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FBI considering new tools to search social media

Written by on January 27, 2012 · Leave a Comment

Based on our knowledge of the Bureau’s investigative capability, we’re guessing this is not about giving the Bureau a capability it doesn’t already have. We suspect it’s a drinking-from-a-firehose problem: if they can’t automate some of these functions, they won’t be able to keep up. From PCMag’s FBI Looking for a Good Facebook-Snooping App:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking for a better way to spy on Facebook and Twitter users. That’s pretty much the gist of a new FedBizOpps.gov post from the FBI’s Strategic Information and Operations Center (SIOC) soliciting proposals for an app capable of sniffing through online media sites and social networks.  Read more »

Categories: Data Mining, Evidence Collection Tech, Search Tools

Hypothetical: is this probable cause for a warrant?

Written by on January 7, 2012 · 2 Comments

Assume the following facts:

A criminal suspect is arrested, with ample probable cause. An inventory search post-arrest yields a receipt for payment for a room at a self-storage facility. The receipt doesn’t indicate room number. Employees  don’t recognize photographs of the suspect. The suspect isn’t connected with any other building, office, house, et cet., but is believed to have stolen property within his control. Suspect has declined to speak other  than to ask for counsel.

There are 100 rooms at the storage facility.

Is this probable cause for a warrant? How to retrieve the stolen property and obtain relevant evidence without violating someone’s constitutional rights?

We don’t think there’s an easy answer. But we hope to address this problem – and electronic analogues – in future posts. Comments and guest posts welcome.

Categories: Fourth Amendment

A difficult case which may depend entirely on physical evidence

Written by on January 4, 2012 · Leave a Comment

Categories: physical evidence

Scrivener now available for Windows

Written by on December 31, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Categories: In Our Test Lab, Information Gathering, software

ConnectedText personal wiki releases version 5.0

Written by on December 27, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Eduardo Mauro, the developer of Connected Text, has released version 5.0.  Connected Text is  billed as a “Personal Wiki,” and it’s certainly that,  but that description barely does it justice, given its rich internal and add-on features.  I’ve been using it intermittently for about two years, but cannot claim to have mastered all of its features.  However, spend a little time browsing the user forums and you’ll get a sense of how sharp the user population is, and the sorts of challenging intellectual problems to which Connected Text is applied.

Categories: In Our Test Lab, software - Tags: , ,

Christine Kent’s Microsoft Word Blog: an oustanding resource for MS Word users

Written by on December 9, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Having recently returned to using MS Word, after a few years of using, for the most part, OpenOffice, all the while missing WordPerfect1 it’s become clear that there are, in fact, many improvements to MS Word, but that, for good or ill, many things have been rearranged and it’s not always easy to resolve  basic user interface geography problems.  Microsoft has rearranged the furniture, the landscape, and the application has advanced far ahead of the documentation.  For instance, Microsoft has made it very easy to find and download a large number of Word templates, but doesn’t make it simple to figure out where they should be saved so they’re available when creating a new document using the   File | New command sequence. The old Word “Template Organizer” is gone, and while it was less than ideal, I did, eventually learn how to use it.  In fact, the basic Windows application horizontal menu navigation has changed by omitting Help as the rightmost top-level menu.

Read more »

  1. For reasons not clear to me, I’ve found installing WordPerfect on any Windows XP machine led to many system crashes and freezes. Since I was able to replicate the problem one more than one machine, and make the problem go away, consistently, by uninstalling WordPerfect,  I gave up.  The inference of a causal relationship between WordPerfect installation and system difficulties did not escape me, but, life being short, one can tilt at only so many windmills, and my bought-and-paid-for boxed copy of the Corel Suite, which includes WordPerfect, now sits on a bookshelf not far from my boxed copy of the complete set of the first generations of Infocom games, including the much-beloved Zork. [↩]
Footnotes made possible by brilliant andgenerous Simon Elvery and his ever-improving WP-Footnotes plugin, http://elvery.net/. Documentation on Simon Elvery's site, as well as on the Wordress Repository. The plugin itself can be installed via the WP dashboard (Appearance | Plugins | Search | Install, using "WP-Footnotes" as search term.

Categories: Toolbox, Word Processing and Document Assembly - Tags: ,

Tote Notes – clever Android app

Written by on November 27, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Tote Notes is an Android App with a free and paid version, which prompts you to ask whether you’d like to dictate a follow-up note which will be e-mailed to you as an MP3 attachment. From the developer’s “Features” page.

Tote Notes™ is an innovative application for Android smartphones that records, transcribes to text, and emails your call notes at the end of important calls, by using only two taps and your voice.

Tote Notes™ combines the functions of your Android smartphone in a new and useful way, and provides you with a powerful productivity and note-taking tool. It’s especially effective when combined with your existing email account. Adjust your email settings to automatically filter and organize all your Tote Notes™.

Tote Notes™ uses Google Voice™ for transcription…..

Each Tote Note™ is delivered to your email inbox with the following subject line: “Tote Note: Contact Name (phone number)”, such as “Tote Note: Tracy Brown (4155551212)”

Tote Notes™ currently comes in two versions: FREE and PRO. The FREE version sets the maximum recording time at 30 seconds for each Tote Notes, and accommodates one destination email address. The PRO version allows each Tote Note™ to be up to 2 minutes in length, and also allows for a secondary email address, which can be used as a “cc” to another person or email address, such as an assistant.

Tote Notes™ are initiated by the end of a phone call, or on demand. To send a Tote Note™ on demand, tap the “History” tab, where you can view your note history and tap any contact to manually record a new Tote Note™.

 

This is a splendid idea – and $4 is a bargain if it fits into one’s workflow. We’d like to see this integrated with a call logger or recorder (for those states which permit it, or where both parties agree to recording in order to be avoid note-taking while driving, to give just one example). And Why note Tote-Notes for landlines? This is version 1.0, and the developers clearly intend to keep improving on ToteNotes. If they can integrate this into other task management or time tracking functionality, they’ll have a killer app on their hands. As it is, it already looks like a bruiser.

Categories: Communications Tools and Technology - Tags: ,

USB-drive-based apps

Written by on November 22, 2011 · Leave a Comment
  • A list of of lists:  excellent USB-runnable  apps, from office suites to single-function tools, which if you’ve the right one with you, make you McGyver, if not for a whole day, at least for an hour or so:   
  1. 100 Portable Apps for your USB Stick (for Mac and Win)
  2. The Portable Free Ware collection has over 500 apps and counting
  3. PenDriveApps.com – don’t know how many apps, but they’r eorganized by category, and there are dozens of those.
  4. 70 Free Useful Portable Applications You Should Know from the always ahead-of-the-curve Hong Kiat
  5. TechSupportAlert.com has NOT ONLY Best Free Portable Programs  but also Guide to Portable Applications, and Best Free Android Apps and  Best Free Win 7 / Vista 64 bit Apps, and more or which you’ll have to check out
    TechSupportAlert.com.
  6. Spoon Lets You Run Portable Desktop Apps From Your Browser as always, essential advice from Lifehacker   Plus , also from Lifehacker, for whom there are only two optimal quantities – a lot,and “even more” – the balance are links to individual posts/reviews on Lifehacker

Please feel free to add selections, experiences  bad and good, in comments. We’d also be very interested in what readers have to say about their favorite and least favorite flash drives.

Categories: software, Toolbox

Penn State scandal has hallmarks of pedestrian cover-up

Written by on November 10, 2011 · Leave a Comment

The central allegation in the Penn State case is that university officials, including head coach Joe Paterno and the university president, learned as early as 2002 that a well-regarded coach was sexually abusing young boys, sometimes on the Penn State campus.

Upon learning about a suspected 2002 assault by Sandusky of a young boy in the football building’s showers, Paterno redirected the graduate assistant who witnessed the incident to the athletic director, rather than notifying the police. Paterno said the graduate assistant who reported the assault, Mike McQueary, said only that something disturbing had happened that was perhaps sexual in nature. McQueary testified that he saw Sandusky having anal sex with the boy.

Excerpted from Paterno Is Finished at Penn State, and President Is Out  (Mark Viera, The New York Times, November 9th, 2011)

Having learned of this conduct, and the obvious risk that it might recur, what were Paterno’s choices? He could have reported the incident to the athletic director himself, gone to campus police, the university president, the local police, local prosecutors, or local social services agency. He could have instructed the graduate assistant to do any or all of those things. He could have fired Sandusky.

Viewed against the range of possible choices, telling perhaps the lowest-ranking person (the graduate assistant) to report the incident to the athletic director, presumably one step above Paterno on the organizational chart, but in reality probably less influential than the sainted Paterno, may have been the smallest thing he could do in order to do something.

This is only one of several incidents. If Paterno believed the graduate assistant, wouldn’t he be surprised that no arrest followed? If he thought the graduate assistant had made a false allegation, wouldn’t firing be appropriate for such serious defamation?

Does this fact-pattern seem reminiscent of recent Catholic Church scandals?

Categories: Cover-ups, Failures to Investigate or report, Systems Failures

Evernote Site Memory for WordPress AND other platforms

Written by on November 2, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Slocum Design Studio, and a member of their design team, Jonathan Desrosiers, have developed Evernote Site Memory, which allows users to clip a blog post to Evernote in, by my count, two mouse clicks and without having to navigate away from the post. And it may prompt some readers to clip who, in their excitement about the post and shouts of “Eureka!” forget to note the URL. (If you’re getting that excited about posts on this blog, you probably need more R&R).

Slocum’s portfolio is outstanding, and it’s clear that they exploit each other’s talents to good effect. A look at the staff portraits makes the point well: each of them is outstanding, and is the visual anchor for each staff member’s “About” page.  In fact, it makes a strong case for engaging a team, whether it’s an established full-time team, or an ad hoc team assembled for a project, for even relatively simple projects. The simplest statement of the principle is that no one should proofread or edit their own copy in any text that matters.

My installation of the WordPress plugin was entirely snag-free [plugin page on WordPress repository]; what’s more, the people at Slocum took the time to provide a clear and detailed entry in the WP Plugin Repository.   NB: if you install via  the WordPress dashboard, there are several other similar-sounding plugins, with similar descriptions of functionality. I tested  Mr. Desrosier’s plugin first because it was featured prominently on the Evernote website. What you’re looking for is “WP Evernote Site Memory,” with a credit in the description field for Slocum and Mr. Desrosier.

Other developers have produced Site Memory functionality for Joomla and Tumblr, and Evernote also provides information for developers; it’s all readily navigable on the Evernote Site Memory page.

One other Evernote plugin for WordPress, EverPress, is essentially the opposite of WP Evernote Site Memory.

EverPress is an automatic RSS posting plugin primarily designed to integrate with the information capturing service, Evernote. This plugin allows Evernote users to automatic post their shared notebooks to WordPress. [EverPress also supports]post scheduling – by day, week or month, and time of day; [and]post settings – set the author, category, status (draft, public and private) and tags.

EverPress is the creation of Martin Hawksey; we hope to have tested and reviewed it in short order.

 

Categories: collaboration tools, In Our Test Lab, Information Gathering - Tags: ,

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