, owned and operated by a third party, located in 7-Eleven stores over a 12-day period from October 28, 2007, through November 8, 2007.”
That’s a very key difference, given that third-party ATM data—from machines that essentially leased space from various stores—would never be in the possession of 7-Eleven.
Read more on StorefrontBacktalk.
This can't be correct, can it? They have the victims personal information and still can't identify them? The reporter must mean “contact” rather than identify, otherwise the charge of Identity Theft would become “Making up a phoney Identity”
http://www.databreaches.net/?p=6774
Md. police trying to find ID theft victims
August 19, 2009 by admin Filed under Breach Incidents, ID Theft, U.S.
Police said they were trying to identify at least 100 victims of identity theft whose private information was found in a hotel room in Elkridge, Md.
Four suspects from Florida face charges for a theft scheme that stretches across at least four states, the Howard County, Md., police said Wednesday in a news release.
Police said a hotel housekeeper alerted them to some suspicious documents she found in a trash can. A search of the hotel room and the vehicle of the person registered to the room turned up hundreds of personal and financial documents from various states and victims, including driver’s licenses, credit cards, checks, Social Security cards and bank statements, the police said.
Read more on UPI.
Now hate speech is part of the economic stimulus package? Did he become too good at his job? Did he say something that embarrassed the FBI or made them look silly? More importantly, WHY DON”T THEY PAY ME! I can pretend to hate people for enough money, honest I can.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/08/lawyer-fbi-paid-right-wing-blogger-charged-with-threats/
Lawyer: FBI Paid Right-Wing Blogger Charged With Threats
By David Kravets Email Author August 19, 2009 4:00 pm
A notorious New Jersey [I'm from New Jersey! Bob] hate blogger charged in June with threatening to kill judges and lawmakers was secretly an FBI “agent provocateur” paid to disseminate right-wing rhetoric, his attorney said Wednesday.
Hal Turner, the blogger and radio personality, remains jailed pending charges over his recent online rants, which prosecutors claim amounted to an invitation for someone to kill Connecticut lawmakers and Chicago federal appeals court judges.
But behind the scenes the reformed white supremacist was holding clandestine meetings with FBI agents who taught him how to spew hate “without crossing the line,” [Can I get a copy of that book? Bob] according to his lawyer, Michael Orozco.
“Almost everything was at the behest of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Orozco said in a 45-minute telephone interview from New Jersey. “Their job was to pick up information on the responses of what he was saying and see where that led them. It was an interesting dynamic on what he was being asked to do.”
“He’s a devoted American,” added the lawyer, who claims Turner was paid “tens of thousands of dollars” for his service.
How not to cross that line...
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=2951
Court offers guidelines on when to unmask anonymous posters
August 19, 2009 by Dissent Filed under Court, Internet
In the US, the right to free speech is construed as also protecting the anonymity of the person doing the speaking. Provided that the content, be it spoken or written, violates no laws, citizens have the right to fulminate in public fora without said public being aware of their identity. Courts have also extended this protection to anonymous Internet communications, and are now being asked to weigh in on a related issue: when do accusations of wrongdoing justify the removal of anonymity from the sources of anonymous statements made via the Internet.
Read more on Ars Technica.
[From the article:
The appeals court, noting that DC courts had no precedent for this situation, examined the varied decisions handed down in other areas. It found the Virginia standard—a "good faith basis" for the accusations—far too lax, given the importance that anonymity has been granted in the US. Instead, the court laid out guidelines that are far closer to the New Jersey standard:
the court should: (1) ensure that the plaintiff has adequately pleaded the elements of the defamation claim, (2) require reasonable efforts to notify the anonymous defendant that the complaint has been filed and the subpoena has been served, (3) delay further action for a reasonable time to allow the defendant an opportunity to file a motion to quash, (4) require the plaintiff to proffer evidence creating a genuine issue of material fact on each element of the claim that is within its control, and (5) determine that the information sought is important to enable the plaintiff to proceed with his lawsuit.
In short, the plaintiff has to provide evidence that its claims are reasonable and the identity of the defendant is needed before the suit could continue. The defendant should also be given the opportunity to attempt to block his or her unmasking in court.
This makes sense. I wonder if Google would archive the page for the court?
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/022108.html
August 19, 2009
US Courts - Internet Materials in Opinions: Citations and Hyperlinking
The Third Branch: "The Judicial Conference has issued a series of “suggested practices” to assist courts in the use of Internet materials in opinions. The recommendations follow a pilot project conducted by circuit librarians who captured and preserved webpages cited in opinions over a six-month period... The guidelines suggest that, if a webpage is cited, chambers staff preserve the citation by downloading a copy of the site’s page and filing it as an attachment to the judicial opinion in the Judiciary’s Case Management/Electronic Case Files System. The attachment, like the opinion, would be retrievable on a non-fee basis through the Public Access to Court Electronic Records system."
Further indication that I led a deprived childhood.
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/022106.html
August 19, 2009
Teens and Mobile Phones Over the Past Five Years: Pew Internet Looks Back
Teens and Mobile Phones Over the Past Five Years: Pew Internet Looks Back, August 2009: "Teenagers have previously lagged behind adults in their ownership of cell phones, but several years of survey data collected by the Pew Internet & American Life Project show that those ages 12-17 are closing the gap in cell phone ownership. The Project first began surveying teenagers about their mobile phones in its 2004 Teens and Parents project when a survey showed that 45% of teens had a cell phone. Since that time, mobile phone use has climbed steadily among teens ages 12 to 17 – to 63% in fall of 2006 to 71% in early 2008. In comparison, 77% of all adults (and 88% of parents) had a cell phone or other mobile device at a similar point in 2008."
Something for my Criminal Justice students? My suspicion is this type of database would find lots of sponsors in the “Single Topic” world (MADD for example) that would use reports of “their crime” to drum up new members, harangue politicians, etc.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/19/crimespotting-crime-has-never-looked-so-good/
Crimespotting: Crime Has Never Looked So Good
by MG Siegler on August 19, 2009
There’s nothing cool about crime, but Stamen Design comes pretty damn close to making it cool with the new site it built and designed, San Francisco Crimespotting, that launched today. The site offers a visual representation of reported crimes in the city during a set period of time. Various types of crime ranging from alcohol-related to theft to murder are represented by different color dots placed on a map of the city.
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