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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."
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?
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
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?
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This is why you should always check your keyboard cable on your work-PC.
Not only does it keep you secure, but you might score a brand-new keylogger for free.
According to this politech posting by bernieS, it appears that the feds are going to be doing a little bit of double backing.
It raises an important question, I think: are keyloggers wiretapping devices? They don't involve telecommunications lines directly, so can they be considered in the same class?
Some food for thought.
While his heart may have been in the right place, it sounds like he went to far. Once the class action suits started, once the state of Calif. started investigating, there was very little need for his cloak and dagger actions. The courts could have done the work. If he felt that they were tampering with evidence, destroying evidence, or not providing everything the courts demanded he could have come forward. In my view, he put his own neck on the line in a wreckless way.
He was collecting the names of all the insurance company's clients... So uh... so he could notify them of their ability to join the class action lawsuit!
He was... he was helping the government investigate a corrupt company, yeah! He was James Bond! Saving the innocent from themselves!
Yeah... he had no intention whatsoever of joining a competing company and stealing the client list.
Good. It is not the decision for just any man to make, on when to invade someones privacy. (Most) Laws exist for a reason. This man broke one. Hopefully he'll spend some time in jail.
Read all about it here.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
The EU convention on cybercrime, which is law in most (all?) EU countries since 2000 prohibits the interception of private electronic communications. A key logger would certainly fall into this category.
However, there have been very few convictions under these laws, only a couple of "hacking" cases in the UK afaiaa.
It's not only about domestic/workplace espionage. Spyware vendors (a species that rates somewhere between slimemolds and spammers) use similar techniques to spy on and report back on people's use of their computer.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
....He got busted when he call the company to get the device back!
Not the smartest thing to do. He deservse whatever he gets.
I think I think, therefore I think I am.
They were to apply federal wiretapping laws to spyware? If an unauthorized piece of software transmits information about my activities to a third party without my knowledge... that sounds like wiretapping to me.
I better go with a wireless keyboard! That'll stop people from capturing my keystrokes!
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.
I have to agree that this sort of behaviour is absolutely inevitable in nowadays everyday life. In the past it was called "social control" where small communities monitored each other's behaviour to see if somebody wasn't stepping out of line. If they would, due psychological force could be executed to get them in line again ("gossip"). Now this practice has mainly gone away simply because there are less and less small communities, and thus we need to monitor other people by different means. Ofcourse, in due time virtual communities will take over the "social control" thing in a comparable way, but it's not there yet.
In the meantime, we shall have to rely on the usual methods of camera's, microphones, keyloggers and traitors. I think we can learn a lot from former Soviet-Russia and sortlike countries that have executed this behaviour in great practical ways...
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
And how exactly does running xlock prevent anyone from putting hardware in between keyboard and PC?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
As adults, they may be presented with similar policies. Only this time, they have the "choice" of consenting or losing their job.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
So we've got this guy working for an insurance company who decides to inform the Dept. of Insurance that they are cancelling policies unlawfully. This is a good thing and brave of him to do it. Hopefully his motivations were purely good and not just because he was pissed he didn't get a raise last year or something.
And let's face it, insurance companies are the some of the worst kinds of organizations in corporate America. They collect huge sums of money via premiums - that are based in people's fear that something terrible could happen. And then as soon as you need them (you have an accident, someone in your family gets ill, etc.), they immediately initate every effort to not pay you in your time of need. I know it's how they do business, but it's a disgrace. I have experienced this first hand more than once ...
Back to the story, the guy then plants a keystroke logger on a secretary's PC in order to collect further info for his crusade and to aid lawyers in a class action suit against his company. He obviously crossed a line here. And in the middle of this, he finds himself fired (curious). So he asks a former co-worker to retrieve the logger for him? And of course being a good insurance company employee, she rats him out.
I applaud his intentions, if they were indeed based in fairness and the public good. He did get carried away for sure by planting the bug. But I can't believe the stupidity of (1) admitting he planted it to a former co-worker and (2) expecting her to help him retrieve it and f--k the company she still worked for. I guess he really was a bit of a dreamer ...
Why do I get the impression that this article specifically avoids mentioning software keyloggers? Whether or not they're currently illegal under the law shouldn't they be?
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Aint that a bitch.
I was just thinking last year how stupid these insurance companies were for always sending cancellation notice as opposed to a bill. (I live in Michigan.) So when I actually get a cancellation notice I don't know if its simply a bill, or an actual cancellation notice.
I have never received a bill from an insurance company, only cancellation notices, and I've been with at least 5 different ones. What more info is needed? we know they do this.
For those who didnt RTFA, Ropp was trying to get the list of people who they pulled this fast one on, from the companies password protected (DMCA anyone?) database.
More power to you Ropp. If the government mandates one must buy something, that thing should be heavily regulated by the government. racket.
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.
From now on, I'm only doing text input with charmap!
Sure it may be a little slower, but hey, I'm paid by the hour!
Life is too short to proofread.
Should keylogging a co-worked be illegal? Yes (though if it is done by your employer and you signed consent then no, just like phone monitoring ... free will works both ways).
... VNC not included :).
... idiots), their credit card # (amazon), or their root password. Keylogging is far more invasive.
Should keylogging be considered wiretapping? NO. It is a distinctly different technology and all lumping things together does is make it easier to confuse the issue the next time someone wants a warrant to do something -similar-.
Keylogging, network interception and a whole host of other things are still quite different from basic phone taps. They should be given a distinct category that can be properly defined.
If anything, the expectation of privacy on the line between your computer and your keyboard is MUCH higher than any expectation people have today for phones (when was the last time you started typing and realized someone else was typing on your computer as well
Plus, you can't expect that by listening in on a phone you are going to regularly hear someone's social security # (my bank uses it for my login id
In the end I think the guy should be penalized more than wiretapping, but not -as- a wiretapper.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
By obviously not reading the article first ...
*DrugCheese rants*
All of this is a far cry from using electronic spy tools to secretly monitor the children's activities. What kind of message does it send to the kids? "Be good! Because if you don't, we are always watching. No matter where you go, we are watching!" Is that really the lesson we want to teach the children? Be good, not for the sake of being a good person, but for the sake of not getting caught.
And that is the difference between appropriate supervision and eletronic surveillance. With the former, the goal is to teach the children, mold them by example and through good leadership, and let the keep their individuality and allow them to experiment within appropriate bounds. With the latter, its simply trying to keep kids away from things which *could* be bad for them.
In short, if a school thinks it needs to install this kind of electronic monitoring system, I think it is indicative of a lack of appropriate supervision and/or quality teachers.
My kids' teacher should know what my child is doing (approximately) without resorting to spying.
Taft
First off, see if your employer doesn't want you getting any information about the program. They might try to prevent this by blocking access to the si... oh, wait...
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
Seems like the feds are contradicting themselves (I guess that's not a huge surprise). In the Scarfo case, the FBI claimed they didn't need a wiretap approval to put a keystroke logger on Scarfo's computer because they were only monitoring internal communications between the keyboard and the computer. Thus it wasn't a wiretap.
Now the government is prosecuting someone for doing the exact same thing. Has anyone else noticed this contradiction, or am I missing some important distinction?
I also run a keylogger on each of my employees' computers. It's a great way to get free new porn passwords.
"As always, if you are killed or captured the secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions. This tape will self-distruct in five seconds" (Tape bursts into flames.)
I recently got fired from an electronics engineering company in the town of Pullman, WA. I feel like I was treated unfairly, in that I was fired because I agreed to an electronic use policy that stated that the computer I used and anything send from it was able to be monitored. About 11 months ago, I broke up with my girlfriend. I really loved the girl, and hoped to clear up misunderstandings that led to the breakup. However, as these things go, sometimes the prettiest of comments are not said to one another. She said some things I don't think any person should hear. Sadly, and I'm not proud of it at all, I said some things back (of course wanting to uphold my pride, not really thinking that at the time I was only shooting myself in the foot, not only with what little was left of our relationship, but the fact that I was doing it from a company computer). About 3 weeks ago, my hard drive failed. I called our IS department, who came out to deliver a new drive. I erased the old one after I had transfered my files off it. Shortly therafter, they came to pick it up, saying they didn't want it to get into circulation again since it was damaged. Someone must have been thouroughly bored and decided to start a little investigation of my personal data by reconstructing what was on the drive. (Although I deleted files, I didn't reformat...my bad). Shortly after dropping off the old drive, I was told I was fired, because the company had viewed conversations to my ex that were automatically logged by MSN messenger. I'm still quite perterbed that they pulled this out almost a year after it happened. Also, the point was brought up...what gives them the right to monitor a computer, whether they own it or not, when they certainly can't do that with a phone?! How much of our lives are to remain ours, and private when we go to work? The reason they gave was that it put the "company's servers at risk". Hmm. Okay. Obviosuly not that much if nothing has happened, and it's been a year. I wrote the owner of the company, who I greatly respected, who handed it back to the HR department, who verified that they would not re-hire me, despite my personal life issues that led me to do this. On one hand, I see their point in not re-hiring, in that if you do it for one, you give grounds to have to do it for all. From another though, does this stink a little of improper HR and IT practices to anyone but me? -J