US Police Departments Distributing Malware
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It has come out in the news that police departments in the US have been involved with promoting and even purchasing and distributing malware that installs a keylogger and steals data from users. Unbelievable. The people who are supposed to be protecting the citizens are the very ones involved in stealing their data. There should be severe penalties for this sort of thing.
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It's definitely not unbelievable , but it's definitely wrong.
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Seems like citizens trusting police, who have zero training, skill or knowledge in the area of computers and IT, are just asking for problems. This is like going to any random person and asking for advice on something they have no reason to know something about. You just can't do that. People need to take some responsibility for not taking the time to be careful about where they get advice. Obviously the police are not a trusted source for computer information any more than they would be the place to go to get recipes for wedding cakes.
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I think the local PD and Sheriffs Office where I live recommend Net Nanny. To my knowledge though they do not distribute the software though, just the information on how to get it.
http://www.netnanny.com/ -
It worries me that police departments recommend weird, quirky software and not the same things as businesses like Webroot, Avira, Avast, Windows Defender, etc. Does no one notice these red flags?
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@scottalanmiller said:
they would be the place to go to get recipes for wedding cakes.
CakeCop - the only bakery to be officially endorsed by leading law enforcement agencies
The police should have some expertise in IT giving the continuing rise of cyber crime. Ignorance isn't really an excuse. I mean I'd expect them to know something about drugs, even though they don't actually manufacture, distribute or consume drugs themselves (at least not officially). Regardless, the issue here is them claiming to know something when they clearly don't. I'd have the same objection if they started giving out wedding cake recipes and poisoning everyone.
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@scottalanmiller I've never heard them recommend antivirus products though, it's mostly just things that parents can do to protect their kids while online.
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This is much more frightening than key logging software
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/01/drones-police-force-crime-uavs-north-dakota
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
they would be the place to go to get recipes for wedding cakes.
CakeCop - the only bakery to be officially endorsed by leading law enforcement agencies
The police should have some expertise in IT giving the continuing rise of cyber crime. Ignorance isn't really an excuse. I mean I'd expect them to know something about drugs, even though they don't actually manufacture, distribute or consume drugs themselves (at least not officially). Regardless, the issue here is them claiming to know something when they clearly don't. I'd have the same objection if they started giving out wedding cake recipes and poisoning everyone.
I would agree but I'm not sure how many local police departments actually are involved in cyber crime, at least here in the US. I mean, clearly, the police in this article are directly involved in committing cyber crimes but you know what I mean. When illegal activity happens on the Internet who calls the police? At least the local police. The FBI would be well versed in this stuff but since the Internet is not local (at least not 99.99% of the time) the local police are normally, at most, involved only in filling out a report.
Drugs, on the other hand, are both outright illegal and are local. The police are directly involved in stopping, confiscating, arresting, etc. vis a vis drug crimes. It is quite different.
If the local police were spending 10% of their time being training on and fighting cyber crime then hey, completely different story. But most police stations in the US are fighting to get computers and use them, not fighting actual cyber crime.
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@Bill-Kindle said:
@scottalanmiller I've never heard them recommend antivirus products though, it's mostly just things that parents can do to protect their kids while online.
That's a little better. Same issue, lower threshold.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
they would be the place to go to get recipes for wedding cakes.
CakeCop - the only bakery to be officially endorsed by leading law enforcement agencies
The police should have some expertise in IT giving the continuing rise of cyber crime. Ignorance isn't really an excuse. I mean I'd expect them to know something about drugs, even though they don't actually manufacture, distribute or consume drugs themselves (at least not officially). Regardless, the issue here is them claiming to know something when they clearly don't. I'd have the same objection if they started giving out wedding cake recipes and poisoning everyone.
I would agree but I'm not sure how many local police departments actually are involved in cyber crime, at least here in the US. I mean, clearly, the police in this article are directly involved in committing cyber crimes but you know what I mean. When illegal activity happens on the Internet who calls the police? At least the local police. The FBI would be well versed in this stuff but since the Internet is not local (at least not 99.99% of the time) the local police are normally, at most, involved only in filling out a report.
Drugs, on the other hand, are both outright illegal and are local. The police are directly involved in stopping, confiscating, arresting, etc. vis a vis drug crimes. It is quite different.
If the local police were spending 10% of their time being training on and fighting cyber crime then hey, completely different story. But most police stations in the US are fighting to get computers and use them, not fighting actual cyber crime.
But there were so many student loans handed out for Cyber Security programs at every nook and crany school out there.
On a side note, I've met some of these students at my last job that spun up a Cyber Security program. Kids weren't enrolling because they wanted to learn how to protect systems and data, they were signing up so they could learn how to hack. We had to have one of these interns work with us on a work-study program, and he was always trying to point out how he could just hack his way past whatever measures we put up. It was annoying, but funny at the same time, because when asked to do some basic IT work, he was inept.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Bill-Kindle said:
@scottalanmiller I've never heard them recommend antivirus products though, it's mostly just things that parents can do to protect their kids while online.
That's a little better. Same issue, lower threshold.
Unfortunately there have been a lot of pervs in the area over the past few years, and their numbers are growing. Parents get scared, some do their own research, some don't. That's why the PD gets involved and tries to remind people to be parents and try to watch for these things, and become educated.
