7th Circuit analyzes staleness in computer searches, holds the doctrine should apply "only in the exceptional case"

8-30-2012 7th Circuit:

In United States v. Seiver, No. 11-3716 (7th Cir. 2012), in an opinion by Judge Posner, the Seventh Circuit analyzed the issue of staleness as it relates to a finding of probable cause to search a computer. Noting that "modern computer technology and the usual behavior of its users" support the position that the probable cause was not stale, the conviction was affirmed.

The case concerned a search warrant for child pornography on the defendant's computer. A 13-year-old girl had uploaded a pornographic video of herself to the Internet, and the defendant later discovered and downloaded that video. He then uploaded stills from the video to a photo-sharing site and sent an album link to the girl's stepmother who alerted police. Law enforcement tracked the IP address to the defendant, but there was a seven month gap between the upload and the search of his home.

On appeal, the defendant argued "that there was no reason to believe that seven months after he had uploaded child pornography there would still be evidence of the crime on his computer." Here's a summary of the points of Judge Posner's opinion (which in itself is a well-condensed opinion and difficult to summarize):

1. The traditional issue with staleness is whether the defendant was a collector of child pornography and was "likely to have 'retained' or 'maintained' rather than 'destroyed' the ... images." However, this concern alone "reflects a misunderstanding of computer technology."
2. Posner then goes into great detail in discussing deleted files, overwriting data, and file recovery.
3. "'Staleness' is highly relevant to the legality of a search for a perishable or consumable object, like cocaine, but rarely relevant when it is a computer file. Computers and computer equipment are 'not the type of evidence that  rapidly dissipates or degrades (internal citations omitted).'"
4. After a file has been deleted, "it is possible that the deleted file will no longer be recoverable" ... [or] the computer will have been sold or physically destroyed." Despite these possibilities and the time interval, however, "rarely will they be so probable as to destroy probable cause ... for probable cause is far short of certainty."
5. "[I]t appears that few consumers of child pornography ... understand well enough how their computer’s file system works to grasp the importance of wiping or overwriting their deleted pornographic files or encrypting them securely if they want to avoid leaving recoverable evidence ... after they've deleted it." Though software to perform these tasks is readily available, its use "is surprisingly rare."
6. "[A]fter a very long time, the likelihood drops to a level at which probable cause ... can no longer be established." However, "seven months is too short."
7. Possession requires knowing possession, and images being in slack space may prevent the knowledge element. However, that does not eliminate probable cause "unless the statute of limitations on possession ha[s] expired."
8. "Only in the exceptional case should" staleness be used to strike down a search of a computer for child pornography.
9. "[F]uture changes in computer technology may alter" the staleness inquiry, "and judges as well as law enforcers must be alert to that possibility as well.

..Source.. by Cybercrime Review

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SocialGuard for Children's Facebook Accounts

What Does SocialGuard Do?

Protects your kids from cyberbullies, strangers and unsafe links;
Safeguards more effectively than "friending" your child;
Scans for language that could be abusive or dangerous;
Alerts you automatically - you don't even need to use Facebook.

This is a service that appears to be worthwhile. See the video below:

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Computers That See You and Keep Watch Over You

1-2-2011 National:

Hundreds of correctional officers from prisons across America descended last spring on a shuttered penitentiary in West Virginia for annual training exercises.

Some officers played the role of prisoners, acting like gang members and stirring up trouble, including a mock riot. The latest in prison gear got a workout — body armor, shields, riot helmets, smoke bombs, gas masks. And, at this year’s drill, computers that could see the action.

Perched above the prison yard, five cameras tracked the play-acting prisoners, and artificial-intelligence software analyzed the images to recognize faces, gestures and patterns of group behavior. When two groups of inmates moved toward each other, the experimental computer system sent an alert — a text message — to a corrections officer that warned of a potential incident and gave the location.

The computers cannot do anything more than officers who constantly watch surveillance monitors under ideal conditions. But in practice, officers are often distracted. When shifts change, an observation that is worth passing along may be forgotten. But machines do not blink or forget. They are tireless assistants.

The enthusiasm for such systems extends well beyond the nation’s prisons. High-resolution, low-cost cameras are proliferating, found in products like smartphones and laptop computers. The cost of storing images is dropping, and new software algorithms for mining, matching and scrutinizing the flood of visual data are progressing swiftly.

A computer-vision system can watch a hospital room and remind doctors and nurses to wash their hands, or warn of restless patients who are in danger of falling out of bed. It can, through a computer-equipped mirror, read a man’s face to detect his heart rate and other vital signs. It can analyze a woman’s expressions as she watches a movie trailer or shops online, and help marketers tailor their offerings accordingly. Computer vision can also be used at shopping malls, schoolyards, subway platforms, office complexes and stadiums.

All of which could be helpful — or alarming.

“Machines will definitely be able to observe us and understand us better,” said Hartmut Neven, a computer scientist and vision expert at Google. “Where that leads is uncertain.”

Google has been both at the forefront of the technology’s development and a source of the anxiety surrounding it. Its Street View service, which lets Internet users zoom in from above on a particular location, faced privacy complaints. Google will blur out people’s homes at their request.

Google has also introduced an application called Goggles, which allows people to take a picture with a smartphone and search the Internet for matching images. The company’s executives decided to exclude a facial-recognition feature, which they feared might be used to find personal information on people who did not know that they were being photographed.

Despite such qualms, computer vision is moving into the mainstream. With this technological evolution, scientists predict, people will increasingly be surrounded by machines that can not only see but also reason about what they are seeing, in their own limited way.

The uses, noted Frances Scott, an expert in surveillance technologies at the National Institute of Justice, the Justice Department’s research agency, could allow the authorities to spot a terrorist, identify a lost child or locate an Alzheimer’s patient who has wandered off.

The future of law enforcement, national security and military operations will most likely rely on observant machines. A few months ago, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon’s research arm, awarded the first round of grants in a five-year research program called the Mind’s Eye. Its goal is to develop machines that can recognize, analyze and communicate what they see. Mounted on small robots or drones, these smart machines could replace human scouts. “These things, in a sense, could be team members,” said James Donlon, the program’s manager.

Millions of people now use products that show the progress that has been made in computer vision. In the last two years, the major online photo-sharing services — Picasa by Google, Windows Live Photo Gallery by Microsoft, Flickr by Yahoo and iPhoto by Apple — have all started using face recognition. A user puts a name to a face, and the service finds matches in other photographs. It is a popular tool for finding and organizing pictures.

Kinect, an add-on to Microsoft’s Xbox 360 gaming console, is a striking advance for computer vision in the marketplace. It uses a digital camera and sensors to recognize people and gestures; it also understands voice commands. Players control the computer with waves of the hand, and then move to make their on-screen animated stand-ins — known as avatars — run, jump, swing and dance. Since Kinect was introduced in November, game reviewers have applauded, and sales are surging.

To Microsoft, Kinect is not just a game, but a step toward the future of computing. “It’s a world where technology more fundamentally understands you, so you don’t have to understand it,” said Alex Kipman, an engineer on the team that designed Kinect.

‘Please Wash Your Hands’

A nurse walks into a hospital room while scanning a clipboard. She greets the patient and washes her hands. She checks and records his heart rate and blood pressure, adjusts the intravenous drip, turns him over to look for bed sores, then heads for the door but does not wash her hands again, as protocol requires. “Pardon the interruption,” declares a recorded women’s voice, with a slight British accent. “Please wash your hands.”

Three months ago, Bassett Medical Center in Cooperstown, N.Y., began an experiment with computer vision in a single hospital room. Three small cameras, mounted inconspicuously on the ceiling, monitor movements in Room 542, in a special care unit (a notch below intensive care) where patients are treated for conditions like severe pneumonia, heart attacks and strokes. The cameras track people going in and out of the room as well as the patient’s movements in bed. ..For the remainder of the story.. by Steve Lohr, NY Times

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Supercomputer Joins Hunt for Child Predators

The theory is that when they catch someone with "possible child porn" they can enter those pics into the supercomputer at it will match these images with past known images that have been tagged as child porn. The flaw in that theory is, that it will not catch the person who is making new images, such a person will still have to be processed under the old matching system. The number of annual arrests for child porn is rather interesting and refutes claims of many in law enforcement in past media reports.

12-12-2010 Global:

Jaguar Supercomputer Has Already Helped Arrest Dozens of Criminals

The tragedy of seven-year-old Somer Thompson's 2009 murder was that it didn't have to happen.

Somer's assailant, Jarred Harrell, 24, was in police custody in 2009. The police also had Harrell's computer, which contained child pornography. But investigators hadn't seen the material, which would have kept him locked up. He was released, and on Oct. 19 Harrel abducted the Florida child on her way home from school.

Two days later Somer's body was found in a Georgia landfill.

Now scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, along with local and national collaborators, are working to save the life of the next Somer Thompson.

With the aid of the Jaguar supercomputer, the second most powerful computer in the world, Oak Ridge scientists hope to find child pornography faster than ever and then trace and arrest pedophiles quickly before they abuse or kill more children.

"These guys are on the verge of changing history," said Grier Weeks, executive director of the National Association to Protect Children. "There is no tool to interrupt child sexual abuse on a scale like this."

New Program Can Lead to Quicker Prosecution, Arrest

Every year U.S. law enforcement arrests between 2,000 and 3,000 individuals for charges related to child pornography, said Weeks. That's out of an estimated 300,000 people authorities suspect are engaged in this kind of criminal activity.

There is currently technology, developed last year by ORNL's Thomas Potok and Shaun Gleason, that could have helped investigators find the pornography on Harrel's computer, although they didn't have it. Still the new program, called Artemis, after the Greek goddess of the hunt, has helped make a dent in the local population of pedophiles.

When investigators, such as Tom Evans from the Knoxville Police Department, enters a suspect's home, they carry with them a copy of Artemis, which they run on the suspect's computers to find images with flesh-colored pixels, which could be child pornography.

Artemis has already helped the Knoxville Police Department in the roughly 30 child sex crime related arrests it has made this year, said Evans. "It can lead to a quicker prosecution and a quicker arrest," he said.

Jaguar Most Likely Won't Start Catching Pedophiles Until End of 2011

While Artemis does in seconds what would ordinarily take hours or even days to find, it only works when police have an actual suspect. And finding a suspect is the hard thing to do, according to Michael Teague, a forensic psychologist and retired Director of Psychological Services for the Raleigh Police Department.

Tips from concerned parents, girlfriends and other citizens go a long way to identifying pedophiles, said Teague. But these people often operate in networks, sharing images and video with one another over the Internet. Finding these people, and especially the people producing the images and video, is more difficult. This is how the Jaguar supercomputer can help.

"With the current process, it could take weeks for law enforcement to track someone down," said Robert Patton, a scientist at Oak Ridge who, along with Carlos Rojas, runs the Jaguar and pedophile project. "Right now we could probably do it in a few days. What we want is to do it in a few hours."

What Patton means is that from the time a child pornographer uploads a series of new pictures or video onto a network, the Jaguar supercomputer could find that file, see who has downloaded it, and track it down to an actual physical address source, all in a few hours.

The flaw here is, how will they now -using only flesh colored pixels- that pictures uploaded are not grandma taking pics of grand kids taking a bath. Maybe that will be the next child pornographer we will hear about, and surely they will sensationalize the heck out of the case. But, in their example they could at least finish giving the kids their bath...

Once police have that information they could raid the home, arrest the pedophile, and, hopefully, save the life of a child.

"The quickness is what would be so important," said Teague.

These criminals have molested and abused a child or children; kidnap or murder is not beyond them, as Somer Thompson's case so tragically illustrated. If a child becomes uncooperative or tries to run away it is easier to kill the child or move than risk being caught.

While Artemis has been running for a while now, Jaguar most likely won't catch pedophiles until the latter end of next year, said Patton. Right now they are running simulations and testing the programs on Jaguar before they use it in the real world. But the investigators hope that soon Jaguar will chase down pedophiles and prevent the death of the next Somer Thompson. ..Source.. ERIC BLAND

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Browser Windows and the 4th Amendment

10-22-2010 National:

For those of my readers who are interested in law and how cases are decided, there is a very interesting post over at CYB3CRIM3, same title of this post. It starts like this:

This post is about a Kentucky case in which a man who was using a library computer to browse child pornography wound up being indicted on federal charges. If you’d like to read a little more about the facts in the case, check out the news story you can find here.

The case is U.S. v. LaPradd, 2010 WL 3843140 (U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky 2010) and this is how it arose:

On August 7, 2009, [Kenneth L.] LaPradd was at the University of Louisville Art Library using a public desktop computer. [The computers are in the lobby of the library, have unfiltered access to the internet, and are available for public use.] LaPradd was known to the library staff, as he frequently used the public computers and had been the subject of several complaints to the staff regarding a number of pornographic images other library patrons had seen on his computer terminal. In previous conversations with the University of Louisville Police Department (`ULPD’) about the patrons' complaints concerning LaPradd, the library's staff had been advised to call the ULPD when he next appeared at the Art Library. Upon sighting LaPradd on August 7, the library staff contacted the ULPD. ... more on CYB3CRIME3 site

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