Keystroke Logger Faces Federal Wiretap Charges

securitas writes "In what prosecutors say is the first case of its kind, a former insurance claims manager was indicted on federal wiretapping charges for allegedly installing a keystroke logger on another employee's computer. The device was secretly installed 'on a PC used by a secretary to senior executives at Bristol West Insurance Group.' Reuters reports that the man, who had been fired, was gathering information for a class action lawsuit against his former employer. SecurityFocus interviews would-be keystroke logger user Larry Lee Ropp who reportedly installed the KEYKatcher device on the PC."

Comments

Just slightly OT

[The-Bus]

From http://www.keykatcher.com/testimonials/index.html

"I must thank you for this great invention. Early this year, I discovered my 14-year-old daughter was on the ICQ with a person with a name of "P****". I was shocked and did not know what to do. I then e-mailed the editor of Parent and Child and they reccommended me to do a search on the internet. I was very fortunate to have purchased a KEYKatcher. The ability to read my daughter's e-mail has helped us to make the right decision about the school she would attend last September..."

I mean, is there any useful use for this device at all?

Re:Just slightly OT

[REBloomfield]

we actually use something similar in the school i work at. Students are monitored by the logger, if it finds a word or phrase in our database, then a screenshot is sent to us, and we can then watch the student in real time over VNC.

eg. student types in http://192.168.0.1/admin then we know about it (ficticious example: idea is that the kid is going somewhere he shouldn't).

Re:Just slightly OT

[Liselle]

I can't think of anything that's terribly legal. I knew there was a reason I never do anything important on publically-accessible terminals. I guess it's a nice device to own if you're a bad parent with a tinfoil hat.

The question in the back of my mind on this article though: what would they have done if it was a software keylogger, instead of a hardware one? Do the wiretap laws still apply in the same capacity? I understand from TFA that the fact that it logged emails made him a target for it.

Re:Just slightly OT

[Chess_the_cat]

I mean, is there any useful use for this device at all?

Definitely. If you're a writer of some kind, install a KeyKatcher and you've got an instant backup of everything you've written. If your word processor crashes, no problem; fire up KeyKatcher and cut and paste everything you've lost. Beautiful stuff.

Re:Just slightly OT

[Mose250]

Not really - what's the difference between this and just having a teacher walk around and glance over the kids' shoulders? The fact that VNC is used instead of a pair of eyes? Computers in schools have never been a place for completely anonymous internet access.

Re:Just slightly OT

[orthogonal]

I can't think of anything that's terribly legal

Well, there are very few cases, but... I installed a (software) key logger on my own box in order to get the raw data needed to figure out my personal letter frequency in typing -- the standard English frequency wouldn't apply, as I do a lot of C and C++ coding. (How often do you see semi-colons, let alone curly braces, in standard English writing?)

A nice side benefit is that I could review the key log -- to see if anyone else had been using my computer.

Re:Just slightly OT

[Cr3d3nd0]

As a matter of fact I just found a maybe not so much legal, as a justifiable use for a keylogger. My girfriend lives at home with her mom, 6 year old brother, and her mom's boyfriend. Being the geek I am I took the time to help clean their system of spyware and the like when I ran into a few child pornography pictures in the recycle bin. Seeing as they have a 6 year old child living there I wanted to keep an eye on their system to find out where the pictures had come from. Sure enough three days later I got a log in the email of the boyfriend chatting with a young child online. I informed the mother, and the police and now the asshole is up on child porn charges. Obviously they couldn't use the keylog information but the fact that the pictures were on there was enough.

Re:Just slightly OT

[Huogo]

I've found that booting to a Knoppix CD, then connecting to a proxy on my webserver through an SSH tunnel is a very good way to avoid being monitored. NetOp (basically VNC) won't work, VNC won't work, watching my history won't work, and the server logs won't work. All the data is encrypted, with nothing running client side to monitor me. Only way is for someone to look over my shoulder.

Re:Just slightly OT

[maximilln]

If you're relying on a keystroke logger to clue you in to children who have problems with any of these issues then let it go. You're already too late.

If parents and mentors were even close to taking responsibility for their children they'd pick up on these issues long before a keylogger alerts them to it.

Ode to a generation that is completely self-absorbed until the last possible moment when "DANGER WILL ROBINSON" is blaring over loudspeakers.

Re:Just slightly OT

[elmegil]

You've never had to deal with rule breakers, have you? It's not a matter of "playing God" in most cases, it's a matter of making sure that the rules are adhered to. If all you do is sit back and repeat the rules, and are only able to do anything about the most flagrant rulebreakers, all you end up doing is pushing the real troublesome ones underground. Policies should not only say "you agree to be monitored" but also what you can do if you think you've been mistreated, and provide real relief if you are.

As a former university sysadmin, there were times when we would find out someone was breaking the rules, but to enforce them we had to have real evidence. This involved surveillance, usually electronic/email. We then made our case to the dean of students, and if they agreed that the rules were broken, punishment was handed out. The student always had the ability to appeal to higher authorities if they thought they'd been mistreated or the punishment was too harsh. Enough checks and balances that it was never abused; we didn't snoop on students who had not done anything to arouse suspicion, and I can't recall any cases where we went to any great depths investigating anyone who wasn't found to be guilty of enough of an infraction to justify our time.

That said, I think continuous keystroke logging is excessive and likely more prone to abuse, but still, there is NOT any absolute guarantee of privacy, even if I'm using my own equipment. That's why the FBI can go to a judge and get permission to wiretap a suspect (let's leave aside the fact that I believe that PATRIOT has gutted a lot of the appropriate checks and balances in this system). The other side of that is that you can't just wiretap someone because you want to, and getting back OT, that's what happened here. Regardless of how noble the cause, the means was illegal.

Federal wiretapping charges?

[pinkUZI]

When is the last time you remember hearing about an indictment for actual wiretapping? Doesn't it seem like people get away with wiretapping regularly? I'm thinking about things like the illegally recorded phone conversations with Monica Lewinsky. Or does the law specify exemption if it is done for a good cause?

I've used a keyboard logger

[spidergoat2]

We had a consultant (former employee) work at a branch office. The owner said to keep an eye on them. I want to the branch office and told every employee that I was installing a keyboard logger and why. When the consultant (former employee) logged on, they had no idea they were being tracked. I discovered they had a back door account and were logging into a supervisor account. Good or bad, I discovered the holes in my system.

thinkgeek disclaimer?

[circletimessquare]

so when is the disclaimer going up at thinkgeek?

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/5a05/

disclaimer: please do not buy this product and use it for what you think you were going to use it for, thank you... same with that x10 camera you were thinking about too, while we're at it

My keylogger experience

[kwandar]

I was working for the President of a company who seemed to have information about others that left me wondering. So, I ran a program, (I believe it was Spycop), to scan for anything nefarious on my computer. Nothing found, fortunately.

However I shared this program with a colleague and she ran it and found a keylogger that would send emails from her company laptop, to a blind email account. He apparently had a thing for her roomate, a former employee, and was using this to spy.

My colleague was shocked that this would happen, but as it appeared to have been non-functional for a while due to internet login issues, she didn't say anything, and I told her what to delete to kill the program from running.

That way, any deletion of the software could at least appear to be accidental.

Re:Does this contradict the Scarfo case?

[_LORAX_]

Yes,

For those that don't know...

In New York federal investigators used a search warrant to physically alter Scarfo's computer to install a hardware keyboard logger so that they could retrieve his pgp passwords This search warrant was a sneek and peek. They then went back in a month and took the computer on another search warrant.

At no time did they have a wiretap warrant, they claimed that they didn't need one. This case seems like they are contradicting themselves in several ways. By prosecuting this grey hat, they may be giving Scarfo grounds for an appeal of his conviction based on the fact that the evidence was tainted.

The reason this is important is that the requirements are more stringent for a wiretap warrant then for a search warrant, if they had had proper evidence they would have use it to get a wiretap, but they didn't.