Archive for the 'News Media' Category

Photoshop Fakery & Disasters

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on December 14, 2009
in News, News Media and Private Investigator
. 0 Comments

I’m naturally skeptical, especially of what is reported in the news. The Toronto Star keeps putting a bodiless hand in a picture of the Mississauga Mayor, Hazel McCallion, and her son.

Photoshop

This Photoshop disaster hasn’t gone unnoticed, but it highlights the issue of how Investigators and Researchers use such pictures and how they cite collected images.

I don’t have the technical skills to verify the authenticity of every image I collect and use in reports, but I can, and do, report the source of the image and the date it was collected. For example, in this case, several versions of this image are in the public domain. If I use the image in a report, I must state its source and the date collected, as it may later be revealed as a fake or altered image.

TinEye

I also use TinEye on such an image to see if an alternative version exists and to see where else the image might have appeared. For example, using TinEye on the cropped Toronto Star image I get a reference to the obviously Photoshopped image with the bodiless hand.

Versadex

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on June 15, 2009
in Canada, Courts, News and News Media
. 0 Comments

The recent  controversy surrounding the improper investigation of potential jurors in Ontario has exposed some of the information the government has on Canadians and their contact with the police. One such database is known as Versadex.

National Post editorial board: Ontario stonewalls justice, one mistrial at a time

The Versadex database administered by the Canadian Police Information Centre contains information obtained by police on any call to a private address, even if that call did not lead to an arrest, and appears to contain other informal police annotations concerning individuals. Notes on mental health status are included.

The term Versadex, refers to a  family of products from Ottawa-based Versaterm which produces public safety software.  Versaterm produces Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) software with integrated E911 emergency response, (along with advanced mobile workstations in the patrol vehicles, this puts vital information at police officers’ fingertips) and the Police Records Management System (RMS) for gathering intelligence and disseminating information on involved individuals, businesses, vehicles and locations. The Records Management System (RMS) is the core of the Versadex software suite.  When RMS is fully integrated with both PoliceCAD and the Mobile Workstation they ensure a seamless information flow.

Once the Cat’s Out of the Bag

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on June 5, 2009
in News, News Media, Private Investigator, Reputation Management, Search Strategies and Sources
. 0 Comments

I started with a very interesting article about what you might find in a college newspaper that would be interesting to an investigator.

One thing leads to another and I also found an article about a study of how quickly social sites remove pictures. Some sites take up to 30 days to really get rid of the offending images. This is an important thing to understand if your are looking for derogatory pictures.

Your (journalistic) past can haunt you online

Once the cat is out of the bag, you probably won’t be able to catch her and stuff her back inside…

That (now) embarrassing article you wrote for your college newspaper three years ago? It’s still online. And when people Google you, they find it…

Apparently a lot of student newspapers are receiving requests from former student writers to remove or “hide” (from Google) articles of which they are now ashamed…

…requests by former students who were featured in articles in the student newspaper. Campus police arrests for drunkenness, that sort of thing. They would like those articles to be removed or “hidden.”…

Here’s a related story about someone trying to get an old newspaper story erased from the search engines. Article published in The Seattle Times on Aug. 15, 2008.

Websites keep deleted photos, study shows

Cambridge researchers have shown that photos aren’t always deleted when users ask, causing a major ‘data remanence’ issue for cloud computing.

According to a study of 16 social networking, blogging and photo sharing sites…most of them failed to remove photos after users deleted them…

What They Don’t Teach in Detective School

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on February 9, 2009
in Methods, News Media, Private Investigator and Search Strategies
. 1 Comment

I used to do a series of lectures about the skills I found most lacking in the education of detectives. The lecture about evaluating the revealed wisdom that pours forth from the Internet was always fun to deliver.

One example that I used when I started doing these, was a site that identified the second gunman in the Kennedy assassination — there was Elvis holding a Thompson sub-machine gun on the grassy knoll. It was on the Internet so it must be true.

Here is the 13 point check list for evaluating information upon which I based the lecture. Continue reading ‘What They Don’t Teach in Detective School’

Don’t Believe Everything You Read

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on September 11, 2008
in News Media
. 0 Comments

The Income Securities Advisor runs a 6 year old story about United Airlines filing for bankruptcy and within 10 minutes, UAL’s stock had fallen from $12.45/share to $3/share before trading was halted.

Read the article by Mary Ellen Bates about this and why Web browsers should come with training wheels.

Spread FUD Not Propaganda

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on June 20, 2008
in Communication, Competitive Intelligence, News Media and Reputation Management
. 0 Comments

An excellent article at Knowledge Is Power about using a blog to spread FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) about competitors and manage the spin on news about its rivals while usually reporting positively about your own employer.

Another post about Black PR defines this as distinct from a disinformation campaign.

Stupid Private Investigator Stereotype

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on May 16, 2008
in Due Diligence, News Media and Private Investigator
. 0 Comments

Over at the Daily Caveat, Michael Thomas criticizes the use of worn-out stereotypes of Private Investigators in a Wall Street Journal article that focuses on the use of Private Investigators by Venture Capitalists to conduct due diligence research.

Corporate Family Trees

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on April 29, 2008
in Company Research, Competitive Intelligence and News Media
. 2 Comments

I often see the following terminology misused in the press. For the Investigator, these terms have very specific meanings. The Investigator must also recognise that most laymen will misuse these terms.

A parent company controls separately incorporated firms. The controlled company is a subsidiary. A subsidiary has a parent when the controlling firm owns more than 50% of its shares.

Divisions are business names owned by a corporation. A division specialises in some product or service offered by the company that owns the business name. A corporation using a registered business name is doing business as that name, hence the term DBA (Doing Business As).

An affiliate is a corporation which is owned by more that one entity which do not individually own more that 50% each.

Propaganda

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on April 14, 2008
in News Media
. 0 Comments

“Four hostile newspapers, are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.” Napoleon Bonaparte to his generals.

Propaganda may be defined as the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist.

I’ve been reading about propaganda lately. A reviewer correctly observed that one book about the evils of propaganda stated that only conservatives engage in it, and they are always “wrong.” This was a rather comical bit of propaganda in a book warning about the dangers of propaganda. Many of the books I read contained this type of nonsense.

Today, a friend brought a National Post column to my attention. It is about a Wikipedia editor using the popular service as a platform for propaganda. The article alleges that, “By patrolling Wikipedia pages and ensuring that her spin reigns supreme over all climate change pages, she has made of Wikipedia a propaganda vehicle for global warming alarmists. But unlike government propaganda, its source is not self-evident.”

Be careful out there, and don’t believe everything you read.

CI and Industrial Espionage

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on February 11, 2008
in Competitive Intelligence, Industrial Espionage and News Media
. 2 Comments

In an article entitled, Cyberterrorism, Inc., we see the usual link between CI and industrial espionage as if the two are the same. Creating a link between the two is the work of feeble minds.

To gain an advantage over competitors, many corporations are hiring ex-military and government agents trained in the art of intelligence gathering techniques, according to a report from the SANS Institute, a Washington-based cybersecurity training organization.

These individuals are used to head new company divisions whose mission is to spy on competitors and obtain intelligence. Companies spend over US$2 billion annually to spy on each other, according to the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals.

In 1999, North American companies lost more than US$45 billion to theft of trade secrets and other valuable corporate data, according to the SANS report. “Today’s total losses are anyone’s guess,” the report continued.

CI is the act of creating Intelligence from open source data. Industrial espionage, on the other hand, usually involves the commission of criminal offences. I suspose the distinction is too complex for so-called journalists.

UK Newspaper Searches

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on January 16, 2008
in News Media and Search Engines
. 0 Comments

Chipwrapper is a Custom Google Search Engine that searches across the UK’s major national newspapers. For an excellent review of this visit Karen Blakeman’s Blog.

Weird Propaganda

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on April 17, 2007
in News Media
. 0 Comments

We monitor a wide variety of media outlets for clients. Some of these outlets are state owned propaganda outlets, some are simply moronic. Here’s an example of the nonsense we have to read and pass along to clients.

American radio icon Don Imus disgraced, fired after threat to reveal 9/11 secrets
13.04.2007 Source: URL: http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/89728-Don_Imus-0

Covert Surveillance

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on February 16, 2007
in Courts, Legislation, News Media, Privacy and Surveillance
. 0 Comments

Hidden devices set up in the local arena, municipal building and firehall in small Ontario community

The Globe and Mail reports that the small rural Ontario municipality of Highlands East, in the Haliburton area, had installed cameras in several facilities. The article described the device thusly:

“The camera was powered up and broadcasting both audio and video, it was set up so anybody within about 300 feet who had that type of receiver could watch in there and listen with impunity.”

I think somebody in Highlands East should read Part VI of the Canadian Criminal Code. If this device captured audio then it might be considered a listening device used to illegally intercept private communications.

The Internet, Poor Security, and a Smart Crook

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on September 25, 2006
in News Media
. 0 Comments

Smart Crook finds operator’s manual for an ATM machine on the Internet. Crook gets prepaid & untraceable debit card.

The Smart Crook finds an ATM still using the manufacturer’s default password. He then reprograms it to think it is handing out $5 bills not $20 bills. The Smart Crook takes his extra money and leaves. Nine days later, some honest person reports that she got too much money from the machine.

CNN reports the crime, now a lot of Not-So-Smart Crooks know how to do this.