Author: Cyrus Farivar

Philadelphia cops admit they put Google Maps sticker on surveillance vehicle

Who approved Google sticker on license plate reader-equipped car? Philly PD won’t say.

The Philadelphia Police Department has refused to answer Ars’ questions about how or why it deployed an unmarked police vehicle equipped with at least one license plate reader and a bizarre Google Maps decal.

Lt. John Stanford, a spokesman for the department, repeated a statement he previously sent to Vice Motherboard, which broke the story on Thursday.

"We have been informed that this unmarked vehicle belongs to the police department; however, the placing of any particular decal on the vehicle was not approved through any chain of command," he wrote. "Once this was brought to our attention, it was ordered that the decals be removed immediately."

Ars specifically asked if only one such vehicle was disguised as being a Google vehicle, who authorized this deployment, and whether the PPD has used similar tactics in the past. Lt. Stanford did not respond on any front.

A Google spokeswoman told Ars that the vehicle is not a company car, adding, "We are currently looking into the matter."

Vice Motherboard reported earlier that it found this vehicle after from a tweet by a University of Pennsylvania computer science professor.

As Ars has reported for years, license plate readers are used by law enforcement agencies big and small nationwide as a way to automatically scan, record, and analyze potentially wanted or stolen license plates. Police have long argued that they are necessary tools to catch wanted criminal suspects, while privacy advocates have expressed concern that the data collection is too broad and often is retained for years on end. In Oakland, California, for example, the "hit rate" (wanted cars divided by all scanned cars) is just 0.16 percent.

Man who claims to have invented e-mail sues Gawker for $35M in libel suit

Gizmodo: “Laying claim…for a universal technology gives you acres of weasel room.”

(credit: Howard Lake)

The same lawyer who successfully sued Gawker Media over Hulk Hogan’s sex tape has now sued the online publisher again, this time representing the Massachusetts man who claims that he invented e-mail in 1978 at the age of 14.

On Tuesday, Charles Harder brought a libel suit on behalf of Shiva Ayyadurai, a man who has gone on a years-long campaign (seriously, his website is inventorofemail.com) trying to convince the world that he, and he alone, invented e-mail.

Ayyadurai now demands $35 million from Gawker, Gizmodo’s parent company, and a public retraction to Gizmodo’s 2012 articles that convincingly reported: "Corruption, Lies, and Death Threats: The Crazy Story of the Man Who Pretended to Invent Email," and "The Inventor of Email Did Not Invent Email?"

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FBI director warns that feds will bring more encryption-related cases

Meanwhile, WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption continues to frustrate FBI, too.

James Comey (right) is the director of the FBI.

The head of the FBI said Wednesday that the government will bring more legal cases over encryption issues in the near future, according to Reuters.

Speaking with reporters at FBI headquarters in Washington, FBI Director James Comey specifically said that end-to-end encryption on WhatsApp is affecting the agency’s work in "huge ways." However, he noted the FBI has no plans to sue Facebook, the app’s parent company.

He also said that since October 2015, the FBI has examined "about 4,000 digital devices" and was unable to unlock "approximately 500."

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Feds must hand over NIT source code or dismiss child porn charges, lawyer says

FBI already gave source code to lawyers in similar Nebraska case—why not again?

(credit: Timothy Vollmer)

A lawyer representing a child pornography suspect in Washington state has told the federal judge overseeing the case that government prosecutors should essentially put up or shut up.

In a new Monday filing, Colin Fieman forcefully argued that the government must provide him and his client, Jay Michaud, access to the source code of the FBI’s "network investigative technique" (NIT). In this case, United States v. Michaud, the government has refused to do so, despite the fact that it did so in a related case in Nebraska, United States v. Cottom.

Fieman continued, saying that the court should note that the "actual NIT discovery is not classified, a fact that is otherwise hard to reconcile with the harms the Government claims might arise from its disclosure," and that the court could "fashion a protective order" that would prevent public disclosure of the NIT. If his efforts are successful, it would mark yet another ruling in favor of defendants in another one of the 135 "Operation Pacifier" child pornography cases that are being prosecuted nationwide.

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Cumulus is your new favorite surveillance-fueled dystopian novel

Review: You’ll soon understand how “absolute data corrupts absolutely.”

(credit: Eliot Peper)

OAKLAND, Calif.—I’ve lived in this gritty but proud city by the Bay for essentially the last decade. While I didn’t grow up here (I was raised in Southern California), I have family roots: My grandfather went to an Oakland high school that no longer exists, and my mother grew up in adjacent Berkeley.

Oakland has seen a rapid transformation in recent years, at least in the greater downtown area. It feels like every month, some new cocktail bar or bookstore opens up. (Personally, I’m stoked about the new bike lanes.) Consequently, the word 'gentrification' comes up pretty frequently, and the city is endlessly compared to Brooklyn. In September 2015, Uber bought a historic Sears building downtown and is set to open a "major office" in 2017. About a month later, Mayor Libby Schaaf invented a new word to express her hope for equitable prosperity for the city: "techquity."

But Oakland also has significant issues with crime and poverty—18 people have been murdered this year alone. It’s become the fourth-most expensive rental market in the country, thanks to spillover from nearby San Francisco. It’s no secret Oakland remains very segregated: a significant portion of the city’s minorities and lower economic classes live south of the 580 freeway, which bisects the city. (Thanks, redlining!) This week, a poll claimed that more than one-third of those surveyed were "prepared to leave the Bay Area" entirely in coming years, citing rising expenses and worsening traffic.

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Cops to public: Stop calling alleged drug dealer’s phone, we need to search it

City of Alliance, Ohio also zings suspect: “Oh, and his ringtone is terrible!”

This is the phone in question. (credit: City of Alliance Police Department)

A small town in Ohio is pleading with its residents to halt calls to an alleged drug dealer’s seized phone—the volume of calls are disrupting investigators’ ability to search the phone.

According to a Tuesday evening Facebook post by the City of Alliance Police Department, local authorities are now in possession of Steve Notman’s phone after he was arrested “for ALLEGEDLY (on video) selling crystal meth here in Alliance.”

While we at Ars often report on questionable police searches, there is no Fourth Amendment violation here, as the cops have the suspect's permission.

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Brazilian judge blocks WhatsApp for 72 hours, but it still works over VPN, Wi-Fi

“This decision punishes more than 100 million Brazilians who rely on our services.”

(credit: samazgor)

A Brazilian judge has ordered (Google Translate) that all mobile phone providers in the country block WhatsApp traffic for 72 hours, beginning yesterday.

However, Brazilians are discovering that the ban only covers mobile carriers—so Brazilians still can use WhatsApp over Wi-Fi or a VPN connection over their mobile data plan.

Judge Marcel Maia Montalvão issued the order Monday while working on an ongoing drug case that remains under seal. This was the same judge who ordered that Facebook executive Diego Dzodan should be arrested in March after "repeated non-compliance with court orders." Dzodan was released soon after.

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Woman ordered to provide her fingerprint to unlock seized iPhone

Law prof: “I still decline to use my fingerprint out of an abundance of caution!”

A Southern California woman was recently ordered to provide her fingerprint to unlock a seized iPhone, according to a report by the Los Angeles Times.

The case highlights the ongoing balancing act between security and convenience and how the law treats something you know (a passcode) as being quite different than something you are (a biometric). Under the Constitution, criminal defendants have the right not to testify against themselves—and providing a passcode could be considered testimonial. However, being compelled to give up something physiological or biometric (such as blood, DNA sample, fingerprint or otherwise), is not.

As the Times reports, Paytsar Bkhchadzhyan was ordered by a federal judge to provide her fingerprint on February 25, and the warrant was executed and unsealed on March 15.

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Seattle’s sanitation workers can no longer pry through trash without a warrant

Citing stronger state privacy rights, judge allows only “plain view” searches.

(credit: Zena C)

A Washington county judge has ruled that the city of Seattle’s warrantless searches of garbage violated the state’s constitution.

In her 14-page order, King County Judge Beth Andrus found in favor of eight Seattle residents whose trash was searched by sanitation workers. The workers were operating under a city ordinance that allowed them to inspect trash for possible violations of a city composting law. Violators could be fined $1 if they mistakenly put food waste into their regular garbage rather than organic waste bins.

The ruling turned on whether these inspections amounted to a privacy violation. The order, which was handed down last week, illustrates that states are able to grant more rights than those interpreted by the Supreme Court.

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Rule 41 would make it easier for the government to carry out hacks

ACLU: Rule 41 fix has “insufficient privacy protections, transparency, or oversight.”

Privacy activists and at least one senator are up in arms over a proposed change to a section of the Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure that would allow any magistrate judge to issue warrants authorizing government-sanctioned hacking anywhere in the country.

If the proposal does go forward, it would mark a notable expansion of judicial power to sign off on "remote access" of criminal suspects’ computers. As Ars has reported previously, for more than two years now, the Department of Justice has pushed to change Rule 41 in the name of being able to thwart online criminal behavior enabled by tools like Tor.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court passed the proposed change to Rule 41 and sent it to Congress on Thursday, which will have until December 1 to modify, reject, or defer the proposal. If the House of Representatives and Senate do not pass a resolution in favor by simple majority, the revisions will become law that same day.

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