Oregon Paper Turns The Tables On Garbage-Sifting Prosecutors, Delight Ensues

A fifteen year old article got new
 life on social media this week, with dumpster diving
reporters going through public officials' trash to
make a point about privacy and rights. 

I'm not sure why this  is making the rounds on social media today, but everybody seems to be reviving an Oregon alt weekly newspaper's turning of the tables on nosy police and prosecutors.

Given that police sometimes tend to be overly nosy, i.e. sans search warrants, this decade and a half old tale is one to remember in case this ever happens again.

At the time, police in prosecutors in Oregon decided it was A-OK to go looking through people's garbage cans at curbside looking for evidence of a crime. That is, without a search warrant.

The logic was the garbage and recycling is abandoned property, so it was fair game to go looking through the refuse.

Since there's a lot of personal and potentially private material in garbage - recepts, notes, documents, evidence of where you shopped and when you shopped and where you were, invading garbage seems pretty invasive.

I come down in favor of police sifting through your garbage - but only if they have a search warrant. Since the Willamette Week knew prosecutors and police and the local mayor thought it was OK to search through garbage without a warrant, the reporters there decided to brilliantly turn the tables.

They sifted through the trash left curbside by the prosecutor, police chief and the mayor. Abandoned property, right?

The police chief and especially the mayor were terribly displeased when the Willamette Week reporters fessed up to sifting through their trash. The local prosecutor had a better sense of humor about it.

The anger by the police chief and mayor seemed a little misplaced, because the reporters, judging from that week's trash, concluded that both officials seemed like fine, upstanding citizens. There was certainly more than a whiff of garbage, but no real whiff of scandal.

Here's how the paper wrote about the Police Chief's Mark Kroeker's reaction at the time:

"'This is very cheap,' he blurted out, frowning as we pointed out a receipt with his credit card number, a summary of his wife's investments, an email prepping the mayor about his job application to be police chief of Los Angeles, a well-chewed cigar stub, and a handwritten note scribbled in pencil on a napkin, so personal it made us cringe. We also drew his attention to a newsletter from the conservative political advocacy group Focus on the Family" addressed to Mr and Mrs. Mark Kroeker."

With that, the normally accessible and affable police chief abruptly ended the interview and complained to other media about the Willamette Week's invasion of privacy. The paper did not reveal what was in the personal note on the napkin, but it was nothing nefarious, such as an extra-marital affair or illicet activity.

The paper couldn't get to the mayor's garbage. The bin was up against her house, and the reporters would have trespassed if they'd gone on to her property to check it. But the recycling was curbside, so the reporters had a look.

The contents were mostly just newspapers, all mainstream and middle of the road and reputable.

Then-mayor Vera Katz was livid when she got wind of the recycling heist by the paper. She summoned the reporters, and the newspapers from the recycling bin to her office. She also ordered them to bring the name of the newspaper's lawyer.

The mayor's prepared statement read, in part, "I consider Willamette Week's actions in this matter to be potentially illegal and absolutely unscrupulous and reprehensible....I will consider all my legal options in response to these actions."

Funny, though. The mayor was fine with her police force digging through people's trash. What's the difference?

The local district attorney, possibly sensing a PR mess, didn't get too publicly excited about Willamette Week's dumpster diving. He only asked the reporters, "Do I have to pay for this week's garbage collection?"

However, the paper did detail the findings in the the DA's refuse bin. Again, nothing shady, but the reporters got a LOT of personal information about the guy.

Again, I know this story is 15 years old. But it's a master class for when government or police officials overreach.

I get it. Police have a job to do and we demand that they keep us safe while they conduct their often dangerous work. But it never hurts to keep them in check, though.

Anti-Trump Social Media Junkies Are Getting Scary Pro-Trump Robocalls

It's still unclear if this organization had anything to do with
robocalls threatening people who critcized Donald Trump
on social media. 

Gizmodo earlier this month reported on yet another dark side of social media and the internet.

Some people who are active on social media and are not Donald Trump fans have been getting weird, kind of threatening robocalls on their phones from what appears to be the pro-Trump crowd.

Nobody is quite sure if all this is a joke, a real threat, a harmless prank or just more social media bullcrap. But I have to admit it's unnerving.

Luckily, evidence is pointing toward the "harmless prank" theory, but the fact that this can be done is probably giving the evil alt right ideas even as I write this.

The robocalls warn the anti-Trumpsters to stop making "negative and derogatory posts about President Trump," said Brett Vanderbrook, who was driving for Uber when he got the call a few weeks back.

After Gizmodo first published the story, several readers said they recognized the voice in the recording as being from Ownage Pranks, a service that places automated prank calls. "Citizens for Trump" is a prank offered by the service, says Gizmodo, but the trouble is there is a real organization called "Citizens for Trump" that really are just that and active.

Gizmodo, and pretty much nobody else, is sure whether the real Citizens for Trump is behind these robocalls.

They are kind of cartoonishly scary. Here's part of the script:

A man's voice comes on. "We've been monitoring some of your posts and it does seem that you've beem making some rather negative comments about President Trump. Is that correct?"

Then there's a pause as if the voice is waiting for an answer. Then it continues: "Listen, we're going to have to ask you to lay off on the negative and derogatory posts about President Trump, OK?" Then another pause, then more: "What's your problem, anyway? Don't you want to make America great again? Well, you've been warned. We'll be keeping an eye on you. Have a nice day."

It doesn't sound like a lot of people have received this robocall, but it is chilling, even if meant as a joke.

They say Big Brother is watching you. So is obnoxious brother, apparently.

Some People Are Too Enthusiastic About Technology, Get Themselves "Chipped"

Dude with a microchip to e implanted in humans, for
convenience, I guess. But what about privacy?

One of the better inventions that's been around for awhile is those little microchips we had implanted in our dogs Jackson and Tonks.

If they get lost, and somebody finds them and brings them to a vet or an animal shelter, they'll get scanned, and they'll figure out where they live.

It's peace of mind.

It would be super easy to translate that technology into humans, since it's basically the same, painless and safe from a health standpoint.

But would you really want to give somebody else the ability to track you.

A surprising number of people are saying Yes.

As the Associated Press reported, employees at a Swedish startup called Epicenter are voluntarihly being "chipped."

Microchips the size of grains of rice are being injected into their hands, and they function as swipe cards, can open doors, operate printers and buy smoothies at the wave of a hand, reports the Associated Press.

Sounds convenient!

But I'd rather just hand over cash for a smoothie than do that.

I'll let the Associated Press explain why: "......As with most new technologies, it raises security and privacy issues. While biologically safe, the data generated by the chips can show how often an employee comes to work or what they buy. Unlike compay swipe cards or smartphones, which can generate the same data, a person cannot easily separate themselves from the chip."

What if we get to a point where employers require you to be chipped. It's appropriate obviously, for your supervisors to monitor you and your job performance at work, but this would enable them to watch your every move when you're off the clock, too.

And what if the chips are hacked?   What would hackers do with this information? There's a lot there. They'd know when you're at work, when you're not home, and pretty much what you're doing and how you're doing it pretty much all the time.

Still, some people are enthusiastic about being microchipped, so maybe I'm missing something. But I doubt it.

At Epicenter, the business the Associated Press highlighted, some employees are enthusiastic. One, Fredric Kaijser, who has one of those weird tech job titles - chief experience officer - is blithe about his microchip and privacy.

He said people who learn that he has a microchip "get all excited about privacy issues and what that means and so forth. And for me it's just a matter of I like to try new things an just see it as more of an enabler and what that would bring into the future."

I guess newness trumps everything else.

I think I'll wait and take a pass for now on this Great New Thing.

Sorry, But I Think This TSA Agent Was Getting His Jollies

Image of the creepy TSA patdown of a 13 year old kid at
te Dallas-Fort Worth airport recently. Ugh. 

A lot of people have been yelling and screaming in social media about Aaron Henderson, 13, who got quite the NSFW patdown from a weird TSA agent at an airport recently.

This all started at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport when agents detected what might have been a trace of an explosive substance in the kid's laptop.

There are a lot of false positives with these tests, but I can't blame the TSA from taking a closer, second look at the laptop, and Aaron. Better safe than sorry, right?

However, the "patdown" Aaron got looked like foreplay in a porn movie, though Aaron was clearly not happy about this. I wouldn't be, either.

This apparently is a new policy at the TSA, giving them permission to really feel out people for contraband.

Sorry to blame everything on Donald Trump, but things are getting more police state-ish under his administration, so the TSA "rubdowns" might be part of this.

In addition, CBS News reports that this is part of new TSA procedures that came after an undercover audit in 2015 revealed major lapses in security.

 Aaron's mother, Jennifer told CBS News, "I believe he was patted down excessively. They went over his sensitive areas, a little more than necessary, especially given that he wasn't wearing bulky clothing or anything like that."

The TSA says new procedures took effext March 2.

I get it that they're trying to prevent terrorist attacks.

But working for the TSA is a thankless job which pays poorly. Most people don't want to work there. But the desperate, sometimes the stupid, sometimes the perverts also want to work there, since nobody else will.

This won't end well.

Here's the creepy video from CBS, showing the patdown. To me, it's almost child porn, so I was reluctant to show it. But we need to know what the TSA is doing, so I tried to overcome my qualms to post it.

Dolls Keep Getting More And More Nosy. And Scary

 Could hackers access voice messages left by kids
on this internet-connected cute toy?
Security experts say yes. 

Since when have toys gotten so nefarious?

In December, I told you about Cayla, the doll that collects information from chatty kids. This information could be used to target advertising, or worse, scam the kid or their family.

Now, we're learning about more dolls and toys that are just as cavalier about privacy.

There's a group of toy animals, made by an outfit called CloudPets, that can store and replay voice messages sent to them via the internet, says the Huffington Post. 

Often families buy these toys for things like sending hearfelt messages to and from dad or mom who might, say, by deployed in the military overseas.

The problem is, the personal information of more than 800,000 customers is now out there. These include some two million voice recordings, many of them made by children, the Huffington Post says. 

What's worse is CloudPets appears to some to have a pretty cavalier attitude toward the data breach.

Information like customers' login and password information and voice recordings, was in a database there for anyone who knew how to find the information.

Security experts like Troy Hunt ried to contact CloudPets about the issue, but never heard back from the company, the Huffington Post reports. 

The head of toy maker, Mark Meyers, denied that the voice recordings were stole, says Network World. 

The security threat isn't huge, espeically if the passwords for CloudPets products aren't the same as users' other devices.

But the data could be used to push messages to children, and there are a lot of creepy people out there.

I really think we should just go back to old fashioned dolls that have no connection to the internet.

According to The Guardian:

"John Madelin, CEO at IT security experts Reliance ACSN, echoes Hunt's warnings. "Connected toys that are easily accessible by hackers are sinister. The CloudPets issue highlights the fact tht manufactuers of connected devices really struggle to bake security in from the start."

Madelin called the accessibility of the CloudPets data "unforgivable."

Time to haul out the internet-free teddy bears we got when we were kids, I guess.

"Telltale Heart Implant" Gets Guy An Arson Conviction

Investigators used data from a man''s pacemaker to help
convict him of setting this arson fire at his home. 

Seems like everything is watching us nowadays.

Security cameras are everywhere, and all kinds of devices are telling somebody, somewhere what we're doing and what we're thinking.

Here's a new example that has me torn on whether it'singenious or creepy.

Police in Middletown, Ohio used data from an electronic heart device that had been implanted in Ross Compton, 59, to help convict him of arson and insurance fraud, says NetworkWorld.com

It all started with a fire that caused $400,000 in damage to his house and its contents

Authorities had already gotten very suspicious of Compton before they got the data. The fire at his house was clearly arson, as investigators noticed the fire had started in several spots on the exterior of the home.

Police said Compton's stories of what happened the day of the fire were inconsistent, The 911 call he made to report the fire seemed weird, too.

In the 911 call, "an out-of-breath Compton claimed he had 'grabbed a bunch of stuff, threw it out the window.'  He claimed to have packed his suitcases, broken the glass out of a bedroom window with his walking stick, and tossed the suitcases outside," says NetworkWorld.com

Here's where the medical device data comes in. Police obtained a search warrant to look at the data from Compton's pacemaker. Authorities wanted to know "Compton's heart rate, pacer demand ad cardiac rhythms before, during and after the fire."

Court documents said, "A cardiologist who reviewed the data determined 'it is highly improbable  Mr. Compton would have been able to collect, pack and remove the number of items from the house, exit his bedroom window and carry numerous large and heavy items to the front of his residence during the short time period he has indicated due to his medical conditions."

This piece of evidence was among the factors that helped lead to Compton's conviction.

It's still a more than a little spooky, though that authorities are using data from computerized systems to investigate crime. For instance, cars now have data recorders that can be used to determine who was at fault in a crash.

What I worry about is, can people be framed and/or falsely convicted using computer data? It seems easy to hack into data and alter it, and I'm guessing many people might not be able to determine if evidence was falsified or altered through hacking.

We already had a case in Vermont where a school teacher got in big trouble for possessing child porn. 

The teacher had visited a web site with malware that placed child porn on his computer. He didn't know it was there, but investigators found it.

Charges against the teacher were eventually dropped because the guy never willingly looked up child porn and never wanted to see it,  but by then he'd been fired from his job and his reputation was in shambles.

I wonder how often this kind of thing happens?

I guess like anything that involves computers, investigators use data as a tool. Like any tool, it can be used for good or for bad. The only problem is computer data can be good or bad writ large.  Computer data can either cause great good or great harm.

Is This Doll Spying On Your Kids?

I'm glad I'm not a parent of young children.

Is this cute little computerized
doll named Cayla spying on
kids and saving their information?

Especially this time of year.  

So many things to consider. Is the toy safe? Will the kid like it? Will it instill the values we want in our children? Is it too expensive?

Unfortunately, parents now have a new, much more insidious worry: Is the toy spying on our children, on the family? Is the toy gathering intelligence on us?

This feels like Brave New World, but apparently, it's here.

According to Huffington Post and other news organizations, a group of consumer watchdog organizations has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, saing the dolls "My Friend Cayla" and "Que Intelligent Robot" have speech recognition software that gleans information from kids.

According to the FTC complaint:

"By design and purpose, these toys record and collect the private conversations of young children without any limitations on collection, use, or disclosure of this personal information.

The toys subject young children to ongoing surveillance and are deployed in homes across the United States without any meaningful data protection standards. They pose an imminent and immediate threat to the safety and security of children in the United States."

Sounds dire to me!

But how are these spy dolls doing this?

The concept of the dolls is really cool, until you think about how the dolls might collect information.

What child (or adult for that matter) wouldn't like adoll or other toy that has software that allows the doll to provide appropriate responses to everything the child says?

"Cayla can understand and respond to you in real time about almost anything.....She is not a doll...she's a real friend!" goes the Cayla advertising material.

I don't think that part of the FTC complaint iss the real objection.

But if you think about, as the people who filed the complaint have, this could be really underhanded.

Part of the complaint is fairly trivial, to be honest. Cayla mentions she likes the movie "Frozen," the movie "The Little Mermaid" and enjoys Disneyworld

The FTC complaint says that's product placement, and children don't recognize it as advertising.

That's probably true, but we're used to this by now.

To me, the real disturbing part of Cayla the doll is the information they try to glean from the kids who play with them.  Accompanying material with Cayla asks children to provide their name, mom and dad's name, which school they go to, their favorite foods and TV programs and things like that.

It's all about marketing and advertising, but it's creepy that a company would know all this stuff about a kid and her family. Especially since hackers can probably get in and cause all sorts of problems with the information.

Most worrisome, the complaint to the FTC  alleges the makers of Cayla, Genesis Toys, can record and store the information that the kids tell the doll while they're playing and conversing with it. Another company, Nuance Communications, allegedly stores the recordings for Genesis Toys.

The terms of use verbiage with Cayla, explains all this access to the information they have. But with all terms of service statements, this one is really dense and difficult to understand.  Nobody actually reads terms of service statements because they're so byzantine. and if they do, they reall don't understand it. I don't, that's for sure.

The Huffington Post and CBS says Genesis Toys won't comment. Neither would Nuance Communications, but they did direct media outlets to a Nuance muckymuck named Richard Mack, who wrote the company "takes data privacy seriously." and that the company doesn't use or sell voice data for marketing or advertising purposes."

Then why do they keep it, then? Part of it might be so the dolls interact with kids better, but I'm still suspicious.

Still, if I were a parent, I'd get my kids an old fashioned Teddy Bear or something. Call me a luddite, but I'm not sure I like this Brave New World of computerized kids toys.

George Orwell Should Have Worried More About Business Than Government

A California woman is suing her former
employer because she said her boss
monitored her 24/7 through the
workplace management app Xora. 

Talk about an overbearing boss! And a creepy one, if a story about a lawsuit that recently appeared in Ars Technica is true. 

The woman sying, Myma Arias, was fired from her job for the money transfer service Intermex, after disabling an app called Xora from her company-issued iPhone because it traced her every move.

It could tell where her car was going, how fast she was driving, how long she was at a given location, pretty much everything.

Arias said she had no problem with the app running while she was on duty working as a sales executive for the company.

After all, it's pretty reasonable for a boss to make sure the employee is meeting with the people she's supposed to meet with, was driving safely and working,  and not just hanging out at the nail spa or something like that.

The problem Arias said she had is that her boss, John Stubits, monitored Arias and coworkers while they were not on the job.  He could spy on her 24 hours a day.

Part of her lawsuit reads as follows, says Ars Technica. "Plantiff expressed that she had no problem with the app's GPS function during work hrs but she objected to the monitoring of her location during non-work hours and complained to Stubits tht this was an invasion of her privacy. She likened the app to a prisoner's ankle bracelet and informed Stubits that his actions were illegal. Stubits replied that she should tolerate the illegal intrusion."

You have to wonder why Stubits, the boss, was so interested in his employees' off work activities. Was it away to make them feel like they should be working when they are off the clock? Or is Stubits a creepy pervert who wants to know everything about his workers?

Whatever is going on, I think we should all be rebelling against this kind of corporate spying on its employees, just as we should rebel against blanket spying by the government against its own citizens.

Of course, employers have the right to fire employees whose activities on personal time are way over the line.

In Toronto recently, an engineer with a firm was fired after he enthusiastically supported, on camera, another bro who participated in a vulgar, misogynistic insult against a female television reporter, a quote, unquote joke that's gotten popular on social media.

Where I live in Vermont, a Vermont State Police trooper was forced to resign after his superiors caught wind of offensive posts he put up on Facebook.

So yes, there are circumstances where your private life, which isn't so private nowadays, can get you fired. Often justifiably so.

But where does the boss cross the line? Certainly, they shouldnt have the right to spy on your every move. Why should bossman care if you kick back with a beer while watching the game on Saturday afternoon? Or get randy with your spouse on Friday night?

I'm hoping the boss that was monitoring his employees' every move, and is the subject of that lawsuit, gets fired himself.

No, Employer, You Can't Root Through Our Private Messages

If in the future I look for another job, this post might turn into a strike against me, but I congratulate Facebook for threatening to sue would be employers who insist job applicants show them the private pages of their Facebook accounts.

According to the Associated Press, some employers are now requiring applicants to hand over Facebook passwords or "friend" HR managers. 

Should employers  be able to access private pages
on job applicants' Facebook accounts?

On Sunday, U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. and Richard Blumenthal, D-Ct. asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to see whether such demands for Facebook passwords violate federal law.

Of course, any employer should conduct due diligence when hiring somebody. That means combing through public records,  and looking at anything publicly available to see if the prospective employee is a good match. Anything on public Facebook pages, or obtained through Google, is fair game, as far as I'm concerned.

After all, it's probably a good idea to know if the applicant for Chief Financial Officer has three embezzlement convictions. And it's probably useful to know the prospective nanny has a side business producing child pornography.

It's also necessary for job applicants to tell the truth and be open to questions. That's the way it's always worked. And it should.

But really, going through the private pages of Facebook. What's next? Demanding to see every email you've ever written? Turning over those love letters you wrote in college to the HR Department? Wearing a listening device for the rest of your life so your employer knows what you are doing, where you are and what you're saying all the time?

Sorry, pal.  I'm all for giving 110 percent to your employer, but our personal life is our personal life. Yeah, we'll behave, obey the law and not do anything to hurt the companies we work for. That's the employee's end of the bargain.

Employers: If we want to have legal fun, say what we want, do what we want, go where we want on our own time and our own dime, then we will, and you'd better not make that affect our jobs.

Some conservative and libertarian critics say the government has too much power over the public. Others disagree, but in any even, that's a debate definitely worth having.

Another worthwhile debate is to discuss how much control employers should have over us as well. I know, it varies widely. Many employers are great at respecting boundaries, a few are not. We need to set minimum standards on this.

Let the discussion begin.