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Right, and what if these "thousands of hate posts" are just a hand full of operatives ? Remember that document Snowden released describing these tools:

https://assets.documentcloud.o...

There's an excellent discussion here about the legal meaning of Highsmith's Instrument of Gift.

There's a number of contradictory clauses in it, maybe three possible interpretations of what she intended, but one of them is indeed "full public domain" as apparently the court decided.

But the specific excuse for doing this mentioned reserves. They might as well just admit that they are on a fishing expedition.

The slashdot summary phrases things as "reserves". The actually court document introduction focuses on tax avoidance.
"The IRS is responsible for monitoring ways in which United States taxpayers evade their United States tax obligations by concealing or otherwise failing to report their proper amount of taxable income and thus underpay their taxes ... In order to identify taxpayers who have may have underpaid taxes associated with transactions in virtual currency, the United States brings this ex parte proceeding under 7609(f) and (h) of the Internal Revenue Code (26 U.S.C.) for leave to serve a John Doe summons on Coinbase."
https://www.documentcloud.org/...

I see the '50TB' number thrown about a lot, but the original FBI 'Criminal Complaint' says;

7. Among the classified documents located thus far, six of them appear to have been obtained from sensitive intelligence

and goes on to talk about the markings on the documents that identify them as belonging to the government. The next part that seems interesting

10. During execution of the warrants, investigators located property of the United States with an aggregate value in well excess of $1000, which MARTIN had stolen.

And then talks a bit about the $1000+ worth of stolen goods.

I'm genuinely curious. Is $1000 a magic number that makes this a certain class of crime? I've seen it suggested that the 50TB represents the total capacity of the storage he had taken, not the volume of the data. Are you aware of any further information about what has actually been taken?

Just from the Complaint, it could just as well be someone who has been in the job long enough that they have been careless about what work they take home, and who has been 'salvaging' old kit from work. Or he really could have 50TB of classified data and just been profoundly arrogant about being caught - but I'd like some more evidence of it before I make up my mind.

(quotes from http://www.documentcloud.org/d...; linked from the wikipedia entry. Caveat, I haven't spent much time digging)

I see the '50TB' number thrown about a lot, but the original FBI 'Criminal Complaint' says;

7. Among the classified documents located thus far, six of them appear to have been obtained from sensitive intelligence

and goes on to talk about the markings on the documents that identify them as belonging to the government. The next part that seems interesting

10. During execution of the warrants, investigators located property of the United States with an aggregate value in well excess of $1000, which MARTIN had stolen.

And then talks a bit about the $1000+ worth of stolen goods.

I'm genuinely curious. Is $1000 a magic number that makes this a certain class of crime? I've seen it suggested that the 50TB represents the total capacity of the storage he had taken, not the volume of the data. Are you aware of any further information about what has actually been taken?

Just from the Complaint, it could just as well be someone who has been in the job long enough that they have been careless about what work they take home, and who has been 'salvaging' old kit from work. Or he really could have 50TB of classified data and just been profoundly arrogant about being caught - but I'd like some more evidence of it before I make up my mind.

(quotes from http://www.documentcloud.org/d...; linked from the wikipedia entry. Caveat, I haven't spent much time digging)

According to the copyright mafia, if you make it easy to violate their copyright then it's your fault.

The case is well prepared, on page 6 of the motion are previous cases (past practice, normally called Precedence ) that back their claim https://www.documentcloud.org/...

https://assets.documentcloud.o...

The actual court order did not compel Apple to do anything for free, and offered one possible way for them to do it, but also left Apple open to suggest another method. It asked Apple to do an estimate of how much they wanted to be paid, and the way they wanted to do it, to be approved by the FBI.

It appears to me that the court has used a completely made-up "national security exception" to override a clear constitutional right.

Specifically, it was two judges (Davis and Graves) overriding a clear constitutional right. (I know, some people are arguing it's two rights. I don't think it's all that clear one way or the other whether the 2nd should apply here, but IANAL, much less a constitutional-law expert.)

The decision is worth at least a quick skim, particularly the long dissent from Jones. She gets in some good lines about protecting freedom of expression, but also some good technical points about things like the definition of "export".

In case anyone's curious, but not curious enough to spend ten seconds looking it up: Davis (majority) and Jones (dissenting) are Reagan appointees, and Graves (majority) is an Obama appointee. Which just goes to show that often it doesn't really matter who appointed a judge, I suppose. Of course, the past several administrations haven't been terribly keen on civil rights, regardless of party. We love us some police state.

Wow.. you got to be one of THE BIGGEST trump apologist I've ever seen.

First:

Trump's complete ignorance of the fact that Obama's mother was a US Citizen when he was born, and the push that he's not an American on the fabrication that he was born in Kenya, only for the sole fact that his father was Kenyan, was purely motivated by his mixed race.

Second:

What Trump actually said, was that the judge — a Mexican racist himself ("La Raza" member) — may have a conflict of interest. If it is Ok to suspect [washingtonpost.com], that an All-white jury [wikipedia.org] may be unfair to a Black defendant, why is it "racist" to suspect, a Mexican may be unfair to a White one?

You will need to provide substantial proof that the judge is racist before you can make a statement like that.

That Judge is apart of a group called "San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association", not the "La Raza" association you're thinking of.
http://www.snopes.com/judge-cu...

Third:

Has proposed banning members of a religion from the US (very similar to racism).

Not racism. Stick to the topic.

That's pretty much racist. It impacts a wide swath of individuals classified as Muslim, which is directly attributed to anybody from the Middle East, who's appearances are starkly contrasted to caucasians.

There have been numerous attacks on Sikhs who were believed to be muslim because they "looked like a muslim." The only similarity is the skin color.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/14/...

Fourth:

Trump's Real Estate business that he ran with his father were biased against black renters

https://www.documentcloud.org/...

That happened in 1973. He took over his father's business in 1971.

Fifth:
Trump stated that he wouldn't disavow David Duke because he didn't know who he was or what he was about.

Except that was a lie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

He clearly knows who David Duke is, unless it helps his agenda to feign ignorance.

Found here.

This bill rejects an amendment to rule 41 (Search and Seizure) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court and transmitted to Congress for review on April 28, 2016. (The amendment allows a federal magistrate judge to issue a warrant to use remote access to search computers and seize electronically stored information located inside or outside that judge's district in specific circumstances.)

And do you know what those "specific circumstances" are?

If "(A) the district where the media or information is located has been concealed through technical means;"

Shocking! Terrible! Life-threatening! A magistrate can issue a warrant against a computer that HE DOESN'T KNOW THE LOCATION OF!
That is totally the same as hacking without a warrant, or unlimited spying. /sarc

Here's the current Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure Rule 41, and here is the proposed revised version.

Did the Queensland Police hack any computers? They appear to have simply sent emails containing links. When the link was clicked, the IP address of the mail client as recorded.

From the TLA:

>> Details on how exactly this was achieved are limited, but according to a court document from another case,
>> “When a user clicked on that hyperlink, the user was advised that the user was attempting to open a video
>> file from an external website. If the user chose to open the file, a video file containing images of child pornography
>> began to play, and the FLA [foreign law enforcement agency] captured and recorded the IP address of the user accessing the file.”

So it doesn't appear that any code was inserted into the target computer. The offenders didn't follow good opsec - they clicked on a link while they were not connected to a TOR proxy.

As for jurisdiction - it appears that the server was moved to Brisbane. Again from the TLA:

>> At one point, The Love Zone server was also reportedly moved to Brisbane, giving Task Force Argos,
>> the Queensland Police Service unit that took over the site, access to every private message on the site.

If the server was located in Queensland, then Queensland court orders could legitimately apply to it. So no evidence of hacking or of extra-territoriality. Move along folks, no misconduct, just good police work.

The page at Wired requires tons of third-party Javascript and then tries to block ad blockers, so here's a link to the raw PDF:

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3010178/Volkswagen-amp-HiTag2-Keyless-Entry-System.pdf

Are we seeing an actual change of the guard, and if so, is it actually to benefit privacy, security, and anonymity, or are we going to find out all these new board members have been compromised/were already working for the government to compromise our security?

I don't really believe that, but it is worth asking and scrutinizing periodically, just like the tor code and processes itself.

Very good question. Schneier has an excellent reputation and has fought considerably to free up encryption etc. On the other hand at least one of the accusations is provably false.

Probably the new board is chosen by the old board to provide a safe set of hands who are unlikely to collapse under pressure. Probably also this was an attack by a group which has a tendency to use false accusations to force people out of positions of power that they want to take over. That is a very serious situation and it's' really important to know who was behind each of the accusations.

It seems to me that there is a general problem with how humans manage cities. Population density is allowed to become so great that cities become miserable.

Portland, Oregon now has constant traffic jams. A short ride from downtown Vancouver, WA across the bridge to Oregon required 6 minutes 44 seconds in 2012. It required 25 minutes 7 seconds in 2015, almost 4 times worse. See I-5-Study. (PDF file, See page 3.)

>A government agency did this

The leaker says [link to pdf] otherwise:

For the record, I do not work for any government or intelligence agency, directly
or as a contractor, and I never have. My viewpoint is entirely my own, as was my
decision to share the documents with Süddeutsche Zeitung and the International
Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), not for any specifi c political purpose,
but simply because I understood enough about their contents to realize the scale
of the injustices they described

The SIF will be loaded on the SUBJECT DEVICE at either a government facility, or alternatively, at an Apple facility; if the latter, Apple shall provide the government with remote access to the SUBJECT

The actual court order makes several attempts to insist the process only affects this one device, even explicitly suggesting Apple build a sanitized lab and give the FBI remote access, with monetary compensation.

So undoubtedly it's you that has bought the narrative. It's you, and many others that have believed the hyperbole and misinformation without verifying the facts. Apple is playing a political game here. A game intended to sell more phones, as is their duty to their shareholders, and their only duty. The last entity I would ever assume is on my side is private enterprise.

16-4-20-Order-Motion-to-Suppress.pdf The order notes that a district judge may have the authority to issue the NIT warrant. "The jurisdiction of district courts is usually defined by subject matter and parties rather than strictly by geography." Magistrate judges (such as the one who actually issued the warrant) must follow additional rules which confine their authority essentially to within their own district.

IANAL, but this was not a slam dunk for privacy. If a sharp U.S. Attorney had reviewed the request, it might have been sent to the proper judge. Also, a proposed amendment to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure would negate this specific issue.

A search for "TVA senior manager for the probabilistic risk assessment in the Nuclear Power Group from April 2010 to September 2014" returned Ching Guey. Inceed lists his work experience as "Senior Manager Nuclear Power Group - Chattanooga, TN April 2010 to September 2014 TVA" so that's almost an exact match, especially given his name. Matching the list of wikipedia to the info off NRC.gov, there is only Exelon Generation Co. LLC, or FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co. Exelon owns 4 out of the 5. Then, there is the actual PDF of the indictment.

"“The request we got from the government in this case is, ‘Take this tool and put it on a hard drive, send it to the FBI,’ and they’d load it onto their computer,” "

Except, that is entirely a lie. The court order is available to be read, why would anyone believe that dribble?

https://www.documentcloud.org/...

The court order specifically asks for a one off keyed to a single phone, and signed with Apple's key. This isn't something that can be reverse engineered and modified, the signing certificate protects the software from being modified. They also asked them to load it on the phone, in RAM, not on any permanent storage, so it isn't like they wanted access to the actual hack.

You know, I'm having trouble finding where they asked Apple to "it asked Apple to provide a tool for the government to access all data", can you point to it in the order?

https://www.documentcloud.org/...

I see where it says they want a tool that is keyed to this specific phone, so it would be rather inconsistent to also ask for a tool to unlock any phone they like. After all, that isn't how the legal system works, they have to get permission from a judge to unlock every single phone.

You obviously do not understand how the software update process works. What they requested Apple to do would have worked on every single iPhone 5c in the world. It may have worked on other model phones, as well. They were asking for a master key for all iPhone 5Cs. And why should the FBI get it? If the NSA is doing its job, they have already illegally captured all the meta data for communications going into and out of the phone. San Bernadino County could have configured the device properly. The FBI could have left the iCloud account password as Farook set it. The FBI is also free to use as many super computers as they'd like to crack the data on the phone. Since when is it's Apple's duty to undermine their own product line to help the FBI? And finally what's so important on this phone that it was worth all this effort to break into? Probably nothing. He had a personal phone which he intentionally destroyed. He intentionally destroyed all of his personal storage media. Why would anyone think he is smart enough to destroy all of that but dumb enough to use his work phone which could have been phoning home to his employer? Are you saying that it's worth sacrificing more liberty to unlock this phone? Does it bring back the dead people? Prevent this dead person from killing more people? No. It does no good to anyone except people who want more power inside of the FBI.

You know, I'm having trouble finding where they asked Apple to "it asked Apple to provide a tool for the government to access all data", can you point to it in the order?

https://www.documentcloud.org/...

I see where it says they want a tool that is keyed to this specific phone, so it would be rather inconsistent to also ask for a tool to unlock any phone they like. After all, that isn't how the legal system works, they have to get permission from a judge to unlock every single phone.

The decision: https://www.documentcloud.org/...

The judge deemed them to be doing business in Australia because:

A) Valve had CDN's in Australia, a fair number of them
B) Valve allowed Australian customers to access support channels
C) Steam had 2.2 Million Australian Users
D) Valve knew the users were in Australia
E) Steam prices games differently in Australia, or sometimes doesn't make them available at all
F) Valve pays for it's Australian servers from an Australian bank account

You packed a lot of wrong into such a small post.

Unfortunately Apple isn't a 'communications carrier'.

The CALEA subchapter in question that prohibits the feds from mandating a particular design explicitly mentions manufacturers (quoting the relevant bit: "This subchapter does not authorize any law enforcement agency [...] to require any specific design of equipment, facilities, services, features, or system configurations to be adopted by [...] any manufacturer of telecommunications equipment [...]"), which would refer to Apple in this case, since cell phones are considered telecommunications devices. Neither the summary nor the article mention anything about CALEA being limited to just carriers, nor is that the case, since it applies to manufacturers, support service providers, and communications service providers, among others, so I have no clue where you got the incorrect notion that it only applied to carriers.

If this was a viable out then Apple would have used it. It isn't.

You are talking out of your ass, since this is exactly the line of argumentation Apple has been using in its briefs for the last several weeks. Here's Apple's latest brief, where they explicitly mention CALEA and its relevance to applying the All Writs Act. Where do you think this law professor got the idea? It's been the core of Apple's argument ever since their initial appeal of the order in February, since it undermines the very foundation on which the FBI is basing its demand. There have been multiple discussions here at Slashdot over this exact topic in the last few weeks alone. Apple has been arguing that the All Writs Act, which the FBI is using in order to conscript Apple's assistance, is inapplicable in situations where Congress has passed laws that provide more specificity. 200 years of legal precedent agree with that understanding. And, contrary to your assertions, CALEA clearly provides a higher degree of specificity that's directly applicable in this case, since it explicitly states that law enforcement cannot make these sorts of demands of manufacturers.

How your comment got +5 Insightful when it is such utter and complete rubbish is beyond me.

DC Comics v. Towle at first appears to add to a slippery slope that would eventually see all car designs as copyrightable the moment they roll off an assembly line or a garage.

But, a closer reading of the decision seem to show that what's at issue isn't the shape of the car so much as the names it is marketed under. The 9th Circuit built their opinion atop Halicki Films, LLC v. Sanderson Sales & Mktg. , to wit "an automotive character [Eleanor] may be copyrightable even if it appears as a yellow Fastback Ford Mustang in one film, and a silver 1967 Shelby GT-500 in another."

The Carroll Hall Shelby Trust arranged for a custom car shop to create and market Shelby GT-500 "Eleanor" replicas. If you compare a "stock" GT-500 to the relatively minor mods that make "Eleanor" in the Gone In 60 Seconds 2000 remake, Shelby probably would have been in the clear just selling cars "resembling Eleanor". But, by marketing it as Eleanor, not so fast.

I think this is even more clear with the Towle ruling. Making a Batmobile, probably fine. Marketing it as a Batmobile, with the likely-to-be trademarked Batman logo on the doors, rims, and steering wheel turns out to have been a risky move.

Beating the example to death: if I want to revive a style by assembling and selling Studebaker Avanti lookalikes, and market them as Indietro, I'm probably safe under both the US Copyright Office's definition of "useful articles" and parody case law. But, if I try to slap Avanti on the nose, I'd probably soon end up in hot water with whoever current holds the copyrights and trademarks of the former Avanti Motor Corporation.

They also need to comply with lawful warrants.

...and that's precisely one of the issues in this case. It's not clear that the warrant is lawful because we're in genuinely new territory here.

Is there any precedent at all for a warrant which compels a company to build a special-purpose product (which previously did not exist) for the benefit of law enforcement? Has a warrant of this nature ever been tested in court and found to be legal?

It's about this specific case.

...and that's the other issue. Once the new technology exists, other courts will compel its use for other cases. Law enforcement elsewhere is already drooling.

Maybe the next case will be a child pornography case. Maybe the one after that will be a stalking case. Eventually, it will be a tool used in divorce cases. Or perhaps a Chinese dissident case.

Now, I know that James Comey said that it was about this specific case, so I don't blame you for believing it, but it turns out he was flat-out lying about that. This is actually the 13th case.

Why didn't you know that? Because the 12 previous cases were sealed. Apple also requested that this one be sealed, and the DOJ refused. Now it's all come out.

So while, yes, Apple is fighting a PR battle, they didn't want to. The DOJ chose to wait until it had a high-profile sexy case to fight it out in the court of public opinion. The DOJ fired the first shot, and Apple responded in kind.

There are lots of things I hate about Apple. This is not one of them.

Are you really that clueless or do you live under a rug?

I asked for a citation. If it's easier for your to insult anyone who questions you than actually provide a reference then it's usually a strong sign that you're full of shit.

This was in the news repeatedly over the last two years AND on the john oliver show.

I don't recall any cases of a specific court order that requested a specific action, which then got used out of the original scope of the request after actually specifying in writing to the court that it is only being applied for in this one case.

I'm not going to waste my time citing something that should be that widely known- educate your self.

Google stingray-- read how it was abused, how often, and by how many departments.

Maybe it's widely known, or maybe it's widely misunderstood? the easiest way to check would be some references.
I know about Stingray but failing to see any connection here. Maybe you could clarify since you claim to know all about it?

Google civil forfeiture-- read how it was abused, how often, and by how many departments.

I know about Civil Forfeiture but failing to see any connection here. Maybe you could clarify since you claim to know all about it?

Google FBI,abuse,communist- for bonus points, FBI, martin luther king.

It's typical. You can't be that clueless.

No, but you are clearly grasping at straws now. Why don't you throw in fake moon landings too?
None of those things have any relevance to the specific court order applied for here: https://assets.documentcloud.o...
Did you actually read that, or is the extent of your analysis, govt is bad mmkay?

I suppose this is a futile effort here on Slashdot, but maybe perhaps reading the FBI's court brief might answer/allay some of the "smell" of the charade (way to murder a metaphor, m8)

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2716011/Apple-iPhone-Access-MOTION-to-COMPEL.txt
https://assets.documentcloud.o...

Moreover, contrary to Apple's recent public statement that the
assistance ordered by the Court “could be used over and over again,
on any number of devices” and that “[t]he government is asking Apple
to hack our own users," the Order is tailored for and limited to this
particular phone. .....

Yesm It is important to note that this court and this writ does not ask for access to all phones
with a magic key. However it does establish a service that other courts (domestic and
international) can compel.

i.e. having demonstrated your ability that this is possible ... we also demand the same service
in pursuit of the issues before this (different?) court.
i.e. having demonstrated your ability we demand you price and deliver such a service for
our internal investigation into suspected illegal affairs by the estranged spouse of, the
priest accused of, the child suspected of taking a selfie photo that qualifies as child
pornography.
Because this is a court order there is only complying.
It is clear that this is the first phone.... many more cases will demand such a service.

As ordered, it would only affect the particular phone in question. Just create a new version of the OS that disables the delays and lock-out ONLY IF the hardware serial number is ABC123.

My concern (or my understanding of the concern, or whatever) is that keying the payload to a specific device is incredibly misleading. Even if the payload is keyed, signed, even if the FBI stick to the very letter and spirit of the Order and destroy the payload once used, they still make an irreversible powergrab.

There are precisely two defences against All Writs. One is to challenge the legality of the request itself - which is incredibly difficult to do. The other is to plead that the request is undue burden. This is even contained in the court's request itself:

"To the extent that Apple believes that compliance with this Order would be unreasonably burdensome, it may make an application to this Court for relief within five business days of receipt of the Order". ( https://assets.documentcloud.o... )

So within this context, my concern is that if their hand is forced this time, or if they agree that well gosh, fighting terrorists is the Right Thing to do here - and produce this keyed payload; then they've dramatically lowered the bar for further requests. It'll be near-impossible for them to argue Undue Burden in further requests, as obviously all they need to do is re-key & re-sign the same payload. It'd take longer to read the next Order than to fulfil it.

"Slippery slope" is so over-used, but that's exactly what we have here. It's not just a slope. It's a freaking cliff. It's a one-way street. If they concede this time, there is no going back.

Piecemeal, this request doesn't bother me in the slightest. In a vacuum, assisting as far as they can is probably the right thing to do. But Spherical Cows don't actually exist. This isn't going to happen in a vacuum. This is going to have genuine ramifications far beyond this particular case. Once they agree that this approach is actually possible, they open themselves up to many more requests, potentially less defendable requests, and potentially in any other jurisdiction where they have a legal presence. In the EU. In Israel. In Saudi Arabia, in China, in India ...

I haven't found the actual bill yet so I don't know what it actually says but this seems to be the case.

The bill is literally linked in the summary. I'll link it again here: https://assets.documentcloud.o...

It's a page and a half of actual content, even with the narrow columns and oversized font they use for whatever reason.

Lol - I'll cite the article if anyone is actually interested, but I enjoy the fact that you know what I want.

I knew what you meant because it's been brought up by other deniers and shot down repeatedly here already.

Well, once again we establish a proof point that as much as we want to believe certain things does not make them to be true. I was not making any assertions as to whether climate change was or wasn't real, so no need to get your warmist knickers in a twist, I was merely pointing out that there are other factors potentially involved and not all the world's ills are due to climate change.If that upsets you, then I would recommend focusing your attention on deterministic and binary logic problems, not poorly understood complex ones. For the record, here is one link to many articles that discuss the issue, with at least one estimate that suggests that groundwater usage has 3x the impact of icewater melt on global sea levels: https://www.documentcloud.org/.... Nonetheless, this case still very much to do with human activity, so interesting that you should have an issue with it, when it nominally supports your overall narrative. But if I must provide something to get your teeth into, here is a good article to get your heart racing if you are looking for certainty and consensus regarding ice in the antarctic: http://climateaudit.org/2015/1... Enjoy!

With only 7 they certainly could have included a list of frequencies, or at least a range.

Page 7 of the paper that is the second link in the summary.

You are grossly misrepresenting the problem. The fact is that Schwartz was facing 13 federal felony counts in the indictment. That's nothing you can just wave off as a minor inconvenience.

Even if he had pleaded guilty and the prosecutor only sought a two year sentence overall, the sentencing would be at the discretion of the judge - the prosecutor can only recommend things. And judges have proven to a) be prone to displays of political show-offs of being "hard on crime" and b) have a poor understanding of the real severity of technology-related crimes. That means to a judge without tech understanding (which is most of them) a one year sentence pro federal felony served consecutively might seem lenient and 2-5 years pro felony might seem as a "good message to digital criminals"

Aaron Schwartz was facing a threat much more serious than you make it out to be

Huh? Where are your citation links? That is a portion of the each bill that makes 2 bills look the same. They aren't the same if one has to interpret from the whole bill.

RFRA -- http://www.prop1.org/rainbow/r... -- under section 3 EXCEPTION (b)

IRFRA -- https://www.documentcloud.org/... -- under section 8

Wrong, in his statement he went back because they talked smack as he drove away. He only mentions the cigarillos in passing later. Might want to ease up on calling people liars when you don't have your facts straight.

https://www.documentcloud.org/... (page 4)

As to the GJ *routinely* not handing down indictments:

"According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 federal cases in 2010, the most recent year for which we have data. Grand juries declined to return an indictment in 11 of them."

Simply put by an ex-prosecutor: "The only reason a prosecutor will not get an indictment is becasue they don't want one."

I'm not saying there should have been a GJ hearing at all or if Wilson is guilty. Just that this prosecutor did not want an indictment. He produced evidence of an eyewitness who completely lied and recanted and a lot of other evidence that the defense in a criminal trial would produce.

You may in principle target the communications of lawyers. However, you must give careful consideration to necessity and proportionality, because lawyer-client communications are subject to special protection in UK law on grounds of confidentiality known as Legal Professional Privilege. If you intend to or have inadvertently targeted lawyers' communications, and it seems likely that advice to a client will or has been intercepted, you must consult Legal at GCHQ who will seek LA advice. Further information is in Communications Containing Confidential Information.

I honestly don't see anything wrong with this. The point here is multi-fold:
1. There is a distinction between targetting individuals who are lawyers, and targetting lawyer-client communications. Lawyers are human beings, and not everything they do is a client communication. Lawyers do not become uniquely immune from appropriate investigation, just because they are lawyers. Otherwise that's a pretty gigantic loophole.
2. It's clear that the approval 'in principle' is bound by rules and caveats. Spies don't actually have the authority to spy on their own in this case, they "must" escalate to someone else to grant them that authority. The rule of thumb is given on page 90, point number 5: "there must be evidence of criminal activity by the lawyer". Even then the information is to be kept from anyone involved in the trial.

https://www.documentcloud.org/...

And you showed nothing that describes dowloading. The owner of the server controls whether a copy is made or a file is transfered and is responsablty for the distribution.

Nope!

ReDigi was a company that claimed to sell used music files, just as a used bookstore sells books. It argued that it was protected under the 17 USC 109, the first sale exception, by claiming that copying then deleting files was a transfer. (Even they were not so stupid as to believe that it's possible to transfer a file over a network without copying in the process, even if this is not apparent to the user)

The court that heard the case shut them down:

Courts have consistently held that the unauthorized duplication of digital music files over the Internet infringes a copyright owner's exclusive right to reproduce. However, courts have not previously addressed whether the unauthorized transfer of a digital music file over the Internet -- where only one file exists before and after the transfer -- constitutes reproduction within the meaning of the Copyright Act. The Court holds that it does.

You should read the whole thing: http://www.documentcloud.org/d...

It even points out, as I have, that this is unavoidable:

This understanding is, of course, confirmed by the laws of physics. It is simply impossible that the same "material object" can be transferred over the Internet. Thus, logically, the court in London-Sire noted that the Internet transfer of a file results in a material object being "created elsewhere at its finish." Because the reproduction right is necessarily implicated when a copyrighted work is embodied in a new material object, and because digital music files must be embodied in a new material object following their transfer over the Internet, the Court determines that the embodiment of a digital music file on a new hard disk is a reproduction within the meaning of the Copyright Act.

Case law is not law either.

It is in the US.

Judges have been wrong before and they will be wrong in the future.

What does that have to do with anything? You think that legislators are never wrong?

Download PDF here: http://s3.documentcloud.org/do...

This article

Washington Post now has a link to Inmarsat's analysis documents: http://apps.washingtonpost.com... http://s3.documentcloud.org/do... I've no idea what variable D1 is. Maybe some inherent frequency offset in the system that has to be subtracted. Maybe that's the minimum 85 Hz offset in the data. The difference between northbound and southbound flightpaths is almost 100Hz at times (e.g. 19:40 UTC). That's pretty big ; 100Hz from a 131 MHz signal (the higher 137MHz bands are North America only, I think) I get 100Hz / (131E6 Hz) ~ 7.63E-7, and (7.63E-7 x c = 229 m/s = 445 knots. That's a difference of 445 knots in plane-satellite line-of-sight closing speeds between north and south tracks. The 270 Hz peak at 18:20 UTC is an additional 100Hz, or 445 knots directly towards the satellite. The satellite is west, but also really high up. How could an airplane following the surface of the Earth achieve 445 knots closing speed towards a satellite? I still don't see all the details here.

I didn't expect to get modded up - but Ladar's not the white knight that's being presented in the media (if anyone would actually read the documents and see he bought it on himself), and I'm damn tired of it.

As I recall, each paying Lavabit customers' email storage was encrypted using a key of the respective customers' choosing. Lavabit did not have these keys and could not, themselves, read customers' email, even if they wanted to. So, I'm to believe that you can be charged with contempt for not providing something that you don't have?

The encryption key was encrypted by the user's password. Merely intercepting the user's password would decrypt the mailbox. Since they wrote the software, it would be trivial to log the password for any or all user's accounts. It was not much more than 'security by obscurity'.

The contempt part should relate to his all out lack of cooperation, as the original request wasn't even for mailbox data - it was for metadata. He escalated it to requiring SSL keys, because the government didn't trust him. Unless you want the government to charge people with crimes without a proper investigation, there's no reason to ignore a signed metadata request (from a non-FISA court for that matter).

Do you have a source on that? IIRC, they have agreed to install 'pen register' devices in the past. Those provide no useful information for users of their paid accounts because it is all encrypted. They even eventually provided the SSL key, albeit in a very spiteful manner. You are correct that the details of the whole situation are not all out yet, but when everything comes to light, it's usually the authoritarian governments acting in the shadows that come out as the bad guys. With the given evidence out so far, the level needed to justify everything they've done would have to be that they know of a serious threat to all life on Earth, and said threat could come from anywhere, likely involving leaders of other world governments. Anything short of that would mean that the NSA should be taken down.

Read the first document Only metadata was requested, Ladar refused, and the government escalated.

It's not reported that way because 'company ignores warrant for user account information' isn't anywhere near as flashy as 'ZOMG GUBERMENT SPYING ON US!'

The NSA isn't even involved in this. This is a company owner refusing to provide BASIC information, and the government taking logical steps in order to attain the information a non-FISA court agreed was needed in their investigation. One particular person is benefiting immensely from media manipulation, and it's the same person who claimed he could encrypt and decrypt data, and not have access to it.

In the case of Lavabit, the government demanded, and was given, a warrant for the HTTPS private key to monitor the online actions of a couple of defendants. This would allow the FBI to monitor not only the specific defendants, but all Lavabit customers.

And I want to be totally clear about this: The government asked to install a pen trap device *and* have the private keys which would have allowed it to monitor all Lavabit customers.

(Unlike phone companies, E-mail providers are under no legal obligation to make surveillance easy, or even possible, by the government.)

Third parties have a duty to assist law enforcement, but that duty does not extend "regardless of the burden involved". The ACLU argument is that giving over the private keys would have completely destroyed the Lavabit business, which was an unreasonable burden to take in assisting law enforcement.

Ladar destroyed his 'business' (Secure storage where the storing party holds the keys? Not possible) by not handing over the requested METADATA in the first place. By not handing over data that a judge deemed was necessary in an ongoing investigation, the government escalated to the point of pentrap / SSL keys.

You do when they have a warrant.

Just saying "You do when they have a warrant" is no longer sufficient. There's ample evidence that judicial oversight has been compromised by the FISA court et al., and this is a particularly strong case of government overreach.

You can't take warrants at face value any more.

There was no FISA court involved in this issue. It was a standard warrant.

Read the first document - there's nothing in that request that should be objected to - unless you want people to be charged with a crime without a proper investigation. Feel free to compare that court with the list of FISA courts at Wikipedia.

Ladar is playing you all - and you're all falling for it. The NSA spying is most definitely an issue, but this has nothing to do with NSA spying.

"no No NO!"

No, no, no yourself. Lavabit received a FISA court order, accompanied by a gag order. This is not a "typical" court order at all. One of the things he bemoaned in his public statement about the shutdown was that he was prevented from even speaking about the details. That is anything but "normal". It's the illegal FISA court. Second, "pen registers" are for telephones, not emails.

Read the documents. The gag order was to prevent the original account holder from becoming aware of the investigation. That's nothing more than Standard Procedure..

What FISA Court? The original request, on page 1, was from the "UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF VIRGINIA" - according to Wikipedia there are no FISA members there.

Did I mention my post in the original thread? I am an 'insider' - of sorts - with first hand knowledge of how these things progress. I was just as suspicious, until I read the document and saw exactly what happened. Unfortunately the 'media' fans the flames by only presenting the last document "We want SSL keys", and completely avoiding the fact that Ladar ignored first document "Please provide metadata for account x".

I believe the difference they are pointing out is that FM / AM, police, fire, etc. are broadcasting out and are 'readily available', whereas with WiFi is broadcasting but is not readily available to the general public, most of the time it is encrypted and meant just for yourself. This ruling is saying people who want to sue Google, are allowed to, because they were not broadcasting for the same purpose as the other technologies mentioned above.

From the actual summary of the court ruling:
Wiretap Act
The panel affirmed the district court's order denying a
motion to dismiss claims that Google, Inc., violated the
Wiretap Act when, in the course of capturing its Street View
photographs, it collected data from unencrypted Wi-Fi
networks.
The panel held that Google's data collection did not fall
within a Wiretap exemption set forth in 18 U.S.C.
? 2511(2)(g)(i) because data transmitted over a Wi-Fi
network is not an "electronic communication" that is "readily
accessible to the general public." Under 18 U.S.C.
? 2510(16)(A), a "radio communication" is by definition
"readily accessible to the general public" so long as it is not
scrambled or encrypted. The panel held that the Wi-Fi
network data collected by Google was not a radio
communication, and thus was not by definition readily

Un-encrypted WiFi is '"readily accessible to the general public" so long as it is not scrambled or encrypted.' Most people carry around a device that is capable of listening in to these radio communications. There are probably even wifi sniffers available in the Google Play store (probably not in the apple store though) that will let you record these kinds of transmissions automatically.
    Civil actions against Google "listening in" on these conversations is akin to suing the police department for breaching your privacy when they knocked on your car window whilst you were having sex in a secluded location.

I believe the difference they are pointing out is that FM / AM, police, fire, etc. are broadcasting out and are 'readily available', whereas with WiFi is broadcasting but is not readily available to the general public, most of the time it is encrypted and meant just for yourself. This ruling is saying people who want to sue Google, are allowed to, because they were not broadcasting for the same purpose as the other technologies mentioned above.

From the actual summary of the court ruling:
Wiretap Act
The panel affirmed the district court's order denying a
motion to dismiss claims that Google, Inc., violated the
Wiretap Act when, in the course of capturing its Street View
photographs, it collected data from unencrypted Wi-Fi
networks.
The panel held that Google's data collection did not fall
within a Wiretap exemption set forth in 18 U.S.C.
? 2511(2)(g)(i) because data transmitted over a Wi-Fi
network is not an "electronic communication" that is "readily
accessible to the general public." Under 18 U.S.C.
? 2510(16)(A), a "radio communication" is by definition
"readily accessible to the general public" so long as it is not
scrambled or encrypted. The panel held that the Wi-Fi
network data collected by Google was not a radio
communication, and thus was not by definition readily

The slide deck is available.

Aside from the 'WTF is AT&T doing with over a quarter-century of phone records that would justify the cost of storing them, anyway?' angle, there are a few... concerning... elements.

1. The searches aren't "warrantless" in the strictest sense; but apparently most of them occur by the process of 'administrative subpoena', which requires no judicial oversight. The DEA has the power to get one simply by asserting that it needs one because drugs. (Sections 506 and 507 of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970). Given that the features of the program include turnaround times of an hour or less, barring atypically complex queries, there is clearly very limited review going on. It isn't the DEA running raw SQL queries; but the separation between it being the 'DEA's database' and 'AT&T's database' appears to be fairly limited.

2. Pretty much everything in the section of the presentation entitled "Protecting The Program"(starts on page 8): The program is 'unclassified' but "All requestors are instructed to never refer to Hemisphere in any official document" and there are specific instructions on how to conceal Hemisphere as the source in an investigation by using it first, to guide further subpoenas, and then retroactively building a case only on the subsequent subpoenas, in order to conceal, from the court and everyone else, the role of Hemisphere. As they describe the process:

When a complete set of CDRs are subpoenaed from the carrier, then all memorialized references to relevant and pertinent calls can be attributed to the carrier’s records, thus “walling off” the information obtained from Hemisphere. In other words, Hemisphere can easily be protected if it is used as a pointer system to uncover relevant numbers.

In special cases, we realize that it might not be possible to obtain subpoenaed phone records that will “wall off” Hemisphere.

In these special circumstances, the Hemisphere analyst should be contacted immediately. The analyst will work with the investigator and request a separate subpoena to AT&T

This practice of evidence laundering would appear to be very similar to the "Parallel Construction" process described as in use by the DEA for other giant secretive data sources (with 'Parallel Construction' being the term for "recreating" a fictional chain of evidence that excludes the existence of sensitive data sources. Less friendly audiences might call this 'perjury'...)

Correct.

Readers can get a good legal education by reading the examples of stops in the memorandum. http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/750446/stop-and-frisk-memoranda.pdf

One of them actually met the legal requirements for a stop and arrest -- the suspect actually fit the description of a criminal -- but most of them didn't.

The admissions by the cops from officer to cop on the beat made it clear that they were violating the Fourth Amendment.

The police can't possibly have reasonable suspicion that every black person in NYC is a potential criminal.

The judge's memorandum went into that. http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/750446/stop-and-frisk-memoranda.pdf

Queens and Staten Island are high-crime areas. Being in a high-crime area is reason for suspicion. So the cops testified that they have reasonable suspicion to stop someone for being in Queens.

A guy is in Queens, he's black, somebody black committed a crime two weeks ago -- that's three reasons. Put them together and that's a reason to stop and frisk somebody. He's gotta be guilty of something.

Another reason is the way they walk. Walking too fast is reason for suspicion. Walking too slow is reason for suspicion. Walking at a normal speed is reason for suspicion -- they might be trying to avoid attention.

This is from the memorandum in the case. There are many other accounts like this.

DAVID FLOYD, et al. vs. THE CITY OF NEW YORK,
David Floyd, et al. vs. The City of New York.

OPINION AND ORDER
08 Civ. 1034 (SAS)
Case 1:08-cv-01034-SAS-HBP Document 373
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/08/12/nyregion/stop-and-frisk-decision.html
http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/750446/stop-and-frisk-memoranda.pdf

1. Unconstitutional Stop and Frisk

a. Leroy Downs

i. Findings of Fact

Leroy Downs is a black male resident of Staten Island in his mid-thirties. On the evening of August 20, 2008, Downs arrived home from work and, before entering his house, called a friend on his cell phone while standing in front of a chain link fence in front of his house. Downs used an earpiece connected to the phone by a cord, and held the cell phone in one hand and the black mouthpiece on the cord in the other.

Downs saw a black Crown Victoria drive past and recognized it as an unmarked police car. The car stopped, reversed, and double-parked in front of Downs’s house, at which point Downs told his friend he would call back. Two white plainclothes officers, later identified as Officers Scott Giacona and James Mahoney, left the car and approached Downs.

One officer said in an aggressive tone that it looked like Downs was smoking weed. They told him to “get the [fuck] against the fence,” then pushed him backwards until his back was against the fence. Downs did not feel free to leave.

Downs explained that he was talking on his cell phone, not smoking marijuana, that he is a drug counselor, and that he knows the captain of the 120th Precinct. Without asking permission, the officers patted down the outside of his clothing around his legs and torso, reached into his front and back pants pockets and removed their contents: a wallet, keys, and a bag of cookies from a vending machine. The officers also searched his wallet.

After the officers failed to find any contraband, they started walking back to the car. Downs asked for their badge numbers. The officers “laughed [him] off” and said he was lucky they did not lock him up. Downs said he was going to file a complaint, and one of them responded by saying, “I’m just doing my [fucking] job.” Charles Joseph, a friend of Downs who lives on the same block, witnessed the end of the stop. After the officers drove away, Downs walked to the 120th Precinct to file a complaint.

Downs told Officer Anthony Moon at the front desk that he wanted to make a complaint and described what had happened. Officer Moon said that he could not take the complaint because Downs did not have the officers’ badge numbers, and that Downs should file a complaint with the CCRB. As Downs left the station he saw the two officers who stopped him driving out of the precinct in their Crown Victoria, and he wrote down its license plate number on his hand.

Downs then returned to the station. He tried to give Officer Moon the license plate information, but Officer Moon said that he should give the information to the CCRB instead. Downs waited at the station until he saw the two officers come through the back door with two young black male suspects.

Downs pointed out the two officers to Officer Moon and asked him, “Can you get their badge numbers?” Officer Moon talked to the officers and then told Downs “maybe you can ask them.” At that point, Downs went outside again and took a picture of the license plate on the Crown Victoria, which was the same number he had written on his hand.

Eventually, Downs spoke with a supervisor, who said he would try to get the officers’ badge numbers and then call Downs. The call never came. Having spent a few hours at the station, Downs went home.