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Using Google Maps To Intercept FBI and Secret Service Calls
An anonymous reader sends in a story about a network engineer named Bryan Seely, who was tired of seeing fake listings and spam on Google Maps. He contacted the company and tried to convince them to fix their system, but didn't have much luck. Afterward, he thought of an effective demonstration. He put up fake listings for the FBI and the Secret Service with phone numbers that sent the calls to him. When people called, he forwarded them to the actual agencies while he listened in. After recording a couple of calls for proof, he went to a local Secret Service office to explain the problem:
"After that, Seely says, he got patted down, read his Miranda rights, and put in an interrogation room. Email correspondence with the Secret Service indicates that the special agent in charge called him a 'hero' for bringing this major security flaw to light. They let him go after a few hours. Seely says the fake federal listings, which were both ranked second every time I checked Google Maps, were up for four days. He took them down himself when the Secret Service asked."
The Secret Service agent I spoke with was interested, but let me know why he couldn't justify further investigation. Without a clear abused victim with a clear monetary damage of at least $30,000, he couldn't justify obtaining the necessary necessary agency time to get the warrants to track the spammers and the fraud. So I learned a hard lesson: getting the specific criminal act of large enough damage to *justify* prosecutorial interest is key. It's why so many low scale spammers and fraudsters continue so long: they operate under the radar of police or FBI or Secret Service wire fraud thresholds.
On the other hand... had that spammer tried to sell *one* bootleg copy of a movie...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
With all the laws we have now the idea of a "law abiding citizen" is a fantasy. Everyone has broken some law.