International Women's Day: A Celebration of a World Advancing Women's Human Rights: Via Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Every year on March 8, we celebrate the triumphs and struggles of women around the world. In my home country of Australia, the day is always special — and it's not unusual for a stranger to wish you a "happy women's day!" on your way to work. For the past 10 years or so my friends and I have made it a ritual to get up ridiculously early to mark the occasion with a women's breakfast. I always leave these events inspired by the past achievements that we as young women benefit from, and filled with a sense of purpose for the work that is still yet to be done. [ Read more ... ]

New York Police Databases Hold Identifying Clues: Via NYTimes.com .

The tattoo database is one of dozens kept by the Police Department in its technological information hub, the Real Time Crime Center, to jump-start criminal investigations by giving detectives more to go on than a person’s height and weight.

Aside from arrest data and the tattoo database, the center, which was created in 2005, breaks down information in all sorts of ways. There is a database for body marks, like birthmarks and scars. It keeps track of teeth, noting missing ones and gold ones. It keeps track of the way people walk: if there is a limp, it notes its severity. And it has a so-called blotchy database, of skin conditions.

The databases are fed, in part, by arrest reports; officers are instructed to take detailed notes and enter them into a computer program that moves the information to a large server.

Inspector Kenneth G. Mekeel, commanding officer of the crime center, said cadets were “taught in the academy to take down as much as they can.” [ Read more ... ]

FBI investigating online New York school district theft: Via Computerworld Cybercrime/Hacking News.

A New York school district has reverted to using paper checks after cybercriminals tried to steal about $3.8 million from its online accounts just before Christmas, prompting an FBI investigation.

For three days starting Dec. 18, cybercriminals started transferring money overseas from the accounts of the Duanesburg Central School District, which has two schools with about 950 students about 20 miles west of Albany, New York. [ Read more ... ]

7-Eleven Hack From Russia Led to ATM Looting in New York: Via Threat Level.

Flashback, early 2008: Citibank officials are witnessing a huge spike in fraudulent withdrawals from New York area ATMs — $180,000 is stolen from cash machines on the Upper East Side in just three days.  After a stakeout, police arrest one man walking out of a bank with thousands of dollars in cash and 12 reprogrammed cards. A lucky traffic stop catches two more plunderers who’d driven in from Michigan. Another pair are arrested after trying to mug an undercover FBI agent on the street for a magstripe encoder. In the end, there are 10 arrests and at least $2 million dollars stolen.

The wellspring of the dramatic megaheist turns out to be more prosaic than imagined: It started with a breach of the public website of America’s most famous convenience store chain: 7-Eleven.com. [ Read more ... ]

Lawsuit Challenging Unconstitutional Spying Should Be Reinstated, Says ACLU: Via American Civil Liberties Union.

FISA Amendments Act Must Be Subject To Judicial Review

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org

NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union filed a brief late Wednesday arguing that its lawsuit challenging an unconstitutional government spying law should be reinstated. The ACLU and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed the landmark lawsuit in July 2008 to stop the government from conducting surveillance under the FISA Amendments Act (FAA), which gives the executive branch virtually unchecked power to collect Americans' international e-mails and telephone calls by the millions, without a warrant and without suspicion of any kind.

"Allowing this case to move forward is essential to protecting innocent Americans' e-mail and telephone communications from dragnet, suspicionless government monitoring," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. "Without court oversight, individual privacy rights are left to the mercy of the political branches. The courts have not only the authority but also the obligation to ensure that individual rights are not trampled by overbroad surveillance laws." [ Read more ... ]

Leaked 9/11 Text Messages: Via Schneier on Security.

Wikileaks has published pager intercepts from New York on 9/11:

WikiLeaks released half a million US national text pager intercepts. The intercepts cover a 24 hour period surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.

[...]

Text pagers are usualy carried by persons operating in an official capacity. Messages in the archive range from Pentagon, FBI, FEMA and New York Police Department exchanges, to computers reporting faults at investment banks inside the World Trade Center.

Near as I can tell, these messages are from the commercial pager networks of Arch Wireless, Metrocall, Skytel, and Weblink Wireless, and include all customers of that service: government, corporate, and personal.

There are lots of nuggets in the data about the government response to 9/11: [ Read more ... ]

The extreme secrecy of the federal courts: Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.

Once conservatives became embarrassed by their cowardly warnings that we would all be killed if we held a 9/11 trial in New York, they switched to a new argument:  trials in a real court would lead to the disclosure of classified information that would help the Terrorists.  In advancing this claim, they relied on the always-unhinged rantings of National Review's Andy McCarthy -- who has also suggested that Bill Ayers was the real author of Barack Obama's "Dreams from my Father"; attacked his own editors for pointing out the falsehoods of Sarah Palin's "death panel" claims, which McCarthy insisted were true; defended the Birther movement and dissented from NR's editorial rejection of it; and was excoriated by Rich Lowry for claiming that Obama "rather likes tyrants and dislikes America."  This person -- someone who is often too fringe, hysterical and delusional even for National Review -- is the "legal expert" on which the Right is relying to claim that real trials will jeopardize classified information. [ Read more ... ]

New York’s Smoking Ban Is Extending Into Some Apartments: Via NYTimes.com .

The movement to ban smoking in New York City has grown so quickly that no place seems immune — certainly not restaurants or bars, and public beaches and parks may not be far behind. Now the efforts are rapidly expanding into the living room.

More landlords are moving to prohibit smoking in their apartment buildings, telling prospective tenants they can be evicted if they light up in them.

This month, the Related Companies will ban smoking at some of its downtown apartment buildings because of health concerns about secondhand smoke, according to company officials. [ Read more ... ]

NYCLU Calls on NYPD to Make Public Details on 'Ring of Steel' Expansion: Via ACLU - Privacy.

The New York Civil Liberties Union today called on the NYPD to provide the public with basic details of its multi-million dollar plan to blanket Midtown with a computerized network of surveillance cameras and license plate readers – a massive expansion of the “Ring of Steel” surveillance system being developed in lower Manhattan.

“The NYPD is collecting massive amounts of personal information about law-abiding New Yorkers, with no hint of how it plans to protect individuals’ privacy,” NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said. “This is an invitation to abuse.” [ Read more ... ]

New York Court Scores Over Oregon In Recent Email Privacy Opinions: Via EFF.org Updates.

Last week, two new district court opinions took opposing views on the question of whether the Fourth Amendment protects stored email. One of the cases easily adopted the prevailing view that the Constitution protects electronic communications, while the other ignored existing U.S. Supreme Court and Ninth Circuit precedent to find consumers have no expectation of privacy in messages stored with third parties. EFF will be watching these developments closely as we continue to press for email privacy rights in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in U.S. v. Warshak and in other matters.

Email -- like letters, telephone calls or documents you keep in a rented locker -- should be fully protected by the Fourth Amendment. As with letters, calls or rented property, your expectation of privacy against the government does not weaken simply because you entrust the document to a third party for delivery or storage. [ Read more ... ]

Introducing Google Social Search: I finally found my friend's New York blog!: Via Official Google Blog.

Your friends and contacts are a key part of your life online. Most people on the web today make social connections and publish web content in many different ways, including blogs, status updates and tweets. This translates to a public social web of content that has special relevance to each person. Unfortunately, that information isn't always very easy to find in one simple place. That's why today we're rolling out a new experiment on Google Labs called Google Social Search that helps you find more relevant public content from your broader social circle. It should be available for everyone to try by the end of the day, so be sure to check back. [ Read more ... ]

Terrorism Case Shows Range Of Investigators' Tools: Via NPR - National Public Radio.

Investigators in the terrorism case against Najibullah Zazi claim to have amassed stacks of evidence against the former Denver-area shuttle bus driver.

[...]

Officials say FBI agents in Denver and New York had been tracking Zazi for some time — and experts analyzing the case say the way law enforcement gathered evidence against Zazi and possible co-conspirators may be a textbook case of how to conduct a terrorism investigation. The FBI used a blend of wiretaps and subpoenas, search warrants and local police, among other things, to build its case.

"I think what's striking about the Zazi case is not so much that new tools were being used, but that old tools were being used in a comprehensive fashion," [ Read more ... ]

5 More Indicted in Probe of International Carding Ring: Via Threat Level.

Five eastern European men were indicted in New York on Monday as part of an international ring allegedly responsible for at least $4 million in credit card theft.

The ring, which authorities dubbed the Western Express Cybercrime Group, operated between 2001 and 2007 and trafficked in at least 95,000 known stolen credit card numbers, including some belonging to victims in New York, where the case is being prosecuted by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. [ Read more ... ]

‘The Analyzer’ Pleads Guilty in $10 Million Bank-Hacking Case: Via Threat Level.

Ehud Tenenbaum, aka “The Analyzer,” quietly pleaded guilty in New York last week to a single count of bank-card fraud for his role in a sophisticated computer-hacking scheme that federal officials say scored $10 million from U.S. banks.

The Israeli hacker was arrested in Canada last year for allegedly stealing about $1.5 million from Canadian banks. But before Canadian authorities could prosecute him, U.S. officials filed an extradition request to bring him to the States.

Prosecutors alleged in an extradition affidavit that Tenenbaum hacked into two U.S. banks, a credit- and debit-card distribution company and a payment processor, in what they called a global “cash-out” conspiracy. But he was only charged with one count of conspiracy to commit access-device fraud and one count of access-device fraud. [ Read more ... ]

Gothamist: Fighting For the Right to Photograph:

Last month Reverend Billy was locked up for reciting the First Amendment in Union Square. Tonight he returns with a troupe of others to speak out against the outrageous new law that would limit public photography and filming in New York.

Currently there are 2,285,188 photos tagged "New York" on Flickr, and that's just one photo sharing site, imagine if the number stopped there and we lost future images of the city. A new group has sprung up called Picture New York, and they ask you to do just what their name suggests: [ Read more ... ]

New York activists call for surveillance camera laws: "New York rights activists called on the city council on Wednesday to regulate surveillance cameras to prevent intrusion into people's privacy and prevent an abuse of footage.

Norman Siegel, a lawyer and former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, told a debate arranged by a group of lawyers that laws were needed to limit how long video footage could be held and to restrict distribution and access.

Siegel, who estimated there were at least 10,000 cameras around New York City, said surveillance cameras should also be registered with a government agency and people on the street should be informed that they being filmed.

'There are 4 million video surveillance cameras in Britain, 500,000 in London alone -- do we want that in New York City?' Siegel told the debate, 'Caught on camera: security concerns vs privacy rights.' [ Read more ... ]

NYCLA - New York County Lawyers' Association: "Public Forum: Caught on Camera: Security Concerns vs. Privacy Rights

Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Location: NYCLA Home of Law
Time: 6:00pm

APRIL 13, 2007 - NEW YORK, NY - The New York County Lawyers' Association (NYCLA) will address the issue of the proliferation of video surveillance cameras in New York City at a free public forum [ Read more ... ]