...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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