Category Archives: North America

Police Send Spyware To Lawyer For Whistle-Blower

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Port Smith Police Chief Kevin Lindsey

FSPD Chief Lindsey

Police in Fort Smith Arkansas have been caught embedding malware in a collection of documents requested by the lawyer for a whistleblower reporting on misconduct in the department. Attorney Matt Campbell reports that upon the return of a drive he provided to the Fort Smith Police Department for the purpose of receiving evidence, three common pieces of spyware targeting Microsoft Windows computers were implanted into a sub folder on the drive. The spyware includes a keylogger, backdoors, and a command and control utility.

Campell is representing whistle-blower Don Paul Bales in a lawsuit against the Fort Smith Police Department for retailing against Bale's reports of illegal practices within the department concerning employee termination and payroll procedures. Arkansas State Police have declined requests by Campbell to investigate the incident claiming that any potential violations would be merely "misdemeanors" insufficient to involve their investigators. Similarly local Sebastian County Prosecuting Attorney for the 12th District of Arkansas Daniel Shue has declined to investigate citing a lack of resources even though their own web page declares Shue's office is "one of the busiest Prosecuting Attorney’s offices in the state." (archived) It remains to be seen if this can be investigated and prosecuted at the Federal level. Continue reading →

Fenton Replaces Murck as Vessenes Foundation Pivots Again

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The Vessenes Bitcoin Foundation has installed Bruce Fenton as their executive director replacing Patrick Murck who occupied the office on an interim basis. Fenton was elected by the board with five affirmative votes with one recorded abstention. In the recent election for the this foundation's board Bruce Fenton was a candidate ended the election in fourth place. One of the two candidates to win a seat on the Board, Oliver Janssens won a director's seat running for office with a history of seeking the Vessenes Foundation's replacement with software. After his first meeting as a board member Janssens, who won his seat with 63 percent of the membership's vote exposed the Vessenes Foundation's dire situation, and the rest of the board attempted a rebuttal of the indictment by Janssens. Continue reading →

Judge: Preet Bharara's Brinkmanship Endangers Fair Trials

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PreetPreet Bharara, the United States premier inquisitor for prosecuting Bitcoin cases, was reprimanded by United States District Court Judge Valerie Caproni for endangering the former New York Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver's right to a fair trial by making public statements endangering his right to a fair trial by jury. Caproni in ruling on a motion by the defense offered:

"In this case, the U.S. Attorney,1 while castigating politicians in Albany for playing fast and loose with the ethical rules that govern their conduct, strayed so close to the edge of the rules governing his own conduct that Defendant Sheldon Silver has a non-frivolous argument that he fell over the edge to the Defendant’s prejudice."

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  1. Bharara  ↩

EFF Goes to Bat For Podcasters, Hits Homerun Against Patent Troll

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Continuing to keep its shiva hands full and not content with just tackling the videogame industry, the EFF has just helped to win a decision with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) that invalidates the "podcasting patent" held by Personal Audio LLC, a Texas-based patent trolling firm. Personal Audio LLC is famous for having squeezed $8 mn from Apple Inc. in 2011 for the fruit company's use of "navigable playlists" on its iPod music players, as well as having sued American comedian Adam Corolla for distributing podcasts, only to be counter-sued before the two parties quietly settled. Continue reading →

Obama Initiative Promotes Linkrot

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More than one thousand websites in the United States .gov top level domain have gone offline since a 2011 memorandum (archived) issued by the President Obama with the stated intent of "improving online services." While the utility of many of the particular domains and sites hosted on them is debatable, Obama's aggressive culling has the primary effect of making the internet presence of the United States government less useful and far less reliable. Continue reading →

Coinbase Outgoing Email Hacked

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As noticed by #bitcoin-assets user fluffypony, and later confirmed by reddit user CoinbaseAdrian, a sendgrid.net account associated with em.coinbase.com has been compromised. The scammers behind this attack have used it to send email to a list composed mostly of, but not limited to, users of localbitcoins.com. Continue reading →

Vessenes Foundation Attempts Janssens Rebuttal

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This weekend Vessenes' Bitcoin Foundation board member Oliver Janssens offered a scathing critique of the "non-profit" organization.  The attempted rebuttal (archived) rather than refuting, merely edged Janssens's points. The foundation's four points are offered in condensed form below: Continue reading →

Tewksbury Police Pay Ransom

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Local weekly newspaper the Town Crier reports that Tewksbury, Massachusetts police have paid a $500 ransom after a version of the CryptoLocker ransomware encrypted essential files and rendered their network unusable. The initial infection was determined to have happened on December 7th when it entered the police department's network through the computer of the Officer in Charge. The malware's presence was not discovered until the next day. Continue reading →