Undercover Agents Research Articles

Bed bugs, Cimex lectularius: Undercover agents in forensic investigations.

Insects have long played a role in forensic investigations and can be used to estimate minimum time since death, corpse translocation, and link an individual to a crime scene. Bed bugs (Cimex lectularius) are wingless ectoparasitic insects of potential forensic utility, given that all mobile life stages feed on vertebrate blood. Successful profiling of autosomal short tandem repeats (STRs) from human DNA isolated from bed bugs has been previously reported. This proof-of-concept study looked to expand this work and determine any possible limitations of using bed bugs for both rapid stain identification (RSID™) for human blood and Y-STR profiling. To achieve this, bed bugs were fed either human male only or human pooled (female:male) blood for 30 min and subsequently collected at 12-h intervals up to 108 h post-blood meal (PBM). RSID™ blood testing was successful from the bed bug carcass remaining after DNA isolation, regardless of blood meal type and time of collection PBM. Complete Y-STR profiles were generated from bed bugs <60 h PBM. As the time PBM increased, DNA quantity decreased, while the degradation index increased. Collection of bed bugs at a crime scene could provide a valuable source of human blood for Y STR profiling and be used to link an individual to a crime scene or for potential male suspect exclusion. Future studies should look to replicate the results of this proof-of-concept study with larger numbers of bed bugs, more diverse blood donors, and additional STR profiling kits.

An Obvious Plant: Craig Williamson’s Role in Sabotaging the Anti-Apartheid Struggle

This article examines the career of the South African undercover agent Craig Williamson in the 1970s and 1980s, arguing that the violent acts of men like Williamson must be analysed in terms of the broader strategic aims of the Security Police in the maintenance of apartheid. This means, first, that we must look beyond the smokescreen of Williamson’s notoriety and begin to see Williamson as he was – an operative, working alongside many others, within a vast repressive apparatus. Second, we must analyse the entirety of Williamson’s career and not only the crimes for which he is most infamous. Most of Williamson’s career was spent not as a murderer but as an undercover agent, sabotaging the anti-apartheid struggle through the control and misappropriation of movement funds and through subtle interventions at the ideological level. Williamson’s contributions to counter-insurgency strategy and organisational sabotage are significant in and of themselves and must be analysed by scholars. In this vein, this article offers a glimpse into the parallel and overlapping worlds of the African National Congress (ANC) underground in Botswana and Craig Williamson’s time in Geneva working undercover as the deputy director of the International University Exchange Fund (IUEF).

DOZWOLONE GRANICE TRANSAKCJI POZORNEJ

The article deals with a series of legal and practical issues pertinent to the use of controlled buy as well as of controlled delivery or giving a material or personal benefit. The author emphasizes possible irregularities which may occur while performing special operations that make use of such a complex and complicated investigative activity. Policemen and secret service agents must use extreme caution while evaluating the degree of reliability of information which is intended to become the factual base for implementing the institution referred to in art.19a of the Police Act and in other rules about competencies. In many cases courts of law disqualified the evidence obtained this way because of the lack of sufficient verification of the attribute of reliability of the information collected. In addition, the Author has joined the opinions presented in the literature on the subject which postulates de lege ferenda a possibility of implementing controlled delivery or accepting or giving a material or personal benefit for fighting criminality. While working on the text presented to the reader, the Author held unique conversations with undercover agents whose daily routine is special operations. The conclusions resulting therefrom have been placed in the article. Undoubtedly, they will contribute to better understanding of the institution of controlled buy and controlled “bribe”. The indicated element of this paper constitutes an added value to the output of the doctrine.

Analysis of the Cultural Causes of Undercover Images in Hong Kong Action Movies after the New Wave Movement

In the 1980s, the New Wave Movement opened up new space for Hong Kong cinema, providing opportunities for innovation and transformation of action films. Diversified action movies and characters tend to appear at this time. As a type of character with highly localized characteristics in Hong Kong, the complexity of undercover images helps people examine society from different perspectives. This paper reviews the development of undercover films in Hong Kong by selecting representative undercover films, and reveals that undercover is actually a reflection of the collective situation of social identity. Based on the concept of marginalized individuals, this paper finds through literature analysis and case analysis that the diverse types of undercover identities that emerged after the New Wave Movement not only reflect the survival dilemma of undercover agents themselves but also a true portrayal of the identity recognitions dilemma among Hong Kong people in the rapidly changing political and social trends.

Leo Marks’ “mental one-time pad”: an experimental cipher for British special operations in World War II

During World War II, Leo Marks designed ciphers for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). Tasked with ensuring that SOE undercover agents could encrypt radio transmissions from Nazi-occupied Europe to British headquarters, Marks introduced one-time pad ciphers with random keys printed on materials like paper and silk. However, carrying such materials was risky for agents. In an attempt to mitigate this risk, Marks experimented with a system he called the “Mental One-Time Pad” (MOP) cipher. Contrary to its name, the MOP cipher was not a genuine one-time pad system, but rather used double columnar transposition with memorized texts to create unique substitution keys. In this article, we’ll explore the design, vulnerabilities, and historical significance of the MOP cipher, and discuss potential improvements from US Army cryptographer William Friedman.

Prikriveni islednik i ugrožavanje osnovnih ljudskih prava i sloboda s akcentom na pravo na privatnost

Who are the undercover agents conducting "undercover investigations"? Can undercover agents go so far as to threaten basic human rights and freedoms? What is the attitude and practice of the European Court of Human Rights regarding the threat of basic human rights? What limits of legality should an undercover agent observe? These are, in short, the main coordinates within which this paper moves. Firstly, the engagement and activity of an undercover agent may be is seen as a "potential danger" when we talk about the violation and endangerment of the basic human rights and freedoms of members of a criminal group. The work also analyses the historical evolution of the undercover agents and focuses in particular on the national and international regulations that pertain to this activity. The paper also illustrates examples from the practice of the European Court of Human Rights and a current case of the British Tribunal for investigative powers.

Analysis of Legal Protection against Undercover Agents in the Investigation of Narcotics Crimes

Analysis of Legal Protection against Undercover Agents in the Investigation of Narcotics Crimes

Editorial – An overview on the “crisis” of testimonial evidence as a judicial decision making tool, between ECHR and Italian Criminal Proceeding:

We know that science is a precious ally for the judge in the search for truth. But we also know that every coin has its flipside. Science can in fact constitute a false ally for the judge, dangerously channeling the process towards judicial error. The matter is well known. Criminal justice now draws heavily on the results of science, but has to deal with its overt fallibility. Often the process becomes the place where experts and consultants reveal the gaps in those same disciplines that should instead correctly orientate the decisions of criminal judges. Therefore, the Criminal trial always needs witnesses. Especially witnesses against the accused, of course. However testimonial evidence as a fundamental judicial decision making tool is in crisis today. A crisis that has come about as a result of the downsizing of the right of the accused to effectively cross-examine the witnesses testifying against him (or her), thereby reducing the chances for the judge to perceive the witness's story in the best possible way. Hence the risk of significantly lowering the quality standard of criminal sentences. The crisis of testimony in the criminal trial can be attributed to two factors. The first reason. The multiplication of protected witnesses on the trial scene. Figures who, as a sort of counterpart for their contribution to the assessment, require high, constant and diversified levels of protection: "fragile" and vulnerable people, minors, the mentally ill, witnesses of justice, or "anonymous" witnesses" (undercover agents). As we can see, as a rule, we are dealing with persons who usually testify against the accused. At the level of European and Italian law and jurisprudence the trend is clear. The needs of protection for these categories of witnesses result in a reduction in the number of hearings, and therefore the opportunities for dialectical confrontation between the accused and the witness. The may also result in the push to "personalization" of the methods used for that confrontation, by adapting it to the protection needs to be met. In some cases those forms of protection could be used to get more genuine information from the witness, but we also cannot underestimate the opposite risk of obtaining qualitatively less reliable statements: because they might too conditioned by those protection needs, precluding the defender of the accused the possibility of deepening some controversial points. The second reason. At the national and European political level, the idea now prevails that the speed of Criminal justice is the primary instrument by which to calibrate the standard of reliability and solidity of an economically advanced State. This mainstream perspective is the fruit of an exasperated and erroneous conception of the principle of the reasonable duration of the trial (Art. 6 par. 1 ECHR and Art. 111 par. 2 Italian Constitution). The time factor is now an absolute, apical and absorbing value in the Criminal trial, which seems capable of negatively impacting the quality of the witness evidence as well: we refer, in particular, to the recent so-called Cartabia Reform of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure, where a weakening of the fundamental principle of immediacy is clearly perceptible. That is, the judge attending the construction of the oral evidence and the judge who must adopt the judgment must be the same. When the trial judge changes, the idea is that immediacy can be easily replaced by technology (the audiovisual recording of the testimony before the first judge and subsequent viewing of the recording by the new judge).

Assessment of Post Stroke Dementia in a Sizable, Well-Defined Stroke Cohort

Introduction: In a sizable, clearly delineated stroke cohort, researchers aimed to investigate the clinical causes of post stroke dementia. Dementia after a stroke occurs frequently, and dementia danger after stroke is elevated. We still don't fully understand the stroke-related lifestyle factors for dementia. The purpose of our current research remained to discover pathological conditions that separate demented from no demented people in the great well-distinct stroke cohort Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted with a total of 349 of 498 successive diagnosed patients with a diagnosis aged 58 to 87 years who underwent a thorough neurophysiological testing battery and MRI three months after the onset of the condition. The DSM-III dementia description remained applied. This battery included structured medical, neurological, also laboratory assessments; medical mental position examinations; undercover agent interviews; a comprehensive background of lifestyle factors. Results: When mixed Alzheimer's illness and vascular dementia were excluded, frequency of post-stroke dementia was 32.9 percent (112/349), stroke-related dementia was 29.5 percent (92/349), and dementia following a first stroke was 29.8 percent (82/279). Dysphasia ([OR], 6.7), main dominant stroke disorder (OR, 6.1), past of previous cerebrovascular illness (OR, 3.1), and low educational level were correlates of dementia in logistic regression investigation (OR, 2.2). The order of correlates persisted identical once researchers eliminated individuals having vascular disease and Alzheimer's illness or individuals having recurring stroke. When patients through dysphasia were excluded, main leading disorder (OR, 5.7) and a low level of education emerged as the strongly correlated (OR, 2.2). Conclusion: Our findings indicate that the single clarification for post stroke dementia remains insufficient, but that the danger is instead influenced by a number of variables, such as injury features, host characteristics, and prior cerebrovascular disease. Keywords: Dementia, stroke, medical Causes.

Undercover Investigator in Legislation of the United States and the United Kingdom

In this day and age, one of the specific ways of responding to organized crime is covert operations which, as a measure of an undercover investigation, are a very important form of legal and criminalistic actions. The most efficient tactic of covert operations is deploying an undercover investigator. The success of undercover agent missions is reliant on meticulous planning of every stage of the investigation, in this way the actions of undercover agents can prevent the future criminal activity of suspects and members of criminal organizations. The research subject of this paper encompasses the criminal procedure analysis of an undercover investigator in the legislation of the United States of America and the United Kingdom. This paper aims to compare the legal framework of commissioning an undercover investigator in two compatible legal systems to identify the elements that differentiate between these models and the legal solution in the Republic of Serbia. In the conclusion, we highlight the advantages and disadvantages of the observed differences.

Carmela Curto: The Story of One Italian Immigrant, the History of Millions

Carmela Curto: The Story of One Italian Immigrant, the History of Millions

El agente encubierto y su especialidad informática: reto legislativo pendiente en un escenario digitalizado (análisis de la figura en el Anteproyecto de Ley Enjuiciamiento Criminal)

The figure of the undercover agent in LO 5/1999 was a great advance in the investigation of crime and its incorporation by the Spanish legislator was belated. However, in the almost two decades that have passed, the advances in technology and its use by the criminal world made it clear that the classic undercover agent had to specialise in order to make use of the various information and communication technologies. This figure is introduced into the Spanish criminal procedural system by Organic Law 13/2015, and has allowed the development of undercover computer investigations, which are very necessary in current forms of criminality. However, the gaps and shortcomings of this figure are evident, in its practical application, partly due to the fragmented and scarce regulation of it in the LO 13/2015. There are numerous issues that remain uncovered by the legislator. The Preliminary Draft of the LECrim of 2020 develops a much broader casuistry, with different levels of activity of the undercover computer agent (entry into closed communication channels with a false identity; exchange of illicit files and analysis of algorithms and, finally, capture and recording of images even in the home) and their corresponding judicial authorisations. These questions and others, such as the delimitation of the agent provocateur, are also dealt with in the jurisprudential analysis, which has been completing the doubts and problems generated by the classic undercover agent and the computer agent.

Death of The Limited License to Data: United States v. Van Buren

The United States Supreme Court has normally viewed data as property. Yet in United States v. Van Buren, the Court abandoned the property law angle. Van Buren included examination of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act’s applicability to a police officer who accepted a bribe from undercover agents to look up a phony license plate. The Court held that under the CFAA someone only “exceeds authorized access” when they properly access a computer and then improperly access files “that are off limits to [them].” This Case Note explores why the Supreme Court should not have abandoned the property analogy to data. The Court is wrong because it has effectively destroyed the limited license to data. Further, the Court’s analysis of the underlying technology leaves several questions unanswered for companies seeking to protect their data and employees looking to comply with the CFAA. For instance, users may have different levels of authorized access such as “Read” or “Write” permissions. But the Court merely approached data with an on/off false dichotomy. Van Buren ignores the nuance of data authority in the modern age.

Adversarial Patrolling in a Uniform

Many of us will have seen uniformed guards patrolling in museums, airports, and other places where thefts or attacks are possible. In other similar places, we may have been unaware of undercover agents carrying out similar patrols. The latter type of patrollers has been modeled in recent literature. However, when the patroller is visible (wears a uniform), the potential thief or terrorist may be able to spot him when he is nearby and to time his theft appropriately. For example, the thief may wait a specified time after the uniformed patroller leaves his area. In “The Uniformed Patroller Game,” Steve Alpern, Paul Chleboun, Stamatios Katsikas, and Kyle Y. Lin study the effect on the patrolling game of having a visible (uniformed) patroller. It turns out that putting a uniform on the patroller greatly reduces his effectiveness in intercepting thefts or attacks. Of course, the visibility of a uniform may act as a deterrent to having the theft take place at all.

Undercover Agents of Infection: The Stealth Strategies of T4SS-Equipped Bacterial Pathogens.

Intracellular bacterial pathogens establish their replicative niches within membrane-encompassed compartments, called vacuoles. A subset of these bacteria uses a nanochannel called the type 4 secretion system (T4SS) to inject effector proteins that subvert the host cell machinery and drive the biogenesis of these compartments. These bacteria have also developed sophisticated ways of altering the innate immune sensing and response of their host cells, which allow them to cause long-lasting infections and chronic diseases. This review covers the mechanisms employed by intravacuolar pathogens to escape innate immune sensing and how Type 4-secreted bacterial effectors manipulate host cell mechanisms to allow the persistence of bacteria.

Sonic masquerading in Israeli popular music: self-Imitation, accent, and mockery

ABSTRACT The Mistaʿarvim are Jewish undercover agents who masquerade as Arabs in order to infiltrate Palestinian and other Arab societies in the service of the Israeli military. The first Mistaʿarvim unit, which served in the pre-1948 Palmach Zionist militia, was based on Jews of Arab origin. Arabs in appearance and in speech, these undercover Jewish agents masqueraded as Arabs to blend into Arab communities without raising suspicion. They successfully executed their operations only by transforming their Arab selves into a performative imitation of ‘Arabs’ as Others. Complying with the Zionist binary separation between ‘Arabs’ and ‘Jews’ as two different identities, they broke their originally hyphenated Jewish-Arab identity, and in return they gained heroic acceptance into the exclusively Jewish nation in Israel. In this article, we examine how the military-oriented tactic of histaʿarvut (the infinitive form of acting as Mistaʿarvim) sheds light on performative acts in the field of popular music, whereby a Jewish Israeli identity is asserted through a ‘masked’ performance of Arabs. As an act of self-imitation, ‘cultural histaʿarvut’ includes symbolic borrowing of visual, linguistic, or musical elements from Arab and Palestinian cultures in order to stage a masked performance that ‘crosses’ the cultural lines to ridicule or demean Arabs and their culture, as a means of Jewish Israeli entertainment. Drawing on this, we introduce the term ‘sonic masquerading’ to elaborate on the specific performative uses of the Arabic accent and musical features as an example of cultural histaʿarvut in the work of the Israeli musicians Shefita, Daniel Saʿadon, and Tuna.

Terrorist Financing via Money Transfer Systems

Abstract With the rise of the Islamic State and the corresponding war in Syria, which has caused an international refugee crisis, the combat of terrorism has, again, become a major goal for European authorities. One popular approach to the combat of terrorism is to interrupt the funding of terrorist organisations. Whereas other studies have focused mainly on the implementation of prevention measures, this study investigates terrorist financing methods from the offender’s perspective with a focus on so-called money transfer systems to reveal weaknesses in the regulation of terrorist financing in general and money transfer systems in particular. For this purpose, qualitative interviews with 15 presumed providers of illegal financial services and 15 European compliance experts were conducted. This paper has implications for law enforcement, regulatory authorities, investigators and financial service providers. Innovative measures such as the use of electronic surveillance and expanding the jurisdiction of undercover agents are suggested.

Performing Exile as an Undercover Agent: The Spy Films of Lilli Palmer

Lilli Palmer’s personal and political status as a Jewish émigré informs her success as a stage and screen actress and later, as a novelist and painter. Like other Jewish émigrés to Britain and the United States, Palmer illustrates the creative opportunities many experienced in voluntary exile or as refugees escaping Nazi persecution. This essay focuses on Palmer’s espionage roles that plunge her into political and narrative jeopardy. Whether her characters are written into British or American productions, or whether they are subject to Nazi or Soviet terror, they occupy a liminal position that generalizes the gendered import of her roles. At the end of each of her spy films, her characters wait for the dubious promises of romance to be fulfilled; they are sacrificed for the Allied cause, reactivating the self-determining choice that first drove her to espionage. Even as Lilli Palmer’s spy thriller roles and performances developed over the course of her career, they continued to echo the cultural and political displacement she experienced.

Autonomous Intelligent POD for Military Purpose

At present, the surveillance of International border areas is a challenging task. The border guarding forces are patrolling the border seriously, but it is no longer viable to watch the border at each and every moment. A critical requirement of this state of affairs is a robot that robotically detects trespasser in the border and reports close by board security control unit. Many of the army departments now make use of robots to elevate out risky jobs that can't be executed by means of the soldiers. In this present work, a Raspbian working system-based undercover agent robot platform with far off monitoring and manage algorithm through the Internet of Things (IoT)has been developed which will save human lives, reduces manual error and protect us from enemies. The spy robotic device comprises the Raspberry Pi (small single-board computer), pi camera and sensors. The information regarding the detection of living objects with the aid of the PIR sensor is dispatched to the users thru the net server and pi digicam capture the moving object which is posted inner the webpage simultaneously. The consumer in the manipulate room in a position to access the robot with wheel drive control buttons on the webpage. The movement of a robotic is also controlled robotically via obstacle detecting sensors to avoiding collisions. This surveillance system using a spy robot can be custom-made for more than a few fields like industries, banks and shopping malls.

Linguistic analysis of suspected child sexual offenders’ interactions in a dark web image exchange chatroom

Child sexual offenders convene in dark web spaces to exchange indecent imagery, advice and support. In response, law enforcement agencies deploy undercover agents to pose as offenders online to gather intelligence on these offending communities. Currently, however, little is known about how offenders interact online, which raises significant questions around how undercover officers should ‘authentically’ portray the persona of a child sexual offender. This article presents the first linguistic description of authentic offender–offender interactions taking place on a dark web image exchange chatroom. Using move analysis, we analyse chatroom users’ rhetorical strategies. We then model the move sequences of different users and user types using Markov chains, to make comparisons between their linguistic behaviours. We find the predominant moves characterising this chatroom are Offering Indecent Images, Greetings, Image Appreciation, General Rapport and Image Discussion, and that rhetorical strategies differ between users of different levels of offending and dark web image-sharing experience.