We always like to say that when we find out about a person, we do so without invading their privacy. That can still mean we find out a lot of things about them that they would rather keep secret, but those facts are derived from what we can legally look at: legal records, mortgages and
How to Improve Your On Line Security (Even if People Know Your Phone Number)
The New York Times published in interesting piece this week that was among its most popular: I Shared My Phone Number. I Learned I Shouldn’t Have.
In it, the paper’s personal tech columnist Brian X. Chen explained how much information people can get about you with just your phone number. This includes “my current
The Bumbling Spies of Black Cube: Lawyers Beware
If you haven’t seen the amusing and disturbing piece in the Wall Street Journal this week about Black Cube, the band of former Mossad (Israeli secret service) agents, it’s worth a look.
The article explains that Black Cube’s people run around the world pretending to be people they are not, in order to investigate private,
Artificial Intelligence: Good and Evil All at Once, Just Like its Creators
Have you ever noticed that artificial intelligence always seems much more frightening when people write about what it will become, but then how it can seem like imperfect, bumbling software when writing about AI in the present tense?
You get one of each in this morning’s Wall Street Journal. The paper paints a horrific picture
How to Improve Your Privacy by Staying Off Databases
A reader of my new book, The Art of Fact Investigation, suggested that for the next edition there should be a chapter about legal ways to “hide from snoopers, private and public sector. I am probably not the only one who was thinking as I read the book on what I could do to
The Apple Fight: Before Arguing About Privacy, Define Privacy
The current fight between Apple and the U.S. Department of Justice, which is trying to execute a search warrant in a criminal matter, has been framed by Apple and its defenders as a battle over privacy.
Apple is not arguing that the information sought should never be seen by the government. The company handed over
A Boon for Investigators We’d Happily Live Without
We’ve written plenty before about Europe’s “Right to be Forgotten,” under which governments tell Google and other search engines to take down links to legal, public documents that are deemed embarrassing or inconvenient for the people involved. We thought four years ago that this problem wouldn’t go away, and we were right
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We never
Cell Phone Pinging and Probable Cause
The next time an investigator tells you he can legally “ping” someone’s cell phone to figure out where they are going, run away fast.
We’ve written before about the illegality of getting a friendly phone company employee to help out with cell phone tower signal data that helps to locate people. As we wrote in
Europe’s Right to be Forgotten: Full Employment for Investigators
If anyone wondered what the practical side of Europe’s new Right to be Forgotten would turn out to be, here it is:
In less than a month since a court in the E.U. decided Google links were substantial information and could be scrubbed at the will of a judge, Google has received 40,000 requests to
The E.U. Google Decision: Big Brother Gets to Play Favorites
The on-line world is abuzz today with news from Europe’s highest court that Google will have to start removing links to certain information that some judge or bureaucrat decides is irrelevant. Even if it’s true and lawfully posted, the governments of Europe now get to decide what’s suitable to read, case by case
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We’re