Posts tagged crime
Could Jailbreaking Your iPhone Become a Crime Soon?
Jan 25th
Whether or not jailbreaking or rooting one’s smartphone is a legal act isn’t something most of us in the U.S. have had to think about for some time. That’s because, in 2010, the U.S. Copyright Office declared that jailbreaking devices is not a violation of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Fine, said Apple, but it will still void your warranty and we bet it will screw up your phone.
Despite the company’s official disapproval, jailbreaking iOS is still big among a certain subset of users, as evidenced by the popularity of the A5 Absinthe tool that was released last Friday. But should people in the jailbreak community continue to rest easy, assured that freeing their devices will forever remain legal? Probably not.
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That’s because the notion that jailbreaking is legally acceptable wasn’t established by, say, a Supreme Court ruling and all of the weight of legal authority that that would entail. Instead, it was a directive from the U.S. Copyright Office. So the thing can expire. That could happen soon, warns the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The only way to ensure that this doesn’t happen, says the EFF, is for everyone to let the Copyright Office know that they would prefer to see jailbreaking remain legal, and why. There’s a comment form that lets them do that.
In addition to smartphones, the EFF wants the Copyright Office to add exemptions for tablets and video game consoles as well. Two years ago, the tablet market simply wasn’t what it is today, let alone the jailbreak community around it.
Video game consoles have been hacked and modded for years, but more recent tinkering with Microsoft’s Kinect in particular has brought the true potential of the technology to the forefront. Even though Microsoft itself has embraced Kinect-hacking, the EFF doesn’t want to let this kind of user-modification of game consoles slip through the legal cracks.
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Big Data, Big Attraction for Organized Crime
Dec 23rd
Maybe Marc Goodman’s talk from the Strata Summit on the business of illegal data grabbed me because I just finished watching the entire series of The Sopranos from start to finish last week. But even if you don’t have a penchant for mob shows, Goodman’s talk is worth the time to watch.
As we wax on about the wonders of big data, Goodman reminds us “the more data you produce, the more criminals are happy to receive what you produce.”
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Much of that, he says, is stolen by organized crime. Goodman says 85% of data stolen is stolen by organized crime.
The criminal underground, says Goodman, has already figured out systems to take advantage of data. Whether that’s data with obvious value like credit card information, or not so obvious. Goodman says that “social data is great for criminal underground.” How do they get it? Two main ways, one is malware. The other? Social engineering.
Business of Stolen Data
You know how prices for legitimate data services tend to normalize? Amazon and Rackspace, for example, price their cloud storage offerings pretty similarly. Well, Goodman says that stolen data has fairly standard pricing as well. In the market for stolen data, $10 will get you a stolen credit card with a $25,000 limit. For $700, you can get a bank account with a $82,000 balance.
The “good” news? A big one like the Sony PlayStation breach means that it drives the price down for data. Just like any other market, there’s supply and demand – and a big flood of data drives the price down.
The Sony PlayStation Network hack got a great deal of attention, but it turns out that it’s not even the biggest breach recently. Heartland Payment Systems was hacked to the tune of 130 million records in January 2009. TJX Companies were breached in 2007 for 94 million. Sony was “only” 77 million accounts. (You have to wonder how many unfortunate folks had their data compromised with Sony, Heartland and TJX.)
Crime as a Service
How do criminals scale? Goodman says “crimeware” is available, and there’s a full “illicit data supply chain” that happens across different organized crime groups around the world. Because there’s not enough acronyms in the world, Goodman calls this Crime as a Service (CaaS). This includes free demos, service level agreements (SLAs) and discounts for buying in bulk.
Even more impressive, or scary depending on your point of view, is that Goodman says that some CaaS providers offer 800 numbers to support their software.
Terrorist Use of Data
He also talks about terrorist use of data to plan attacks, and says that the 2008 Mumbai attacks were “the most technologically advanced attack planed by a terrorist organization to date.” What was different, says Goodman, was that terrorists were mining data in real time during the attack. Goodman’s final story will make you think a little more carefully about the information you put online.
Take a few minutes to watch Goodman’s talk, it’s definitely something to think about.
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Consumers Beware: $10M lost to cyber crime this holiday season [INFOGRAPHIC]
Dec 19th
F-Secure released an infographic called “Online Shoppers Beware: What’s Lurking in Your Online Holiday Gift Purchase?”. Some interesting data: Top six online retailers – Expected Amazon, but was shocked by a few others 21 Million people will shop from mobile devices 53% of smartphone users will use their device to research – I use my [...]
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What Does Crime Look Like in Your Neighborhood? Crime Maps Will Show You
Jun 2nd
There are a number of questions people ask when looking for a new place to live: What are the schools like? How close is public transportation? Are there grocery stores nearby? But one of the most common concerns is safety. People want to know about the crime rates in cities and neighborhoods.
The real-estate Trulia launched a new product today called Crime Maps that should answer some of these questions. As the name suggests, the new tool lets people view and compare the frequency, types, and history of crimes across various cities in the U.S.
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The data for Crime Maps comes from a number of sources, including CrimeReports.com and EveryBlock, which in turn work with numerous news and law enforcement agencies to gather crime data.
Crime Maps users can drill down into the crimes in specific neighborhoods and can easily compare statistics between different locations. The tool generates a heatmap so you can identify and differentiate high-crime and low-crime areas at a glance. Crimes are also broken down by time of day and by type – all helpful as you weigh whether you want to live in a neighborhood that has a propensity towards shootings or vandalism. The tool also lets you add information and advice so you can add your own comments on top of Trulia’s data.
“Historically, detailed and easy-to-decipher crime reports haven’t been easily accessible to the average citizen, and Trulia aims to bring that data to light at the most important moment – when people are deciding where they should live,” says Pete Flint, Trulia’s co-founder and CEO.
It makes good business sense for Trulia to be able to add this sort of data to its search offerings as this sort of hyperlocal is increasingly important. However, at launch, Crime Maps are only available in 50 counties.
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What Price, Gold? Virtual Currency Can Mean Real Crime
May 27th
As has been said innumerable times in the past 28 columns here, virtual goods represent a huge and growing global market, worth billions of dollars annually. That’s billions of real, not virtual dollars, mind you. But wherever there is money, ther…
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Fearsquare: If You Knew the Crime Stats, Would You Still Go There?
Apr 12th
Whether it’s PleaseRobMe, the site that aggregated people’s publicly-shared check-ins, or Creepy, the app that aggregates public check-ins and photos, location-based services hit on a nerve. But what if they could be used to show us personalized crime data about the places we already go?
The Lincoln Social Computing Research Centre has turned the relationship between LBS apps and safety on its head with a mashup called Fearsquare. Fearsquare uses public data to show Foursquare users in the U.K. how many crimes have been committed in the places they check in and is part of a study looking at how this sort of personalized data could change user behavior.
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Rather than scaring users about publicly sharing their location, Fearsquare “takes a list of your ten most recent FourSquare check-ins and cross-references these with the UK Police Crime Statistics database” and shows “how many crimes were committed, during a recent one-month period, in the locations where they checked-in.” It is all part of an opt-in study that examines “the interaction of people with crime statistics that are presented in a uniquely personal manner.”
After authorizing Foursquare, Fearsquare makes the comparison and shows you how many instances of robbery, violent crime and “antisocial crime” have occurred in the vicinity. They can then see how they rank on a leaderboard of users and “FearPoints.”
“We are interested in how this information affects peoples’ fear of crime and in whether peoples perceptions of how much crime they are exposed to on a daily basis reflects the reality,” the site explains. “We are also interested in whether data represented in this manner is found to be useful by participants.”
What do you think – would crime data for all of the locations you visit (and check in to) change where you go? If you found out that the restaurant across town was near several robberies and violent crimes, would you reconsider? Or are numbers not enough? Does what you see around you and your judgement override the data, or vice versa?
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South Korea crime ‘reenactment’ practice gets boost – Los Angeles Times
Aug 7th
 Los Angeles Times |
South Korea crime 'reenactment' practice gets boost
Los Angeles Times "It's a conflict between the public's right to know and an individual's privacy," said Seo Suk-ho, executive director of legislation at the Korean Bar Assn. … |
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