According to washingtonpost the man who called himself “Mo” had dark hair, a foreign accent and if the pictures he e-mailed to federal investigators could be believed — an Iranian military uniform. When he made a series of threats to detonate bombs at universities and airports across a wide swath of the United States last year, police had to scramble every time.
Mo remained elusive for months, communicating via e-mail, video chat and an Internet-based phone service without revealing his true identity or location, court documents show. So with no house to search or telephone to tap, investigators turned to a new kind of surveillance tool delivered over the Internet.
The FBI’s elite hacker team designed a piece of malicious software that was to be delivered secretly when Mo signed on to his Yahoo e-mail account, from any computer anywhere in the world, according to the documents.
Mo even sent the FBI pictures of himself fashionably decked out in an Iranian military uniform.
The FBI, frustrated in its attempts to track him down, used special software that would install itself in Mo’s computer when he opened his e-mail. It was designed specifically to help agents track his location and his movements.But the software never worked as designed, the paper said, and Mo remains at large.
The feds had gotten permission to install the software from a Denver judge. The agency tried to use it on at least one other probe, but a Houston judge described the method as “extremely intrusive’’ and probably unconstitutional and shot it down.
The FBI has had the capability to sneak into computers’ Web cams for several years, a former employee of the agency told the Washington Post.
It was not clear how many times it tried to do it, but the paper’s source said the FBI has used its tool mainly in terrorism and the “most serious’’ investigations. The technology is highly controversial.
Mo remained elusive for months, communicating via e-mail, video chat and an Internet-based phone service without revealing his true identity or location, court documents show. So with no house to search or telephone to tap, investigators turned to a new kind of surveillance tool delivered over the Internet.
The FBI’s elite hacker team designed a piece of malicious software that was to be delivered secretly when Mo signed on to his Yahoo e-mail account, from any computer anywhere in the world, according to the documents.
Mo even sent the FBI pictures of himself fashionably decked out in an Iranian military uniform.
The FBI, frustrated in its attempts to track him down, used special software that would install itself in Mo’s computer when he opened his e-mail. It was designed specifically to help agents track his location and his movements.But the software never worked as designed, the paper said, and Mo remains at large.
The feds had gotten permission to install the software from a Denver judge. The agency tried to use it on at least one other probe, but a Houston judge described the method as “extremely intrusive’’ and probably unconstitutional and shot it down.
The FBI has had the capability to sneak into computers’ Web cams for several years, a former employee of the agency told the Washington Post.
It was not clear how many times it tried to do it, but the paper’s source said the FBI has used its tool mainly in terrorism and the “most serious’’ investigations. The technology is highly controversial.
No comments:
Post a Comment