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Between November 2022 and May this year, thieves broke into a number of vehicles and government buildings in Olympic National Park, Washington. Amongst the items stolen were thousands of dollars worth of National Park Service laptops and radios, as well as personal items belonging to visitors to the area. The latter included a pair of Apple AirPods, the location tracking features of which proved to be useful to law enforcement, according to a National Park Service investigation.
In early May, the AirPods owner locked the headphones and was soon alerted when they reported back a precise GPS location, according to a search warrant reviewed by Forbes. That location matched with a sighting of a vehicle used by the suspected perpetrators–two individuals who had been previously interviewed by park rangers after they were seen with gas canisters that looked similar to those stolen from the National Park Service, according to the warrant. Lacking any further evidence, no arrests were made at the time.
But a week later, the AirPods owner informed the cops that the headphones had moved to a street in Port Angeles, Washington. It was another match: the suspects previously told officers they were planning to store some of their camping equipment at an address on that street after leaving the park.
Neither suspect has been charged, but the case shows how a little-known location tracking feature in Apple’s AirPods can be used to find a suspect and, potentially, incriminate them. In recent years, Apple’s Find My iPhone and Airtag technologies have proven helpful to police monitoring the movements of suspects. With many tech manufacturers making GPS-enabled products, all can now expect their tools to be put to use by cops looking into bigger cases than a missing pair of headphones.
The Big Story
On Facebook, DHS Investigates Plot To Enslave Female Prisoners
The DHS says 89,000 pages of Facebook data on a 66-year-old user show he heavily relied on the social network to target vulnerable women for enforced domestic servitude, theft, babysitting and sex work.
Stories You Have To Read Today
A global cyberattack launched by the Clop ransomware crew has claimed numerous victims, from U.S. government agencies to big names like the BBC and British Airways. The hacks targeted the MOVEit file transfer software and the DHS is so concerned about the attacks that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is now coordinating a cross-government response. The U.S. government is also offering $10 million to anyone who comes forward with information on the hackers.
Early June slowdowns and outages of Microsoft Outlook and OneDrive were due to distributed of denial of service attacks, the tech giant confirmed. Some researchers have claimed the attacks were carried out by a Russian group.
Winner Of The Week
Kashmir Hill, writer for the New York Times, is releasing a book due out in September looking at the rise of facial recognition and one of its biggest purveyors, Clearview AI. It’s now open for preorders and its covers are out, Hill announced on Twitter. It should be a great, if anxiety-inducing, late summer read.
Loser Of The Week
The Defense Department’s Secret Service equivalent, the U.S. Army Protective Services Battalion, is using social media surveillance technology to look out for any negative sentiment towards Pentagon personnel, The Intercept reported. While protecting the safety of staff is understandable, keeping them safe from “embarrassment” is, perhaps, less so.
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