SonicSpike shares a report from The Daily Beast: You can use bitcoin. But you can’t hide from the taxman. At least, that’s the hope of the Internal Revenue Service, which has purchased specialist software to track those using bitcoin, according to a contract obtained by The Daily Beast. The document highlights how law enforcement isn’t only concerned with criminals accumulating bitcoin from selling drugs or hacking targets, but also those who use the currency to hide wealth or avoid paying taxes. The IRS has claimed that only 802 people declared bitcoin losses or profits in 2015; clearly fewer than the actual number of people trading the cryptocurrency — especially as more investors dip into the world of cryptocurrencies, and the value of bitcoin punches past the $4, 000 mark. Maybe lots of bitcoin traders didn’t realize the government expects to collect tax on their digital earnings, or perhaps some thought they’d be able to get away with stockpiling bitcoin thanks to the perception that the cryptocurrency is largely anonymous. “The purpose of this acquisition is to help us trace the movement of money through the bitcoin economy, ” a section of the contract reads. The Daily Beast obtained the document through the Freedom of Information Act. The contractor in this case is Chainalysis, a startup offering its “Reactor” tool to visualize, track, and analyze bitcoin transactions. Chainalysis’ users include law enforcement agencies, banks, and regulatory entities. The software can follow bitcoin as it moves from one wallet to another, and eventually to an exchange where the bitcoin user will likely cash out into dollars or another currency. This is the point law enforcement could issue a subpoena to the exchange and figure out who is really behind the bitcoin. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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IRS Now Has a Tool To Unmask Bitcoin Tax Evaders
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hacker News: Swedish media is reporting of a massive data breach in the Swedish Transport Agency (Transportstyrelsen) after the agency mishandled an outsourcing deal with IBM, which led to the leak of the private data about every vehicle in the country, including those used by both police and military. The data breach exposed the names, photos and home addresses of millions of Swedish citizen, including fighter pilots of Swedish air force, members of the military’s most secretive units, police suspects, people under the witness relocation program, the weight capacity of all roads and bridges, and much more. The incident is believed to be one of the worst government information security disasters ever. In 2015, the Swedish Transport Agency hand over IBM an IT maintenance contract to manage its databases and networks. However, the Swedish Transport Agency uploaded IBM’s entire database onto cloud servers, which covered details on every vehicle in the country, including police and military registrations, and individuals on witness protection programs. The transport agency then emailed the entire database in messages to marketers that subscribe to it. And what’s terrible is that the messages were sent in clear text. When the error was discovered, the transport agency merely thought of sending a new list in another email, asking the subscribers to delete the old list themselves. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Kaspersky Lab surveyed 16, 750 people and concluded that often negative experiences on social experience overpower their positive effects — and they’re doing something about it. JustAnotherOldGuy pointed us to their latest announcement. 59% have felt unhappy when they have seen friends’ posts from a party they were not invited to, and 45% revealed that their friends’ happy holiday pictures have had a negative influence on them. Furthermore, 37% also admitted that looking at past happy posts of their own can leave them with the feeling that their own past was better than their present life. Previous research has also demonstrated peoples’ frustration with social media as 78% admitted that they have considered leaving social networks altogether. The only thing that makes people stay on social media is the fear of losing their digital memories, such as photos, and contacts with their friends. To help people decide more freely if they want to stay in social media or leave without losing their digital memories, Kaspersky Lab is developing a new app — FFForget will allow people to back up all of their memories from the social networks they use and keep them in a safe, encrypted memory container and will give people the freedom to leave any network whenever they want, without losing what belongs to them — their digital lives. The FFForget app will be released in 2017, but there’s already a web page where you can sign up for early access. Kaspersky plans to monetize this by creating both a free version of the app — limited to one social network — and a $1.99-per-month version which automatically backs up social content from Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Instagram in real-time with a fancier interface and more powerful encryption. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
An anonymous reader quotes Mashable: Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said Thursday that he wants Apple’s encryption to go back to how it was in early 2014. Back then, police could basically extract any information they wanted after getting a warrant. “Doing nothing about this problem will perpetuate an untenable arms race between private industry and law enforcement, ” Vance said on Thursday. “Federal legislation is our only chance to lay these arms aside.” Vance said he’s got 423 “lawfully-seized Apple devices” that his employees can’t do anything with. Forty-two of those devices “pertain to homicide or attempted murder cases” according to the district attorney’s office, and a similar number “relate to sex crimes.” The argument, of course, is that the district attorney’s office would have an easier time solving crimes if they had access to these phones… Apple believes being forced to hack into phones at the government’s will is an unreasonable burden. ZDNet adds that “the call for federal legislation could be given a popular boost by president elect Donald Trump, who previously called for a boycott on Apple products when it refused to help the FBI.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Softpedia: David Levin, 31, of Estero, Florida will spend 20 days in prison after hacking two websites belonging to the Florida state elections department. Levin, a security researcher, tested the security of two Florida state election websites without permission, and then recorded a video and posted on YouTube. The problem is that the man appearing in the video next to Levin was a candidate for the role of state election supervisor, running for the same position against the incumbent Supervisor of Elections, Sharon Harrington. Harrington reported the video to authorities, who didn’t appreciate the media stunt pulled by the two, and charged the security researcher with three counts of hacking-related charges. The researcher turned himself in in May and pleaded guilty to all charges. This week, he received a 20-day prison sentence and two years of probation. In court he admitted to the whole incident being a political stunt. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 