Mediaboss Marketing

Ashwathi Krishnan, a 23-year-old fashion designer, was introduced to Hello, Orkut Buyukkokten's second social networking venture, through a few friends over drinks on a weekend in May.

Soon enough, she found herself spending over 20 minutes a day on the app, trying out different personalities from Bollywood to music and science fiction trivia.

It's nice because it's very specific to particular interests and you can keep changing those interests to discover new things and different people, said Krishnan. I think once the user base in India picks up, I would probably be able to form an online fashion community on Hello, whom I could even interact with offline.

Within two weeks of the platform's beta launch in India, Hello has nearly 10,000 app users in the country.

Users can choose from a host of personas such as photographer, beer lover, runner, artist, cat owner and selfie lover. The most common ones are traveller, foodie, cat lover, dog lover and coffee lover, said Buyukkokten in a video interaction with ET.

Users can also create communities, join one or simply browse through trending communities on the app. To measure and increase user engagement, the app has a fair amount of gamification.

This includes karma points, where each heart on a post adds to a milestone bar. Users can also buy and spend virtual Hello coins to post anonymously , besides finding hidden personality tests.

Various social networking sites including Orkut, hi5.com, Bharatstudent.com and Myspace have floundered in the past decade as Facebook emerged as a social media giant. According to Buyukkokten, however, while Facebook acts as a digital directory to all the people you have met in life - schoolmates, neighbours, relatives- Hello aims to serve a different purpose.

Our topology goes beyond the broadcast model and takes into account not just your friends and people you follow, but also your interests, location and personality , said Buyukkokten.Connecting and pursuing our passions are two fundamental human needs and Hello fosters connections around passions.

In India, the response has been great, he said. We are looking to add chai lovers besides the existing ones we have, which are Bollywood fan, spiritualist persona and cricket fan, and will also launch in Hindi during the coming months.

Shortly after Buyukkokten left Google in March 2014 - Orkut was shuttered in September that year - he began working on Hello with a team of 15 people who are based out of San Francisco and Mountain View, California. Google is one of the main investors in Hello.

The app, which targets users largely in the 18-30 age group, launched in Brazil last year and the beta version is available in England, Canada, France, Spain, Australia and Ireland.

We are looking at international markets first and not the US at the moment. We are seeing very high engagement. The number of minutes people spend on the app on an average in a month is 300-400 minutes. That's higher than Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat; many platforms except Facebook, said Buyukkokten.

In India, 80% of the users are Android users and about 20% are on Apple's iOS. The app, which launched in September 2016, has more than 300,000 users globally, a majority of them in Brazil. The South American country was the largest market for the Orkut social network as well, followed by India.

According to Anand Lunia, partner at India Quotient and an investor in Indian social networking app ShareChat, there is room for newer social networking apps although the chances of them flourishing are unlikely to be higher than 1%.

Read more here:
Orkut Buyukkokten: Orkut Buyukkokten's social networking venture ... - ETtech.com

The Sixth Circuit Appeals Court is the latest to weigh in on cell site location info. It joins every other circuit that has handled the issue in deciding the gathering of cellphone GPS data by law enforcement is not a search under the Fourth Amendment.

This decision [PDF] isn't too surprising considering the court reached the same conclusion last year in a similar case. The difference between the two is the latest case deals with real-time collection of GPS data, rather than historical GPS records. But that's the only difference. The Appeals Court believes the same holds true for real-time location info, although it cites something other than 1979's Smith v. Maryland in its analysis.

[T]he district court heldand we affirm, holding that the governments detection of Montai Rileys whereabouts in this case, which included tracking Rileys real-time GPS location data for approximately seven hours preceding his arrest, did not amount to a Fourth Amendment search under our precedent in United States v. Skinner, 690 F.3d 772, 781 (6th Cir. 2012). The government used Rileys GPS location data to learn that Riley was hiding out at the Airport Inn in Memphis, Tennesseebut only after inquiring of the front-desk clerk did the government ascertain Rileys specific room number in order to arrest him. The GPS tracking thus provided no greater insight into Rileys whereabouts than what Riley exposed to public view as he traveled along public thoroughfares, id. at 774, to the hotel lobby. Therefore, under Skinner, Riley has no reasonable expectation of privacy against such tracking, and the district court properly denied Rileys motion to suppress evidence found upon Rileys arrest.

While tracking a robbery suspect, law enforcement obtained an order demanding AT&T hand over location data as soon as it was collected.

The court order compelled disclosure of call metadata such as inbound and outbound phone numbers and cell-site location (CSL) data, as well as real-time tracking or pinging of the latitude and longitude coordinates of Rileys phone. Specifically, the order required AT&T to disclose the following, potentially for two months, until August 26, 2015:

16. Precision location of mobile device (GPS Location) such that service provider shall initiate a signal to determine the location of the subjects mobile device on the service providers network or with such other reference points as may be reasonable [sic] available and a [sic] such intervals and times as directed by State Task Force Investigators and Deputy Marshals of the United States Marshal Service.

The court goes on to note that the location records submitted as evidence do not show whether this collection of info was triggered by AT&T or by the cellphone's owner.

No evidence of record indicates whether Rileys phone automatically transmitted its GPS coordinates to AT&T (and if so, whether on a continuous basis or otherwise) or whether AT&T affirmatively sent a signal to Rileys phone to cause it to send AT&T its GPS coordinates.

This should have been a warning flag. It's one thing to collect this info as it comes in. If AT&T is pinging the phone to generate GPS coordinates, AT&T is essentially performing a search on behalf of the government. That should make a difference in this case, as it shifts it from being about a collection of third-party records to an affirmative gathering of records by the government, using AT&T as a third-party stand-in to work around warrant requirements. (Not that case law is settled for GPS tracking, but still)

But it doesn't. The court goes on to say it doesn't matter because the records were gathered by a third party and they all dealt with the movement of an individual in a public area (the motel where he was arrested). That's why the court cites the Skinner decision, rather than relying exclusively on Smith v. Maryland.

In Skinner, we held that location data emitted by a voluntarily procured cell phone could not be subject to a reasonable expectation of privacy, even if the cell-phone user had no reason to expect that the government would compel the service provider to disclose those data. Id. at 779. There, because the defendants movements could have been observed by any member of the public, ibid., we held that it could not possibly be a Fourth Amendment violation for law-enforcement officers to monitor those movements by using cell-phone location data just because such electronic monitoring was more efficient than relying on visual surveillance alone.

But it then goes on to reach a conclusion which seems to contradict the evidence provided.

Using seven hours of GPS location data to determine an individuals location (or a cell phones location), so long as the tracking does not reveal movements within the home (or hotel room), does not cross the sacred threshold of the home, and thus cannot amount to a Fourth Amendment search. After all, the tracking in Knotts revealed the location of the cabin to which the criminal suspects had traveledbut the tracking in Knotts was not a search because it revealed no information about the interior of the cabin itself. Likewise here, the tracking revealed only that Riley had traveled to the Airport Inn, not which room (if any) the phone was in at the time of the tracking.

The lack of location info particularity should have worked against the government's argument. The court even admits in a footnote the government had no idea where exactly the suspect was located -- only a general idea that he was likely in a publicly-accessible building.

When viewed on a map, the majority of these coordinates are scattered within the perimeter of the Airport Inn, but with insufficient precisioneven if the Airport Inn were only one story tallto reveal which room, if any, the phone was in at the time of each ping.

So, it could be argued the government did track the suspect's "movements within a hotel room," which would put this back in Fourth Amendment territory. But the court never attempts to reconcile these contradictory statements and instead continues to use both the motel's accessibility and the coarse location info as an argument against potential Fourth Amendment violations.

That Riley was arrested in a motel is of no moment, for the government learned no more about Rileys whereabouts from tracking his cell-phone GPS data than what Riley exposed to public view by traveling to the motel lobby along public thoroughfares, Skinner, 690 F.3d at 774even if Riley meant to keep his location a secret, one cannot expect privacy in ones public movements.

Certainly the arrest was "no moment," but the tracking that occurred once he was inside the building should have been given more consideration. The fact that law enforcement can obtain real-time location tracking information definitely needs to be examined more closely, especially when there's ample evidence law enforcement has effectively backdated orders like these to cover up use of more intrusive technology like Stingray devices.

More here:
Sixth Circuit Appeals Court Latest To Say Real-Time Cellphone Location Tracking Not A Fourth Amendment Issue - Techdirt

In a split decision in United States v. Delva, No. 15-cr-683 (Kearse, Winter, Jacobs), the Second Circuit held that the Fourth Amendment allowed law enforcement officers to seize cell phones and a number of letters that were in plain view in the room of a suspects home where he was interviewed immediately after an arrest. The majority opinion, written by Judge Kearse, relied on the exigent circumstances doctrine to hold that it was reasonable under the circumstances to hold an interview in the suspects home, which allowed the officers to seize incriminating evidence that was in plain view without obtaining a search warrant. Although the majority opinion is careful to recognize that the exigent circumstances exception requires a case-by-case analysis, the decision extends the infrequently applied exigent circumstances doctrine to a new set of facts. The decision drew a dissent from Judge Jacobs, who objected to the majoritys reliance on the exigent circumstances doctrine when the government had not raised it in the trial or appellate court, thus denying the defendant any chance to respond to this somewhat novel analysis offered by the Court.

The case arose out of a brutal drug-related double kidnapping, robbery, and assault committed in 2012 in the Bronx. The panel opinion begins with a recitation of the gory facts, which involved a violent home invasion robbery followed by a second kidnapping, all in a search for drug money. The resulting investigation led law enforcement officers to a small, three-room apartment with an arrest warrant for Gregory Accilienbut no search warrant. When the police arrived, Accilien was in the apartment along with defendant David Delva, who was not yet a suspect in the kidnapping/robbery, as well as two other men, a woman, and several children. After entering the apartment, the police moved the woman and children to the living room, handcuffed three of the men in the kitchen, and handcuffed Delva on the floor of the bedroom. While securing Delva and checking the bedroom for additional people, the officers spotted a bag of cocaine and a loaded gun through an open closet door. They seized the gun and the drugs and moved Delva to the kitchen. It took the officers less than two minutes to secure the apartment.

While Accilien was put under arrest for the kidnapping, the officers testified that they did not know who was responsible for the guns and the drugs found in the bedroom, which contained both a bed and an air mattress. The officers took Accilien into the bedroomthe only empty room other than the bathroomto question him. Accilien said that the gun and the drugs were Delvas, and Delva was arrested and charged under state law. However, while they were in the bedroom questioning Accilien, one of the officers observed two cell phones, one on the TV and one on the bed, and several letters addressed to Accilien from an individual who was already under arrest for the kidnapping. The letters implicated Delva in the kidnapping, and he was rearrested on federal charges several months later.

The primary question on appeal was whether the district court (Forrest, J.) erred in denying the motion to suppress the phones and the letters. There was little dispute that the items were in plain view, so, under well-established case law, the officers could seize the phones and letters so long as the officers were lawfully in the bedroom when they spotted them. The Second Circuit began by rejecting the reasoning of the district court, holding that the phone and the letters were not seized as part of a protective sweep of the apartment. The Second Circuit found that the district court erred by treating the phone and letters, which the officers saw in plain view during the interview of Accilien, just like the gun and the drugs, which they saw in plain view while securing Delva and the bedroom. While the officers behaved reasonably to ensure their safety by conducting a protective sweep, handcuffing Delva, and checking that the bedroom was otherwise empty, they did not see the phone or the letters on this first trip to the bedroom during this protective sweep. It was only when the officers re-entered the bedroom, after the apartment had been secured, that the additional evidence was found. At that point, additional searches could not be justified by the officers concern for their safety.

Rather than reverse the decision of the district court and remand the case, the majority instead identified a different doctrine that supported the constitutionality of the search: the exigent circumstances exception. The Court held that this doctrine justified the officers presence in the bedroom when they saw the cell phones and letters. This rationale had not been raised by the government at the trial court or circuit court level. The classic exigent circumstances case involves a situation in which the police must enter a private area to prevent the destruction of evidence or a suspects flight. But the majority extended the doctrines reach to these facts, noting that reasonableness is always the touchstone of Fourth Amendment analysis. The Court cited to its prior decisions considering whether warrantless conduct was permitted. E.g., United States v. MacDonald, 916 F.2d 766, 769 (2d Cir. 1990) (en banc). The majority found that it was reasonable for the officers to take Accilien into the bedroom to interview him because (1) they did not know who to arrest for possession of the drugs and the cellphone, (2) Accilien might have been intimidated from speaking freely in the presence of the others, and (3) besides the bathroom, the bedroom was the only empty room in the apartment with a door. The case cited by the panel involving the most analogous facts to those in Delva was an unpublished decision from the Sixth Circuit. See United States v. Ocean, 564 F. Appx 765, 771 (6th Cir. 2014).

Judge Jacobs dissented from the Fourth Amendment analysis, and would have remanded the case to the district judge to consider the exigent circumstances exception, the application of which is a fact-dependent question. He observed that because the government had never raised that exception, either before the trial court or on appeal, Delva had no opportunity to respond, either on the facts or the law. Moreover, Judge Jacobs said that [i]t is not as though there would have been nothing for Delvas counsel to say, noting that no published opinion from any circuit court has ever applied the exigent circumstances doctrine to similar facts.

In a brief final section of the opinion, the majority rejected Delvas remaining arguments. It held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in allowing one of the victims to testify about her rape, even though Delva was not charged with rape, because it formed a part of the story line that explained how the crime progressed. The Court also found no abuse of discretion in the removal of a juror who had failed to disclose arrests and convictions at voir dire and during later questioning. Finally, the Court rejected Delvas challenge to his sentence which, at 360 months, was below the Guidelines range of life plus five years.

The Court of Appeals was evidently troubled by the district courts ruling on the protective sweep doctrine, believing that the district court expanded the doctrine beyond the very specific type of situation it was meant to address: a warrantless seizure of evidence that is seen in plain view while the police officers are conducting a necessary safety procedure during an arrest. Where the officers have secured the premises and are taking second-order investigative steps, the protective sweep doctrine no longer applies. By deciding the appeal on alternate grounds, the Court of Appeals was able to avoid remanding this case, involving very serious allegations, for a new trial. However, this result came at the cost of a broadened interpretation of the exigent circumstances doctrine. Given the fact-specific nature of the Courts decision and the Courts emphasis on reasonableness as the touchstone of Fourth Amendment analysis, it leaves open the possibility of limiting the reach of Delva in future cases. Finally, although the majority seems to have believed that no additional fact-finding or briefing was necessary, litigants are rightly disturbed to lose on an issue that they never had the opportunity to brief or argue. In light of this, litigants will probably hope that this procedure continues to be the exception and not the rule.

Read more:
Exigent Circumstances Under the Fourth Amendment May Extend to the Need to Interview an Arrestee in Place - Lexology (registration)

A federal contractor was arrested over the weekend and accused of leaking a classified report containing "Top Secret level" information on Russian hacking efforts during the 2016 presidential election.

Reality Leigh Winner, 25, appeared in U.S. District Court in Augusta, Ga., to face one charge of removing classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet, theJustice Department said Monday.

Winner's arrest was announced shortly after the Intercept website published a story detailing how Russian hackers attacked at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent so-called "spear-phishing" emails to more than 100 local election officials at the end of October or beginning of November.

The Justice Department did not specify that Winner was being charged in connection with the Intercept's report. However, the site noted that the National Security Agency (NSA) report cited in its story was dated May 5 of this year. An affidavit supporting Winner's arrest also said that the report was dated "on or about" May 5.

The Intercept contacted the NSA and the national intelligence director's office about the document and both agencies asked that it not be published. U.S. intelligence officials then asked The Intercept to redact certain sections. The Intercept said some material was withheld at U.S. intelligence agencies' request because it wasn't "clearly in the public interest."

The report said Russian military intelligence "executed cyber espionage operations against a named U.S. company in August 2016 evidently to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions, according to information that became available in April 2017."

The hackers are believed to have then used data from that operation to create a new email account to launch a spear-phishing campaign targeting U.S. local government organizations, the document said. "Lastly, the actors send test emails to two non-existent accounts ostensibly associated with absentee balloting, presumably with the purpose of creating those accounts to mimic legitimate services."

The document did not name any state.

The information in the leaked document seems to go further than the U.S. intelligence agencies' January assessment of the hacking that occurred.

The Washington Examiner reported that Winner worked forPluribus International Corporation and was assigned to a U.S. government facility in Georgia. She had held a top-secret classified security clearance since being hired this past February. The affidavit sworn by FBI agent Justin Garrick said that she had previously served in the Air Force and held a top-secret security clearance.

Late Monday, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange tweeted his support for Winner.

Winner's attorney, Titus Thomas Nichols, declined to confirm whether she is accused of leaking the NSA report received by The Intercept. He also declined to name the federal agency for which Winner worked.

"My client has no (criminal) history, so it's not as if she has a pattern of having done anything like this before," Nichols told the Associated Press in a phone interview Monday. "She is a very good person. All this craziness has happened all of a sudden."

Garrick said in his affidavit that the government was notified of the leaked report by the news outlet that received it. He said the agency that housed the report determined only six employees had made physical copies. Winner was one of them. Garrick said investigators found Winner had exchanged email with the news outlet using her work computer.

Garrick's affidavit said he interviewed Winner at her home Saturday and she "admitted intentionally identifying and printing the classified intelligence reporting at issue" and mailing it to the news outlet.

Asked if Winner had confessed, Nichols said, "If there is a confession, the government has not shown it to me."

House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, praised the arrest in an appearance on Fox News' "The Story with Martha MacCallum."

"When you have classified information, you cannot put that out there just because you think it would be a good idea," Chaffetz said. "I want people in handcuffs and I want to see people behind bars."

Chaffetz also criticized federal agencies for failing to protect sensitive information after a series of high-profile leaks.

"They have hundreds of thousands of people that have security clearances," Chaffetz said. "There are supposed to be safeguards in there ...But how many times do we have to see this story happen? They obviously dont have the safeguards."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

See the article here:
NSA contractor accused of leaking top secret report on ...

CNN is told by sources that the document Winner allegedly leaked is the same one used as the basis for the article published Monday by The Intercept, detailing a classified National Security Agency memo. The NSA report, dated May 5, provides details of a 2016 Russian military intelligence cyberattack on a US voting software supplier, though there is no evidence that any votes were affected by the hack.

US intelligence officials tell CNN that the information has not changed the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, which found: "Russian intelligence obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple US state or local electoral boards. DHS assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying."

Prosecutors say when confronted with the allegations, Winner admitted to intentionally leaking the classified document -- and she was arrested June 3 in Augusta, Georgia.

An internal audit revealed Winner was one of six people who printed the document, but the only one who had email contact with the news outlet, according to the complaint. It further states that the intelligence agency was subsequently contacted by the news outlet on May 30 regarding an upcoming story, saying it was in possession of what appeared to be a classified document.

The Intercept's director of communications Vivian Siu told CNN the document was provided anonymously.

"As we reported in the story, the NSA document was provided to us anonymously. The Intercept has no knowledge of the identity of the source," Siu said.

"Releasing classified material without authorization threatens our nation's security and undermines public faith in government. People who are trusted with classified information and pledge to protect it must be held accountable when they violate that obligation," Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in a statement Monday.

Winner faces up to 10 years in prison for leaking classified information. Winner's court-appointed attorney, Titus Nichols, said a detention hearing will take place on Thursday in Augusta, where the judge will determine whether to release her on bond. Winner did not enter a plea in her initial appearance Monday.

Last month Attorney General Jeff Sessions slammed leaks in the wake of the Manchester attacks, saying: "We have already initiated appropriate steps to address these rampant leaks that undermine our national security."

Winner's mother said that her daughter is "touch and go" in an interview with CNN on Monday.

"I think she's trying to be brave for me," Billie Winner said. "I don't think she's seeing a light at the end of the tunnel."

She also said her daughter wasn't especially political and had not ever praised past leakers like Edward Snowden, to her knowledge. "She's never ever given me any kind of indication that she was in favor of that at all," her mother said. "I don't know how to explain it."

Nichols told CNN that Winner spent six years in the military, speaks Farsi and Pashtun, and has been with her current company since 2017. He added that he has not received any evidence from the government about the arrest warrant and case files, and hasn't seen evidence of a relationship between his client and the reporter.

"She's just been caught in the middle of something bigger than her," Nichols said.

Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, the former Democratic vice presidential candidate, said on CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" that people who leak classified information should face the full force of the law, but added that Americans need to know much more about alleged Russian attempts to influence the election.

"Somebody who leaks documents against laws has got to suffer the consequences" Kaine said. "But the American public is also entitled to know the degree to which Russia invaded the election to take the election away from American voters."

Kaine noted he knew of no evidence that showed Russia affected machine voting totals and said he was referring to intelligence assessments that Russia had acted to influence the election.

The October information appears to be part of what is contained in the new NSA document, but the document contains additional details.

Most significantly, as CNN reported at the time, and The Intercept also reports Monday based on the this document, that there is still no evidence any votes were affected by Russian hacking.

CNN's David Shortell and Nick Valencia contributed to this report.

See the article here:
Contractor charged with leaking classified NSA info on ...