Tag Archives: crime

City Crime Incident Map – every city should have one!

I found this link of the local Kitsap area newspaper (  ) to an on-line Crime Map!    Very interesting tool to see just how bad crime is in the local area.  You can bring up all incidents in a date range, or create a sub-selection of specific crimes.

Crime Incident Map

The reports made by officers do not reflect actual criminal convictions, only the initial report taken at the scene by a law enforcement officer. Some incidents, such as suicides and rapes, aren’t published in adherence to the Kitsap Sun’s policies of what is published in the newspaper and on kitsapsun.com.

Westsoundguide.com‘s criminal incident map is made up of reports taken by law enforcement officers from the Bainbridge Island Police Department, Bremerton Police Department, Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office, Port Orchard Police Department, and Poulsbo Police Department.

This seems like a really great tool for Real Estate.  Wonder if that awesome house you found for a great price, is so cheap because it’s in the middle drive-by-city?  Now you can, at least for some Norhtwest citys do just that.  LINK:  Bremerton Area Crime Map

Narcotics Activity – May 2009

Assaults – Map 2009

I applaud the paper for putting together this information.  Every locality should be required by law to produce this sort of useful map + police blotter data mining.

Congrats US NAVY – Rescue of Captain Phillips.

Congratulation to the US NAVY for the sucessful rescue of the hostage, Captain Phillips.  With 3 of the 4 pirates killed and the 4th in custody, it seems that it was a very successful operation.  News still seems to be streaming in and accounts vary slightly by source.

MSNBC – ‘Captain was in imminent danger’

MOMBASA, Kenya – U.S. Navy snipers opened fire and killed three pirates holding an American captain at gunpoint, delivering the skipper unharmed and ending a five-day high-seas hostage drama on Easter Sunday.

Reuters –  ‘U.S. NAVY rescues captain, kills Somali pirates.

MOGADISHU (Reuters) – The U.S. Navy shot dead three Somali pirates and rescued cargo ship captain Richard Phillips on Sunday from a lifeboat off the coast of Somalia where he was being held captive, ending a five-day standoff.

[…]

“The on-scene commander took it as the captain was in imminent danger and then made that decision (to kill the pirates) and he had the authorities to make that decision and he had seconds to make that decision.”

President Barack Obama granted the Pentagon’s request for standing authority to use appropriate force to save the life of the captain, Gortney said.

Washington Post — ‘U.S. Captain Rescued From Pirates by U.S. NAVY SEALs

Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 12, 2009; 6:39 PM

Mombasa, Kenya, April 12 — An American captain being held by Somali pirates was freed unharmed Sunday in an operation carried out by U.S. Navy SEALs, U.S. military officials said. Three of the pirates were killed and the fourth was captured.

The captain, Richard Phillips, who had been held in a lifeboat adrift in the Indian Ocean since Wednesday, was initially taken aboard the Norfolk, Va.-based guided missile destroyer USS Bainbridge. He was later flown to the USS Boxer, where he received medical attention and phoned his family. The operation took place at 7:19 p.m. local time, the Navy said.

Bottom line is that our new President exhibited some stones, ordered the rescue and let the NAVY do what it needed to do, to make that happen.   Credit is due to all in this situation, including the President.  Why it took 10 days to put the operation together, or for the order to be made, I have to wonder.  But, it’s still great news!

The first US flagged ship comendered in 200 years and it was quickly returend to crew control, the the pirated/terrorists where dispatched.  No money paid.  This is message to the rest of the panzy nations worldwide that help to make piracy a viable business model.   GET WITH THE PROGRAM!   KILL THEM, DON’T PAY THEM!

A parent’s terror – attempted kidnapping at Pike Place Market

Monday morning, a visit to the Pike Place Market was one of many highlights for visiting family from California.  My sister and her two girls joined myself and my two kids, along with our mother for a tour of Seattle.    One of the places we spent quite some time, was at the Pike Place Fish Market (home of the flying fish) watching salmon, crabs and carp being tossed back and forth for packing.

We arrived at the market at 10:00AM. While trying to purchase a parking sticker, a fight broke out less than 20′ feet away between two homeless people. Both of which seemed less than mentally efficient. When one of them started reaching into their jacket I shuttled the rest of the family up the hill, while I looked for a parking sticker dispenser in another location. This is the first time in years that I wish I’d had my firearm on myself.

Being ‘early‘ for the hippy-type vendors, most of the outdoor vendors were still arriving, and the market was not overtly busy, but still more crowded than I’m used, after spending 8 years living on the penninsula.   My son, age 6, is a pretty energetic and very independent, so he likes to try to go and check things out on his own.  It’s a full-time job keeping tabs on him, especially in crowds.

If I had known that right at the same time we were at the Fish market counter, with our 4 kids, I would have left immediately.   Another family from California, almost lost a child to a kidnapper at exactly the same time.  The child was only 1 year younger than my own!    I’m so glad this was did not happen to us, and thankful the pervert did not make it all the way to the bathroom with the boy before being foiled by the mother.

Just after 11 a.m., the boy’s mother stopped to remove a small rock that had become lodged in a cast on her foot, according to Seattle police. Her husband turned to help her and when they looked up, the couple discovered the youngest of their three children was no longer with them.

The family searched for the boy in the crowded market. The mother spotted her child being led away by a man, about 40 feet from where she was, police said. She called to her son and ran to him, with her husband and two other children, ages 6 and 7, close behind.

After watching a follow-up news cast this morning, I recalled that we actually encountered this individual while the Seattle Police where arresting them. It seemed odd at the time that there were so many Seattle PD at the market to handle this old man. Bicycle cops, patrol units and some sort of special ‘NCI TEAM’ members. He was in handcuffs and I thought little more of it at the time.

I’ll have to talk to my son today about this and try to make it clear why he just can’t take off without supervision, especially in crowds. He’s 6 and thinks he knows everything. Being a parent is by far the hardest job I’ve ever had.

Conficker – has the chaos started? (it’s April 1 in Melbourne)

UPDATED:

I recently received a link to the this analysis of the crime-ware.  Pretty sophisticated!!!  The Conficker Cabal is busy trying to measure it’s function and effectivness.  If you have the time, and the stomach for a tech article, I suggest you read this!

SRI International – Techncial Report on Conficker C

— MY PREVIOUS COMMENTS —

Wow, I can’t believe I can still access the web?!?!   It’s already April 1st in Australia (right now :  Melbourne *Wed 4:50 AM)    and the entire internet has not collapsed!

I’m trying my best to act shocked but…   I’m not a trained actor.   Maybe a few hours into April 1st is too early to call it but..  frankly..   I stand by my first post on this..   much ado about NOTHING!

For entertainment factor, here are some more alarmist articles on the ‘threat’

Conficker Worm: Hoax or Genious? — OS News

Companies encouraged to take threat seriously — SC Magazine UK

Conficker Worm: April Fools joke or ? —  NY Times Blog

Conficker – jolt or joke

The Conficker threat, is this another Y2K?

There seems to be no lack of technology press on this piece of crime-code, that is set to go off on April 1st.  The largest concern is that nobody seems to know what the Command-and-Control (C&C) computers will instruct the infected systems to do on April 1.

For myself, and the company I work for, we are safe for the technical exploit, since we do not run MicroSoft systems, and non-MS systems by all indications are perfectly safe from becoming part of the botnet.

Conficker is a program that is spread by exploiting several weaknesses in Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Various versions of the software have spread widely around the globe since October, mostly outside the United States because there are more computers overseas running unpatched, pirated Windows. (The program does not infect Macintosh or Linux-based computers.)

New York Times Technology article

The speculation is that the bots will try to access a pool of 50,000 different domains (something we can determine by examining the code) looking for it’s C&C.   The problem is that defensivly registering the 50,000 domain names is something that nobody seems to want to, or capable of doing.

Other crimeware uses similar technolgy to look for different C&C systems based on a predictable algorythm, this is nothing new or groundbreaking.  The size of the pool is by far the largest I have heard of, so that is new.

There are likely man different ways that the nentire network can be thwarted, if the registrars, backbone providers and ISP’s all co-operate (fat chance) to null-route any of the 50,000 domains that might be registered and directed to the C&C systems.     That alone makes me think this is much ado about nothing.

Should people running computers infected with Windows ignore this potential threat.  Obviously they need to take the possiblity their computer is infected, VERY seriously.  If they are unable to switch to a operating system without so many security issues, then they should at least make sure their computer is not exploited.

Later today I will compile a list of reliable links to instructions/software for mitigation the threat on your own computer.  As far as the massivly parallel monster system this botnet might become on April 1st…well..   we won’t have to wait long to find out if this is a boy craying wolf, or the real thing.

Massive Chinese cyber espionage network discovered

Researchers in Toronto released a report this weekend, regarding the discovery of a massive cyber-espionage and data theft network that appears to have 3 of it’s 4 Command-and-Control (C&C) located in China.

Vast Spy System Loots Computers in 103 Countries
By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: March 28, 2009

TORONTO — A vast electronic spying operation has infiltrated computers and has stolen documents from hundreds of government and private offices around the world, including those of the Dalai Lama, Canadian researchers have concluded.

Link to full New York Times article

Details of the exploit vector are exactly spelled out in the article, but it would appear that this software infection of computers capable of monitoring email and other traffic.  By description, it sounds like the malware/trojan/crimeware employs a network sniffer to watch traffic I/O on the infected machine, sending interesting data back to one (or more) of the C&C systems.  The researchers also indicated that they stumbled upon some of this by accident, and there could be other capabilities of the network not yet exposed.

I plan to look into this further to see what types of systems have been infected.