I wonder what process failed. Would informant and
surveillance data be generally available rather than tightly
compartmentalized? Did no one review the data sent to the lawyers?
(The fact that it was a “link” suggest anyone who saw it could
grab a copy of the data, not just the lawyers it was intended for.)
Radio New Zealand reports:
Police say that sensitive, secret files have been mistakenly sent to a defence lawyer and have been widely circulated.
A criminal lawyer who has seen the files said they contained details about informants, criminal activity and police surveillance that could put people at risk.
The mistake occurred when a standard criminal disclosure sent to a lawyer contained a link to the sensitive information, which should not have been accessible.
Read more on RNZ.
Now why would the defense lawyer who received the
material have circulated it? Wouldn’t they realize it was a
mistake and be ethically bound not to disseminate it further?
Didn't the FBI used to have experts? Is this a
mere “Oops!” or indication of real paranoia?
The Justice Department will drop economic
espionage charges against a Temple University professor the
government claimed was providing secret technology to China,
according to multiple reports.
The misstep is a setback in the government’s
attempts to stanch what they say is a massive Chinese economic
espionage campaign to pilfer U.S. intellectual property.
… Xi’s lawyers said the FBI had
misinterpreted the technology behind the professor’s efforts and
overseas communications.
At a presentation given to investigators Aug. 21,
Xi and his lawyer, Peter Zeidenberg, presented affidavits from the
world’s top physicists who had analyzed Xi’s emails with his
Chinese contacts and concluded the professor was conducting a
scientific pursuit with little commercial application, the Associated
Press reported.
… The FBI recently said economic espionage
cases have shot up 53 percent over the last year, mostly due to
China-based activity, according to the Journal.
This could be amusing...
EFF
Provides Evidence to Courts on Telecoms Collection of Metadata
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Sep 12, 2015
“This week EFF
presented evidence in two of its NSA cases confirming the
participation of Verizon Wireless, Sprint and AT&T in the NSA’s
mass telephone records collection under the Patriot Act. This is
important because, despite
broad public acknowledgment,
the government is still claiming that it can dismiss our cases
because it has never confirmed that anyone other than Verizon
Business participated and that disclosing
which providers assist the agency is a state secret. This
argument was successful recently in convincing the D.C. Circuit to
reverse and remand the case of Klayman
v. Obama. EFF filed requests with the courts in two
lawsuits, Smith
v. Obama and First
Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA, asking that they
accept as evidence and take into account government filings in the
secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that were
recently made public. The filings confirm that AT&T, Verizon,
Verizon Wireless, and Sprint participated in the NSA’s programs
since they report on a “compliance incident” involving those
companies. One of the documents was released as part of a Freedom of
Information Act lawsuit brought by the New York Times. It is a
letter sent from the Department of Justice to the FISC describing how
the agency failed to comply with an order the court issued in 2010.
The subject line of the letter references that the order was for
records from AT&T, Verizon, Verizon Wireless, and Sprint. The
other document is one that had previously been made public on the
website of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that
confirms that the spying program referred to in the letter is indeed
the mass collection of telephone call detail records…”
The never-ending saga of a bad decision.
Tech
company: No indication that Clinton’s e-mail server was ‘wiped’
The company that managed Hillary Rodham Clinton’s
private e-mail server said it has “no knowledge of the server being
wiped,” the strongest indication to date that tens of thousands of
e-mails that Clinton has said were deleted could be recovered.
… To make the information go away permanently,
a server must be wiped — a process that includes overwriting the
underlying data with gibberish, possibly several times.
That process, according to Platte River Networks,
the Denver-based firm that has managed the system since 2013,
apparently did not happen.
… Even if the e-mails could be restored, it’s
unclear whether anyone would have the authority to do so.
Conservative groups have already been pressing in
court for access to those e-mails, if they exist.
… Politically, even the possibility that the
e-mails could be retrieved is likely to further inflame an issue that
has already hampered the campaign of the Democratic presidential
front-runner. Clinton has been trying to move past the issue for
months and on Tuesday said she was “sorry” she had not used
separate e-mail accounts for public and private matters.
… The conservative group Judicial Watch asked
a federal judge on Sept. 4 to order the State Department to take
steps to determine whether those personal e-mails still exist. The
group has said that Clinton’s e-mails were essentially government
property that she should not have been allowed to take upon her
departure from the State Department.
Justice Department lawyers, on behalf of the State
Department, have opposed the request, arguing that personal e-mails
are not federal records and that the court lacks jurisdiction to
demand their preservation. Government
lawyers offered a robust defense of Clinton’s e-mail practices
on Wednesday in a court filing, arguing that federal employees,
including Clinton, are allowed to discard personal e-mails provided
they preserve those that deal with public business.
… Republican lawmakers have questioned the
credibility of Clinton’s process for dividing her public and
personal e-mail correspondence.
Lawmakers have repeatedly noted that all or part
of 15 e-mails to Clinton from longtime adviser Sidney Blumenthal that
appeared to be work-related were missing from the State Department’s
file of official e-mails. Blumenthal had provided those e-mails to
the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
The chairman of
that panel, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), said at the time that the
missing Blumenthal e-mails confirmed “doubts about the completeness
of Clinton’s self-selected public record and raises questions about
her decision to erase her personal server . . . before it could
be analyzed by an independent, neutral third party.”
Keeping up.
Here's how
China's aircraft carrier stacks up to other world powers'
For my students taking a late class.
Companion:
Tens of thousands using safety app that lets friends digitally walk
you home at night
Tens of thousands of people around the world are
now using a free
personal-safety mobile app that allows friends to
virtually walk you home at night. The Companion app, created by five
students from the University of Michigan, enables users to request a
friend or family member to keep them company virtually and track
their journey home via GPS on an online map.
Although they can do so, the friend or family
member does not need to have the Companion
app installed, which is available for both Android
and iOS.
The user can send out several requests to different phone contacts
in case people are not available to be a companion or not with their
phones at the time.
Those contacted then receive an SMS text message
with a hyperlink in it that sends them to a web page with an
interactive map showing the user walking to their destination. If
the user strays off their path, falls, is pushed, starts running or
has their headphones yanked out of their phone, the app detects these
changes in movements and asks the user if they're OK.
If the user is fine, they press a button on the
app to confirm within 15 seconds. If they do not press the button,
or a real emergency is occurring, the Companion app transforms the
user's phone into a personal alarm system that projects loud noises
to scare criminals from the scene, and gives you the option to
instantly call the police.
This reminds me of a student. (Okay, several
students) Makes my lectures much more interesting.
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