Sheriff says group downing his free software is protecting ‘rights of perverts’

Published 4:27 pm Thursday, October 2, 2014

The free computer software the Limestone County Sheriff’s Department is giving to parents to monitor their children’s online activity is simply spyware that is neither safe nor secure, according to the nonprofit organization Electronic Frontier Foundation.

However, Limestone County Sheriff Mike Blakely said he and his department stands behind the “ComputerCOP” software.

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“Were 100 percent confident in this computer program doing what it is designed to do,” Blakely said. “It’s an aid to parents to protect their children online.”

As for EFF, Blakely, a Democrat seeking re-election Nov. 4, said the EFF group is “nothing but a liberal group trying to protect the rights of perverts.”

The software — which the sheriff said was paid for with money seized from criminals — is available free to Limestone County residents from the Sheriff’s Office at 101 W. Elm St. in Athens.

The sheriff said his staff tested the software to make sure it was safe, that it is used by hundreds of agencies nationwide and that the U.S. Marshal Service endorses it.

EFF, which can be found online at https://www.eff.org, bills itself as a “leading nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world.” It says it works to “ensure that rights and freedoms are enhanced and protected as our use of technology grows.”

In an Oct. 1 article — titled “ComputerCop: The Dubious ‘Internet Safety Software’ That Hundreds of Police Agencies Have Distributed to Families.” — Dave Maass, EFF’s media-relations coordinator and investigative researcher, wrote, “When a child with ComputerCOP installed on their laptop connects to public Wi-Fi, any sexual predator, identity thief, or bully with freely available packet-sniffing software can grab those key logs right out of the air.”

Maass wrote that ComputerCOP markets to government agencies as the “perfect election and fundraising tool,” and when a law-enforcement agency buys a certain number of copies, ComputerCOP sends a camera crew to film an introduction video with the head of the department.

“The discs are also customized to prominently feature the head of the agency, who can count on a solid round of local press coverage about the giveaway,” Maass wrote.

“The way ComputerCOP works is neither safe nor secure,” Maass wrote. “It isn’t particularly effective either, except for generating positive P.R. for the law-enforcement agencies distributing it.

“As security software goes, we observed a product with a keystroke-capturing function, also called a “keylogger,” that could place a family’s personal information at extreme risk by transmitting what a user types over the Internet to third-party servers without encryption. That means many versions of ComputerCOP leave children (and their parents, guests, friends, and anyone using the affected computer) exposed to the same predators, identity thieves, and bullies that police claim the software protects against.”

Blakely agreed if the software were installed on a computer it would track the activity of all of those who use it because that is what it is intended to do.

The sheriff suggested that had the parents of the Columbine High School shooters had the software, they might have known what their children were plotting, they might have been more proactive and their lives might have have been different.