"Jacob Wayne John Keen, now 24, was 15 years old and living in his mother's rental when he allegedly created a sophisticated spyware tool known as a remote access trojan that allowed users to remotely take control of their victims' computers," reports the Guardian.

Once installed it could be used to steal victims' personal information, spy on them via webcams and microphones and track what they typed into emails or documents. Keen allegedly sold the tool for $35 on a hacking forum, making between $300,000 and $400,000 by selling it to more than 14,500 people in 128 countries....

Keen was slapped with six charges earlier in July, and is due to appear at Brisbane's magistrates court next month. His mother, 42, has also been charged with allegedly dealing in the proceeds of crime.

A global investigation involving more than a dozen law enforcement agencies across Europe led to 85 search warrants being executed around the world, with 434 devices seized and 13 people arrested for using the malware for "alleged criminality".
Among the tool's 14,500 users were a "statistically high" proportion of domestic violence perpetrators (and at least one child sex offender), according to the Australian federal police, who believe there were ultimately "tens of thousands" of victims globally.

Slashdot reader Bruce66423 suggests an appropriate punishment would be sentencing Keen to work for spy agencies.

New Jersey police may have used blood samples taken from babies to investigate crimes, according to public defenders in the state. From a report: According to a lawsuit filed by the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender (OPD), the practice came to light after a case in which New Jersey State Police successfully subpoenaed a testing lab for a blood sample drawn from a child. Police then performed DNA analysis on the blood sample that reportedly linked the child's father to a crime committed more than 25 years ago. The suspect then became a client of the OPD, which alerted the office to the techniques used to identify the man.

The lawsuit, filed jointly by the OPD and the New Jersey Monitor, now seeks to compel the state of New Jersey to disclose information on the full extent of the practice. All babies born in the state of New Jersey are required to have a blood sample drawn within 48 hours as part of a mandatory testing program that screens them for 60 different disorders. These samples are processed in a state-run lab, which shares data with the state health authority and communicates results to parents. The blood samples are not directly shared with law enforcement agencies. But if police are able to reliably obtain the samples through subpoena, then effectively, the disease screening process is entering all babies born in the state into a DNA database with no ability to opt out.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Associated Press: The New Orleans City Council has reversed itself and approved police use of facial recognition software and cellphone surveillance towers to investigate violent crimes. The ordinance, approved by the council on a 4-to-2 vote Thursday, comes as killings in the city reach numbers last seen in the mid-2000s after Hurricane Katrina. It partly reverses an ordinance passed nearly two years ago, when crime was low. Mayor LaToya Cantrell called it "a tremendous stride towards greater public safety."

The ordinance lists 39 specific crimes that can be investigated by using the technologies, including murder, rape, stalking, and battery of a police officer. Two other kinds of policing software remain forbidden: programs that seek to predict spots where crime is likely and those which use characteristics such as size, clothing or vehicle model to track people. The American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana said facial recognition software has been shown to be biased by race and sex, and "there is absolutely no evidence that reinstating facial recognition will help reduce violence."

Council member Eugene Green, who proposed the ordinance, said new police policies, including procedures for ensuring accuracy, were adequate safeguards. John Thomas, director of public safety and homeland security for the city, added: "The facial recognition in and of itself cannot get you any arrest warrants, no search warrants. It is just a tool for us to say, 'OK, this is a lead.'"

Charter Communications must pay out $7 billion in damages after one of its Spectrum cable technicians robbed and killed an elderly woman, a jury decided Tuesday. The Register reports: Betty Thomas, 83, was stabbed to death by Roy Holden Jr in December 2019. He had dropped by her home in Irving, Texas, on a service call after she reported a problem with her internet-TV bundle, and returned the next day in his company uniform and van, inviting himself in and killing her using his Spectrum-issued gloves and utility knife. She was found dead by her family on her living room floor after she didn't show up to a Christmas and birthday party that night. Holden pleaded guilty to murder last year and was sentenced to life behind in bars.

Thomas' family sued Charter [PDF] in 2020 for negligence. It was alleged in testimony that Holden had complained to his bosses that he was penniless and desperate after a divorce. It was further alleged that he had stolen credit cards and checks from elderly Spectrum subscribers, and that the corporation turned a blind eye to a pattern of theft by its installers and technicians. During that civil trial it was also claimed Thomas' family was charged $58 for Holden's service call, and continued to be billed after their grandmother's brutal slaying to the point where her account was sent to collections.

The court heard how Holden was not working the day he killed Thomas, and went out to her home anyway to rob her. He was able to use his company keycard to access a Charter vehicle lot and drive off in one of its service vans even though he was off-duty. According to the family's legal team, while Holden was seemingly making repairs, he tried to steal one or more of her bank cards from her purse, and murdered her when he was caught in the act. He later went on a spending spree with her funds, it was claimed. "This was a shocking breach of faith by a company that sends workers inside millions of homes every year," said the one of family's trial lawyers Chris Hamilton, of Dallas-based Hamilton Wingo, in a statement.

According to the law firm, Holden lied about his employment history -- such as not revealing he had been previously fired -- which wasn't checked by Charter when it hired him and would have been one of many red flags against him. During the civil trial, the court heard how Holden would break down crying at work, at one point was convinced he was a former Dallas Cowboys football player, suffered from insomnia, and was probably sleeping overnight in his Spectrum van. It was further claimed the cable giant tried to force the lawsuit into closed-door arbitration where the results would have been secret and damages limited.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Shoppers at a supermarket chain in southern England are being tracked by facial recognition cameras, prompting a legal complaint by a privacy rights group. Big Brother Watch said Southern Co-operative's use of biometric scans in 35 stores across Portsmouth, Bournemouth, Bristol, Brighton and Hove, Chichester, Southampton, and London was "Orwellian in the extreme" and urged Britain's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) to investigate whether it breaches data protection legislation.

The complaint claims the use of the biometric cameras "is infringing the data rights of a significant number of UK data subjects." It outlines how the facial recognition system, sold by surveillance company Facewatch, creates a biometric profile of every visitor to stores where the cameras are installed, enabling Southern Co-operative to create a "blacklist" of customers. If a customer on the list enters the store, staff are alerted. [...] "We take our responsibilities around the use of facial recognition extremely seriously and work hard to balance our customers' rights with the need to protect our colleagues and customers from unacceptable violence and abuse," Southern Co-operative said. It said it uses the facial recognition cameras only in stores where there is a high level of crime to protect staff from known offenders and does not store images of an individual unless they have been identified as an offender. Kmart and Bunnings stores in Australia are also being investigated for the privacy implications of their facial recognition systems. The two chains were trialing the technology to spot banned customers, prevent refund fraud and reduce theft.

The New York Times' product-recommendation service "Wirecutter" has sparked widening criticism about how laptops are reviewed. The technology/Apple blog Daring Fireball first complained that they "institutionally fetishize price over quality". That makes it all the more baffling that their recommended "Best Laptop" — not best Windows laptop, but best laptop, full stop — is a Dell XPS 13 that costs $1,340 but is slower and gets worse battery life (and has a lower-resolution display) than their "best Mac laptop", the $1,000 M1 MacBook Air.
Technically Dell's product won in a category titled "For most people: The best ultrabook" (and Wikipedia points out that ultrabook is, after all, "a marketing term, originated and trademarked by Intel.") But this leads blogger Jack Wellborn to an even larger question: why exactly do reviewers refuse to do a comparison between Wintel laptops and Apple's MacBooks? Is it that reviewers don't think they could fairly compare x86 and ARM laptops? It seems easy enough to me. Are they afraid that constantly showing MacBooks outperforming Wintel laptops will give the impression that they are in the bag for Apple? I don't see why. Facts are facts, and a lot of people need or want to buy a Windows laptop regardless. I can't help but wonder if, in the minds of many reviewers, MacBooks were PCs so long as they used Intel, and therefore they stopped being PCs once Apple switched to using their own silicon.
Saturday Daring Fireball responded with their own assessment. "Reviewers at ostensibly neutral publications are afraid that reiterating the plain truth about x86 vs. Apple silicon — that Apple silicon wins handily in both performance and efficiency — is not going to be popular with a large segment of their audience. Apple silicon is a profoundly inconvenient truth for many computer enthusiasts who do not like Macs, so they've gone into denial..."

Both bloggers cite as an example this review of Microsoft's Surface Laptop Go 2, which does begin by criticizing the device's old processor, its un-backlit keyboard, its small selection of ports, and its low-resolution touchscreen. But it ultimately concludes "Microsoft gets most of the important things right here, and there's no laptop in this price range that doesn't come with some kind of trade-off...." A crime of omission — or is the key phrase "in this price range"? (Which gets back to Daring Fireball's original complaint about "fetishizing price over quality.") Are Apple's new Silicon-powered laptops sometimes being left out of comparisons because they're more expensive?

In an update, Wellborn acknowledges that this alleged refusal-to-compare apparently actually precedes Apple's launch of its M1 chip. But he argues that now it's more important than ever to begin making those comparisons: It's a choice between a hot and noisy and/or slow PC laptop running Windows and a cool, silent, and fast MacBook. Most buyers don't know that choice now exists, and it's the reviewer's job to educate them. Excluding MacBooks from consideration does those buyers a considerable disservice.

"Uber has officially accepted responsibility for hiding a 2016 data breach that exposed the data of 57 million passengers and drivers..." reports Engadget.

Reuters explains this acknowledgement "was part of a settlement with U.S. prosecutors to avoid criminal charges." In entering a non-prosecution agreement, Uber admitted that its personnel failed to report the November 2016 hacking to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission [for nearly one year], even though the agency had been investigating the ride-sharing company's data security... U.S. Attorney Stephanie Hinds in San Francisco said the decision not to criminally charge Uber reflected new management's prompt investigation and disclosures, and Uber's 2018 agreement with the FTC to maintain a comprehensive privacy program for 20 years.

The San Francisco-based company is also cooperating with the prosecution of a former security chief, Joseph Sullivan, over his alleged role in concealing the hacking.
Here's what the Department of Justice is now alleging against that security chief (as summarized by Reuters last month: "he arranged to pay money to two hackers in exchange for their silence, while trying to conceal the hacking from passengers, drivers and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission."

That's led to three separate wire fraud charges against the former security chief, as well as two charges for obstruction of justice. The defendant was originally indicted in September 2020, and is believed to be the first corporate information security officer criminally charged with concealing a hacking. Prosecutors said Sullivan arranged to pay the hackers $100,000 in bitcoin, and have them sign nondisclosure agreements that falsely stated they had not stolen data.

Uber had a bounty program designed to reward security researchers who report flaws, not to cover up data thefts.... In September 2018, the San Francisco-based company paid $148 million to settle claims by all 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. that it was too slow to reveal the hacking.

"TikTok is resisting calls to preserve and hand over access to its content for war crime investigations," reports the Financial Times, "as lawyers and activists warn that the Chinese-owned app is a major data challenge in prosecuting atrocities in Russia's invasion of Ukraine." The video app's popularity with young Ukrainians and Russians posting footage of the war has made it a trove of digital intelligence that investigators are attempting to mine and archive as evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and illegal acts of violence in Ukraine....

"I have concerns about the security of data there, and it is not fully clear where the interest and influence in the company is coming from," said Dia Kayyali, associate director for advocacy at Mnemonic, a nonprofit that archives digital documentation of human rights violations. "It is especially concerning that China could directly have access to that data...." Since early 2022, TikTok has met with human rights lawyers, activists, and others involved in Ukraine war crime investigations. However, it has yet to introduce any changes to its process or the product itself.

Criminal prosecutors are increasingly relying on social media posts from TikTok and others as a way to "bring the crime scene to the courtroom," said Karim Khan, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. "Any effective investigation anywhere in the world now really requires a very effective harnessing of social media," said Khan. "People... recording killings or attacks or the consequences of attacks in real time, it can have absolutely fantastic probative value...."

TikTok said it regularly meets with organizations, government bodies, and third-party experts to gather feedback and is committed to cooperating with law enforcement while respecting the privacy of its users.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Daily Beast: On Sept. 5, 1992, computer engineer Laurie Houts, 25, was found fatally strangled in her car near a California garbage dump. Her boyfriend's roommate was arrested in connection with the case, but two trials -- and two hung juries -- later, a judge dismissed the case. The roommate moved to the Netherlands soon afterward. Over the weekend, the roommate -- now the chief executive of a small software company -- was arrested as he landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, according to the Santa Clara County Office of the District Attorney. John Woodward, the 58-year-old CEO and president of ReadyTech, is expected to be extradited to Santa Clara County by the end of the month, District Attorney Jeff Rosen said Monday. Once there, Woodward will be arraigned for the third time in Houts' murder by strangulation.

Houts' body was discovered by a passerby less than a mile from her office at Adobe Systems in Mountain View more than 30 years ago, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. A rope was around her neck, and there were footprints on the inside of her windshield, which were called "a sign of her struggle with Woodward" by the district attorney's office. Forensic science at the time was able to match Woodward to fingerprints found outside the car, but investigators could not prove that he had been inside the vehicle. Still, when Houts' boyfriend made a call, monitored by police, to Woodward soon after the 25-year-old's death, he "did not deny" killing Houts. Instead, according to a police summary of the matter, Woodward asked what evidence the authorities had against him and suggested to the roommate that they "meet in a parking lot" to talk more.

Woodward, who had no alibi for the night Houts was killed, was arrested that same year. Prosecutors alleged that Woodward had developed an "unrequited" romantic interest in Houts' boyfriend. The theory was criticized as homophobic at Woodward's first trial by his defense lawyer in 1995, the The Mercury News reported Monday, and the jury deadlocked on his innocence, voting 8-4 for acquittal. A year later, despite a judge barring the romantic-rival argument, the jury hearing Woodward's second trial again hung itself, this time ruling 7-5. The judge soon dismissed the case for insufficient evidence. But advances in DNA technology allowed detectives to link Woodward to the rope around Houts' neck for the first time last year, Rosen's statement said. Investigators in both the Santa Clara County Crime Lab and Mountain View Police Department matched both Woodward's genetic material and fibers on his sweatpants to "the murder weapon," police said.

Myanmar's junta government is installing Chinese-built cameras with facial recognition capabilities in more cities across the country, Reuters reported Monday, citing three people with direct knowledge of the matter. From the report: In tenders to procure and install the security cameras and facial recognition technology, the plans are described as safe city projects aimed at maintaining security and, in some cases, preserving civil peace, said the people who are or have been involved in the projects. Since the February 2021 coup, local authorities have started new camera surveillance projects for at least five cities including Mawlamyine - the country's fourth-largest city, according to information from the three people who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals by the junta. The new projects are in addition to five cities where camera systems touted as crime prevention measures were either installed or planned by the previous government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, according to the sources and local media.

15-year-old Ellis Pinsky stole $23.8 million worth of cryptocurrency — and his life was never the same. For example, Rolling Stone reports, in his last year of high school, "Four men wearing ski masks and gloves, armed with knives, rope, brass knuckles, and a fake 9 mm," crept around the back of his home in the suburbs: Two weeks before the break-in, a lawsuit had been filed against him, and news stories had circulated connecting him to the hack. He knew that the thieves wanted this money, the millions and millions of dollars he had stolen. He also knew that he couldn't give it to them. He didn't have it. Not anymore.
The magazine paints the portrait of "an anxious young man in Invisalign braces" who describes the revelation he'd had at the age of 13. "The internet held such secrets. All he had to do was uncover them." As he soon found, there were plenty of people working to uncover them all the time, and willing to share their methods — for a price.... Realizing that a lot of the information social engineers used came from hacked databases, he began teaching himself to program, particularly to do the Structured Query Language injections and cross-site scripting that allowed him to attack companies' database architecture. The terabyte upon terabyte of databases he extracted, traded, and hoarded made him valuable to OGUsers as well as to others, like the Russian hackers he was able to converse with thanks to his fluency with his mother's native language... By the time he was 14, he tells me, "I think it's fair to say I had the capabilities to hack anyone."
The article describes him as "attending high school by day and extracting the source code of major corporations by night.... He was 14 years old and taken with the thrill of possessing a hidden superpower, of spending his nights secretly tapping into an underground world where he was esteemed and even feared. And then, in the morning, being called downstairs to breakfast." He wrote a Python script to comb through social media networks and seek out any mentions of working for a [cellphone] carrier. Then he'd reach out with an offer of compensation for helping him with a task. Every fifth or sixth person — underpaid and often working a short-term contract — would say they were game, as Pinsky tells it. For a couple hundred dollars' worth of bitcoin, they'd be willing to do a SIM swap, no questions asked. Eventually, Pinsky says, he had employees at every major carrier also working for him. Then the stakes got even higher. It was only a matter of time before OG hackers, known to each other as "the Community," realized that if they could use the SIM-swapping method to steal usernames, they could just as easily use it to steal cryptocurrency...
In one massive heist Pinksky stole 10% of all the Trigger altcoins on the market from crypto impresario Michael Terpin. ("As Pinsky's money launderers were converting it, the market was crashing in real time.") Pinsky recruited a crew to launder the money — at least one of which simply kept it — but even with all the conversion fees, he still made off with millions. And then... For a while, he half-expected the FBI to knock on his door at any moment, just like in the movies; but as time passed, he grew less anxious.... He says he moved on to learning different types of programming. He ran a sneaker business that used bots and scripts to snap up limited pairs then flip them... He went to soccer practice. He and his friends had started hanging out with girls on the weekend, driving down to the docks where you could see the glowing lights from the Tappan Zee Bridge.
Until Terpin figured out it was Pinsky who'd robbed him: Pinsky and his legal team preempted his arrest by contacting the U.S. attorney directly and offering his cooperation. In February 2020, he voluntarily returned every last thing he says he got from the Terpin heist: 562 bitcoins, the Patek watch, and the cash he'd stored in the safe under his bed.... When I ask if he has also worked with the FBI to help bring down other hackers, he blinks quickly and then changes the subject.
Pinsky has not been criminally charged — partly because he was a minor, but also because of his cooperation with law enforcement. But filing a civil suit, Terpin wants to be compensated with triple the amount stolen, arguing that the teenager who robbed him was running an organized crime racket and that he should be heavily punished to set an example.

Rolling Stone's article raisees the question: what should happen next?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Arizona passed a law making it harder to record police by limiting how close bystanders can be while recording specified law enforcement activity. [...] The new Arizona law requires any bystanders recording police activity in the state to stand at a minimum of 8 feet away from the action. If bystanders move closer after police have warned them to back off, they risk being charged with a misdemeanor and incurring fines of up to $500, jail time of up to 30 days, or probation of up to a year. Sponsored by Republican state representative John Kavanagh, the law known as H.B. 2319 makes it illegal to record police at close range. In a USA Today op-ed, Kavanagh said it is important to leave this buffer for police to protect law enforcement from being assaulted by unruly bystanders. He said "there's no reason" to come closer and predicted tragic outcomes for those who do, saying, "Such an approach is unreasonable, unnecessary, and unsafe, and should be made illegal."

This week, Kavanagh has succeeded in making close-range recording illegal in Arizona, with only a few exceptions. Perhaps most critically, the person involved in the police activity -- someone being questioned, arrested, or handled by police -- can record, as long as it doesn't interfere with police actions. The same exception extends to anyone recording while in a vehicle involved in a police stop. Additionally, anyone recording activity from an enclosed structure on private property still has a right to record police within 8 feet -- unless law enforcement "determines that the person is interfering" or "it is not safe" for them to be in the area. That caveat potentially gives police a lot of discretion over who can record and when.

Kavanagh said he decided to push for this change in Arizona law after some Tucson officers complained that bystanders sometimes stood a foot or two behind them while recording arrests. The state representative also told USA Today that his decision to set the minimum distance at 8 feet "is based upon 8 feet being established by the US Supreme Court as being a reasonable distance as they applied it to people entering and leaving abortion clinics when faced with protesters." Responding to critics who think citizens should be able to get closer to law enforcement activity, Kavanagh said, "The argument that filming from 8 feet away does not allow for a proper view of the scene is ridiculous." He cited impactful police brutality recordings that were recorded from further distances, including Rodney King (100 feet) and Freddie Gray ("clearly 8 to 10 feet away"). In 2017, a federal appeals court ruled that the First Amendment protects individuals' right to film police officers performing their official duties.

The ACLU says this law is a "chilling" use of the "public's most effective tool against police wrongdoing in violation of our First Amendment rights." ACLU staff attorney K.M. Bell added: "By limiting our ability to record police interactions, this law will undoubtedly make it even more difficult to hold police officers accountable for misconduct."

A Miami-based CEO has been arrested for allegedly importing $1 billion worth of counterfeit Cisco equipment from China and then selling it on Amazon and eBay. From a report: The Justice Department announced today that it had indicted 38-year-old Onur "Ron" Aksoy for selling the counterfeit Cisco gear via numerous online storefronts. Allegedly, Aksoy imported tens of thousands of fraudulent Cisco devices from China and Hong Kong. He then created at least 19 companies in New Jersey and Florida, dubbed the "Pro Network," to help him resell the hardware as genuine through the e-commerce sites.

"The operation allegedly generated over $100 million in revenue, and Aksoy received millions of dollars for his personal gain," the Justice Department said. The Cisco equipment Aksoy allegedly sold was usually older, lower-end models that were previously bought or discarded. Counterfeiters in China then modified the equipment, making the devices appear as if they were newer or more expensive Cisco product models. "As alleged, the Chinese counterfeiters often added pirated Cisco software and unauthorized, low-quality, or unreliable components -- including components to circumvent technological measures added by Cisco to the software to check for software license compliance and to authenticate the hardware," the Justice Department said. In addition, the counterfeit products were packaged with authentic-looking labels, boxes, and documentation.

Sunny Balwani, the former president and chief operating officer of bankrupt blood-testing company Theranos, on Thursday was found guilty of 12 counts of conspiracy and fraud against certain investors and patients. Axios reports: It's a similar verdict to one handed down in January to Theranos founder and ex-CEO Elizabeth Holmes, who once dated Balwani. Balwani isn't a household name like Holmes, but he was instrumental in building a billion-dollar house of cards that duped both investors and patients. Balwani's attorneys tried to pin the blame for Theranos' failures on Holmes, much as her attorneys had tried to blame Balwani.

As we wrote when the trial began: Holmes tried to thread an incredibly narrow rhetorical needle, denying the existence of fraud while also redirecting blame. Balwani seems to be attempting something similar; claiming he was a savvy executive with lots of past success, but also a naif who was bamboozled by Holmes. But prosecutors, who originally wanted to try the pair together, often used Balwani's own words against him. For example, they presented a text message from Balwani to Holmes that read: "I am responsible for everything at Theranos." One big difference between the trials, however, was that Balwani didn't testify in his own defense.

The U.K. government has tabled an amendment (PDF) to the Online Safety Bill that could put it on a collision course with end-to-end encryption. TechCrunch reports: It's proposing to give the incoming internet regulator, Ofcom, new powers to force messaging platforms and other types of online services to implement content-scanning technologies, even if their platform is strongly encrypted -- meaning the service/company itself does not hold keys to decrypt and access user-generated content in the clear. The home secretary, Priti Patel, said today that the governments wants the bill to have greater powers to tackle child sexual abuse.

"Child sexual abuse is a sickening crime. We must all work to ensure criminals are not allowed to run rampant online and technology companies must play their part and take responsibility for keeping our children safe," she said in a statement -- which also offers the (unsubstantiated) claim that: "Privacy and security are not mutually exclusive -- we need both, and we can have both and that is what this amendment delivers." The proposed amendment is also being targeted at terrorism content -- with the tabled clause referring to: "Notices to deal with terrorism content or CSEA [child sexual exploitation & abuse] content (or both)."

These notices would allow Ofcom to order a regulated service to use "accredited" technology to identify CSEA or terrorism content which is being publicly shared on their platform and "swiftly" remove it. But the proposed amendment goes further -- also allowing Ofcom to mandate that regulated services use accredited technical means to prevent users from encountering these types of (illegal) content -- whether it's being shared publicly or privately via the service, raising questions over what the power might mean for E2E encryption.

In a study conducted in Columbus, researchers found that neighborhoods with more dogs had lower rates of homicide, robbery and, to a lesser extent, aggravated assaults compared to areas with fewer dogs, at least when residents also had high levels of trust in each other. Phys.Org reports: The results suggest that people walking their dogs puts more "eyes on the street," which can discourage crime, said Nicolo Pinchak, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in sociology at The Ohio State University. "People walking their dogs are essentially patrolling their neighborhoods," Pinchak said. "They see when things are not right, and when there are suspect outsiders in the area. It can be a crime deterrent."

For the study, researchers looked at crime statistics from 2014 to 2016 for 595 census block groups -- the equivalent of neighborhoods -- in the Columbus area. They obtained survey data from a marketing firm that asked Columbus residents in 2013 if they had a dog in their household. Finally, they used data from the Adolescent Health and Development in Context study (which Browning runs) to measure trust in individual neighborhoods. As part of that study, residents were asked to rate how much they agreed that "people on the streets can be trusted" in their neighborhoods. Research has shown that trust among neighbors is an important part of deterring crime, because it suggests residents will help each other when facing a threat and have a sense of "collective efficacy" that they can have a positive impact on their area, Pinchak said.

Results of this study showed, as expected, that neighborhoods with high levels of trust had lower levels of homicide, robbery and aggravated assaults when compared to neighborhoods with low levels of trust. But among high-trust neighborhoods, those with high concentrations of dogs showed an additional drop in crime compared to those with low concentrations of dogs. Among the high-trust neighborhoods, neighborhoods high in dog concentration had about two-thirds the robbery rates of those low in dog concentration and about half the homicide rates, the study found. It really has to do with the dog walking, Pinchak said. [...] Results showed that the trust and dog-walking combination helped reduce street crimes: those crimes like homicides and robberies that tend to occur in public locations, including streets and sidewalks. The study found that more dogs in a neighborhood was also related to fewer property crimes, like burglaries, irrespective of how much residents trust each other, Pinchak said. [...] The protective effect of dogs and trust was found even when a wide range of other factors related to crime was taken into account, including the proportion of young males in the neighborhood, residential instability and socioeconomic status. The study was published in the journal Social Forces.

Royal Mail's stamps are finally entering the digital world, with printed codes that can be used to track letters or linked to videos. Collectors, traditionalists and royalists are not amused. From a report: In February, Royal Mail introduced a new design for its standard stamps, which have changed so little since the launch of the Penny Black in 1840 that they are officially known as "definitives." The new stamps -- "plum purple" for first class, "holly green" for second -- still feature the same regal profile introduced more than 50 years ago. But what is most bothering purists -- and leading Johnson to the brink of direct action -- is the addition next to the Queen of a digital barcode. The rectangular codes -- which look like QR codes but are apparently not QR codes, which are a particular, and trademarked, kind of code -- are designed to stop counterfeiting and to enable the tracking of all letters to improve efficiency. Correspondents will soon be able to share photo or video messages by linking digital content to their coded stamps. Recipients will view it via the Royal Mail app (currently the codes link to a short film featuring Shaun the Sheep and a plasticine postwoman).

[...] David Gold, the head of public affairs and policy at Royal Mail Group, knew the coded stamps would create a stir. "Collectors, traditionalists and royalists feel a sense of ownership over stamps," he says. It's why the new stamps, the designs for which had to be approved by Buckingham Palace, include a fake perforation as a kind of dignity screen between code and Queen (who is also, notably, facing the other way). Gold says the codes mean Royal Mail can track all letters, allowing it to better monitor, predict and respond to regional changes in demand, for example. He is also confident the unique codes will stop the fraudulent washing of postmark ink and resale of used stamps -- a crime that he claims costs Royal Mail "tens of millions" of pounds a year.

The former top corporate lawyer at Apple pleaded guilty to insider trading charges, for what prosecutors called a five-year scheme to trade ahead of the iPhone maker's quarterly earnings announcements. Gene Levoff, 48, of San Carlos, California, pleaded guilty to six securities fraud charges at a hearing before U.S. District Judge William Martini in Newark, New Jersey. From a report: Levoff allegedly exploited his roles as corporate secretary, head of corporate law and co-chair of a committee that reviewed drafts of Apple's results to generate $604,000 of illegal gains on more than $14 million of trades from 2011 to 2016. Prosecutors said Levoff ignored the quarterly "blackout periods" that barred trading before Apple's results were released, as well as the company's broader insider trading policy -- which he was responsible for enforcing. "Gene Levoff betrayed the trust of one of the world's largest tech companies for his own financial gain," First Assistant U.S. Attorney Vikas Khanna in New Jersey said in a statement.

A hacker has claimed to have procured a trove of personal information from the Shanghai police on one billion Chinese citizens, which tech experts say, if true, would be one of the biggest data breaches in history. From a report: The anonymous internet user, identified as "ChinaDan," posted on hacker forum Breach Forums last week offering to sell the more than 23 terabytes (TB) of data for 10 bitcoin BTC=, equivalent to about $200,000. "In 2022, the Shanghai National Police (SHGA) database was leaked. This database contains many TB of data and information on Billions of Chinese citizen," the post said. "Databases contain information on 1 Billion Chinese national residents and several billion case records, including: name, address, birthplace, national ID number, mobile number, all crime/case details." Reuters was unable to verify the authenticity of the post. The Shanghai government and police department did not respond to requests for comment on Monday.

The British army is "investigating an apparent hack," reports Engadget, after its official Twitter and YouTube accounts were compromised Sunday: News of the breach was first reported by Web3 is Going Great . According to the blog, both accounts were simultaneously compromised to promote two different cryptocurrency scams.

Although it has since been scrubbed, the army's verified Twitter account was briefly changed to look like a page for The Possessed, a project involving a collection of 10,000 animated NFTs with a price floor of 0.58 Ethereum (approximately $1,063). During that time, the account tweeted out multiple links to a fake minting website....

Over on YouTube, the army's channel [had] been made to look like a page for Ark Invest...livestreaming videos that repurpose old footage of Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey and Ark CEO Katie Wood discussing cryptocurrency. The clips feature an overlay promoting "double your money" Bitcoin and Ethereum scams. According to Web3 is Going Great, a similar scheme netted scammers $1.3 million this past May. It's unclear who is behind the attacks.