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The title is a bit clickbaity and misleading. The tech he used gave him information on his targets, which he then provided to a hacker. There are no details abo

The title is a bit clickbaity and misleading. The tech he used gave him information on his targets, which he then provided to a hacker. There are no details about what the hacker did, but he probably used social engineering and/or guessed passwords to gain access to the target Snapchat accounts. The law enforcement tech in question (Accurint) was not directly used in the hacks.

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superkuh 4y ago
>The law enforcement tech in question (Accurint) was not directly used in the hacks. Ah yes. It was just used to collect "meta-data" not accessible through legal means. Totally harmless.
- econonut 4y ago
  Did you read the article? Sounds to me like that "meta-data" is all accessible and the tool speeds up the process of collecting that data. I recall tools being posted to Hacker News that help a person find all social media accounts linked to a name. Doesn't sound too different. > Accurint, a product of data brokerage firm LexisNexis Risk Solutions, is advertised to law enforcement agencies as a tool that can quicken investigations and “discover non-obvious connections between people that might not otherwise be known.” Combining databases of public and non-public information, Accurint can provide detailed information about a person, including their phone numbers, relatives and associates, employers and social media profiles associated with their email account.
  - socialismisok 4y ago
    The cop was trained to use this tool, and likely would not have had the technical know how to achieve this on his own. The existence of similar tools doesn't reduce the abuse the officer committed.
    - econonut 4y ago
      And the comment thread were in is in reference to the title being clickbaity and misleading. And trained to use this tool? It doesn't take training to type a person's name into a textfield. Try going to Google and typing in a full name and city. Chances are you'll find the address, past addresses, phone numbers and roommates and family members. Probably not for yourself because most people on this site understand tech, but try it for some of your less tech/privacy aware friends.
      - socialismisok 4y ago
        "it's no different from Google" seems pretty factually wrong to me.
  - nickthegreek 4y ago
    I have access to Accurint through my work, it is one of the most powerful lookup services I have ever seen.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
socialismisok 4y ago
I don't think it's necessary to apply that distinction. The cop had these women's accounts hacked, he used a number of tools and connections to achieve that goal. One of the tools used was this piece of tech, but it was only a single link in the chain. Ultimately the story is "cop abuses access to tech to exploit women".
- luckylion 4y ago
  "Ex cop uses oil-refinery to run over woman".
  - socialismisok 4y ago
    Come on, that's reduction to an absurd degree. The cop used special access to technology directly to get the information on these women.
    - luckylion 4y ago
      Of course, it's meant to show the problem in that argument. It's all part of the chain. A more accurate headline could be "Ex cop paid hacker to hack women", but that doesn't sound quite as good. If there's a complete list of passwords for every citizen at Accurint and the hacker was just a middle man because the "ex cop" doesn't want to touch a computer but he gives them the username + password, then yes, he "used law enforcement tech to hack them". But it doesn't sound like that's what happened.
  - strix_varius 4y ago
    It's intuitively clear that your rebuttal is a poor one made in bad faith, but we might as well get into why: I could use an "oil-refinery" to run over someone. I have equal access to cars and gas stations to the police. However, I couldn't use Accurint as part of a chain of tools to extract explicit photos of someone. Access to Accurint is a privilege of the police. Without this person's abuse of the elevated societal privilege that police get, he wouldn't have been able to extort his victims. He'd still be a shitty person, with all the same motives and lack of morals, but without the power his police network gave him, he would have been impotent to achieve his goals.

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superkuh 4y ago

>The law enforcement tech in question (Accurint) was not directly used in the hacks. Ah yes. It was just used to collect "meta-data" not accessible through legal means. Totally harmless.

econonut 4y ago
Did you read the article? Sounds to me like that "meta-data" is all accessible and the tool speeds up the process of collecting that data. I recall tools being posted to Hacker News that help a person find all social media accounts linked to a name. Doesn't sound too different. > Accurint, a product of data brokerage firm LexisNexis Risk Solutions, is advertised to law enforcement agencies as a tool that can quicken investigations and “discover non-obvious connections between people that might not otherwise be known.” Combining databases of public and non-public information, Accurint can provide detailed information about a person, including their phone numbers, relatives and associates, employers and social media profiles associated with their email account.
- socialismisok 4y ago
  The cop was trained to use this tool, and likely would not have had the technical know how to achieve this on his own. The existence of similar tools doesn't reduce the abuse the officer committed.
  - econonut 4y ago
    And the comment thread were in is in reference to the title being clickbaity and misleading. And trained to use this tool? It doesn't take training to type a person's name into a textfield. Try going to Google and typing in a full name and city. Chances are you'll find the address, past addresses, phone numbers and roommates and family members. Probably not for yourself because most people on this site understand tech, but try it for some of your less tech/privacy aware friends.
    - socialismisok 4y ago
      "it's no different from Google" seems pretty factually wrong to me.
- nickthegreek 4y ago
  I have access to Accurint through my work, it is one of the most powerful lookup services I have ever seen.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

socialismisok 4y ago

I don't think it's necessary to apply that distinction. The cop had these women's accounts hacked, he used a number of tools and connections to achieve that goal. One of the tools used was this piece of tech, but it was only a single link in the chain. Ultimately the story is "cop abuses access to tech to exploit women".

luckylion 4y ago
"Ex cop uses oil-refinery to run over woman".
- socialismisok 4y ago
  Come on, that's reduction to an absurd degree. The cop used special access to technology directly to get the information on these women.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    Of course, it's meant to show the problem in that argument. It's all part of the chain. A more accurate headline could be "Ex cop paid hacker to hack women", but that doesn't sound quite as good. If there's a complete list of passwords for every citizen at Accurint and the hacker was just a middle man because the "ex cop" doesn't want to touch a computer but he gives them the username + password, then yes, he "used law enforcement tech to hack them". But it doesn't sound like that's what happened.
- strix_varius 4y ago
  It's intuitively clear that your rebuttal is a poor one made in bad faith, but we might as well get into why: I could use an "oil-refinery" to run over someone. I have equal access to cars and gas stations to the police. However, I couldn't use Accurint as part of a chain of tools to extract explicit photos of someone. Access to Accurint is a privilege of the police. Without this person's abuse of the elevated societal privilege that police get, he wouldn't have been able to extort his victims. He'd still be a shitty person, with all the same motives and lack of morals, but without the power his police network gave him, he would have been impotent to achieve his goals.