Ultrasaur Blog

Keeping track of exciting new threats to your digital records.

Posts Tagged ‘police’

Wait, what’s a typewriter?

Friday, July 17th, 2009

When we demo, usually one of the first things I say is “You have digital records” because almost every organization is moving towards having more and more of their content in document management systems of some stripe.

But it’s always interesting to read about the tiny fraction that aren’t, like New York Police Department, which still spends a third of a million dollars every year on typewriters.

Most of the city’s arrest forms have been computerized, but property and evidence vouchers printed on carbon-paper forms still require the use of typewriters.

…officials are working on software that would eliminate the need for the typewriters.

FBI seizes 50 servers

Saturday, April 4th, 2009

This is somewhat breaking news, but apparently the FBI has seized the servers of 50 companies because they were hosted in the same building as a company suspected of leaking an unreleased movie.

“[Owner of Core IP Networks, Matthew] Simpson claims nearly 50 businesses are without access to their email and data. Some of those clients provide internet services to car dealers and other companies.”

It appears that primarily web sites and email were affected this time, but it might be setting a dangerous precedent from our perspective: If you keep backups of your records offsite, the FBI may take them at any time if they think some entity also using that site is involved with movie piracy.

Aside: Remember our pitch, we never make copies of your records, if the FBI takes our servers all they can do is verify your files if you give them to them.

Update from CBS 11 News in Dallas:

CBS 11 News has uncovered new information about FBI raids against Dallas companies that provide web servers for dozens of businesses in North Texas and across the country.

Court documents show it’s all part of an alleged massive fraud scheme against AT&T and Verizon.

Court records show Verizon first went to the FBI this past January, alleging some North Texas web server providers were cheating them and AT&T out of millions of dollars.

SWAT Record Keeping

Friday, February 6th, 2009

According to Radly Balko, apparently SWAT Teams keep poor records:

“In cases where a raid resulted in no charges, the warrants are actually often thrown out. Of course, those are the very cases we want to know about.”

It seems strange that organizations with guns (he’s refering to armed raids) are held to laxer records keeping standards than businesses.