Tag: SPYING

During his tenure as an employee at Google, 27-year-old David Barksdale belonged to an elite group of Site Reliability Engineers, or SREs, giving him total access to some of the company's most closely guarded personal data -- including private Gmail accounts. Instead of using this access to respond to technical difficulties, however, Barksdale reportedly spent a lot of his time stalking ...

After months of back and forth and hand wringing, it looks like the strange tale of the Lower Merion school district may finally be coming to a close. In advance of the new school year, U.S. Attorney Zane David Memeger has announced that the federal government will not be filing charges against the district or its employees over the controversial use of tracking software on school-issued laptops ...

The legal haranguing over the Lower Merion School District's use of computer tracking software may be winding down. And, while the school administrators don't escape unscathed, a report has found no evidence of a concerted effort to "spy" on students. The report, commissioned by attorneys for the district, does find serious flaws with the school district's privacy policies, and even hammers ...

As we've informed you, the new monitoring service Social Sentry allows nosy vigilant bosses to read exactly what their employees are saying and talking about on Facebook, all in the name of "corporate protection." Created by Teneros, Social Sentry allows bosses to set up alerts and real-time notifications about their employees' Twitter or Facebook activity, and can even monitor workers who social ...

If accusations made by a suit filed against Pennsylvania's Lower Merion School District on behalf of Harriton High School student Blake Robbins are true, we can't imagine a single valid defense for the school system's actions. According to the court documents, Robbins was disciplined last November by assistant principle Lindy Matsko for "improper behavior in the home." As evidence of this ...

When the New York Times revealed in December of 2005 that the U.S. government was eavesdropping on citizens' telephone and e-mail conversations without warrants, a retired AT&T technician named Mark Klein knew he had physical evidence showing how the feds had been stealing information from AT&T's network. Strangely, though, nobody gave him the time of day. According to Klein, even the ...

A recent Wired.com story reports that the FBI has been using a proprietary spyware program to snoop on alleged ne'er-do-wells since at least 2004. According to heavily redacted documents that Wired obtained by invoking the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI has developed a sophisticated program it calls 'computer and Internet protocol address verifier,' or CIPAV, that can infiltrate target ...

Here's a tip: If you are going to rat someone out to the cops, make sure the cops don't end up busting you instead. The Smoking Gun reports that Michelle Owen, a 24 year-old Indiana woman, suspected that her ex-boyfriend had used her computer to look up child pornography. Embroiled in a custody dispute with the man and concerned by the criminal nature of such searches, Owen requested that ...

If you're one of those people who enjoy erotica at the office, you'd better watch out. Software maker Parabem has built a forensic program that analyzes files stored on office computers and networks to identify pornographic images. Apparently, some employers out there worry that checking out smut at work wastes time and productivity and could lead to lawsuits. Shocking. The program scans and ...

We always knew those electromagnetic emanations would amount to no good, and now here they go ruining any shred of privacy we once thought to possess. Some folks from the Security and Cryptography Lab at Switzerland's EPFL have managed to eavesdrop on the electromagnetic radiation shot off by shoddy wired keyboards with every keystroke. They've found four different ways to listen in, including ...

Parents are getting desperate in the battle to stay on-top of their kid's online activities. The preferred method of combat used to be occasionally sitting down at the PC with your child and/or picking up some filtering software, but that just isn't cutting it anymore. Kids are on social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, even if they're under the 13-year-old age limit. Even worse, many ...

National security agencies are warning American officials and businesses to take extra precautions with the data (addresses, documents, etc) on their cell phones and laptops while in China for the Olympics. In the past year, China has shown its desire to infiltrate American networks in order to steal government and industry secrets, and agencies are warning that it will be very easy for it to do ...

If you were looking for a spy, where would you start. The baccarat table? A dark alley? A Washington D.C. parking garage? Xbox Live? That last place probably wouldn't be high on your list, but that's exactly where the British government is starting a recruitment campaign to find potential spies interested in employment. The ads will be embedded into the popular online game 'Tom Clancy's Splinter ...