Cops are handing out spyware to parents – with zero oversight
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Barely a few days after a government crackdown on a spyware manufacturer, comes the startling revelation that law enforcement agencies have been purchasing commercial spyware themselves and handing it out to the public for free.
Police departments around the country have been distributing thousands of free copies of spyware to parents to monitor their children’s activity, a fact that’s come to light in the wake of a federal indictment this week against the maker of one commercial spyware tool on wiretapping charges.
According to a report in wired.com, the tool being distributed by agencies, known as ComputerCOP, has been purchased in bulk by more than two hundred police departments in thirty-five states as well as by sheriff’s offices and district attorneys. It’s designed to search computers for files and videos based on a keyword dictionary that comes with the software and also can log every keystroke on a computer, sending some of that data – in an unsecured manner – to a server belonging to the company that makes the software.
But according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which examined the spyware and uncovered the arrangement with law enforcement agencies, the spyware works badly and there is nothing to prevent parents who receive it from using it against other adults.
Aside from the issue of police departments distributing spyware to the public, there are security issues with the product. According to EFF, the open-source keystroke logger records every keystroke made on the computer – either by specified users or by every user – and stores it on the computer. On Windows machines, it stores this data unencrypted. On machines using Mac operating systems, it encrypts the keylog files, but uses a default password to decrypt the file—a password (logKext) that is readily available for anyone to see in documentation available online for the open-source key logging tool.
By providing a free key logging program to the public, law enforcement agencies are “passing around what amounts to a spying tool that could easily be abused by people who want to snoop on spouses, roommates, or co-workers,” notes Dave Maas, an investigator with the EFF in his report about the software.
