At least a dozen people sent suspicious messages, with senior figures suggesting foreign state could be culprit A police investigation has been launched after MPs were apparently targeted in a “spear-phishing” attack, in what security experts believe could be an attempt to compromise parliament. A police force said it …

The Washington Post is reporting on the FBI’s increasing use of push notification data—”push tokens”—to identify people. The police can request this data from companies like Apple and Google without a warrant. The investigative technique goes back years. Court orders that were issued in 2019 to …

Add pharmacies to the list of industries that are giving private data to the police without a warrant. [...]

More unconstrained surveillance : Lawmakers noted the pharmacies’ policies for releasing medical records in a letter dated Tuesday to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra. The letter—signed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), and Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.)—said their investigation …

Details of thousands of officers may have been taken in ransomware attack on third-party supplier The personal details of tens of thousands of public sector workers could have been breached in a cyber-attack that has hit two of Britain’s biggest police forces, an expert has said. More than …

Potential leaked data from system with access to names, ranks and photos of officers could do ‘incalculable damage in the wrong hands’ The Metropolitan police is on high alert after a security breach involving the IT system of one of its suppliers, the force said. Scotland Yard is working …

Details about PSNI officers appear to be in the possession of people who may terrorise and kill them. The return of power-sharing has never been more urgent Half of the people who live in these islands have no adult memory at all of the Northern Ireland troubles. Too many …

Information about victims of crime, witnesses and suspects included with freedom of information responses, forces say Two police forces in England have admitted mishandling the sensitive data of victims, witnesses and suspects in cases including domestic abuse incidents, sexual offences, assaults, thefts and hate crime. Norfolk and Suffolk police …

Force’s chief constable believes thousands of officers’ personal details are in paramilitary hands Republican paramilitaries have obtained the information that leaked in a Police Service of Northern Ireland data breach, according to the force’s chief constable. Simon Byrne said on Monday that he believed dissident republicans had …

A serving member of Police Service Northern Ireland on the sacrifices that have been made and the lack of support from the top I’m a serving officer with the Police Service of Northern Ireland, from a nationalist background in West Belfast. I couldn’t join the RUC because …

Police-issued laptop, radio and documents stolen from car in Northern Ireland on 6 July About 200 police officers and staff were not informed about the theft of devices and documents with data potentially affecting them for almost a month, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has confirmed. A …

Breaches hurt police morale and may help republican paramilitaries intimidate officers and their families Police data breaches in Northern Ireland have given republican paramilitaries a powerful tool to intimidate, demoralise and target officers and their families for years to come, according to security experts. The New IRA and other …

Exclusive: Accidental publishing of names and salaries happened in March and follows scandal over PSNI leak Another British police force has experienced a huge breach of the data of all its officers and staff, the Guardian has learned. Cumbria police has admitted accidentally publishing the names and salaries of …

The police’s error is hard to forgive, but ministers must treat Northern Ireland’s wider human safety needs as a priority too A new documentary film recounts a grim story from the Northern Ireland Troubles. Half a century ago, Thomas Niedermayer was a German businessman living in Belfast …

DUP MP Sammy Wilson says serious questions must be asked at highest level of PSNI amid fears over safety of officers The head of policing in Northern Ireland has been urged to consider his position over the mass breach of officers’ data amid warnings that terrorists could use the …

Admission that document with names of 200 staff was stolen in July follows revelation of ‘monumental’ data breach on Tuesday The Police Service of Northern Ireland has admitted that this week’s “monumental” data breach followed an earlier leak of names of hundreds of officers and staff, deepening a …

Russia named as likely culprit in cyber-attack on election watchdog, while police service accidentally publishes staff details The UK election watchdog and Northern Ireland’s police service both announced serious data breaches on Tuesday, in the latest example of the vulnerability of personal details to hacks and human error …

Seems that there is a deliberate backdoor in the twenty-year-old TErrestrial Trunked RAdio (TETRA) standard used by police forces around the world. The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), an organization that standardizes technologies across the industry, first created TETRA in 1995. Since then, TETRA has been used in products …

Motherboard is reporting on AI-generated voices being used for “swatting”: In fact, Motherboard has found, this synthesized call and another against Hempstead High School were just one small part of a months-long, nationwide campaign of dozens, and potentially hundreds, of threats made by one swatter in particular who has …

Here’s a story about a hacker who reprogrammed a device called “Flipper Zero” to mimic Opticom transmitters—to turn traffic lights in his path green. As mentioned earlier, the Flipper Zero has a built-in sub-GHz radio that lets the device receive data (or transmit it, with the right …

Amazon has revealed that it gives police videos from its Ring doorbells without a warrant and without user consent. Ring recently revealed how often the answer to that question has been yes. The Amazon company responded to an inquiry from US Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.), confirming that there have …

Surely no one could have predicted this : The new proposal—championed by Mayor London Breed after November’s wild weekend of orchestrated burglaries and theft in the San Francisco Bay Area—would authorize the police department to use non-city-owned security cameras and camera networks to live monitor “significant events …

San Francisco police are using autonomous vehicles as mobile surveillance cameras. Privacy advocates say the revelation that police are actively using AV footage is cause for alarm. “This is very concerning,” Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) senior staff attorney Adam Schwartz told Motherboard. He said cars in general are troves …

Ever since Apple introduced AirTags, security people have warned that they could be used for stalking. But while there have been a bunch of anecdotal stories, this is the first vaguely scientific survey: Motherboard requested records mentioning AirTags in a recent eight month period from dozens of the country …

Brian Krebs has a detailed post about hackers using fake police data requests to trick companies into handing over data. Virtually all major technology companies serving large numbers of users online have departments that routinely review and process such requests, which are typically granted as long as the proper …