FBI USED ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE TO SNOOP

“An appeals court this week put the brakes on an FBI sur­veil­lance tech­nique that turns an auto­mo­bile driver’s on-​​board vehi­cle nav­i­ga­tion sys­tem into a covert eaves­drop­ping device,” accord­ing to SecurityFocus.
“The case arose from a 2001 FBI sur­veil­lance oper­a­tion in Las Vegas, in which agents obtained a court order com­pelling a telem­at­ics com­pany to secretly acti­vate the stolen vehi­cle recov­ery fea­ture in a customer’s car. The fea­ture, designed to listen-​​in on car thieves as they cruise around in a stolen auto, turns on a dash­board micro­phone and pipes con­ver­sa­tions out over a cell­phone con­nec­tion — nor­mally to the company’s response cen­ter, but in this case to an FBI lis­ten­ing post. “
THERE’S MORE: Congress yes­ter­day gave the FBI “greater author­ity to demand records from busi­nesses in ter­ror­ism cases with­out the approval of a judge or a grand jury,” the Times reports. “While banks, credit unions and other finan­cial insti­tu­tions are cur­rently sub­ject to such demands, the mea­sure expands the list to include car deal­ers, pawn­bro­kers, travel agents, casi­nos and other busi­nesses.“
AND MORE: The New York Police Department yes­ter­day became the first group of local cops to have access to Interpol’s 80-​​country crim­i­nal data­base.

November 20th, 2003 | You can run... | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.