The Null Device

European police have called off their hunt for a master criminal, a woman of Eastern European origin linked by DNA to numerous crimes from murders and carjackings to burglaries of varying levels of competence, after it was found that the DNA belonged to a worker at the factory making cotton swabs used by police forces across Europe. Oops!

(via Boing Boing) ¶ crime europe law enforcement oops 1

Details have emerged of how the Bavarian police intercept Skype calls and encrypted internet traffic. Apparently they use specially written malware, from a company named Digitask. The malware needs to be installed on the suspect's computer (which can be done in a number of ways; if they can't get a black-bag team in, they can send an email carrying the trojan. Looks like Bavaria's safe from criminals who use Windows then.

(via /.) ¶ crime germany law enforcement malware security skype voip 0

Arizona sherriff Joe Arpaio, who has won acclaim from law-and-order types and opprobrium from liberals by keeping prisoners in harsh conditions, is now bidding to add heiress, serial unlicensed hazardous driver and all-round waste of oxygen Paris Hilton to his chain gang:

"Instead of reducing for her sentence, which I feel is wrong, why not bring her over here? We can incarcerate her here. She can do her time over here."

Female inmates who are put on the chain gang work outside seven hours a day from early morning, six days a week in the desert surrounds.

The inmates wear traditional black-and-white striped uniforms and perform such tasks as creating fire breaks, removing trash, and even burial duty for vagrants.

Critics have condemned these housings, which can get blisteringly hot, as violations of human and constitutional rights.

(via M+N) ¶ celebrities joe arpaio law enforcement paris hilton prison schadenfreude usa 0

US law enforcement agencies will soon have a spray which makes envelopes transparent, allowing them to read mail without a warrant and capture more of those nasty drug-dealing paedophile terrorists.

¶ law enforcement surveillance 0

Sometimes, in the course of protecting the public interest from dangerous deviants, the defenders of law and order must improvise. Details emerge of how the police used publicity to frame the Rolling Stones (who were sort of the Oasis of their day or something) on drug charges in 1967.

¶ conspiracy corruption drugs law enforcement the rolling stones 0

Cambridge academic debunks "crypto menace" myth. (NewScientist)

Think what England was like when the government didn't really exist: anyone with any wealth or property had to design their house to withstand infantry-strength assault. That's not efficient. National governments and policemen will survive the electronic revolution because of the efficiencies they create.

If I were to hold a three-hour encrypted conversation with someone in the Medellín drug cartel, it would be a dead giveaway. In routine monitoring, GCHQ (Britain's signals intelligence service) would pick up the fact that there was encrypted traffic and would instantly mark down my phone as being suspect. Quite possibly the police would then send in the burglars to put microphones in all over my house. In circumstances like this, encryption does not increase your security. It immediately and rapidly decreases it. You are mad to use encryption if you are a villain.

¶ crime cryptography law law enforcement security society surveillance 0