Ohio Arsonist Gets Busted By His Own Pacemaker

from the betrayed-by-my-robot-parts dept

Fri, Feb 10th 2017 12:39pm — Karl Bode

When we talk about pacemakers here at Techdirt, the focus is usually on how the devices have paper-mache grade security, allowing anybody to assassinate the cardiac-challenged with relative ease. In fact we've reached the point where the FTC had to recently issue its first ever warning against a pacemaker vendor when it announced that hackers could comprmise pacemakers made by St. Jude Medical, sending "commands to the implanted device, which could result in rapid battery depletion and/or administration of inappropriate pacing or shocks."

But your pacemaker may just betray you in other ways, too. In Ohio a man was indicted this week on arson and insurance fraud charges after his Pacemaker data contradicted the story he was telling authorities. When the man's home burned down on September 19, Middletown resident Ross Compton told authorities he quickly packed some belongings in a suitcase and some bags, broke a window with his cane, and quickly fled through the window before carrying his belongings back to the car. The man also acknowledged at the time that he had a pacemaker.

So police obtained a warrant for the data stored on the device, and doctors quickly concluded that the story the man's heart was telling didn't match the narrative coming out of his mouth:

"A cardiologist determined that it was "highly improbable," due to his medical conditions, that Compton could do all the collecting, packing and removal of items from his house and then carry them in the short period of time he indicated, according to court records. Police have said statements they received from Compton were "inconsistent" with the evidence they gathered. They also have said that he gave statements conflicting with what he had told a dispatcher, the Hamilton-Middletown Journal-News reported."

Obviously there are numerous privacy questions at play here, since we're living in an era when your car, home, phone, and implant data can not only be used to support criminal charges, but will increasingly be used by giant corporations to determine everything from your insurance rates to your qualification for health care. As such, the Electronic Freedom Foundation was quick to warn the AP about the slippery slope of having your own body's data used against you in such a fashion:

"Stephanie Lacambra, a criminal defense staff attorney with the San Francisco-based foundation, said in an email Tuesday that Americans shouldn't have to make a choice between health and privacy. "We as a society value our rights to maintain privacy over personal and medical information, and compelling citizens to turn over protected health data to law enforcement erodes those rights," Lacambra said."

Internet-of-things devices are not only poorly secured, the privacy policies affixed to most of them are a dumpster fire. So remember folks: the next time you intend to commit a crime or apply for health coverage with a pre-existing condition, remember to wipe the data from all of your cybernetic implants -- and get the latest firmware update for your cerebral and coronary firewalls and intrusion detection systems.

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Filed Under: arson, iot, pacemaker, privacy, security, tracking

23 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2017 @ 1:12pm

Ah yes! The Telltale Heart.

When the perp was asked if he would ever do that again, he doth quoth, "Nevermore!"
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- Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2017 @ 1:41pm
  
  Re:
  So ripe for a correction, but I am to tired to do so... you have a couple of stories mixed up here.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2017 @ 1:14pm

cybernetic implants
a new infection path
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Roger Strong (profile), 10 Feb 2017 @ 1:29pm

"People in the media say they must look at the president with a microscope. Now, I don't mind a microscope, but boy, when they use a proctoscope, that's going too far."
- Richard Nixon

Setting aside that IoT medical devices, WikiLeaks and Trump will combine to make this a reality... Assuming that Trump doesn't just tweet it first...

...Nixon was right. The government also goes too far when it turns that proctoscope in the other direction.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2017 @ 1:55pm

NY law* wants to mandate the use of a textalyzer to force analysis of your mobile phone during a traffic stop. Since phones of the future will likely be directly connected to our brains, getting pulled over could mean dumping your conciousness into a LEO storage device. To be fair, self-driving cars will likely also be mandatory by that time so you traffic stops would be obsolete.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/science/driving-texting-safety-textalyzer.html
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2017 @ 1:58pm

The problem with adding security is that it usually adds complexity. Protecting against threats needs to be weighed against potential malfunction due to said complexity.
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- orbitalinsertion (profile), 11 Feb 2017 @ 6:42am
  
  Re:
  Or one can simply remove all the unnecessary complexity, and it will be inherently more secure.
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Fake news is criminal, 10 Feb 2017 @ 2:23pm

fag
fag
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- Roger Strong (profile), 10 Feb 2017 @ 2:39pm
  
  Re: fag
  (Checks to see if this is the latest Trump tweet)
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  - Unanimous Cow Herd, 10 Feb 2017 @ 5:00pm
    
    Re: Re: fag
    Please do not feed or tease the trolls. Even someone pretending to be a Trump supporter.
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    - Roger Strong (profile), 10 Feb 2017 @ 5:09pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: fag
      Fair enough. I can't argue with a unanimous decision.
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- Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2017 @ 2:40pm
  
  Re: fag
  REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2017 @ 3:43pm

Alibi fabrication
I can't help but wonder if proprietorial inventiveness will mean that we'll start seeing people hacking their own pacemaker records to create alibis. "I was totally in fear for my life when I shot him. Just look at my pacemaker readouts!".
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2017 @ 5:26pm

So basically, if this crap continues a precedent could be set where if your heart rate isn't fast enough then it OBVIOUSLY wasn't an emergency. You can replace that with whatever device / data you'd like it'd be the same concept.

Who cares about what really happened when we have some numbers.
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Atkray (profile), 10 Feb 2017 @ 8:13pm

Next up
Crook betrayed by

What with them monitoring your heart-rate and steps and calories burned they provide even more data.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2017 @ 8:48pm

I knew it!
When I was a young whipper snapper 40 years ago, I said, "Self," I said, "You should get degrees in Law, Medicine, Electronics, and Computers."

Dummy me just went for law and electronics.

Now I'm a computer systems engineer. Go figure.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2017 @ 11:00pm

Nothing to do with the Internet of Things
It doesn't sound like this was a matter of authorities hoovering up data that people thought was private. The detectives got a warrant for the particular data to be seized and then did that and only that. That is 100% what warrants are for: legal authorization for the authorities to seize something or someone.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Feb 2017 @ 5:15am

Unwarranted?
If this search had been warrantless, it would have been heart-breaking.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Feb 2017 @ 9:14am

This seems like a pretty reasonable action by the police, imo. I mean, they got a warrant and properly executed it. And its not like we dont use loads of other kinds of health information in determination of crime. Irrespective of things like accuracy dates (a different issue), its not like we dont have a whole battery of things like drug tests, blood analysis, DNA testing, and all sorts of things. Medical history seems like the kind of thing you really ought to take into account in general, as long as you're getting a warrant for specific stuff.
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Anonymous Coward, 12 Feb 2017 @ 10:36am

Problem here is whether or not the data actually said what the expert witness said it did. Anyone can get up on a stand and point at a graph and say "He didn't do what he said he did." It's quite another one to say "There's a 1 out of 100 chance that he didn't do it." First one is speculation, the second is more scientific if the expert witness can back up his claim with actual data. We should be looking at expert witness testimony with the utmost skepticism these days as a great deal of forensic "science" is turning out to be either pseudoscience (like ear, teeth, or foot prints, and fire patterns) or antiquated and no longer reflect current science theory (fingerprints).

Where does this one fall? Who knows, we don't have the expert testimony in the article and an independent cardiologist to evaluate the data.
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Anonymous Coward, 13 Feb 2017 @ 7:57am

I have a problem with the Police getting a warrant for Medical records like this on a Patient. The whole Patent/Doctor privacy laws. The police getting such personal privacy records from a device inside your Body is taking things over the line.
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- Wendy Cockcroft, 14 Feb 2017 @ 2:18am
  
  Re:
  They got a warrant; I have no problem with that.
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Anonymous Coward, 13 Feb 2017 @ 9:21am

5th amendment right
He was just compelled to be "a witness against himself". Isn't an implanted device a part of "himself"?
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