NIEM 3.0 Public Review

The National Information Exchange Model (the data model used by law enforcement and first responders) has made NIEM 3.0 available for public review from today until May 6, 2013. NIEM is looking for both technical and non-technical comments. If you have an opinion about this now is the time to comment

Fall of the House of Hubris

Few things are as satisfying as watching a bully go down. I have been following Murdoch since I read Rupert Murdoch: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Media Wizard. It was pretty clear years ago that News Corp was breaking the law. There is no legal way News Corp properties could have gotten access to phone conversations of members of the royal family. Once the royal family brought a suit it was just a question of time before the discovery process would begin the great unravelling.

Of course what changed the tide was the revelation that News of the World reporters had hacked the cell phone of a murdered girl. All of a sudden ordinary British people began to realize that secret police journalism did not just apply to politicians, members of the royal family, and celebrities. Suddenly they realized that they could be spied on by News Corp operatives.

I really don't see how the Murdoch family survives this. Now American celebrities are bringing action against News Corp and the FBI has begun a preliminary investigation. The investigation has taken on a life of its own.

Those of us who were in Washington, DC the summer of 1973 recognize all the signs of a great implosion. At first it seems incredible that such a bully can be brought down until it seems inevitable.

Major kudos to The Guardian, who has been with this story from the beginning and persevered when everyone else was too intimidated to touch it.

Mark Steel has a hugely entertaining take on this, but I have to disagree with this part:

So the newspaper will investigate itself, the police will investigate themselves and the politicians will be investigated by an inquiry set up by themselves. They are all keen on stringent law and order so maybe this is their plan to speed up the justice system. Instead of costly trials the accused will be told to hold an inquiry into themselves, and come back in three years and let us know if they did anything wrong or not.

No, not this time. As I said before, the investigation has taken on a life of its own. As I write this advertisers are fleeing, investors are dumping stock, institutional investors are questioning the role of members of the Murdoch family. And that does not even allow for News Corps' continuing legal troubles. This is somewhere between Watergate and Enron. I can't see the corporate survival of the Murdoch family and I would not be surprised if the corporation itself is broken apart, unless if falls apart.

Edit - Murdoch's Pirates: Before the phone hacking, there was Rupert's pay-TV skullduggery

New to me criminal justice IT blog

The Total CIO, Promotes a vision of IT leadership that is customer-centric, best practice-driven, and above all focused on mission excellence!

Andy Blumenthal is the Chief Technology Officer at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Previously, Blumenthal served as the Chief, Office of Enterprise Architecture and IT Governance at the US Coast Guard and prior to that as Chief Enterprise Architect at the US Secret Service. Blumenthal is a visionary IT and business thought leader. For over 20 years, Blumenthal has developed leading-edge technology solutions for premier organizations in both the private and public sectors, including the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Treasury, the Dreyfus Corporation, and IBM. The recipient of numerous honors and awards for his work, Blumenthal is a regular public speaker, has published extensively, and has been featured in Federal Computer Week and interviewed on the radio. He is a lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University and National Defense University, and serves as associate editor of the Journal of Enterprise Architecture. Blumenthal is a member of the Society for Information Management, the Government Technology Research Alliance, and the Government Advisory Panel of the American Council for Technology/Industry Advisory Council.

DNA, databases, and crime fighting

mordaxus

An example of his: there's an increasing desire among politicians and law enforcement to create huge DNA databases for forensic purposes, to aid in crime fighting and whatever. This will work until criminals start collecting DNA samples and scatter them at a crime scene creating confusion.

Angell didn't mention a counter-measure, and I have one that I'm sure the politicos will want to use: make the possession of DNA a crime. There's the obvious exemption for your own DNA, but this brings new and important expansions of the old standby of "inappropriate contact."

More and more, I am convinced that lack of privacy = lack of security.

The coming boom market in crisis commiunications and litigation support

Exposing Bush's historic abuse of power

July 23, 2008 | WASHINGTON -- The last several years have brought a parade of dark revelations about the George W. Bush administration, from the manipulation of intelligence to torture to extrajudicial spying inside the United States. But there are growing indications that these known abuses of power may only be the tip of the iceberg. Now, in the twilight of the Bush presidency, a movement is stirring in Washington for a sweeping new inquiry into White House malfeasance that would be modeled after the famous Church Committee congressional investigation of the 1970s.

There is a specialty within crisis communications PR that trains clients for testifying before congress. Those people are going to be very rich.

We are going to spend the next twenty years examining the misconduct of the Bush administration. Look for major advances in content management, enterprise search, litigation support, e-discovery, and evidence recovery.

GAO questions progress in informaiton sharing

Information Sharing Effectiveness Questioned by GAO

Now nearly seven years since 9/11, not only are state and local law enforcement agencies across the nation questioning the efficacy of anti-terror information sharing pushed by the federal government and intelligence reform measures, but the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports the government isn’t able to effectively measure whether it has made progress in information sharing, or how effective it’s been in thwarting terrorism.

“Work remains, including defining and communicating the Information Sharing Environment’s (ISE) scope, such as determining all terrorism-related information that should be part of the ISE, and communicating that information to stakeholders involved in the development of the ISE,” GAO reported to Congress this week.

Information sharing isn't just about exposing terrorist plots, it is also about catching money laudering, gun running, drug dealing, fencing operations and other sorts of crime.

The international market for crisis communications

IRS asks Swiss for help probing $100B in tax evasion

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service has asked the Swiss government to help in an expanding investigation of tax evasion by U.S. clients of banking giant UBS.

It's also a great day for XBRL.

The coming boom market in crisis commiunications and corporate reputation repair

Auction rate probe hits Wachovia

Securities regulators from several U.S. states on Thursday raided the St. Louis headquarters of Wachovia Securities, seeking documents and records on the company's sales practices. ...

... In April, the Securities Division launched a full-scale investigation, requesting documents, e-mails, transcripts and other records from Wachovia Securities and other banks.

Wachovia Securities has not fully complied with these requests, prompting Thursday's onsite inspection, Missouri officials said.

It's a great time to be in e-discovery.

The coming boom in e-discovery

Sub-Prime Scandal Focuses Attention on E-Discovery

E-discovery is firmly in the spotlight following the arrest of two former Bear Stearns fund managers yesterday for alleged securities fraud.

The two former execs, Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, were taken into custody for their alleged roles in the collapse of two hedge funds which triggered the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Media reports suggest that an email allegedly sent by Cioffi to Tannin may be the smoking gun in the case, underlining the growing importance of e-discovery.

It is not just the sub-prime crisis. The last eight years have been a season of abuse of power both in the public and private sector. Major advances of technology will be financed by the coming investigations.

Edit -
Archiving and the Limitations of E-Discovery

Public Relations and the Fourth Amendment

Fourth Amendment

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Internet Archive founder breaks gag order, detailing FBI's secret demand for user's personal information and the resulting lawsuit challenging the subpoena

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has withdrawn a secret demand that the Internet Archive, an online library, provide the agency with a user's personal information after the Web site challenged the records request in court.

The FBI sent a national security letter, or NSL, to the Internet Archive in November and included a gag order barring site founder Brewster Kahle from talking to anyone other than his lawyers about the request. Kahle, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit to challenge the subpoena, arguing that the NSL program is unconstitutional, and the FBI withdrew the NSL on April 22.

The settlement between the FBI and the Internet Archive allowed Kahle to break the gag order, a standard part of an NSL request. The Internet Archive's challenge of the NSL is only the third case that the ACLU is aware of in which an NSL has been challenged in court, said Melissa Goodman an attorney for the civil liberties group's National Security Project.

Resisting a request for information from the federal government is an extremely serious matter. In general I would advise against it in the strongest possible terms. However, there comes a time when it is painfully obvious that the government is abusing its power. Others, more gifted that I, will speak to the political, constitutional, and moral, aspects, of this case. I will confine myself to the PR of such resistance. By this act, the Internet Archive has established itself as the faithful keeper of information and its proper use. It's conduct stands in stark contrast to the shameful conduct of Telecommunications companies.

Peabody and Sherman would be proud.

Business you should never bid on

FBI raids special counsel's office

Investigators say Bloch is suspected of hiring an outside company to scrub his computer amid a federal investigation of alleged misconduct in his office.

He hired an outside company because there isn't a civil servant in the entire federal government dumb enough to go to jail for Bloch. The private company which did this has a name, I have no doubt we will be learning its name in the near future.

This is a great time to be in e-discovery and records management, because the investigations into this maladministration will produce business for years to come.

It is also a good time to be a government IT reporter, because one else will have the unique combination of knowledge or politics, the civil service, and technology that will make it possible to tell these stories. Entire careers are going to be made out of this.

Edit -

The Legal Times and Project on Government Oversight comment.

Edit ii
FireDogLake: The Bloch Raid: A Mafia Turf War?

Email, every case seems to come down to email

The murky world of pay TV pirates

If few remarked on Adams’s departure in May 2002 during the hullabaloo, no one noticed a minor incident involving his vehicle. According to NDS, someone broke into the family car that month and stole the hard drive from his laptop. The hard drive contained some 26,000 pages of confidential NDS documents, including hundreds of pages of internal NDS emails detailing the activities of its covert operations group.

In a global hunt to retrieve the documents, NDS lawyers appeared in a Vancouver court last September, where they claimed the hard drive had been obtained by Plamen Donev, a Bulgarian hacker who had been on the NDS payroll. He had passed copies of the documents to Canadian satellite pirates on two CDs.

The Vancouver hearing was just an outlying skirmish related to a much larger case due to go to trial in April in the California District Court, where EchoStar (and its smartcard provider, NagraStar Corp) is claiming $US1 billion damages against NDS for industrial espionage in a trial.

The EchoStar lawsuit quotes extensively from an explosive series of NDS emails that NDS says came from the missing hard drive. EchoStar says it obtained the emails from a range of sources.

The issue of source seems beside the point. The bottom line is that on NDS’s own account, the innermost secrets of its undercover ops are on CDs being hawked around the world in a boxed set.

It's a great time to be in e-discovery!

CUOMO ANNOUNCES INDUSTRY-WIDE INVESTIGATION INTO HEALTH INSURERS’ FRAUDULENT REIMBURSEMENT SCHEME
~

Database Company Ingenix – Used by Dozens of Insurers – at Center of Scheme
~
Cuomo Notifies Ingenix and its Parent, UnitedHealth Group, of Intent to File Suit; Subpoenas 16 Other Companies

NEW YORK, NY (February 13, 2008) – Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that he is conducting an industry-wide investigation into a scheme by health insurers to defraud consumers by manipulating reimbursement rates. At the center of the scheme is Ingenix, Inc., the nation’s largest provider of healthcare billing information, which serves as a conduit for rigged data to the largest insurers in the country.

Cuomo also announced that he has issued 16 subpoenas to the nation’s largest health insurance companies including Aetna (NYSE: AET), CIGNA (NYSE: CI), and Empire BlueCross BlueShield (NYSE: WLP), and that he intends to file suit against Ingenix, Inc, its parent UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), and three additional subsidiaries.

The insurance industry, finance, real estate, White House email, torture tapes, the list goes on. E-discovery, evidence recovery, records management, and content management, are all going to enjoy boom development. The misconduct of the last eight years has brought a great deal of misery and stands to bring even more, but for those charged with investigating it, there will be fortunes to be made.

It's a great time to be in e-discovery

Durbin Calls for Inspector General Investigation of Torture Memos

But Durbin says the emphasis should be on those who authorized the activity. He explains: "Under U.S. law, command responsibility is a well-established theory of liability that covers those who authorize violations of law."

And accordingly, Durbin writes that he will ask the Justice Department’s Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility "to investigate the conduct of Justice Department officials who advised the CIA that waterboarding is lawful."

Entire firms will be built on investigating the actions of the last eight years. We could be treated to the spectacle of government contractors investigating each other, or at least supplying the consulting and litigation support services to do so.

I look foward to new technologies in evidence recovery, search, and content management.

The next decade will be a great time for government IT reporters, as they will have the best insight and ability to explain all this to the general public.

Why journalism matters, Jerry Bledsoe

Via Ed Cone, Jerry Bledsoe's chilling account of what it is like to live under a death threat, I was particularly struck by the part about the database:

Barrett and Gardner were not big on small talk. They got right down to business. The threat against me had arisen during the course of an investigation, I was told.

"A drug case?" I asked.

It was.

"Well, I probably can tell you who's involved," I said. I gave them names of three people who have been known as long-time drug bosses in Greensboro.

They looked at each other.

"How do you know that?" Gardner asked. "Do you talk to officers, or what?"

I said that I did talk to officers among other things. As it turned out I was right on one of the three people I'd named, but I wouldn't know that for a while.

I was offered no details about the investigation. Nobody said that somebody wanted me dead. That was understood.

Instead, I was told what to look for. If they came, the killers likely would be young black males. I should be watchful for cars with out-of-state tags, particularly from New York.

"I assume it will be a home invasion or a drive-by," I said, and they agreed.

I asked if Rhinoceros Times Editor John Hammer or former Police Chief David Wray were considered to be in danger. Not that Barrett and Gardner were aware of, I was told.

"Is there any connection to Greensboro police officers?" I asked. None that they knew about was the answer.

They had flagged my name in databases so that no law enforcement officers could access information such as my home address, vehicles that were registered in my name or my driver's license bearing my age, height and weight, along with my photo. All of that would be helpful to killers.

I asked Barrett and Gardner if they knew whether anybody already had retrieved information about me, particularly anybody from the Greensboro Police Department. They would check, Barrett said, and let me know.

Why records management, e-discovery, and evidence recovery have a great future

Government Executive

With the end of President Bush's two terms drawing near, the White House has until two months after the election to provide his records to the National Archives. By Feb. 1, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee wants an update on progress.

"Serious questions have been raised about whether the White House has sufficient systems to preserve presidential records and to prepare for the transition to the next president," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the committee's chairman, in letters to U.S. Archivist Allen Weinstein and Counsel to the President Fred Fielding on Dec. 20, 2007. "According to information received by the committee, the White House has failed to implement a robust system for archiving e-mails and other electronic records, despite several efforts to do so."

CREW

Bush Admin. admits to destroying e-mails from start of Iraq War, Leak of Valerie Wilson's name and DOJ investigation of leak

Entire companies will be built upon investigating the actions of the last eight years.

Concerning email smears

Certain scurrilous emails smearing Presidential candidates are circulating. Email is not anonymous. There are ways, ways that don’t require advanced technical knowledge, of tracking down the source of an email. Even in cases where it has been forwarded, it is possible to track down the original source.

In the United States presidential candidates receive Secret Service protection. If your email can be reasonably interpreted as an incitement to assassination, the Secret Service will track you down. They will obtain search warrants, require your Internet service provider to provide your identity, and come knocking on your door.

Do no play this game. None of us are amused.

Maryland commits to information sharing

Maryland Governor O'Malley Outlines Law Enforcement Information Integration

O'Malley said security integration "means protecting our people and communities through seamless coordination and consistent information-sharing. It means that the criminal justice system must work as a system, not a collection of parallel lines -- and parallel cultures and parallel datasets and parallel intelligence systems -- that never meet.

"Security integration must be horizontal, as well as vertical,"

It has taken years, but editors are finally learning that information sharing is news. I am very proud of the role that Presto Vivace played in bringing about this change.

e-discovery, evidence recovery, and content management lollapalooza

Interim Report on RNC Emails and the Presidential Records Act

There has been extensive destruction of the e-mails of White House officials by the RNC. Of the 88 White House officials who received RNC e-mail accounts, the RNC has preserved no e-mails for 51 officials. In a deposition, Susan Ralston, Mr. Rove’s former executive assistant, testified that many of the White House officials for whom the RNC has no e-mail records were regular users of their RNC e-mail accounts. Although the RNC has preserved no e-mail records for Ken Mehlman, the former Director of Political Affairs, Ms. Ralston testified that Mr. Mehlman used his account “frequently, daily.” In addition, there are major gaps in the e-mail records of the 37 White House officials for whom the RNC did preserve e-mails. The RNC has preserved only 130 e-mails sent to Mr. Rove during President Bush’s first term and no e-mails sent by Mr. Rove prior to November 2003. For many other White House officials, the RNC has no e-mails from before the fall of 2006.

Obviously there will be several investigations coming out of this. Those investigators will have to sift through mountains of evidence, employ advanced technology to recover other evidence, and generally search for needles concealed in fields of haystacks. Presto Vivace does not currently represent clients who officer that sort of service, but this is a great time to tell those stories.

Studios, FBI Teach Swedish Cops to Hunt File Sharers

Daniel Goldberg, Computer Sweden

The FBI and the MPAA, with the Swedish antipiracy organization Antipiratbyren, are training Swedish law enforcement officers in copyright and piracy matters.

So the FBI is content to play enforcer for a trade association and the Swedish government is going along with it? Not what you would call citizen centric is it?