surveillance

School accused of off-campus Webcam spying

I know that there are many parents who would dearly love to spy on their children. Some, because they think their kids might be up to no good. Some, because they think their kids might be up to something so very not good that it might be illegal.

So I am rather moved with concern at a spying accusation that has reportedly been leveled by parents at a Philadelphia-area school district.

According to Computerworld, a class action lawsuit has been served upon the Lower Merion School District, based in Ardmore, Pa. It declares that the school district has taken on … Read more

Police push for warrantless searches of cell phones

When Christian Taylor stopped by the Sprint store in Daly City, Calif., last November, he was planning to buy around 30 BlackBerry handhelds.

But a Sprint employee on the lookout for fraud grew suspicious about the address and other details relating to Taylor's company, "Hype Univercity," and called the police. Taylor was arrested on charges of felony identity fraud, his car was impounded, and his iPhone was confiscated and searched by police without a warrant.

A San Mateo County judge is scheduled to hear testimony on Thursday morning in this case, which could set new ground rules … Read more

Justice Dept. defends warrantless cell phone tracking

The FBI and other police agencies don't need to obtain a search warrant to learn the locations of Americans' cell phones, the U.S. Department of Justice told a federal appeals court in Philadelphia on Friday.

A Justice Department attorney told the Third Circuit Court of Appeals that there is no constitutional problem with obtaining records from cellular providers that can reveal the approximate locations of handheld and mobile devices. (See CNET's previous article.)

There "is no constitutional bar" to acquiring "routine business records held by a communications service provider," said Mark Eckenwiler, a … Read more

Feds push for tracking cell phones

Two years ago, when the FBI was stymied by a band of armed robbers known as the "Scarecrow Bandits" that had robbed more than 20 Texas banks, it came up with a novel method of locating the thieves.

FBI agents obtained logs from mobile phone companies corresponding to what their cellular towers had recorded at the time of a dozen different bank robberies in the Dallas area. The voluminous records showed that two phones had made calls around the time of all 12 heists, and that those phones belonged to men named Tony Hewitt and Corey Duffey. A … Read more

Priest introduces fingerprint check for kids at Mass

There are those who believe that enterprise has no place in religion. They are, however, very few in number.

Churches must use every commercial means available to attract devotees, be it advertising, be it incentivizing, or be it the latest in electronic surveillance.

So may I indulge you in the story of Father Gregorz Sowa, a priest in the southwestern Polish town of Gryfow Slaski.

This is not a big place (just over 7,000 inhabitants) and no one terribly famous has ever come out of there to impact the world. However, it is a place, like so many in … Read more

EFF sues feds for info on social-network surveillance

The Electronic Frontier Foundation sued the CIA, the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Justice, and three other government agencies on Tuesday for allegedly refusing to release information about how they are using social networks in surveillance and investigations.

The nonprofit Internet rights watchdog group formally asked more than a dozen agencies or departments in early October to provide records about federal guidelines on the use of sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr for investigative or data gathering purposes, according to the lawsuit.

The requests were prompted by published news reports about how authorities are using social networks to … Read more

Town to photograph every car that enters and leaves

Tiburon, Calif., is a twee little place. If you aren't familiar with the old-country colloquialism "twee," it means, well, something like "precious." Like one of those dogs Paris Hilton used to carry in her purse.

When one wanders through its little streets, just north of San Francisco, one gets the sense that a few of the residents, on seeing someone who appears not to be from around those parts, reach for their handkerchief and hand sanitizer.

How can one, therefore, be surprised that a meeting of the Tiburon Town Council voted on Wednesday by 4 … Read more

Putting a Net-controlled robot on 'guard duty'

Robots may be the eventual downfall of the human race, but for now, most are either cute or useful. One that exists in both categories has spent the last week lurking quietly in a darkened corner of my house, watching my every move. Did I mention I'm happy about this?

The robot in question is the Rovio, which made its debut at last year's Consumer Electronics Show. From an Internet-connected computer, you can drive the $250 robot around your house, watch it from the built-in camera, and talk to people in your house through the mic and speaker. For all intents and purposes it's a toy, but it's also got the makings of a very capable telepresence machine.

Unlike traditional Web cams, or mounted security cameras, the Rovio is mobile. It has a built-in Wi-Fi antenna and three wheels that have little wheels of their own. This design means it cannot handle stairs, but it does let it move in any direction without a lot of back and forth cornering like you'd get with a vacuum. All the while you can watch everything it's seeing in streaming VGA-quality video.

The Rovio's control system is managed entirely in a Web browser. You control all of its movements with a cockpit of controls that lets you perform a number of tasks without any special training. In other words, you don't need to read the manual.

Included is a control grid that lets you rotate the robot a predetermined number of degrees in one direction or the other. Or you can hit one of the four-way directional buttons to get it moving forward, backward, or side to side. Its big trick though is that it also lets you drag your mouse as if you were using an analog control stick, which controls how fast it moves in any one direction. This provides a very fluid-like feeling when maneuvering it around your house.

The control panel also gives you three choices for how you want its camera angled. The default has it sitting flat, but you can also have it move up a few inches (while still staying level), or going up in a 45 degree angle that lets you sneak a peak at the ceiling. Out of the three I found the middle to be the sweet spot, but I often found myself wanting… Read more

White House pulls e-mail for 'fishy' reports

On August 4, White House aide Macon Phillips announced the launch of flag@whitehouse.gov, which encouraged Americans to report "fishy" information related to the Obama health care proposal. Phillips' announcement was titled "Facts Are Stubborn Things."

Well, so is public opinion, as the White House acknowledged on Monday by quietly pulling the plug on the flag@whitehouse.gov e-mail address.

Messages sent there are now bounced back with this response:

<flag@whitehouse.gov>: host mailhub-wh2.whitehouse.gov[63.161.169.140] said: 550 5.2.1 <flag@whitehouse.gov>... The email … Read more