Tag: alleged
City of London Police investigates alleged CBI sexual misconduct
Stakeknife: Alleged Army agent in IRA Freddie Scappaticci dies
Tesla faces potential class action lawsuit for alleged breach of privacy
A Tesla customer is taking the electric vehicle giant to court, in the first legal move since Tesla employees were revealed to be sharing private customer information.
The potential class action lawsuit was filed on April 7 by Tesla Model Y owner Henry Yeh, who took to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to demand accountability from Tesla toward owners of its autopilot-equipped cars.
“Like anyone would be, Mr Yeh was outraged at the idea that Tesla’s cameras can be used to violate his family’s privacy, which the California Constitution scrupulously protects,” Yeh’s attorney, Jack Fitzgerald, said in a statement to Reuters. Yeh wrote that he felt violated by the employees’ actions to share sensitive data taken from his car for the goal of “tasteless and tortious entertainment” and “the humiliation of those surreptitiously recorded.”
On April 7, Reuters reported on claims made by nine former Tesla employees that team members were sharing personal video footage and images taken from internal car cameras across employee channels. Messages shared included “intimate” scenes from customer homes and events on the road, which were disseminated by Tesla artificial intelligence trainers (known as “labelers”) as a form of company clout.
In the complaint, Yeh wrote that it is being filed “against Tesla on behalf of himself, similarly-situated class members, and the general public” in a possible class action from customers who leased or purchased a Tesla vehicle within the past four years.
Google Defends Auto-Deletion of Chats After US Alleged It Destroyed Evidence
Google said the government plaintiffs “contend that the Federal Rules specifically mandate that Google should have applied a forced history on setting for all custodians for all chats created while the custodian was on legal hold, regardless of the possible relevance of the message to the litigation.” But federal rules only require “reasonable steps to preserve” information, Google pointed out. “Google’s vast preservation efforts here — and specifically its methodology with respect to history-off chats — were ‘reasonable steps’ under the Rule,” Google argued. Google said the US and state attorneys general “have not been denied access to material information needed to prosecute these cases and they have offered no evidence that Google intentionally destroyed such evidence.” Google also argued that the objections came too late, alleging that the government knew before litigation began “that there was a subset of chats not automatically retained.” “Plaintiffs’ motions are barred at the outset because they were on notice of Google’s approach to chats for years, yet did not object until well after the close of discovery. Those tactics should not be countenanced,” Google told the court.
Google said its November 2019 disclosures in an ESI (Electronically Stored Information) questionnaire “show that the distinction between ‘on-the-record’ and other chats was apparent to anyone who wanted to pursue the matter from the outset of DOJ’s investigation. For instance, the ESI Questionnaire response specifies that chat ‘messages are generally retained for a period of 30 days if they have been marked on-the-record, and potentially longer if on-the-record messages are on legal hold.'” Google also said, “it is no secret how Google’s Chat product operates” because it’s a publicly available product and the Google Chat website explains the history-off feature. The Justice Department’s motion last month said things happened very differently. “Google systematically destroyed an entire category of written communications every 24 hours” for nearly four years, the government motion said, continuing […].
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
US authorities arrest alleged BreachForums owner and FBI hacker Pompompurin
US law enforcement authorities this week arrested the person allegedly responsible for hacking the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2021. As reported by Krebs on Security (via The Verge), FBI agents on Wednesday arrested Conor Brian Fitzpatrick on suspicion of running BreachForums. As Brian Krebs notes, the website’s administrator, “Pompompurin,” is responsible for or connected to some of the most high-profile hacks in recent memory, including multiple incidents involving the FBI.
In 2021, Pompompurin took credit for compromising the agency’s email servers and sending thousands of fake cybersecurity warnings. Pompompurin is also linked to the 2022 breach of the FBI’s InfraGard network, an incident that saw the contact information of its more than 80,000 members go on sale. Separately, Pompompurin is connected to the 2021 Robinhood hack that saw the data of 7 million users compromised, and the 2022 Twitter data leak.
In a sworn affidavit, one of the FBI agents involved in the arrest claims Fitzpatrick identified himself as Pompompurin and admitted to being the owner of BreachForums. The forum rose from the ashes of RaidForums, which the FBI raided and shut down last year. For the moment, BreachForums is still up and running. “I think it’s safe to assume [Pompompurin] won’t be coming back, so I’ll be taking ownership of the forum,” said a user named Baphomet. “I have most, if not all the access necessary to protect BF infrastructure and users.” Fitzpatrick will appear before a federal court on March 24th.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/us-authorities-arrest-alleged-breachforums-owner-and-fbi-hacker-pompompurin-170009266.html?src=rss
Feds arrest alleged BreachForums owner linked to FBI hacks
The FBI has arrested the person allegedly in charge of the BreachForums online hacking community, as reported earlier by Krebs on Security and Bleeping Computer. Conor Brian Fitzpatrick, also known online as “Pompompurin,” was arrested at his New York home on Wednesday and charged with conspiracy to commit access device fraud, according to a pair of court filings.
In a sworn statement, the FBI agent involved in the case claims Fitzpatrick admitted to owning BreachForums at the time of his arrest and identified himself as Pompompurin. Pompompurin created BreachForums after the FBI seized RaidForums, a similar hacking site that also sold leaked information.
The hacker is implicated in a number of breaches, with many of them targeting the…
Amazon faces lawsuit over alleged biometric tracking at Go stores in New York
Back in 2021, a law took effect in New York City that requires businesses to post conspicuous signs if they’re collecting customers’ biometric information, such as their facial scans and fingerprints. Now, Amazon is facing a proposed class-action lawsuit that accuses the company of failing to inform customers at its Go cashierless stores that it was collecting their biometrics.
In the lawsuit (PDF), filed by Alfredo Alberto Rodriguez Perez, the plaintiff argues that Go stores constantly use customers’ biometrics “by scanning [their palms] to identify them and by applying computer vision, deep learning algorithms, and sensor fusion that measure the shape and size of each customer’s body to identify customers, track where they move in the stores, and determine what they have purchased.” It said the company only put up signs about its biometric tracking activities over a year after the law went into effect.
Amazon’s Go stores give shoppers the option to take whatever product they have off shelves and walk out without the need to check out. To be able to enter these stores, customers will need to scan a code from the Amazon app with a connected credit card. However, some locations offer Amazon One, the e-commerce giant’s palm-based identity and payment service, as an entry option. The plaintiff’s complaint said the sign informs customers that Amazon will not be collecting their biometrics unless they choose to sign up for Amazon One. However, “Amazon Go stores do collect biometric identifier information on every single customer, including information on the size and shape of every customers body,” the complaint argues.
In a statement sent to NBC News, an Amazon spokesperson defended the company’s practices and technologies. They explained that Amazon does not use facial recognition, and any system it uses to identify shoppers inside its Go stores don’t constitute biometric tech. “Only shoppers who choose to enroll in Amazon One and choose to be identified by hovering their palm over the Amazon One device have their palm-biometric data securely collected,” they insisted, “and these individuals are provided the appropriate privacy disclosures during the enrollment process.”
The lawsuit’s outcome could then depend on whether the court sees someone’s body shape and size as biometric information. In the complaint, the plaintiff quotes NYC Admin Code 22-1201’s definition of a biometric identifier in context of the law as “a physiological or biological characteristic that is used by or on behalf of a commercial establishment, singly or in combination, to identify, or assist in identifying, an individual, including, but not limited to: (i) a retina or iris scan, (ii) a fingerprint or voiceprint, (iii) a scan of hand or face geometry, or any other identifying characteristic.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-faces-lawsuit-over-alleged-biometric-tracking-at-go-stores-in-new-york-144429703.html?src=rss