Swedish Police Use WhatsApp For Surveillance Ops, Share Intel With Civilians 37
New submitter TheP4st writes "A group of Swedish police officers thought it would be a good idea to use WhatsApp as a work tool for surveillance operations. The officer that set up their chat group mistyped one of the phone numbers to mistakenly include a civilian IT teacher. Once the teacher informed authorities about the mistake, it took more than 24 hours before he stopped receiving sensitive case information, which included criminal records, passport photos, and communications between surveillance teams tailing suspects. When confronted by Computer Sweden (Google translation of Swedish original), the officer responsible for setting up the group said, 'I know this server is not located in Sweden and that one cannot share every kind of information.' The only mobile chat medium approved for sensitive information is BlackBerry, and this initiative by a small group of officers happened because they do not have access to BlackBerry handsets."
LOL (Score:1)
The only mobile chat medium approved for sensitive information is BlackBerry, and this initiative by a small group of officers happened because they do not have access to BlackBerry handsets.
This problem could have been solved in two ways: 1. Get Blackberries, 2. Upload sensitive data to a private company in a foreign country. It's shouldn't be this easy to pick the wrong one.
Re: (Score:1)
Aren't those two options pretty much the same thing? Option three: increase police budget to include a system for such communications, and the necessary insurance, supervision and monitoring to not to fuck the project and the operations up. Surely Swedish engineers are capable enough to implement and run such a system.
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police don't need insurance in nordic countries... they'll just say oops.
(and any damage payments would come from state anyways)
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Nope. BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) was developed to do just this job. You spin up a BES instance in your existing IT infrastructure (much like you would set up a Exchange server), and then link your BlackBerry to it. Then basically all communications go through that, rather like a VPN setup. And it's encrypted, too.
SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid (Score:4, Funny)
And why you should, too.
Truly cross-platform (even PC!)
Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid (Score:4, Funny)
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Spoilsport!
Oh FFS! (Score:5, Insightful)
A shoddy chat app that is hardly good enough for personal communication is used for sensitive police work? And if they hadn't used that, they would have used fucking Blackberrys, which also store everything on foreign servers? Does the Swedish police not have an IT department which can provide them with secure communication tools?
Re: (Score:1)
"Blackberrys, which also store everything on foreign servers"
Why do you say Blackberry runs only on "foreign" servers? You can have your own Blackberry server in any country you like. Even your own
Re:Oh FFS! (Score:4, Funny)
Yes. They use Oracle. It has gone about as well as you would expect. Seriously (in Swedish, sorry). [nyteknik.se]
The last comment on that article claims that the Swedish police basically got a new CIO who felt he had to prove his worth by making some sort grand decision. He decided to switch tracks and use Siebel as the basis of their new system.
Sounds plausible enough.
Re: (Score:2)
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It's not like Android o
blackberry (Score:1)
Just got a Z10, I love it! It's OK if you guys hate me though :)
Re:blackberry (Score:4, Funny)
Just got a Z10, I love it! It's OK if you guys hate me though :)
No, no, I find endangered species from vanishing ecosystems to be quite interesting. Some of them are also cute, tasty, or a source of fascinating new biologically active compounds. Like those wacky Amazonian frogs.
Re: (Score:3)
Narrator: The bug-eyed Blackberry has entered the clearing.... by the way its moving it appears to be looking for market share. But wait, what's this? It looks like an iSnakepad has grabbed it in a lightning fast strike! The iSnakepad is wrapping itself around the bug-eyed Blackberry and is starting to squeeze. Sadly now, there can be but one outcome.
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Hey folks, you won't believe this but I just shot that entire well-lit video sequence using my Nokia N9, and it looks great! I'd share it with you, except I'm in one of those countries, and you are probably in one of the other ones.
Re: (Score:2)
It's very much how I felt about Nokia and Symbian. Great hardware, and the OS wasn't too shabby, but there were a lot of things you just couldn't do on the platform
Common problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Workplace has confidential information.
2. Workplace puts up elaborate high-security protocols and technology intended to protect that data.
3. Workers find that all this security is getting in the way of actually doing their jobs.
4. Workers ignore protocol and devise their own means of going behind the backs of those dictating security.
5. Embarassing breach occurs.
A common example occurs when IT dictates all passwords must be at least seven characters an include mixed case and punctuation. Faced with difficulty remembering passwords, the staff respond by putting them on post-it notes under their keyboards. Or when getting a new staff member approved for access to the confidential data takes a few days, leading to staff letting temps borrow their credentials so they can get started right away.
Re:Common problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
When an organization sees people doing things like this, they should recognize that they are not providing the right kind of IT services to their employees.
Re:Common problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
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> all passwords must be at least seven characters an include mixed case and punctuation
People can and will work around any barrier that stops them working, even if they are now working in an unsafe environment.
I worked somewhere once with those rules, plus the password had to be changed monthly, and no reuse of ones you'd used previously.
Pretty much everyone would have a compliant password today that was a slight variant on the unforgettable:
Feb.2014
Re: (Score:2)
A common example occurs when IT dictates all passwords must be at least seven characters an include mixed case and punctuation.
Ha! My IT department where I work (I shall not disclose whom I work for) requires that all passwords have a minimum of 14 characters and the password is required to be changed on a regular interval in a mandatory basis. There is a policy in place against passwords; on post-it notes, in notebooks and so forth so it's really frustrating and really easy to forget if you're not careful.
So... (Score:2)
(Incidentally, who wants to bet that the officers involved may not have adhered to every tedious little 'best practice' in their handling of past cases? Sure is a good thing that they aren't in a p