Nude Pix Put Cops In a Fix

Forget Paris Hilton; heres a wireless security story thatll make ones heart pulsate the next time a cell phone or PDA lands in someone elses possession.

Houston police officer Christopher Green, after arresting a woman on suspicion of drunken driving, allegedly downloaded sexually explicit pictures from her confiscated cell phone onto his PDA and then showed them to several colleagues.

Internal investigators have stepped in to examine the situation and reports that Greens partner, George Miller, later called the woman and asked her for a date.

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Both officers have been pulled from their usual patrolling duties.

"Were sort of waiting to see whats going to happen," Houston Police Officers Union attorney Aaron Suder told the Houston Chronicle, which broke the story Friday.

This news is another indicator that wireless privacy and security is becoming a more visible issue, especially as its becoming the norm for portable devices outfitted with wireless capability.

For companies, security on employees portable wireless devices, such as cell phones and PDAs, has already started to become a major part of the IT infrastructure.

Some companies have taken the first step, mandating that employees refrain from using work-issued portable devices for any personal matter.

Forrester Principal Analyst Ellen Daley says companies have also been starting to require power-on passwords and in terms of data disposal, setting up scenarios that will let the company kill the data on a device remotely if, say, an employee forgets a BlackBerry at happy hour or tosses an old cell phone in the trash after receiving a new one.

To read more about companies push for mobile security, click here.

Outside company walls, though, wireless privacy for consumers has yet to get the same star treatment.

Next Page: Working toward security.