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Informing Intelligence-Led Policing
A New Hope…
Dave Aitel has graciously allowed us to run his commentaries before – see Hackers May Help Choose The Next US President and Aitel On Cyberwar. Dave is the founder and Chief [Security|technology|executive][1] Officer of Immunity, Inc, and runs the Daily Dave mailing list, where this article was originally published. It is re-published here with his kind permission. So […]
Posted in: Commercial Intelligence, Commercial IT Security Tools, COTS, Cyber Policy, Cybercrime, Data Mining, Education, Information Security, Intel Intelligencer, Intelligence Gathering, Intelligence Led Policing, Intelligence Operations Centers, Intelligence Policy, Law-Enforcement Technologies, Police Malfeasance
Opportunity is Knocking. Answer the Door.
October 31, 2013
by Nick Selby
If you’ve ever thought that you should open the door when opportunity comes knocking? Listen up: it’s pounding on your door. It’s not often that we in the public safety community are approached with an opportunity to hothouse innovation, but this is one of those times. This week the call went out specifically to those […]
Prison Hack Shows More About Shared & Open Data Than Fugitive Hunting
October 19, 2013
by Nick Selby
This blog post ran at StreetCred Software.com and is cross-posted here. It is non-commercial. − When the story broke about Charles Walker and Joseph Jenkins, the two Florida murderers who hacked their way out of jail with forged documents, I had just finished giving a speech on fugitive capture and manhunts that included this observation: “If your fugitive is featured […]
Posted in: Intelligence Led Policing
Civic Coding and You – Apply for the Code for America Fellowship
July 29, 2013
by Nick Selby
Dave and I have sat in a room – this was recently – watching a college-educated woman at a desk with two computers, and two keyboards. She was typing information from one into the other because the two systems didn’t talk to one another. The data she was moving had to do with dangerous fugitives. […]
Banning Feds From DefCon Is Self Defeating. Here’s Why.
July 11, 2013
by Nick Selby
If you’re not familiar with DefCon, the hacker confab that has been meeting in Vegas for more than 20 years, you’re not paying attention to hacking. DefCon (and the accompanying conferences like BlackHat and BSides) makes Vegas the nerdiest place in the universe during July. You don’t want to use an ATM, connect to a […]
Big Ears, Little Ears: One article, three layers of blown secrecy, and how Edward Snowden proves my point
June 18, 2013
by Nick Selby
Today’s guest post is from Eric Olson, author of the Digital Water blog and a previous contributor to PLI. Well, I haven’t had much time to write here for quite a while, but the Edward Snowden affair – and more specifically this piece in the Guardian – were such a terrific display of the Digital […]
To Whom the 4th Amendment Doesn’t Apply
June 9, 2013
by Nick Selby
Guest blogger Chris Swan contributed this from the UK. Chris is Chief Technology Officer of CohesiveFT, where he focuses on product development and product delivery. After a decade as a Combat Systems Officer in the Royal Navy, Chris moved to the financial services industry where over the last 12 years he was an engineer, architect, […]
Strikeback! Commission on IP Theft Report Gets All Ronin On China
May 23, 2013
by Nick Selby
A bipartisan group that studies the effects and impacts of IP theft in the US, The Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, has released a report outlining their findings on the scope of the issue and making policy recommendations to combat it. The most interesting proposal among several: strikeback to re-capture stolen IP […]
Weapons-Grade Stupid
May 7, 2013
by Nick Selby
Just a collection of stories from the last month or so related to zero-tolerance and weaponry in schools. We have enough problems with real guns to allow this to be taken so seriously. So, presented for your dining and dancing pleasure, ladies and gentlemen, with limited comment. He’s Got A Gun … Where? I … […]
Posted in: Education
How We Learn What We Know, to Chart What We Know
April 29, 2013
by Nick Selby
I spent an enjoyable 20 minutes today speaking with Hilary Sargent, an OSINT rock-star who had to ask me what OSINT was. That’s not to say that she didn’t know – I’m sure she did. But when I told her that it was Open Source INTelligence, and further explained the difference, say, between that and […]
Posted in: Data Mining, Education, Intel Intelligencer, Intelligence Gathering, OSINT, PLI, Police Intelligence, Training
Boston Bombing Investigation: Intel Failure? No. Bad Expectation-Setting? Oh, yeah.
April 24, 2013
by Nick Selby
This is a long post. As either Blaise Pascal, Mark Twain, Voltaire or my Uncle Sid said, I didn’t have time to make a shorter post. It ran today in CSO Magazine and will run in other outlets this week (though this version here has some footnotes). In a hurry? Here’s a summary: My conclusion is […]
Silent Circle: Mobile Encrypted Comms Get Mainstream-Easy
February 11, 2013
by Nick Selby
If you’ve never given thought to the fact that, most of the time, critical non-federal law enforcement operations are conducted by unencrypted cellular and text communications, today might be a good time to start. (A good place to start understanding the wider implications of safe and unsafe smartphone use is here). I spend a great […]
Posted in: Intelligence Led Policing
We Don’t Got Your Back. We Got Your Money.
February 4, 2013
by Nick Selby
“We deal in deception here. What we do not deal with is self-deception.” – The Departed, written by William Monahan, Alan Mak and Felix Chong FADE IN. EXT. DAY. A WHEAT FIELD. BEES AND BUTTERFLIES FLUTTER. WE ZOOM IN ON A WOMAN IN A BUSINESS SUIT, HOLDING A TABLET COMPUTER. WOMAN: I used to worry […]
Posted in: Cybercrime, Information Security
Onity Hotel-Room Lock-Hacking Triviality Becomes an Issue In Texas
November 28, 2012
by Nick Selby
Last July at the Black Hat conference, security researcher Cody Brocious gave a well-attended and much-discussed presentation in which he responsibly, totally reasonably and helpfully demonstrated the complete fail that is the Onity hotel door lock system. Now, I have skin in this game – I stay in hotels. A lot. So much so that, […]
The Answer Is In Your Data. And It’s “No” Until You Ask.
November 15, 2012
by Nick Selby
This post covers some really basic stuff, but it’s fundamental to what we do, so I think it’s worth a review. You’ve probably heard of “big data”, which after “cloud” is the most over-used, God-awful buzz-phrase of the past couple of years. Basically, big data means aggregating and correlating very large sets of data and […]
Posted in: COTS, Data Mining, Education, Integration, Intelligence Gathering, Metrics, OSINT, Statistics, Warrants
Police-Led Intelligence 
December 24, 2013
by Nick Selby
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