Cell phones and digital cameras, along with a sense of public duty, are propelling a new form of citizen “snitching” that some are calling “cyber snitching.”

This troubles some privacy experts, who are concerned that a sense of civic duty could quickly degenerate into a loss of personal privacy.

One example cited involves bystanders, who willingly turned over their cellphone videos and digital photos to help Montreal police identify and arrest hockey rioters last week. It was the most recent example of public citizens helping the police do their work.

Anie Lemieux, spokeswoman for Montreal police, observed: “We often say the public’s eyes are police eyes.”

However, Richard Rosenberg, professor emeritus of computer science at the University of British Columbia, said there is a slippery slope between justified and invasive involvement.

The incident in Montreal struck Rosenberg as an example of turning the general population into a branch of the police, where neighbours and people you don’t even know are snooping and spying on one another to see if there’s something the police might be interested in.

Mr. Rosenberg is also the president of the British Columbia Freedom of Information and Privacy Association.

Source: Canada.com

Wired.com’s How-To Wiki has published the following tips for helping consumers fight identity theft:

1. You can opt out of pre-screened credit card mailings by calling 888-5OPTOUT ( 888-567-8688 ). This stops identity thieves from stealing your mail and getting credit lines in your name.

2. You should check your credit reports regularly. US federal law allows you to request a free credit report from each of the three credit bureau providers once a year.

3. Active duty military personnel can automatically put a one-year alert on all three of their credit reports by contacting one of them: Equifax - 800-525-6285; Experian - 888-397-3742; TransUnion - 800-680-7289.

4. Study your credit, debit and banking statements each month. If you fail to report fraudulent activity on your cards or checking accounts within 60 days, your liability is not capped.

5. People who are really concerned about identity theft can place a renewable 90-day fraud alert on their credit reports for free by phone, however, this service is intended to be for people who suspect they are the victims of identity theft. Credit issuers then have to take steps to verify your identification.

6. Victims of identity theft should file a police report and send a letter requesting a seven-year fraud alert on their reports. This alert requires creditors to contact you before issuing a line of credit.

7. As of November 2007, all 50 states allow individuals to place credit freezes on their credit reports. This stops card issuers from looking at your credit report until you allow the credit bureaus to unlock it. In many states the unlocking can take anywhere from three to five days. Some states like New Jersey and Utah are working to make the unlocking process faster.

More information on fighting identity theft is available at FTC.gov.

Source: Wired.com

At a recent Black Hat security conference in DC, two cyber-security techies showed how easy it is to wiretap another person’s cellphone.

David Hulton and Steve Muller showed off a new method for breaking the GSM encryption used by major cellphone service providers to prevent eavesdropping on cellphone communications.

Hulton and Muller say their method allows an eavesdropper to record conversations on cellphone networks from miles away and decode it within a half hour using just $1,000 in computer equipment.

Hulton, an applications director for high-performance computing company Pico, and Muller, mobile security researcher for CellCrypt, plan to make their decryption method freely available to the general public public.

However, they hope to start selling a faster version that can crack cellphone encryption in only 30 seconds. This premium version will cost between $200,000 and $500,000.

As to the issue of eroding the privacy of cellphone users, Muller says that he and Hulton didn’t invent the hacking technology; they just brought attention to its vulnerabilities and made the technology public.

According to Muller: “If governments or other people with millions of dollars can listen to your conversations right now, why shouldn’t your next-door neighbor?”

David Pringle, a spokesman for the GSMA trade association, which represents 700 GSM cellphone carriers worldwide, stated that decrypting GSM still requires special technology and is more secure than a landline.

As for intercepting conversations on Hulton and Muller’s cellphones, don’t bother. They don’t use them.

Source: Forbes

Proving that anyone can be the victim of identity theft, the Associated Press has run a news story on how a Moroccan prince had his identity stolen on FaceBook.com by a government employee.

According to the AP story –

Moroccan police have arrested a state-employed engineer for allegedly stealing the identity of King Mohammed VI’s brother on the social network site Facebook.com.

Fouad Mourtada was detained in Casablanca over “villainous practices” linked to the alleged theft of the identity of Prince Moulay Rachid.

Source: CNN.com.

Online phishing scams cost people a lot of privacy and money each year. Think you will never get caught by a phishing scam? Take McAfee’s 10 question online phishing scam quiz and test your phishing IQ. This quiz is useful for everyone from your average online layperson on up to a company’s Chief Technology / Information Officer.

You can take the McAfee phishing test @ McAfee SiteAdvisor Phishing Quiz.

In a controversial move to fight the spread of HIV in Indonesia’s Papau, lawmakers are considering a proposal to monitor the behavior of known HIV carriers with a microchip implant.

From Breitbart.com –

Lawmakers in Indonesia’s Papua are mulling the selective use of chip implants in HIV carriers to monitor their behaviour in a bid to keep them from infecting others, a doctor said Tuesday.

John Manangsang, a doctor who is helping to prepare a new healthcare regulation bill for Papua’s provincial parliament, said that unusual measures were needed to combat the virus.

“We in the government in Papua have to think hard on ways to provide protection to people from the spread of the disease,” Manangsang told AFP.

“Some of the infected people experience a change of behaviour and can turn more aggressive and would not think twice of infecting others,” he alleged, saying lawmakers were considering various sanctions for these people.

“Among one of the means being considered is the monitoring of those infected people who can pose a danger to others,” Manangsang said.

“The use of chip implants is one of the ways to do so, but only for those few who turn aggressive and clearly continue to disregard what they know about the disease and spread the virus to others,” he said.

A decision was still a long way off, he added.

Source:
Microchips mulled for HIV carriers in Indonesia’s Papua

According to a 4/15/2007 Washington Post article, student loan providers with access to a national student database have searched the personal and confidential information for tens of millions of student borrowers in ways that violate federal rules.

The questionable searches on the database have grown so considerable that the Education Department is considering a temporary shutdown of the service.

The database contains confidential and personal information for millions of students, including social security numbers, email addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, loan balances and other financial information.

Source: Lenders Misusing Student Database.

The United Kingdom’s Daily Mail reports that British citizens who opt out of a government ID card system will lose their ability to obtain, keep a travel passport.

From the article —

Anybody who objects to their personal details going on the new “Big Brother” ID cards database will be banned from having a passport.

James Hall, the official in charge of the supposedly-voluntary scheme, said the Government would allow people to opt out - but in return they must “forgo the ability” to have a travel document.

With one in every eight people saying they will refuse to sign-up, up to five million adults could effectively be refused permission to leave the country.

Campaigners reacted to Mr Hall’s remarks with fury, saying they were yet more evidence of the lurch towards “Big Brother” Britain.

Phil Booth, of the NO2ID group, said: “The idea that ID cards scheme is voluntary, and people can opt-out, is a joke.

Source: Don’t like ID cards? Hand over your passport

This embarrasing news for Diebold, posted on bradblog.com, details how hackers recreated a master key for Diebold voting machines from images posted on the Diebold website.

DIEBOLD VOTING MACHINE KEY COPIED FROM PHOTO AT COMPANY’S OWN ONLINE STORE!

The Palm Beach Post reports on a recent lecture on identity theft by famous con man Frank Abagnale, whose criminal activities were made into the movie “Catch Me If You Can”.

From the article –

Frank Abagnale knew about identity theft before it had a name.

In fact, he practiced it with precision.

His legendary exploits as a con man were immortalized in the 2002 Steven Spielberg movie Catch Me If You Can, with Leonardo DiCaprio playing the role of Abagnale.

Between the ages of 19 and 21, Abagnale cashed $2.5 million in fraudulent checks in every state and 26 foreign countries. He posed as a Pan Am airline pilot, an attorney, a college professor and a pediatrician. He also served time in French, Swedish and U.S. prisons starting when he was 21.

”How could I say my life was glamorous?” he said. ”If I had been brilliant, if I had been a genius, I don’t know that I would have felt the need to break the law.” Now a consultant for the FBI and banks such as Morgan Stanley, he spoke earlier this month about his life and about the dangers of identity theft to an audience of around 150 people at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.

When Abagnale, 58, did it more than 30 years ago, the process of stealing someone’s identity was simple, if a bit time-consuming. It required going to the county clerk’s office, finding the name and Social Security number of a dead child, asking for a copy of the birth certificate and using that certificate to obtain a driver’s license. With the Social Security number and driver’s license, the financial world was his oyster — and still is for today’s crooks.

The rest of the article discusses the use of technology in modern identity theft and some ways for people to protect themselves.

You can read the full article @ ‘Catch Me’ con man offers advice on avoiding identity theft