Sex Trafficking in the Puget Sound Area

According to a report by Q13 Fox News (May 29, 2018), sex trafficking of children, teens has been growing in Puget Sound area.

Hundreds of children and teens are involved in sex trafficking across Western Washington. In King County, WA every night there are 500 minors exploited  said Beth Podvorac, center director at The Genesis Project, which helps victims of sex trafficking. Podvorac says the average age of entry into trafficking is just 13.

It’s not as common for girls to get kidnapped and thrown in the car, it’s most often the sex trafficker building a relationship with the girl and then trafficking her that way.  She adds that although it can happen to anyone, girls who come from less stable homes and ones who are looking to feel loved are easy targets for pimps, who pick up on their vulnerabilities. Podvorac says the pimps will often groom girls online or in person for a while before luring them into the sex trade.

According to data on the Genesis Project web-site:

The average age of entry into prostitution is 13.
71% experienced physical assault.
63% were raped.
89% wanted to escape prostitution immediately but didn’t have a way to do so.
75% had experienced homelessness.
68% met criteria for having Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Some Ways to Prevent Your Child from Being Trafficked Into Prostitution:

Sex traffickers frequent malls, movie theaters, bowling alleys, parks, typical teen hang out areas, and around school grounds. Make sure your children are supervised and not alone when in these areas.

Sex traffickers are always looking for girls who are alone or isolated; if your child is with a group, she is much less likely to be targeted.

Check your child’s emails, social media, and internet activities. Many Sex traffickers will build a relationship with children through the internet over time in order to gain their trust.

Screen any boyfriend by checking his age and status in the community. Check with his parents to verify his age, any gang affiliation, or any criminal history. Sex traffickers are notorious for lying about their age and who they are in order to gain a girl’s–and even her parent’s–trust.

Have a code word or phrase. For example, saying “I’m fine” means “Not okay! I need help!”. This way, if they are in the hands of an abductor they can text you this code without raising the suspicion of the abductor or sex trafficker.

Use the percentage sign or some unique symbol that will allow your child to text you one quick symbol to tell you they are in trouble.

Have specific and periodic check in times with your children. Setting a recurring alarm on your child’s phone will help them remember to check in. If your child misses a check in time, you can set a response in motion assuming that they are in trouble.

Talk to your child about what to do if they get into trouble with someone who is threatening them.

The basic rule is to never go to the second location once you realize you are in danger. No matter what the threat, advise them to go to a figure of authority immediately.

It is a difficult discussion to have, especially with junior high age children, but 8 to 14 year-olds are the primary targets of sex traffickers. Children really need to be coached on how to respond to that type of threat if it happens to them.

Advise your child to never leave any drink, even water, unattended at any party or event. Sex traffickers will drop what they call a “roofie” into the drink which causes the victim to become submissive to anyone without bringing attention to the situation.

Apple Is Testing a Feature That Could Kill Police iPhone Unlockers (like Cellebrite)

According to an article on Motherboard (June 4, 2018) an upcoming security feature for the Apple iPhone will keep it from being exploited if it is seized by government agents.

Apple’s new security feature, USB Restricted Mode, is in the iOS 12 Beta, and it could kill the popular iPhone unlocking tools for cops made by Cellebrite and GrayShift.

On Monday, at its Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple announced features of iOS 12. One very important security feature is called USB Restricted Mode. The feature essentially forces users to unlock the iPhone with the passcode when connecting it to a USB accessory every time the phone has not been unlocked for one hour. That includes the iPhone unlocking devices that companies such as Cellebrite or GrayShift make, which police departments all over the world use to hack into seized iPhones.

That pretty much kills GrayShift and Cellebrite. If it doesn't let ANY type of data connection happen until it's unlocked, then you can’t exploit the device because you can't communicate with it.

The last two iOS beta releases, 11.4.1 beta and 12 beta, have USB Restricted mode on by default. The feature is included in the Touch ID, Face ID and Passcode settings. Despite being in some of the betas, the feature did not make it to 11.3 nor 11.4, the latest public release of iOS.

I look forward to USB Restricted Mode being included in all public releases of iOS. It is an important security feature needed by the community.

Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends

According to a June 3, 2018 article in the New York Times:  "Facebook has reached data-sharing partnerships with at least 60 device makers — including Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry, Microsoft and Samsung — over the last decade... Facebook allowed the device companies access to the data of users’ friends without their explicit consent, even after declaring that it would no longer share such information with outsiders. Some device makers could retrieve personal information even from users’ friends who believed they had barred any sharing... Some device partners can retrieve Facebook users’ relationship status, religion, political leaning and upcoming events, among other data."

Police Broke Into Manning's Home With Guns Drawn — in a “Wellness Check”

According to The Intercept (June 5, 2018) Police Broke Into Chelsea Manning's Home With Guns Drawn — in a “Wellness Check”.

Shortly after Chelsea Manning posted what appeared to be two suicidal tweets on May 27, police broke into her home with their weapons drawn as if conducting a raid, in what is known as a “wellness” or “welfare check” on a person experiencing a mental health crisis.

Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst turned whistleblower and U.S. Senate candidate, was not at home, but video obtained by The Intercept shows officers pointing their guns as they searched her empty apartment.

“This is what a police state looks like,” Manning said. “Guns drawn during a ‘wellness’ check.”

Welfare checks like this, usually prompted by calls placed to 911 by concerned friends or family, too often end with police harming — or even killing — the person they were dispatched to check on.

Manning was out of the country at the time of the incident, said Janus Cassandra, a close friend who was on the phone with her that night. “If Chelsea had been home when these cops arrived with guns drawn, she would be dead.”

The video is also available on YouTube.
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A Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC) study from December 2015 found “people with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed during a police encounter than other civilians approached or stopped by law enforcement.” 

TAC estimated a “minimum of 1 in 4 fatal police encounters ends the life of an individual with severe mental illness.” This was based on real-time databases compiled by the Washington Post and the Guardian. (This remains the case in 2017.)

So far in 2018 (as of June 5th), the Washington Post has documented 73 instances where police shot and killed individuals with mental illness.

Personal Security -- At Home, On the Street, & While Traveling

Personal Security--At Home, On the Street, & While Traveling (US Department of State)

Security Awareness Overseas: An Overview

Travel to High-Risk Areas

Safety and Security for the Business Professional Traveling Abroad (FBI)

Army's Rifles Are Going Off When They Shouldn't

Some of the Army's rifles appear to have a malfunction that causes them to fire when they aren't supposed to, causing the service to review all of its rifles to make sure they are functioning properly.

It all started with a video recorded by a soldier showing an M4A1 carbine firing when it shouldn't have. The video shows the rifle's selector switch between "semi" and "auto" fire modes. The soldier squeezes the trigger, but the rifle does not fire. Once the soldier moves to auto, the weapon discharges a round.

The M4A1 featured in the video was one of several carbines converted from the original M4 model, which offered a three-round burst instead of automatic fire. The conversions were part of the Army's Product Improvement Program, which added a heavier barrel and ambidextrous controls in addition to fully automatic fire.

Officials at U.S. Army Tank-Automotive & Armaments Command (TACOM) believe the issue goes beyond the converted weapons, however, so it has instituted a new policy requiring all M4 and M16 series rifles to be checked for the issue within 10 days of April 18 or prior to live fire. So far, approximately 50,000 weapons have been checked with a failure rate of about 6 percent, according to Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command.  (Circa, June 5, 2018)

What Would You Do?

You've been tied up in meetings all morning, meetings that ran well into your lunch hour. You finally get a minute to slip out of your office and grab something to eat. You go to an ATM, put in your card and see the message "Transaction Denied. Please Contact Your Financial Institution." You go to your bank, but it is closed. The ATM at the bank says "Temporarily Out Of Service".  You begin to notice that businesses around you are closing early. You get out your cell-phone to make a call and hear the message "All circuits are busy now. Please try your call again later." As you look around you see that the police are blocking off streets and setting up check points...

The likelihood that you will survive a long-term emergency depends largely on survival planning done today. Planning and preparation will enable you to react to a developing situation quickly and safely.

If a disaster strikes in your community, you might not have access to food, water, or electricity for several days. You may think that you will have enough time to run to the grocery store, but stores quickly sell out of important supplies following emergency warnings.

Preparing emergency kits for your family is an important step in keeping them safe and healthy during a disaster.

Because your family may not be together when a disaster strikes it is important to create a plan in advance.

Your plan should include:

• How you will get to a safe place
• How you will contact each other
• How you will get back together
• What you will do in different situations

Depending on your threat model, there are many things you may need to plan for. It's Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend. As you approach your, home looking forward to a few days off, you see a police car parked on the street in front of your house. A black SUV with government plates, and another marked police vehicle are parked in your driveway. You see four or five uniformed police officers standing in front of your house... What would you do?  Do you run up to the closest police officer, declare that this is your home and ask what's going on? If they have a warrant for your arrest you'll be spending the long weekend in jail, before you can see a judge on Tuesday.

A few years ago Matthew David Keenan's Criminal Law Legal Blogs provided advice on what to do if you think that the police are looking for you.

Most of us are probably not overly concerned about being arrested by the police; but do you have a crazy ex-spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend, etc. that might be looking to cause you some problem. According to a study by the CDC, an estimated 15 percent of women and 6 percent of men have been a victim of stalking during their lifetimes. 61 percent of female victims and 44 percent of male victims were stalked by a current or former intimate partner. 7.5 million people were stalked in one year in the U.S.

If you need to drop out of sight for a few days, do you have a place to go and a plan to do so?

The U.S. State Department has a booklet, "Personal Preparedness Plan: Prepare for an Unexpected Departure from Post" that offers advice for someone who might have to leave an area on short notice.

According to the law enforcement and intelligence experts on CBS's Hunted, going on the run is a lot harder than you might think.