[security-news] Bulletin #7 - September 16, 2002

[security-news-admin at resist.ca]

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Security-news <security-news at resist.ca>
A security bulletin for autonomous resistance movements
Produced by the folks who bring you http://security.tao.ca
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September 16th, 2002

Far be it from us to promote a right-wing rag like the Economist, but
there is a really interesting article in the August 31st edition of that
magazine about the crackdown of civil liberties in the US and around the
world. The best thing about the article is the world map diagram that
shows what laws have been changed and where in the world repression has
increased. We have scanned the picture and posted it at
http://security.tao.ca/post911legal.jpg for y'all to check out.


**********************************
Security-news: Issue #7 - Contents
**********************************
* Security tip of the week: Bug Checking
* Updates to security.tao.ca
* News & Analysis: Colorado Activists Look at Police Files
* News & Analysis: Aussie Cops Flex Their New DNA Powers
* How-to: Discover a vehicle tracking device

*****
Security Tip of the Week: Bug checking
*****
High-tech bug checking devices may seem interesting and useful, but more
often serve the purpose of giving a false sense of security rather than
actually proving that an office or dwelling is bugged. Line-tap checkers
are equally useless, particularly in the face of "legal" taps (those done
via warrant at the switch source). Practicing common sense when speaking
in a dwelling, office, vehicle, or on the phone - is the only way to
defeat planted monitoring devices - one should always assume the walls
have ears.

*****
Updates to security.tao.ca
*****
At the top of the index page, there is now a link to the current
security bulletin which will be kept current, so you can always check
out the site for the latest activist security-news.


*****
News & Analysis: Colorado Activists Look at Police Files
Associated Press, September 4 2002
*****

DENVER (AP) - Holding the just-released 18-page file that had been
secretly compiled on her by police, activist Barbara Cohen smiled and
shrugged her shoulders. "Don't I look like a dangerous criminal?" the
barely 5-foot tall, 53-year-old gray-haired legal secretary asked.

About 200 people crowded the lobby of Police Department headquarters     
Tuesday after officials opened 3,200 "spy files" on local activists and
organizations.

City officials have conceded police went too far when they began
documenting individuals and groups some three years ago. Mayor Wellington
Webb, himself the subject of police surveillance when he was a young
activist, has condemned the practice. He said it violated city policy.

Many who waited for up to an hour to see their file received papers that
still smelled of black marker where police had deleted the names of
people linked to them. Some of these files, which were categorized by
groups, individuals and incidents, contained inaccurate information, some
said.               

Cohen, who belongs to the group End the Politics of Cruelty, said she is
considering a lawsuit after police linked her to a motorcycle group she
never heard of.

News that religious and peace groups were among those placed under
surveillance since about 1999 drew charges of police misconduct, an
investigation by a three-judge panel and the decision to let some people
see their files before the reports are purged.

Mark Silverstein, legal director of the Colorado chapter of the American
Civil Liberties Union, had a file for speaking at a rally in February
2000, which he insisted he didn't attend.

"It sounds like I ran my mouth off at a rally, but I wasn't there," he
said.

The American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group and a Nobel Peace
Prize winner, was listed as a criminal extremist group by police,
according to the ACLU.

So was the Chiapas Coalition, which supports the Mayans of the Chiapas
state in Mexico where there have been guerrilla uprisings.

Amnesty International was listed as a civil disobedience group. Some
officers were not properly trained in intelligence gathering and some
people and groups may have been misclassified as criminal extremists,
said C.L. Harmer, spokeswoman for the Department of Safety, which 
oversees the police department. The system has been examined by outside
auditors and training is under way, she said.

Criminal intelligence gathering, however, remains an important police
tool, Harmer added.

"As we approach 9-11, I think it reaffirms the legitimate use of         
legitimate criminal files," she said.

Records of people not suspected of crimes will be released to those
people, then purged after Nov. 1. However, the city attorney's office   
will keep copies of all files, including those eliminated by police.

The names of people or groups considered legitimate targets of           
surveillance, as determined by an outside auditor, will remain in the
files and won't be released.

Security-news note: The only thing at all unusual about this case is that
the state admitted to some wrong-doing. There are numerous
examples of state, provincial and federal government agencies spying on
agencies as "radical" as christian peace groups and legal entities such
as trade unions. We find it interesting that while the police have
been ordered to destroy these "wrongful" files, the state attorney's
office will be keeping copies of them... doesn't sound like the
government is making much of an apology for several years of ill-informed
and heavy-handed data collection. Oh well, 9-11 certainly justifies it...
doesn't it?


*****
News & Analysis: Aussie Cops Flex Their New DNA Powers             
posted by ABC Melbourne to infoshop.org, September 03 2002              
*****

Police in Victoria (Australia) have announced that they will be         
forcibly collecting DNA from almost 4000 ex-offenders living in the  
community. Under draconian new laws that were passed in May, those
ordered to give their DNA will be arrested if they fail to do so once a
four-week deadline has expired. Once in police custody they will be  
given a second chance to provide a sample.

If they still refuse, the police are now legally entitled to use        
so-called "extraction teams" to remove prisoners from their cells and
forcibly restrain them while a nurse takes a blood test. All testing will
be videotaped and the police are banned from taking samples, apparently
this has to be done by a nurse. But the testing will be conducted at
police stations in the presence of police. Apparently the samples will
then be placed in "tamper-proof" containers and sent to the Victorian
Forensic Science Centre where they will be matched against the Victorian
DNA database of unsolved crimes before being passed on to the Federal
Government's "CrimTrac" system.

People who will be forced to comply with this violation of their human 
rights are any persons who have been convicted of a list of 36 serious
offences. What all of these offences actually are has not been made
public yet; what is known so far is that anyone convicted for murder,
arson, burglary, serious assault, rape and drug offences will be forced
to give DNA.

Information has not yet been provided as to what type of 'drug offences'
the new laws will target.

It is worth pointing out that the last time mass DNA testing took place 
in Victoria that it took place in the prison system. This testing was
done illegally however the government moved swiftly to change the law and
to backdate it meaning prisoners were left without a legal leg to stand  
on. A great majority of the prisoners who were forced to provide DNA were
not 'serious offenders' as the police and media would have us believe but
mainly those convicted of drug-related crimes against property. No doubt
this will be the case once more.



*****
How to: Discover a vehicle tracking device 
Taken from portland.indymedia.org, September 9, 2002
*****

(This isn't really in how-to format, it actually comes from an email to a
list of technical security professionals - but it provides enough info so
that you know what to look for)

Summary:Spooks commonly use tracking devices installed in private
vehicles to monitor travel and associations of individuals. This detailed
description of vehicle tracking devices and their installation reveals
just how it's done!

Weblink: http://cryptome.org/track-this.htm

To: tscm-l at yahoogroups.com
From: \"Greg H. Walker, Attorney At Law\" <gwalker at riskontrol.com>    
Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2002 10:17:59 -0500
Subject: [TSCM-L] Re: Tracking device detection

Dear Group:

I am a major user of RF tracking devices which just sit and wait for a 
signal to respond and then their response is done so in a burst of about
20 microseconds.  In 5 years of using these devices I have never had one
found that was installed inside of the interior of the vehicle and the
cars have been in for repairs of every kind and nature, including      
electrical repairs. We have had them on police cars (for the internal
affairs people) and on former military counter-intelligence people
(marital).

Steve and James are so correct when they say that only a really well
trained TSCMer will find them -- anybody else trying is just lucky if
they find one because of the very short burst -- some of are units are
queried every five minutes and others every 30 minutes and the schedule
changes from time of day and the day of the week depending on what we
expect the  vehicle to be engaged in.

We have had PI's with their toys try to find them, but never a hardcore
TSCM professional.

Since I never see anyone on this list within my operating area let me
give you some information.

We install the unit inside of the vehicle and actually take the interior
apart to put them in underneath the plastic panels that make up modern
vehicle interiors, on rare occasions we will put the unit in the trunk
back near the wall separating the trunk and the passenger compartment,but
on the side panels.  A favorite place in a truck is in the passenger's
side front kick panel.  Some vehicles also lend themselves nicely to
taking out the glove box and putting them deep inside of the dash. On
SUV's we often put them to either side of the large tailgate type back
door. We have been forced to put them under the back seat, our least
favorite spot and usually carve out some of the foam in the seat to slip
the unit into.

The units will have two wires coming from it, one will be a coaxial cable
which is the antenna (there is the unit and the antenna and the unit can
go darn near anywhere where it can be concealed, but the placement of the
antenna is absolutely key).  Our preferred spot is to bring the cable up
a sidepost of the vehicle nearest where we put the unit and then put the
antenna between the headliner and the metal roof with the working end of
the antenna (our antennas are either a flat square or flat round and are
about the size of a 3-1/2 inch floppy disk and about 1/2 inch thick)
pointing down into the passenger compartment so that the burst will have
plenty of glass to exit through.  In some instances we have had to put
them underneath the shelf between the back seat and the rear window and
on occasion in a side panel itself and once or twice high up into the
dashboard (usually a van or large truck without a headliner).           

By the way, you usually cannot find the antenna by palpating the
headliner or even visually examining the headliner because today
headliners are thick and foam padded.

The second wire will be a power supply wire and it will either go to a
battery set (ours are specially made and shrunk wrapped in a heavy black  
plastic -- we have two sizes one consisting of 8 D size regular alkaline 
batteries, usually Duracell, and the other consisting of, as I recall (I
can't find one to look at right now) 16  2/3 AA lithiums -- quite        
expensive and also specially built and shrunk wrapped or it will go to
the vehicle's own power supply (which is what we do almost 100% of the
time today) {Steve and I have a friendly difference of opinion on the
legality of this, however, since under Texas law we have to the
permission of an owner or lessee of the vehicle to even install the
device it includes the consent to connect to the vehicle electrical
system} -- we will connect either to a full time live wire near where the
unit is placed or we will run a wire under the carpet, side molding, etc.
to the fuse box and we have a special little hook like thing that fits
into the fuse box underneath a regular fuse and is difficult to detect.
On rare occasions we have went direct to the battery.

Since most of our installations last a month or more we prefer the       
hardwire so we don't have to keep getting the vehicle back to change     
battery packs.  We have some installations that go on for a couple of
years.

One of the problems with the battery packs is their life span (the D
packs if queried every 15 minutes 24/7 will last anywhere from 12 to 14
days depending the how hot the area where they are placed gets (down here
in Texas the Summer heat reduces their time by about one day); the 2/3 AA
lithiums run about the same length of time, but we only trust them for 10
to 12 days. The lithium packs are small about 2-1/2" wide by 5" long and
1/2" thick and are light weight, but they are very expensive -- the D
packs are bulky and heavy.

I use a commercial radio shop that does fleet radio systems to make my  
installs because they understand RF technology and are good at
disassembling and reassembling interiors of vehicles.  I do not recommend
that anyone use a car stereo shop or a mobile phone shop.              

I hope that this is of help to true professional TSCMer's, again, Steve
and James are correct, leave this to true professional TSCMer's they know
what to look for and have the correct equipment.

Greg H. Walker, ARM*
Attorney At Law       
President
RisKontroL -- Risk Management, Security Consulting & Investigations   
Houston, Texas
(713) 850-0061

* Associate in Risk Management Designation (Insurance Institute of       
America's Center For Advanced Risk Management Education)                  

WARNING NOTICE BY GHW:  Greg H. Walker's comments are not intended to be 
and should absolutely not be taken as legal advice.  Unless you have   
entered into a specific written agreement with him for legal services,   
signed by both you and him, and paid him a retainer in good funds, then   
he is not your Attorney, does not intend to be your Attorney and you    
should not act nor refrain from acting based, in whole or in part, on his
comments.

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