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Hacker Breaches Securus, the Company That Helps Cops Track Phones Across the US (vice.com)

Securus, the company which tracks nearly any phone across the US for cops with minimal oversight, has been hacked, Motherboard reported Wednesday. From the report: The hacker has provided some of the stolen data to Motherboard, including usernames and poorly secured passwords for thousands of Securus' law enforcement customers. Although it's not clear how many of these customers are using Securus's phone geolocation service, the news still signals the incredibly lax security of a company that is granting law enforcement exceptional power to surveill individuals. "Location aggregators are -- from the point of view of adversarial intelligence agencies -- one of the juiciest hacking targets imaginable," Thomas Rid, a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University, told Motherboard in an online chat.

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  1. What the hell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But this latest data breach is not the only sign that Securus is careless with sensitive information. Rid pointed Motherboard to a Securus user manual available online. One part shows a map and user interface for a Securus product, but instead of populating the screen with fake data for demonstration purposes, the guide appears to include the real name, address, and phone number of a specific woman. (Motherboard confirmed the details with those in online databases, as well as a media report that mentions the woman).
    How stunningly incompetent