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Sept 26, 2013

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From the FBI

New Internet Crime Initiative -- Combines Resources, Expertise

A pilot program targeting Internet crime—focused on establishing a model for sharing information and coordinating investigations—was recently launched by the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) and the state of Utah.

“The Utah pilot is the first step in our efforts to fix a gap that the FBI and our state and local law enforcement partners have recognized exists in the investigation and prosecution of Internet fraud,” said Richard McFeely, executive assistant director of the Bureau's Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch. “Because not all Internet fraud schemes rise to the level necessary to prosecute them in federal court, we are enhancing how we package the investigative leads we receive at IC3 and disseminating those packages directly to state and local agencies.” Based on the initial results of the Utah pilot, he said, the FBI plans to expand it to other states.

Internet fraud and other Internet-based crimes for profit cause untold financial losses each year. The IC3 reports that in 2012 alone, victims reported more than $500 million in losses due to crimes like fraudulent auto sales, intimidation/extortion scams, online dating fraud, scareware and ransomware, auction fraud, charity fraud, and computer intrusions. Our new initiative, led by IC3 with the assistance of our Cyber and Criminal Investigative Divisions, combines law enforcement resources to strategically pursue criminals responsible for these kinds of crimes.

How the program works. Using its complaint database and its analytical capabilities, IC3 personnel create actionable intelligence packages that are connected to particular geographic regions. These packages can highlight trends, identity individuals and criminal enterprises based on commonalities of complaints, link different methods of operation back to the same organization, and detect various layers of criminal activity. They will also contain results of preliminary investigative research performed by IC3 analysts, including criminal record checks and basic web domain searches.

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2013/september/new-internet-crime-initiative-combines-resources-expertise/new-internet-crime-initiative-combines-resources-expertise

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Oklahoma

Security Fail! Inmates Escape After Guards Leave Keys in Van

Eight prisoners re-captured in Oklahoma on Tuesday just hours after fleeing in security vehicle

Eight prisoners made a short-lived break for freedom when prison guards transporting the group parked outside a hospital and left the keys inside the still-running security van, local authorities have admitted.

A private correctional firm was transporting the inmates on Tuesday when one became ill, prompting an unscheduled detour to a medical facility near the town of Weatherford, an hour west of Oklahoma City. As the guards went to look for help for the sick prisoner, the unsupervised inmates proceeded to kick down an interior partition in the vehicle and then drove off.

Six fugitives were re-apprehended soon after the escape and the remaining pair were back behind bars later that evening. Nearby Southwestern Oklahoma State University was locked down for several hours during the manhunt.

Oklahoma teen found guilty in school shooting plot

BARTLESVILLE, Okla. A teenager who authorities say tried to recruit classmates for a mass shooting and bomb attack at his northeastern Oklahoma high school has been convicted in a plot to kill students, teachers and police officers.

A jury in Bartlesville found 19-year-old Sammie Eaglebear Chavez guilty of planning to cause bodily harm and recommended a 30-month prison term and $5,000 fine. The jury found him not guilty of conspiring to perform an act of violence.

Chavez had pleaded not guilty and testified in his own defense that he was joking when he told classmates about how a shooting and bomb attack could be carried out at Bartlesville High School.

"It was a joke in the sense that it wasn't meant seriously," Chavez told jurors, the Tulsa World newspaper reported. Bartlesville is 45 miles north of Tulsa.

Police and prosecutors said Chavez intended to lure students into the school's auditorium, chain the doors shut and shoot the students. Chavez also planned to place bombs by the auditorium doors and detonate them as police officers approached, according to an affidavit.

Chavez was arrested in December, hours before a gunman opened fire at a Connecticut elementary school and killed 20 children and six adults before killing himself.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/09/25/4340873/oklahoma-teen-found-guilty-in.html#.UkLWvfLD85s

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Massachusetts

Boston Police boss Davis: Use crime-fighting community policing strategies against terrorism

LOWELL, Massachusetts — A key to preventing future attacks like the Boston Marathon bombing is to bring the crime-fighting strategies of community policing to the battle against terrorism, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis said Tuesday.

Davis said there are almost always some warning signs that could alert investigators of an individual planning an attack.

He said it's critical to work with communities so people who might spot those warning signs feel comfortable giving that information to police, a tactic that he said has worked in the fight against crime in Boston.

Davis said simply increasing the police presence at major public events isn't the answer, noting that there aren't enough police officers in the entire state to line both sides of the marathon for all 26 miles of the race.

Instead, he said, reaching out to individual communities and members of the public is a smarter approach.

http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/83e98437ac934b5d9b5f771c3699eaf3/MA--Terrorism-Center

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Massachusetts

Maritime academy weighs arming its police force

BUZZARDS BAY — In the wake of the 2007 massacre at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and the mass shooting in December at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., the conversation on arming campus police is hardly new to Massachusetts Maritime Academy.

But in a closed-door meeting earlier this month, the academy's board of trustees raised the possibility that campus police officers — currently armed with batons and pepper spray — would add handguns to their utility belts.

The timetable for the board's decision is unclear, as the trustees could take months weighing the risks against the rewards of arming the campus force of seven full-time officers.

Richard Covel, chairman of the academy's board, could not be reached for comment.

If the board opts to provide campus police with sidearms, the academy would become the eighth school in the nine-campus state university system with an armed force. The Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston would be the only school left without an armed force in the state university system, which falls under the state Department of Higher Education but is separate from the University of Massachusetts and community college systems..

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130925/NEWS/309250336

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Sept 24, 2013

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California

Program prepares law enforcement, public to handle active shooter situations

LAKE FOREST -- There was a hostage situation within the halls of a middle school, and Tim Stack and Steve Lieberman were moving in.

They stood back to back, covering each other as they moved through the hallways and classrooms.

Children ran past screaming. Stack and Lieberman told them to take cover.

The two shuffled into a room, still covering each other's backs, when the assailant emerged in front of Lieberman, holding a gun to a hostage's head.

Lieberman called for the armed assailant to drop the gun. Instead, he aimed it at Lieberman, and Lieberman fired, killing the gunman and freeing the hostage along with the rest of the middle school students.

Lieberman and Stack managed to do all of this without firing a single bullet or leaving a Lake Forest warehouse. Welcome to Artemis Defense Institute, the only virtual defense training facility in the Southland.

http://www.dailynews.com/technology/20130923/program-prepares-law-enforcement-public-to-handle-active-shooter-situations

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German hacker group claims iPhone fingerprint hack

BERLIN — The fingerprint-based security system used to unlock Apple's latest iPhone can be bypassed using a household printer and some wood glue, a German hacking group has claimed.

A spokesman for the Chaos Computer Club said the group managed to fool the biometric sensor in the iPhone 5S over the weekend by creating an artificial copy of a genuine fingerprint.

“It was surprisingly easy,” Dirk Engling told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Monday, a day after the group announced the exploit on its website.

A member of the Chaos Computer Club going by the pseudonym Starbug took a high-resolution photograph of a fingerprint left on a glass surface, printed it onto a transparent sheet and smeared the pattern with liquid latex or wood glue. Once the glue set, it could be peeled off and placed on another finger to mimic the genuine print, said Engling.

“We used this method 10 years ago and didn't have to change much for the iPhone,” he said. “The hardest bit was getting hold of one of those new iPhones because they are chronically sold out.”

http://www.dailynews.com/business/20130923/german-hacker-group-claims-iphone-fingerprint-hack

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Illegal entrance into U.S. rising

Observers cite improving economy, lax enforcement

WASHINGTON — After several years that saw more undocumented immigrants leaving the U.S. than entering, illegal immigration may be back on the rise, according to a report released Monday.

The total number of undocumented immigrants reached 11.7 million in 2012, representing a slow increase that is nearing the country's all-time high of 12.2 million undocumented immigrants in 2009, according to the report from the Pew Hispanic Center, a research group.

So far, the trend seems to have gone largely unnoticed in Oregon's farming community, where undocumented immigrants are most commonly employed.

“They're always looking for people,” Farm Bureau government affairs specialist Ian Tolleson said. He works with farm labor issues and said he hasn't heard from farmers that undocumented immigrants are suddenly more available.

“It's difficult to get good, qualified workers who want to work in the fields, no matter the season, the crop or the year,” he said.

http://www.statesmanjournal.com/article/20130924/NEWS/309240028/Illegal-entrance-into-U-S-rising

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Schools tighten security after Sandy Hook

They're using a mix of strategies, from police to surveillance to armed teachers.

Visitors to any of 53 elementary and middle schools this year in Oregon's Salem-Keizer School District will need to be buzzed in. Their arrival will be captured on camera. And that's about all security manager Ray Byrd wants to say about that.

"We have to be careful not to put information out there that can be exploited by the bad guys," he says.

In a grim reminder that mass shootings have become a fact of life in America, school districts across the USA this fall are opting for more locked doors, more visitor check-ins and more surveillance equipment. Many have had security policies on the books for years, especially after the 1999 Columbine High School shootings. But the massacre last December at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where a gunman killed 20 children and six educators, introduced a new level of urgency. Suddenly, even children in elementary schools were not safe from bad guys.

"Sandy Hook changed the playing field," says Curtis Lavarello, executive director of School Safety Advocacy Council, based in Sarasota, Fla. "We realize now every school is vulnerable to that kind of a tragedy."

Limiting access to school property has been one of the most visible changes. School officials in Marlboro, N.J. budgeted $1.8 million this school year for security measures, including construction of "man-trap" vestibules at entrances to be completed later this fall. In Tupelo, Miss., school officials made a slew of upgrades this summer, including new playground fencing. School district officials in several states, including New York and Pennsylvania, have asked election officials to move polling places off their campuses.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/23/schools-step-up-security-measures-in-wake-of-sandy-hook/2844423/

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Sept 23, 2013

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Honoring Navy Yard Victims, Obama Asks: ‘Do We Care Enough' to Change?

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Sunday eulogized the 12 victims of the Navy Yard shooting and lamented what he called a “creeping resignation” in America about the inevitability of gun violence.

President Obama paid tribute at a memorial to the victims of the Washington Navy Yard shootings in Washington on Sunday.

Family members of victims of the Washington Navy Yard shooting before the start of a memorial service in Washington on Sunday.

In remarks to service members and their families who packed the bleachers in the barracks about two and a half blocks from where the killings took place last week, Mr. Obama vowed that he would not accept inaction after the latest in a string of mass shootings during his presidency.

But the president appeared exasperated with the political system that he leads, admitting that changes in the nation's gun laws “will not come from Washington, even when tragedy strikes Washington.” He acknowledged that his previous effort to pass new gun laws had failed, but he did not specifically call for a new political battle, saying change would come only when Americans decide they have had enough.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/23/us/obama-to-attend-memorial-service-for-victims-of-navy-yard-shooting.html?_r=0

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Independent Surveillance Review Not Exactly "Independent," Per Se

A panel of so-called independent experts appointed by President Obama to review the federal government's surveillance programs "has effectively been operating as an arm of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the NSA and all other U.S. spy efforts," according to a report from the Associated Press. They write:

The panel's advisers work in offices on loan from the DNI. Interview requests and press statements from the review panel are carefully coordinated through the DNI's press office. James Clapper, the intelligence director, exempted the panel from U.S. rules that require federal committees to conduct their business and their meetings in ways the public can observe. Its final report, when it's issued, will be submitted for White House approval before the public can read it.

That sounds super independent. Even though no classified information has been discussed, the meetings have remained closed, and the press office for the DNI said that Clapper exempted the review panel from the Federal Advisory Committee Act due to the "highly classified nature of their review." The office also told the AP that, "We are conducting this review as openly and transparently as possible." In one meeting, representatives from tech giants including Microsoft and Apple advocated for more permission to be open with their users.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/09/independent-surveillance-review-not-exactly-independent-se/69722/

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Police say 'swatting' leads to serious trouble

PANAMA CITY — It's a hoax, but law enforcement agencies across the country aren't laughing.

The FBI estimates that hundreds of instances of “swatting” — making a false 911 call to cause a police SWAT team to respond — occur each year. Cody Blaine Jones, a 16-year-old Southport boy, added to that tally last Monday when he allegedly caused the Delaware County Police SWAT team and bomb squad in Broomall , Pa. to respond to an empty house. Broomall police were told there was a heavily armed man inside the house holding someone hostage, and that the man had an explosive device.

Those were lies, police said.

Jones was charged with filing a false report of a bomb, explosive device or weapon of mass destruction in the incident. The Bay County Sheriff's Office reported that Jones faced the same charge for an incident of “swatting” at Wyndham Bay Point Resort last October. Jones and his family could not be reached for comment Sunday. Their neighbors said they either didn't know the family or declined to comment on Jones' arrest.

http://www.newsherald.com/news/crime-public-safety/police-say-swatting-leads-to-serious-trouble-1.206797

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