Child Sexual Predator Project, launched by Northwestern DA David Sullivan, monitors sex offenders in Hampshire, Franklin counties

Caught Red-Handed, see how folks under supervision are closely monitored esp. on their computers.

10-22-2012 Massachusetts:

"Keith" is a 25-year-old Franklin County man who lives with his parents, works less than 20 hours a week and says he spends much of the rest of the time in his room playing video games.

He also is classified by the state as a Level 3 sex offender, previously convicted of indecent assault on a minor. Under the terms of his probationary sentence, he wears an electronic ankle bracelet and is not supposed to drink, do drugs or be viewing pornography.

And, that is a problem, because an external hard drive just found on his computer during a surprise visit by police and probation officers contained video files of some pretty graphic, hard-core sex scenes downloaded from various adult websites.

“What’s all this stuff?” asks Frank M. Glenowicz, chief probation officer for Franklin Superior Court. “‘Girls Slut Party?’ “Public Pickups?’”

Keith, not his real name, kind of shrugs in a sort of “I dunno” way, but his body language conveys the universal language of someone who has just been caught, both red-handed and red-faced, with something he shouldn’t have.

The visit was a compliance check for Level 3 sex offenders in Hampshire and Franklin counties in a program, the Child Sexual Predator Project , initiated last year by the office of Northwestern district attorney David E. Sullivan. The goal is to better monitor sex offenders who live in the two counties. At last count, there were more than 450 Level 2 and Level 3 sex offenders in the two counties.

All people convicted of a sexual offense are required to register with the state Sex Offenders Registration Board, which assigns them to one of three categories of risk.
Level 1 offenders are of low risk, Level 2 of moderate risk and Level 3 offenders are those considered to pose a high risk to re-offend.

“If there are Level 2s and Level 3s out there, we check up on them,” said assistant district attorney Christine Tetreault, project director. “We want to make sure these people are where they are supposed to be.”

On a recent afternoon of the spot checks in Franklin County, The Republican and MassLive.com were allowed to tag along; the only condition was that the names and addresses of the offenders would not be used and photographs of their faces not published.

By teaming up with the Department of Probation, the DA’s office hopes it can ensure that sex offenders are living where they are supposed to be and also make sure they are complying with the terms of their release. If not, they could wind up back in jail.

The visit to Keith’s home began with Glenowicz and state police Sgt. Thomas F. Bakey giving him a Breathalyzer in his mother’s kitchen, checking to see who he had called on his cell phone, and asking if he has been keeping up with his court-ordered sexual therapy sessions.

Keith blew a 0.0 on the Breathalyzer, indicating no recent alcohol use, his telephone checked out and he assured them he was attending therapy.

And, then, they asked to see his computer.

Bakey carried with him an ordinary thumb drive which contains what he calls “newish software” developed by the FBI. Plug it into any computer, run the program, he said, and, in 20 minutes or so, it will conduct a review of all recent activity on the computer.

In particular, it will scan through all photo and video files in search of pornographic images, it will analyze Internet web addresses that were visited and red-flag ones that are questionable. And, it checks the contents of all emails and attached files, Bakey said.

It even reviews the search terms entered into a search engine. For example, if someone had used Goggle to search the phrase “hot teenage girls,” Bakey’s thumb drive would make note of it.

“We’re looking for obvious contraband, such as child pornography,” Bakey said. “But a lot of these sex offenders are not even supposed to have adult pornography without the consent of
their therapist.”

The software can even tell when an external memory device has been plugged into the computer, and this proves to be Keith’s undoing.

The scan showed a clean hard drive, but it also showed that at some point an external memory had been plugged into and then removed from his computer. When Bakey asked for it, Keith started hemming and hawing over its whereabouts while shuffling papers around on his desk in an attempt to find it.

Bakey felt around the top of the computer under his desk and came up with the external memory.

“Is this it?”

...continued... by Patrick Johnson, The Republican

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Your New Facebook Friend May Be a Federal Agent

3-27-2010 National:

WASHINGTON (March 26) -- A Justice Department document asks the simple question: Why Go Undercover on Facebook, MySpace, etc.?

Then it goes on to explain: "Communicate with suspects/targets" ... "gain access to non-public info" ... "map social relationships/networks."

The document, part of a Justice Department PowerPoint presentation, demonstrates how some federal and local law enforcement agents are quietly creating fictitious accounts on social networks like Facebook and MySpace to get dirt on suspected criminals. The presentation recently surfaced in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in a San Francisco federal court.

"This is just the way people meet these days -- electronically," James Cavanaugh, special agent in charge of the Nashville office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told AOL News. "It wouldn't be any different than calling someone on the phone, say, in an undercover capacity. If we can meet them on Facebook by creating a fictitious account, that's great. "

Even so, the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco filed the lawsuit in December against about a half a dozen federal agencies to create a public dialogue on the matter and make sure agencies have guidelines for agents, according to Marcia Hofmann, a senior staff attorney for the foundation. The Justice Department, Homeland Security, Treasury, the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are included in the suit.

Some agencies don't readily appear to have guidelines and some have offered to produce them in coming months to satisfy the demands in the lawsuit, according to Hofmann.

"This on one hand is a very clever use of these tools, but it makes you wonder when enterprising agents come up with these ideas, what is appropriate and what is not," she said. "I don't want to speculate as to what they do and they don't do. I do think there should be a public debate whether it's ethically sound or not. There should be some transparency."

Initially, social networks like MySpace, which first surfaced in 2003, and Facebook, which launched in 2004, and Twitter which arrived in 2006, were simply for hip high school and college-aged kids. As social media's popularity soared, law enforcement began to realize that there was more to these networks than idle gossip and photos of cats, dogs, proms and beer parties.

Now, some federal agents privately talk, almost in amazement, about how much information is available on social networks and how careless criminals are. They say some information can be obtained without even going undercover.

In fact, they say some criminals -- and noncriminals as well -- fail to select the right security settings to block non-friends from seeing photos and other personal information on sites like Facebook. And besides, anyone can see a person's friend list without "friending" the person.

"It's not like we have to dig very deep," said one federal agent who has not created fictitious accounts but knows of others who have. "Facebook is the best. They videotape themselves. They have pictures with guns, posing with gang members. There's addresses of homes. We tend to go after what's there."

Another federal agent says he's amazed how freely some criminals post information on social networks.

"I'm surprised by the recklessness of it," the agent said. "I would think they would be smarter. That's why we only catch the stupid ones. "

Still, even before the recent documents surfaced publicly about fictitious accounts, some federal law enforcement agencies readily admitted to being aware of criminals using the social networks.

On Jan. 27, for example, the Drug Enforcement Administration in Los Angeles issued a press release about the indictment of 20 suspected members of the Riverside Street Gang with ties to the Mexican Mafia. The release noted that the members use "MySpace.com to communicate about gang business, and they use rap music videos and recordings to deliver a message of violence and intimidation."

DEA Agent Sarah Pullen of the Los Angeles office said of the probe, "Any time you have visual evidence that is available, it is extremely helpful in conducting an investigation. It would be the same as a piece of mail or a photo; anything that shows evidence of a crime."

In Washington, federal law enforcement agencies have responded to the issue of agents creating fictitious undercover accounts with carefully worded responses.

"The Department of Justice and our agents follow applicable laws, regulations and internal guidelines for investigations, regardless of whether those investigations occur online or on the street," Laura Sweeney, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said in a statement to AOL News.

"Just as we've done successfully in identifying and prosecuting child predators online, we will continue to use publicly available information individuals post online about their illegal activities, or false statements to law enforcement officials, in our investigations. To do otherwise would be negligence on our part," Sweeney said.

Paul Bresson, an FBI spokesman, noted, "Simply said, law enforcement needs to be able to constantly adapt to the changing world around them while maintaining its ability to use all lawful and available tools at its disposal to gather potential leads to solve crimes."

Interestingly, the Internal Revenue Service provided a document in the San Francisco lawsuit that states employee guidelines for the Internet. "You cannot obtain information from websites by registering ... fictitious identities," the document said.

"I think it's interesting the IRS has drawn the line, and the Justice Department has not," the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Hofmann said.

There has been limited public outcry about the prospects of agents creating undercover accounts since the Justice Department document surfaced.

But Hofmann mentioned the La Crosse, Wis., police department, which reportedly created a fake Facebook page using an attractive, blond-haired woman to lure students and find out about underage drinking. The department did not return a call for comment.

The La Crosse Tribune reported in November that Adam Bauer, a University of Wisconsin-La Crosse sophomore, had nearly 400 friends on Facebook and added the attractive woman. Shortly after, police had Facebook photos of him drinking, and he was fined $227.

After his court appearance in November, Bauer told the paper, "I just can't believe it. I feel like I'm in a science fiction movie, like they are always watching. When does it end?" ..Source..

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FBI Develops Eavesdropping Tools

11-22-2001 Washington Post:

WASHINGTON –– The FBI is going to new lengths to be sure it can eavesdrop on high-tech communications, secretly building "Magic Lantern" software to monitor computer use.

Separately, the agency is urging phone companies to change their networks for more reliable wiretaps in the digital age.

At a conference Nov. 6 in Tucson, Ariz. – and in a 32-page follow-up letter sent about two weeks ago – the FBI told leading telecommunications officials that increasing use of Internet-style data technology to transmit voice calls is frustrating FBI wiretap efforts.

The FBI told companies that it will need access to voice calls sent over data networks within a few hours in some emergency situations, and that any interference caused by a wiretap should be imperceptible to avoid tipping off a person that his calls might be monitored.

The Magic Lantern technology, part of a broad FBI project called "Cyber Knight," would allow investigators to secretly install over the Internet powerful eavesdropping software that records every keystroke on a person's computer, according to people familiar with the effort.

The software is somewhat similar to so-called trojan software already used illegally by some hackers and corporate spies. The FBI envisions one day using Magic Lantern to record the secret unlocking key a person might use to scramble messages or computer files with encryption software.

The bureau has been largely frustrated in efforts to break open such messages by trying different unlocking combinations randomly, and officials are increasingly concerned about their ability to read encrypted messages in criminal or terrorist investigations.

The FBI said in a statement Wednesday that it can not discuss details of its technical surveillance efforts, though it noted that "encryption can pose potentially insurmountable challenges to law enforcement when used in conjunction with communication or plans for executing serious terrorist and criminal acts."

The FBI added that its research is "always mindful of constitutional, privacy and commercial equities," and that its use of new technology can be challenged in court and in Congress.

Magic Lantern would largely resolve an important problem with the FBI's existing monitoring technology, the "Key Logger System," which in the past has required investigators to sneak into a target's home or business with a so-called sneak-and-peak warrant and secretly attach the device to a computer.

In contrast, Magic Lantern could be installed over the Internet by tricking a person into double-clicking an e-mail attachment or by exploiting some of the same weaknesses in popular commercial software that allow hackers to break into computers. It's unclear whether Magic Lantern would transmit keystrokes it records back to the FBI over the Internet or store the information to be seized later in a raid. The existence of Magic Lantern was first disclosed by MSNBC.

"If they are using this kind of program, it would be a highly effective way to bypass any encryption problems," said James E. Gordon, who heads the information technology practice for Pinkerton Consulting and Investigations Inc. "Once they have the keys to the kingdom, they have complete access to anything that individual is doing."

At least one antivirus software company, McAfee Corp., contacted the FBI on Wednesday to ensure its software wouldn't inadvertently detect the bureau's snooping software and alert a criminal suspect.

Experts said the FBI software could be used with a court order against criminals, terrorists or foreign spies. People familiar with the project, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said the package is being developed at the FBI's electronic tools laboratory, the same outfit that built the bureau's "Carnivore" Internet surveillance technology.

Some experts said Magic Lantern raises important legal questions, such as whether the FBI would need a wiretap order from a U.S. judge to use the technology. The government has previously argued that the FBI can capture a person's computer keystrokes under the authority of a traditional search warrant, which involves less oversight by the courts.

"It's an open question whether the covert installation of something on a computer without a physical entry requires a search warrant," said David Sobel, a lawyer with the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, a civil liberties group. ..more.. by Ted Bridis, Associated Press Writer


See also: Shedding Light On The FBI's 'Magic Lantern' By Paul Eng, ABCNEWS.com 12-22-1

See also: Feds use key logger to thwart PGP, Hushmail by CNet News.com 7-10-2007

See also: Keystroke Logging and the Constitution by Tech Insider 7-11-2007

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