A Belfair couple who ran a private investigation firm have been sentenced to six months in prison and two years supervised release for using illegal methods to dig up dirt on people who were involved in court cases or litigation. Emilio and Brandy Torrella ran BNT Investigations, where workers posed as the people they were…
Overseeing Surveillance – Lessons from the UK Experience?
In a previous post I pointed out the remarkable lack of transparency in the oversight of surveillance in Ireland. This has become all the more worrying since July when the remit of this oversight system was extended (by the Criminal Justice (Surveillance) Act 2009) beyond telephone tapping and data retention to include also the planting…
Former CT state trooper fined for unauthorized access
Paul Galietti, a former Connecticut State Trooper who had admitted that he intentionally accessed a government computer in a manner that exceeded his lawful authority, was sentenced to pay a fine of $1000 by a federal court judge this week. According to documents filed with the court and statements made in court, the case started…
How to stop businesses storing SSNs indefinitely?
Over on Slashdot, The Angry Mick describes his experiences trying to get businesses to delete his SSN from their databases and to replace it with an alternative identifier. Then there was DirectTV. This company not only flatly refused to consider the suggestion, but also informed me that even if I were to discontinue service with…