Tag: digest

Activist group sues San Diego Police Department over “stingray” records

A legal advocacy group has sued the San Diego Police Department (SDPD) and the city of San Diego in an attempt to force the release of public records relating to stingrays, also known as cell-site simulators. Stingrays are often used covertly by local and federal law enforcement to locate target cellphones and their respective owners. However, stingrays also sweep up cell data of innocent people nearby who have no idea that such collection is taking place. Stingrays can be used to intercept voice calls and text messages as well. Earlier this week, a local judge in Arizona ruled that a local reporter could not receive similar stingray documents from the Tucson Police Department because disclosure “would give criminals a road map for how to defeat the device, which is used not only by Tucson but other local and national police agencies.” Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Activist group sues San Diego Police Department over “stingray” records

AnandTech snapped up by parent company of Tom’s Hardware and LaptopMag

Purch, Inc. announced  on Wednesday that it had purchased AnandTech.com, ending the site’s 17-year run as an independent publication. Purch also owns a number of other long-running technology sites, including LaptopMag (founded as Laptop Magazine in 1991), Tom’s Hardware (founded 1996), and a handful of other offshoot tech publications. Purch says the acquisition will help it “dominate the tech expert and enthusiast market.” Anand Shimpi, founder and original editor-in-chief of the site, left his post for Apple in late August. Shimpi says he is “happy to see [AnandTech] end up with a partner committed to taking good care of the brand and its readers.” Current Editor-In-Chief Ryan Smith says the site has “grown by leaps and bounds over the past several years” but that it was “nearing what’s possible as an independent company.” Smith goes on to say that Purch values AnandTech’s exhaustive hardware testing and reviews, and that Purch would enable the site to grow “without compromising the quality that made us who we are today.” Under Smith, AnandTech has continued to run reviews of individual PC components and, less frequently, complete consumer products like laptops, phones, and operating systems. While the site misses Shimpi’s voice and expertise (and that of former mobile editor Brian Klug, who also left for Apple this year), its coverage and testing procedures continue to be deep and thorough, and they will hopefully remain that way post-acquisition. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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AnandTech snapped up by parent company of Tom’s Hardware and LaptopMag

FCC expected to fine Sprint $105 million for overcharging customers

The Federal Communications Commission is reportedly on the verge of fining Sprint $105 million for cramming charges that brought complaints from tens of thousands of customers. The $105 million fine would match one levied on AT&T , which was accused of the same illegal practice. The US government has also sued T-Mobile  over cramming charges. The FCC has not confirmed the action against Sprint, but it was reported Monday in the National Journal  and yesterday in The   Wall Street Journal . “According to the enforcement action, which hasn’t been finalized, Sprint billed customers for third-party services it knew they hadn’t asked for and didn’t want,”  National Journal wrote. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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FCC expected to fine Sprint $105 million for overcharging customers

Cops illegally nailed webcam to utility pole for 6 weeks to spy on house

A federal judge on Monday tossed evidence that was gathered by a webcam—turned on for six weeks—that the authorities nailed to a utility pole 100 yards from a suspected drug dealer’s rural Washington state house. The Justice Department contended that the webcam, with pan-and-zoom capabilities that were operated from afar—was no different from a police officer’s observation from the public right-of-way. The government argued  (PDF): Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Cops illegally nailed webcam to utility pole for 6 weeks to spy on house

Feds used Adobe Flash to identify Tor users visiting child porn sites

A little more than 16 months ago, word emerged that the FBI exploited a recently patched Firefox vulnerability to unmask Tor users visiting a notorious child pornography site. It turns out that the feds had waged an even broader uncloaking campaign a year earlier by using a long-abandoned part of the open source Metasploit exploit framework to identify Tor-using suspects. According to Wired , “Operation Torpedo,” as the FBI sting operation was dubbed, targeted users of three darknet child porn sites. It came to light only after Omaha defense attorney Joseph Gross challenged the accuracy of evidence it uncovered against a Rochester, New York-based IT worker who claims he was falsely implicated in the campaign. Operation Torpedo used the Metasploit Decloaking Engine to identify careless suspects who were hiding behind Tor, a free service used by good and bad guys alike to shield their point of entry to the Internet. The Decloaking Engine went live in 2006 and used five separate methods to break anonymization systems. One method was an Adobe Flash application that initiated a direct connection with the end user, bypassing Tor protections and giving up the user’s IP address. Tor Project officials have long been aware of the vulnerability and strenuously advise against installing Flash. According to Wired: Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Feds used Adobe Flash to identify Tor users visiting child porn sites

Oakland cops disciplined 24 times for failing to turn on body-worn cameras

OAKLAND, Calif.—Over the last two years, the Oakland Police Department (OPD) has disciplined police officers on 24 occasions  for disabling or failing to activate body-worn cameras, newly released public records show. The City of Oakland did not provide any records prior to 2013, and the OPD did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment. The records show that on November 8, 2013 one officer was terminated after failing to activate his camera. Less than two weeks later, another resigned for improperly removing the camera from his or her uniform. However, most officers received minor discipline in comparison. The OPD has used Portable Digital Recording Devices (PDRDs) since late 2010 . According to the department’s  own policy , patrol officers are required to wear the cameras during a number of outlined situations, including detentions, arrests, and serving a warrant. At present, the city has about 700 officers . Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Oakland cops disciplined 24 times for failing to turn on body-worn cameras

Judge says reporter can’t get public records about cops’ “stingray” use

A local judge in Arizona ruled Friday that the Tucson Police Department (TPD) does not have to disclose records related to the use of stingrays, also known as cell-site simulators, under the state’s public records act. According to a Saturday report from Capitol Media Services , a state news wire, complying with reporter Beau Hodai ’s public records request “would give criminals a road map for how to defeat the device, which is used not only by Tucson but other local and national police agencies.” Hodai sued the TPD and the City of Tucson in March 2014 to force them to hand over such records. The devices are often used covertly by local and federal law enforcement to locate target cellphones and their respective owners. However, stingrays also sweep up cell data of innocent people nearby who have no idea that such collection is taking place. Stingrays can be used to intercept voice calls and text messages as well. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Judge says reporter can’t get public records about cops’ “stingray” use

Bizarre Yelp lawsuit over alleged fake reviews to finally move ahead

A judge in San Diego, California,  ruled Tuesday against a local bankruptcy lawyer who had attempted to put a stop to Yelp’s lawsuit against him. Specifically, Julian McMillan asked the court more than six months ago to issue an anti-SLAPP ruling. A ” SLAPP ,” or strategic lawsuit against public participation, is a type of lawsuit meant to stifle speech—one where one party employs tactics against a smaller target by drawing out the suit in terms of time and money and intimidating the defendant. Yelp sued McMillan in August 2013. The  lawsuit , filed in San Francisco, alleges breach of contract, intentional interference with contract, unfair competition, and false advertising. Read 18 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Bizarre Yelp lawsuit over alleged fake reviews to finally move ahead

Samsung 850 EVO SSD takes its storage into the third dimension

Things have advanced quite a bit since our last thoroughly in-depth look at how solid state disks work, and Samsung has been one of the biggest companies leading the charge toward faster, denser solid state drives. Its 840 EVO was the first consumer SSD to use TLC NAND—that’s triple-level cell NAND, which can store three bits per memory cell instead of one or two. Now, Samsung’s newest consumer SSD takes NAND density a step further, stacking the memory cells on top of each other in a complex sandwich. The 850 EVO, formally announced this morning , uses 32-layer TLC “V-NAND,” where the “V” stands for “vertical.” As we discussed previously at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show, Samsung is the only SSD manufacturer that makes ” the whole widget “—it’s the only vertically integrated OEM that builds every part of the SSDs it sells, including the NAND that actually holds the data. This gives the company a distinct advantage over other SSD manufacturers—most of whom source their NAND from Samsung. The 850 EVO is set to be released in four capacities: 120GB, 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB. These are all decimal measurements, not binary—so that “1TB” is properly one trillion bytes, not 1024GB (there are official IEC units for binary measurements, but I’ll eat glass before I start saying ” tebibyte “). The quoted numbers on Samsung’s site look pretty good for a consumer-level drive: max sequential read speeds of 540MB/s, max sequential write speeds of 520MB/s, and relatively high IOPS across a variety of read and write regimes. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Samsung 850 EVO SSD takes its storage into the third dimension

Powerful, highly stealthy Linux trojan may have infected victims for years

Researchers have uncovered an extremely stealthy trojan for Linux systems that attackers have been using to siphon sensitive data from governments and pharmaceutical companies around the world. The previously undiscovered malware represents a missing puzzle piece tied to “Turla,” a so-called advanced persistent threat (APT) disclosed in August by Kaspersky Lab and Symantec . For at least four years, the campaign targeted government institutions, embassies, military, education, research, and pharmaceutical companies in more than 45 countries. The unknown attackers—who are probably backed by a nation-state, according to Symantec—were known to have infected several hundred Windows-based computers by exploiting a variety of vulnerabilities, at least two of which were zero-day bugs. The malware was notable for its use of a rootkit that made it extremely hard to detect. Now researchers from Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab have detected Linux-based malware used in the same campaign . Turla was already ranked as one of the top-tier APTs, in the same league as the recently disclosed Regin  for instance. The discovery of the Linux component suggests it is bigger than previously thought and may presage the discovery of still more infected systems. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Powerful, highly stealthy Linux trojan may have infected victims for years