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Judge Upholds FBI Keyboard Sniffing
mshiltonj writes: "Wired is reporting that keyboard sniffing can be used to catch "mobsters." I feel safer already. You can read the ruling. Here's a snippet: "This case presents an interesting issue of first impression dealing with the ever-present tension between individual privacy and liberty rights and law enforcement's use of new and advanced technology to vigorously investigate criminal activity. It appears that no district court in the country has addressed a similar issue. Of course, the matter takes on added importance in light of recent events and potential national security implications." Translation: Don't deny us this tool or you'll be blamed for us not catching terrorists." See also an Infoworld article. We have several previous stories on the Scarfo case.
I'm glad to see the courts upholding our rights to have unusual fetishes such as sniffing other people's keyboards.
If I remember correctly, J Edgar Hoover was the FBI's original keyboard sniffer.
I Heart Sorting Networks
so we know they can now break in and install a device as well as slip in a trojan.
what solutions are there? as for software, i've seen one site about free-ware antivirus, but it was linux only (like linux needs av software!). it would be nice if there was open-source AV for windows. any pointers?
as for hardware, other than having intimate knowledge of your own hardware (always checking your keyboard cable connection and keeping your chassis open for inspection), i can only think of sealed, tamper proof computer chassis.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
I don't see anything wrong with the police searching, or spying on, someone if they first get a warrant.
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Yes, you are missing something...
This ruling means that they don't need to get a warant to sniff, just a court order.
So it's not rampant abuse of the system, but the privacy people see it as the thin end of a wedge.
Gentoo Sucks
In my mind the real question isn't about the keystroke recorder, but the fact that the govt. let them essentially break-in and secretly install it. Yea yea, he's a "known criminal" in our innocent until proven guilty state, but this mean that they can use the same tactics on *anyone* not just criminals.
It definitely bothers me.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
What are you worried about? I doubt they were cluefull enough to make a Linux version of the sniffer. ;-)
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
This ruling means that they don't need to get a warant to sniff, just a court order.
I believe the two are synonymous. You have to go to a judge to get a warrent to perform any kind of search or seizure. I don't believe that this lowers the legal standard.
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
I'm sure others will notice this, but how exactly does the installation of the sniffer take place? Since there is no warrant, and only a court order, do the authorities have the legal backing to "break and enter" a computer to install the sniffer? Is a computer awarded the same rights as a physical place (i.e. apt, home, etc...)?.
Also, if the sniffer is sent as a trojan'd email or program, could this lead to entrapment defenses based on the enticement used in the delivery method?
"Moving through the masses like a fish through water." syrup
Here are some excellent step-by-step instructions on securing Linux, Solaris, and NT.
Please read the article.
Previously, the FBI had to get a wiretap order, under Title III, which has to be signed by the Attorney General or the Deputy. In this case, the FBI was able to gather their evidence using only a search warrant, which any judge can issue.
The FBI's argument was that because the device only intercepted intra-computer communication (i.e. from the keyboard to the CPU) and not computer to computer communications, those communications are not protected by the Wiretap statute (18 USC 2518).
If they get a warrant first.
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I've actually seen similar products for sale at $99 in consumer electronics catalogs as a way to catch your kids surfing porn.
While I have not (yet) seen equivalent products for USB on the market, sniffing USB is even easier than PS/2.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
If you keep the cables a secret, expect them to be severed almost daily.
Who cares is the FBI smells my keyboard? It prolly just smells like sweat and doritos.
The real danger here lies in how wiretapping is shifting from being an activity you need to actively monitor via an external resource, and is becoming a self-contained object you drop into the suspect's house and fetch later. The latter you only need a court order. The former you need a full warrant.
Until a judge figures out that loggers and tappers are basically the same thing with two different methods of planting and unplanting, this ruling will stick, unfortunately. And once voice recorders are small enough to be plantable devices without any active collection needed (or video recorders, or combination video and audio and keystroke and data packet sniffer and so on) then little black boxes can sneak into anyone's home on thin suspicion.
Smart card readers (for your key), and voice dictation software. A keyboard logger can't work, if you don't user the keyboard.
When someone yells "Stop" or goes limp, or taps out, the fight is over.
The US has the concept of the citizen/soldier. Basically, the average citizen is required, when called, to provide for the common defense.
While police are not the military, they are still providing for that common defense. Why should anything be reserved to a government agency, and kep away from the people at alarge? Isn't this a government of the people, by the people, for the people? A lifetime membership oin the public beauraucracy [sorry for my spelling] is a frightening thing.
I'm starting to think the ancient Athenians had it right.
Public service there was should be involuntary, random , and short.
I am a former Military officer, so no need to tell me about military secrets and stuff like that. Far more of our offensive ability comes from our advanced manufacturing power than scientific advances on the US has. I've served my time, and have now returned to the (server) farm.
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
contrary to /. belief. It specifically states that law enforcement needs a search warrant before searching your property or person. Now since they didn't have tcp/ip or telephones in those days it's up to the court system to update the meaning of our constitution as times and technology changes. That's how it has always worked. If you're a suspect and a search warrant is issued our law enforcement agencies have been able to search your property for the last few hundred years.
Come on. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. This is exactly how police surveillance should happen. A court order is still required. It is difficult to do on a large scale, at least when a physical key logger is used. It does not require people to use broken encryption. The problem starts when people are forbidden from verifying the integrity of their own computers.
bb
The FBI's argument was that because the device only intercepted intra-computer communication (i.e. from the keyboard to the CPU) and not computer to computer communications, those communications are not protected by the Wiretap statute (18 USC 2518 [cornell.edu]).
Which is kinda like saying they can put a bug directly in your phone, because then it's only recording what's going from your mouth to the microphone, not phone to phone, and thus not a wiretap.
Granted, in a computer not all keystrokes are going to be transfered over the network, but how can you, the observing FBI agent, know which are which until you look at all of them? I can't see how you could possibly avoid looking at information (like a typed email) that should be require a wiretap order.
But then again, I'm too jaded and cynical to work up much anger when the FBI makes a grab for a little more power. One day my children will wake up and find themselves in a police state where you are born free until an officer of the law says otherwise, and no one will be able to understand how it happened because they won't notice that it has.
The enemies of Democracy are
they probably won't shut down mobster - they'll just have a long string of court dates and then make them switch to a subscription model.
Here's the relavent part of the decision:
"Acting pursuant to federal search warrants, the F.B.I. on January 15, 1999, entered Scarfo and Paolercio's business office, Merchant Services of Essex County, to search for evidence of an illegal gambling and loansharking operation. During their search of Merchant Services, the F.B.I. came across a personal computer and attempted to access its various files. They were unable to gain entry to an encrypted file named ?Factors.?
Suspecting the ?Factors? file contained evidence of an illegal gambling and loansharking operation, the F.B.I. returned to the location and, pursuant to two search warrants, installed what is known as a ?Key Logger System? (?KLS?) on the computer and/or computer keyboard in order to decipher the passphrase to the encrypted file, thereby gaining entry to the file."
Note that the FBI has a warrent for the first entry, and returned with new warrents to install the KLS. I'm as paranoid as the next guy about government intrusion (hence my Libertynews.org website) but the FBI followed the rules here. And as detailed in previous articles they actually bent over backwards to make sure the KLS did not record any of his online keystrokes.
This is the kind of thing that civil libertarians should be applauding, proper use of warrents and use of technology to limit the scope of thier intrusion.
Remember Lexington Green!
...that this will be at all effective? Think about this:
First off, how many people are NOT running Lookout Distress or similar Gatesian Bloatware for their E-mail? Those who fall into this category WILL see the 'Magic Lantern' worm as an unexecuted file attachment, one that is likely to be quickly deleted.
Second: How long is it going to take the computing community "At Large" to dissect how ML or any other keyboard logger works, and come up with a very effective countermeasure?
Third: How long will it take seasoned criminals to grab said countermeasure? The ones that are computer-savvy can download and install just as well as any techie.
This whole exercise seems to be little more than useless window dressing to me. It almost looks like a (somewhat desperate) attempt by the FBI to fool the public into thinking they're effectively fighting terrorists when they may not have the slightest hint of a clue.
I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I really don't see what good monitoring Lord only knows how many computer keyboards will do. And how is a typical consumer, who can barely find their system's power switch, going to know if they're being monitored?
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
In order to combat this, the FBI designed their keylogger to go innactive while the modem was connected. I still have some lingering questions about this. E-mail is asynchronous. With many e-mail services (Eudora, Outlook, and AOL), the underlying software lets you compose e-mail offline and store it to disk, automatically transferring it at a later date. Personally, I compose a lot of my e-mail when my computer is offline -- these days, I spend half my time on airplanes, it is when I get the most e-mail written, I sync when I land at the next destination.
Another worrisome trend is that the hearings were "ex parte in camera" -- meaning in the judges private chambers without the presence of defense attornies. The FBI claims the details must remain a secret for national security reasons. The defense attornies are only provided a sanitized summary of the keylogging features, not the full details. This is worrisome because it prevents the public from understanding the details of what is really going on. As we saw in the Carnivore case, the FBI was free to define its own boundaries. For example, when Carnivore grabs e-mail summaries, I would interpret the court order as allowing capture of only the SMTP "envelope" containing the TO/FROM addresses -- the FBI interprets this as capturing the full e-mail headers. I think this is a gross violation of civil liberties, but there is no way to challenge this. Likewise, the keylogger details may show similar gross violations of civil liberties, but the FBI hides behind its cloak of "national security".
The thing is, there are no important details to keylogging. You can go to http://www.keyghost.com for your own hardware-based keylogger, or you can download numerous keyloggers off the Internet. There are some difficult problems. For example, PGP 6.0 introduced a keyboard driver that intercepts your keystrokes: when you type your password, this driver routes them around Windows. Thus, while it appears that you are typing in a dialog box, this is only an illusion. Standard software keyloggers for Windows will not capture the passwords. (This is why PGP 6 doesn't work well with Win2k -- it doesn't have the power management features, so it prevents Win2k from going into "suspend/hibernate" mode).
Anyway, I'll be posting some more detailed analysis later this month on my personal website. In addition, I'm providing a $10,000 bounty for anybody PC containing an "interesting" keylogger -- maybe one from the mafia doing industrial espionage, maybe one from the FBI, I don't care. I'll be posting the full details to my website (http://www.robertgraham.com).
Granted, in a computer not all keystrokes are going to be transfered over the network, but how can you, the observing FBI agent, know which are which until you look at all of them? I can't see how you could possibly avoid looking at information (like a typed email) that should be require a wiretap order.
The FBI's tool took very careful steps to not record anything when the user was on-line. It checked whether the modem was in use, Internet Explorer was running, and a few other details. (That information comes from the EPIC web site, sorry I don't have a better link.)
I agree that you could argue that the user was typing an e-mail in Notepad that was going to become a communication, but the typing in Notepad is not, in an of itself, a communication. The actual e-mail leaving the system is a communication only.
I can't wait to see some secret cables being dug and laid by freedom-loving people.
Contractor: Hey, boss. I hit some sort of electrical cable at two feet.
Foreman: Was it flagged?
Contractor: Uhhh... no. All the flags for telco, electric and cable are over there. *Points*
Foreman: Keep digging.
Seriously, if this sort of thing could even take off, it will be via wireless connections.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
"Wipe" of course, is a euphemism for "pick".
Edith Keeler Must Die
While I don't know if their program works this way, it is possibly to write key loggers in such a way that they only capture keystrokes that are intended for a specific program. For instance, if I knew the details of the PGP program being used, I could record input only when it was the active window.
that I don't want the government brandishing.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of the types that thinks everytime the government makes a new law or whatever that it is a bad thing. I simply feel that privacy is one of our most sacred freedoms.
If the government taps me accidentally instead of their intended target, and they discover me doing something that violates a law in a minor way, they are going to pursue getting a warrant so that they can use the information legitimately next time it happens. Point is they didn't have the right to tap me in the first place.
Second point is this. If I get tapped by accident (net-criminal spoofed my IP/connection details) and a third party hacker (i'm simplifying this.. i know i'll catch heat for using hacker)intercepts the signal, he may learn of information that puts me, my career, or my life in danger.. information that would not have leaked had it not been for the government adding a hole to my system. I doubt the government would compensate me if I lost my job for leaking trusted information to the web.
I'm all for anything that aids our law-enforcement officials, as long as they are responsible and take ownership of the consequences.
Making it mandatory for the government to notify you that you are being snooped defeats the purpose of the monitoring in the first place. A more suitable method would be allow concerned individuals email or call to request whether or not they are being snooped. Then if they ARE snooping you, and they have reason, they can ask you to see a local court to discuss the matter without actually stating that they ARE monitoring you. That is one faster way of getting the criminals into court, if they are foolish enough. It also protects the innocent. Of course if the government is 'accidentally' snooping you, they will just tell you "no, we aren't monitoring you" because they think they are monitoring the person spoofing your connection.
A better solution is a time-passworded utility that you can install and call to request the current password. The utility would check your system for the trojan. If that is the case, I'm all for this course of action against cyber-crime.
-fc
.
. echo -e \\04 >
Won't be long before the makers of privacy tools will change their GUI front ends so that a keyboard is no longer used to authenticate. The simplest method would be to display a virtual keyboard and have the user mouse over to each character. It would be difficult, though not impossible, to construct a "mouse sniffer" that gathers enough data to reconstruct the password based on movement history. Defeating that would simply require randomly moving the virtual keyboard between each click. A bit of a pain, but if you really want to avoid the rubber hoses, you may have to do it.
The only problem after that is evading the "looking over your shoulder" that no-echo keyboard password prompts are so good at avoiding. Maybe a very low contrast virtual keyboard and cursor...
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
Of course, the trick is not to plant the bug, the trick is to plant the bug in such a way that your intrusion is not discovered. I suspect that the brighter folks in the criminal world will be focussing on detecting such intrusions more than they will be focussing on preventing them.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Despite early reports to the contrary, the major antivirus companies came out saying they did not intend to intentionally leave any loopholes for the FBI.
1 /fbi-virus.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2001/12/1
I think most people here are trying to attach themselves to popular catch phrases and not see the real point.
You cannot walk around yelling "freedom at any cost!", because freedom is just part of the balance that makes our society what it is.
You obviously cannot give everyone all the freedoms in the world just because our culture tells us that freedom is all important. It has a place in society, like justice, restraint and safety.
If you truely believed that you cannot sacrifice ANY freedoms for safety; freedom to own tanks, freedom to spray bullets at Dubaya, freedom to fart in other peoples food, I think it would ROCK! But thats not the point. Society would end as we know it.
As for sayings, recognise this one?
A person's individual freedom to swing his arm extends only so far as the next person's nose.
It is for all of us as a collective society to determine where the next persons nose is.
So, even as importand as freedoms are (and BTW, I disagree with the Judges decision, too much freedoms are at risk, but thats IMHO), we can not go ballying around (HA! I just said ballying!) claiming that freedoms are the end all in everything.
There can always be too much of something, no matter how good it is.
B r o w s e t o a w e b p a g e w i t h l o t s o f w o r d s o n i t a n d t h e n c u t a n d p a s t e e a c h l e t t e r y o u n e e d.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
I'm not convinced. An e-mail that is sent over the net is a communication, even if there is a delay between typing and sending. I mean, there is -anyway-. There's a period of time where the e-mail is sitting in memory, and until you hit "send" it isn't being communicated. Kinda like while the microphone is converting your voice to a digital signal, the phone is converting not communicating, so it should be okay to grab the audio at that point, right?
I'd say that, by definition, an e-mail is a communication whether or not it has been sent yet. Being e-mail implies the intent to communicate it, otherwise it's just a document. Given that, and the fact that they couldn't distinquish an email from anything else, I'd say a wiretap order should still be necessary.
The enemies of Democracy are
They've set up military tribunals,
These are explicitly for non-US citizens caught abroad, trying to attack the US. US citizens aren't subject to them (they've got constitutional rights). Residents of the US aren't subject to them (the Supreme Court says that non-citizens who are residents of the US have constitutional rights). Stop being an idiot.
email/keyboard sniffing
This case was explicitly about a mafioso, so how is the terrorist excuse working here? Besides, WIRETAPS ARE LEGAL WITH A JUDGE'S PERMISSION. This is just the 21st century version of the wiretap. Stop being an idiot.
, hundreds of detnetions,
And every single detainee is either someone who has violated the law (overstaying their visas, for example) or who is a material witness who is likely to flee. Unless you know better, oh stupid one? This is the exact same thing that liberal icon Bobby Kennedy did when he started taking on the mob; if a reputed mafioso spit on the sidewalk, he would be arrested for violating public spitting laws (which exist to prevent the spread of disease). Was it OK for Bobby Kennedy to do? Did civilization collapse?
racial profiling
Note to moron: you would have to be willfully stupid to not wonder about a muslim booking a one-way ticket on a jumbo jet, taking no baggage. Idiots don't pay attention to patterns just because it's not politically correct. Oh, and the majority of American Blacks are in favor of racial profiling to prevent terror attacks, so you can assuage your white, upper-middle class guilt.
under this "terrorism" excuse.
Excuse? If you think this is a fucking excuse, please tell me where the Twin Towers went. Do you think they're on holiday in Paris?
Russia says the Chechyns are "terrorists."
The Chechens are terrorists. They blew up several apartment buildings in Russia two or three years ago. That's what prompted the renewal of the Chechen war. There had been a cease-fire for about a year until they started blowing up civilians in Russia. Sorry to let actual facts get in the way of your mindless diatribe.
China's calling Taiwan "terrorist,"
China is run by a group of evil people. They've been calling the Taiwanese whatever name seems to strike a nerve in the West. It's like Saddam calling the US/British no-fly zones "terrorist" or "criminal." When the evil ones call you names, you're doing well.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
If the government taps me accidentally instead of their intended target, and they discover me doing something that violates a law in a minor way, they are going to pursue getting a warrant so that they can use the information legitimately next time it happens. Point is they didn't have the right to tap me in the first place.
Well, in that case, the charges they bring against you will be dropped (assuming your lawyer is decent) because of exactly what you said: they didn't have the right to tap you in the first place. Then you can sue them for your time.
~ now you know
Well lets see, smoking pot is illegal so if law enforcement starts to spy on you where is the problem? You're breaking the law. As far as everything else you'll probably just get labeled into the crazy weirdo category and no one will care.
But who cares about guns? Just follow your state fireamrs laws and you're OK. No one spies on you because you're weird. Only if you're a suspect in criminal activity.
Isn't some kind of bizare expectation of privacy principle at work here as well? That so many people are denying such a thing for all things internet is very disturbing and in sharp contrast to laws for now obsolete communications methods, phone and post. How the bastards decide that the government can look into my private communications without reason is much less important than the fact that they will do so. The fourth amendment is going away.
What's to keep them from putting cameras into your house? That have worked just as well to get the passwords.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Now, it looks from this as if the police asked for the right to install a sniffer to get the password for a specific encrypted file sitting on the filesystem they had gained access to in pursuing a legitimate search warrant.
I would say this is more closely analogous to getting the key to a locked file cabinet than to monitoring communications. As such, I would agree, the wiretap statute shouldn't apply.
It is like getting the key to a locked file cabinet, but to do so they tapped the guy's phone and waited for him to divulge where he hid the key. Wouldn't you need a wiretap order to do that?
The problem here is that, again, they can't tell if he's typing an email or his password until they see the keystrokes, but they record it anyway. If he was using that computer for e-mail, then there's really no way they couldn't have gotten those emails as well as the password.
Inevitably, they are recording communications, and as such I feel they should need a wiretap order. I can't see any fault with this principle.
The enemies of Democracy are
Whatever you type on your computer is a document. In fact, this comment that I am typing to Slashdot right now is just a document on my computer (in RAM, on disk, whatever), until I click the "Submit" button and transmit data to Slashdot. The bits that go across the wire from me to Slashdot are a communication, and that communication is protected. Any prepatory work done before or afterwards is not protected under the law under 18 USC 2518.
It's not a software key logger, it's a hardware one. It's in the keyboard, and thus has no way to know which app has focus.
Not that I'd trust the FBI to kindly not capture keystrokes when I'm typing in Eudora, thanks. They -can- be capturing communication after installing this device, so they should have to get judicial approval to do so.
The enemies of Democracy are
You won't find anything. They still need probable cause.
From a strict legal perspective the fact that the keyboard logger *could* record communications that the warrent didn't cover isn't really a reason no to use the device. If the device did record any such communication, the communication and anything resulting from it's interception would not be admissable as evidence.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
The heck with that. What if you had an icon on your desktop named "Shortcut MSWORD97.EXE". To enter your password, select this icon, copy it, and paste it into the password dialog box. Let's keep it simple folks... (Even chose a decent password too! upper and lower case, numbers, punctuation, spaces, and 21 characters to boot. Break that!)
Hardware keylogger that physically exists between keyboard and motherboard.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Could they be bugging the room while you are on the phone without a wiretap order? That seems like a pretty obvious way to get around needing a court order.
From a strict legal perspective, the issue has already been solved, by the judge, barring any issues that come up in appeals. What I'm saying is that I for me, the principle I believe in is that the -could- is what matters, not the promise not to.
Plus, it's a lot tougher to have to prove in court that certain bits of evidence are inadmissible because they were obtained from communications vs non-communications captured from the keyboard rather than just saying you can't capture without a wiretap in the first place.
The enemies of Democracy are
Is there any reliable way to detect the characteristic activities of a keylogger? Rather than trusting a virus scanner, or trying to keep every possible back door fixed, I would like a utility that would look for suspicious activity indicative of such a key logging attack. I am assuming though that this would be relatively operating system dependent.
Beyond this, are there ways of making the operating system itself immune to keylogging? In windows this might be a custom keyboard driver. In Linux perhaps a kernel module.
No matter what you do they can always log at the hardware level (essentially bug your keyboard), but it'd be nice to make it as hard as possible for them.
-josh
But at that point, wouldn't using even the most rudimentary of encryption take it 'out of plain view?'
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
They key word (sorry) was /just/ a document. Obviously anything on the computer is a document of one form or another... But some documents are also communications. Communication means not only the act of communicating but the thing communicated. A letter is a "communication" even when not in the hands of a postal carrier, and so is an e-mail in a window. Defining it to only be a communication while being communicated is very limited, and not the usage in any other walk of life.
Whether this is what the law says or not really doesn't matter to whether or not it's true.
The enemies of Democracy are
There is a theoretical solution to this, using quantum diodes and open source software it is possible to create an untapable system. The quantum diodes would be part of an optical based keyboard. When any photons are prematurely observed, the whole thing errors out.
The nature of open source software would make it difficult to add flaws that couldn't be detected if wanted. In fact, the encription program could do MD5 sums on the kernel and all parts of the OS that grap keystrokes making that impossible too.
Other ways like a video grab of the keyboard, or biometrics on the individual typing could be done too. But I think the simplest way would be with a smart card that had a mini ATM keyboard on it. The user would keep it in his wallet at all times, and key in a pin before using it - too many guesses would permanently disable it.
>It is important for law enforcement to have the
>tools at their disposal to be able to properly
>investigate crime and gather evidence.
yes, but this is largely a procedural issue. THere *was* judicial oversight, and there definitely *will be* judicial oversight.
The question is as to the *form* the oversight should take. A very simple look over the shoulder, such a as a warrant, or the higher standard we use with a more intrusive wiretap. In *some* way there will be judicial approval. the question is how.
hawk
Finally an excuse to use my old Amiga!
The amiga keyboard uses a 6502 processor to communicate to the main cpu - a 68000.
That's computer-to-computer communication, and therefore protected by the Wiretap statute. Right? ;^)
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Well, at least that means "Fuck you, spammer" is protected by the First Amendment... ;-)
I actually think the Scarfo case is a good thing. The logger was used in accordance with a court order, and the whole thing gives lie to the argument that we can't have readily available crypto because it makes the actual bad guys invulnerable to law enforcement.
-
Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
Umm, no ... here in the U.S., police officers still take "requests" without any problems.
If you call, they'll show up.
Granted, our police officers are probably underpaid for the work they do - but I have no inclination to give any of them donations either.
I've already done so, indirectly, by paying for a couple of exhorbitantly expensive speeding tickets.
(In fact, I paid a lawyer to get them reduced to plain old parking tickets, but the "court costs" alone were close to $200 for each of them. Obviously, they're making plenty of money off of their traffic courts.)
Ah, the key difference.
Active communications (e.g. e-mail in transit) are protected by 18 USC 2518. Stored communications that you're talking about, such as e-mails you've received, chat logs, and the like, are protected under 18 USC 2703. The rules regarding these protections, also sometimes called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) are rather complicated and depend greatly on the type of information, how old it is, and where it's being stored.
The differences active and stored communications can be summed up this way: To intercept an active communication, the government must show probable cause that the interception will yield evidence of a crime. If a federal judge agrees, he will grant a wiretap order, or authority. To obtain stored communications (e.g. connection logs, billing records, stored e-mail, etc.), the government must present probable cause to a judge, who can grant either a search warrant or a court order (also called a 2703 order). The type of records being obtained determines whether a court order or search warrant is issued.
Zorch released a statement two weeks ago saying that he was not interested in licensing his invention to the United States government at any cost.
Neither friends nor family have heard from Zorch for the past two weeks. His whereabouts are unknown.
Could they be bugging the room while you are on the phone without a wiretap order? That seems like a pretty obvious way to get around needing a court order.
/. regarding these kinds of things. Thank you!)
Yes, they can pick up phone conversations while bugging the room. But! In order to get the authority to monitor the room, the government has to show probable cause that monitoring the communications in the room will give evidence of a crime. They can't say, "We'll be able to listen to the guy on the phone," becuase the judge will bitch slap them and say, "ask for a wiretap!" They have to show that people will be in the room talking and they they're trying to monitor that.
If such a legal monitor happens to pick up other audio information not origingally intended, but that is evidence, it is admissible. The same way that if any member of law enforcement is in a legal position and observes evidence of a crime, it's admissible. (Example: Guy calls the cops to say his TV was stolen. While the cops are in the guys house with him writing out a report, they notice a ten pound bag of crack on the table.)
(BTW, this is first really intelligible discussion I've been able to have on
How many people here would LOVE to catch someone in the act of futzing with their boxes? If they try this on someone who is halfway awake then the cat is out of the bag. One way or another, the software and physical devices involved are going to be revealed. If they're lucky, it will be "HA! HA!" cypherpunk style messages posted loudly to the net. If they're unlucky then organized crime types are going to have a joyous time feeding them misinformation. Mafiosi can employ good IT and security people too. If enough of this sort of thing happens then they certainly will.
And there we have it, ladies and gentlemen -- the exact sentiment that will help destroy justice and the rule of law.
We worry about too much surveillance because it empowers law enforcement far beyond what it needs. The surveillance society cannot be free, because every person must worry at every moment that he/she is under surveillance. What's more, as law enforcement rushes to make more of the citizenry's actions public through surveillance, law enforcement also demands that more of its own actions be made secret -- thereby undermining the public oversight that is the fundament of American liberty.
If we could count on the police to only use this when needed and justified, well, then we wouldn't need excessive brutality laws, Miranda rights, or any of the other trappings of a civil society.
I am not against law enforcement -- my family is deep in law enforcement -- but I am against unaccountable law enforcement. I am against intrusive law enforcement. I am against law enforcement that sees every citizen as merely a crook who hasn't been caught yet.
There are good cops, there are good DAs, there are good judges. You know what? They play by the rules and they welcome the active oversight of an informed public. When one of the anniversaries of Miranda rolled around, a news organization interviewed a bunch of tough law enforcment types to see what impact the decision had had... how many criminals had walked on "technicalities". You know what? Most of the cops said, the Miranda process strengthened law enforcement, because it marked clear boundaries and built civic trust in the justice process.
It is not a choice between liberties and law. The two can coexist... people are just too lazy to see how.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I fear the forces of "law enforcement" far more than I do their new boogie man of choice, terrorists. I fear them more than I do drug dealers, kiddie porn perverts, communists, or any of the other boogie men used in the past to justify increased powers and decreased accountability or oversight.
What the government fears the people there is freedom. When the people fear the government there is tyrrany. Guess which scenario we live in?
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
There's a difference between the Feds sniffing the passphrase, which is indirect evidence, and sniffing the contents of the file as he typed it, which would have been more direct evidence had they done that. The Feds are trying to hide how they stole the passphrase, and they're arguing about exactly what kind of warrant is needed for stealing it (wiretap vs. search warrant), but once they've stolen the passphrase and legally obtained the encrypted file, they can use it to show a jury that the passphrase they stole decrypts the file into the text they're alleging that Scarfo typed which allegedly shows that he's a mobster. And if they'd simply guessed the passphrase (hint, don't use simple words or your father's prison ID # as your passphrase) they could have done the same. By contrast, if they'd used the SEEKRIT keyboardsniffer to snarf up the file itself, they'd have to tell the jury "Nicky really typed this incriminating letter, trust us, we can't tell you how we know that, cuz it's RILLY SEEKRIT, but we're the FBI and we'd never lie to you, so he's GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY", they'd have a much weaker case. (Any self-respecting jury would throw them out on their expletive-deleted for even trying that, but American juries often fall for that sort of thing, and judges fall for it even more often.)
US rules of evidence, since the early-1960s Supreme Court decisions which promulgated the "Exclusionary Rule", say that you can't use illegally obtained evidence, and there's a doctrine called "Fruit of the Poisoned Tree" which says that if you illegally obtain information that you use to obtain other information, you can't use that as evidence either. So if they'd beaten or tortured the information out of Scarfo, or if they hadn't had a warrant when they first searched his computer, they'd be unable to use it legally, which is part of why Scarfo's lawyers were arguing about the precise type of warrant they needed before stealing his passphrase.
On the other hand, if they'd gone asking around the mobster social club if anybody wanted to call in an anonymous tip with Nicky's usual passwords or offering get-out-of-jail-free cards to temporarily-retired mobsters in return for the passphrase, that'd be legal, and unlike the cases where stool pigeons give false testimony about people in return for reduced jail time, a passphrase is demonstrably either correct or incorrect. (And of course, an "anonymous tip" is often nearly indistinguishable from illegally gathered evidence used to obtain a search warrant.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'm not going to waste time responding to your whole spiel, but I picked out the stupidest thing.
" These are explicitly for non-US citizens caught abroad, trying to attack the US. US citizens aren't subject to them (they've got constitutional rights). Residents of the US aren't subject to them (the Supreme Court says that non-citizens who are residents of the US have constitutional rights). Stop being an idiot."
What are you talking about?! American lives are worth more than Afghan lives?! (or for that matter, Somalian, Ethiopian, Pakistani, Iraqi, etc?). Who the F cares if US citizens aren't subject to them. This is a total invasion of the human rights of the Afghanees.
You know these tribunals are exactly what the Soviet Union used during the Cold War. Read up on it. Americans haven't been exposed to this sort of thing, so they're not as sensetive to it.
Who the F cares if US citizens aren't subject to them. This is a total invasion of the human rights of the Afghanees.
It is no such thing. Let me try to explain this to someone as terminally stupid as yourself. Military tribunals are intended to try prisoners of war, captured overseas. Same as the Nuremberg trials, same as the trial faced by Tojo and other Japanese leaders at the end of WW II.
This is a war. The US is bending over backwards to be nice to captured enemy troops, even though these troops are fighting in violation of the Third Geneva Convention (they target civilians, they don't wear uniforms to mark themselves as combatants, and they don't reveal their chain of command). Under international law, the US is well within its rights to shoot these fuckers with no trial at all.
Human rights, by the way, are a fiction created by western societies. If you don't respect them (as the Taliban and Al Qeida certainly don't), they don't exist. Pissing and moaning that the US isn't respecting rights that the the people captured don't even believe exist is an amazing exercise in self-indulgence.
You know these tribunals are exactly what the Soviet Union used during the Cold War. Read up on it. Americans haven't been exposed to this sort of thing, so they're not as sensetive to it.
Oh don't be absurd. This is nothing like the show trials in the USSR. Please site an example (with references) that show any similarities. You're just another America-hater who would love to cast the US as the Evil Empire, since the country you loved (the USSR) proved to be so completely rotten.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
" This is a war. The US is bending over backwards to be nice to captured enemy troops, even though these troops are fighting in violation of the Third Geneva Convention (they target civilians, they don't wear uniforms to mark themselves as combatants, and they don't reveal their chain of command). Under international law, the US is well within its rights to shoot these fuckers with no trial at all."
Stop making things up. These tribunals are 100% secret. You/other civilians have no idea what is going on there.
With on the spot convictions/death penalty, god knows how many innocent people will be sentenced by these kill happy folks.
Are you stupid? According to the US government, no tribunals have occured yet, and the rules for them have not been finalized. And if they have been happening in secret, how do YOU know about them? And how do you know they were innocent people? You must be God.
As for innocent, tell me how many innocent fuckers were in the Taliban and Al Qeida armies.
It must be nice to hate America. You don't need evidence or any such thing to prove your point. Just a feeling that "kill-happy" folks are going to do something. If the US is so evil and kill-happy, why didn't we just nuke Afghanistan?
-jon
Remember Amalek.
"And how do you know they were innocent people? You must be God." I'm sure you've heard how many innocent people get killed in the US via death penalty, and we have due process and trials take years. Now, imagine a trial where the accused has barely any rights (as Bush said, he'll have more than suspects under the Taliban, which is a pretty laughable comparison -- might as well compare the rights of Jews in to the Nazis). God (me?
"As for innocent, tell me how many innocent fuckers were in the Taliban and Al Qeida armies." Obviously they're not innocent (though it's funny how the US supported the Taliban back in 70's or 80's). However as I said before people who are will be executed.
"It must be nice to hate America." I don't hate America. I love manything about it including the culture and diversity. What I hate is how we go into other countries, total F them up, putting in dictators and whatever who supress the people. There are probably a hundred examples, (Taliban is one).
"You don't need evidence or any such thing to prove your point. Just a feeling that "kill-happy" folks are going to do something. If the US is so evil and kill-happy, why didn't we just nuke Afghanistan?" You know more innocent civilians Afghanees have been killed compared to Sept. 11 (~2990). Here's an excert from an article on the Washington Post (obviously not some crackpot source): Yep, the we sure are taking care of those life threatening tribal elders, good things we prevented them from attending the swearing in ceremony of the new government. Jesus... bomb happy fucks.
Well it was nice talking to you. If you haven't already, read A People's History of the US (Zinn).
1. NO TRIBUNALS HAVE OCCURED. Until you prove otherwise, you're a liar when you claim they have.
2.NO EVIDENCE HAS BEEN PRESENTED OF AN INNOCENT PERSON BEING EXECUTED SINCE THE DEATH PENALTY WAS REINSTATED IN 1976. Now, I don't always agree with how the death penalty is implented in places like Texas. But I have yet to see conclusive evidence that any innocents have been executed recently. This doesn't mean the system doesn't have problems, though. In any event, it has NOTHING to do with whether or not "innocent" Afghans will be executed. If you're captured pointing a gun at US troops, you don't have much of a case.
3. LEARN SOME FUCKING HISTORY. The Taliban was created by Pakistani intelligence (the ISI) in the mid-90's. The US didn't support them in the 70's and 80's; they didn't exist. The US supported the Muhenjidin, the Afghani and Arab guerrilla fighters trying to evict the Soviets from Afghanistan. There are overlap between the groups (Mullah Omar lost an eye fighting the Soviets), but they were not the same group of people and they had different goals.
4. WE HAVE NO IDEA HOW MANY AFGHANI CIVILIANS HAVE BEEN KILLED. We can't even get exact numbers on the number of people killed at the Twin Towers, and we're picking through rubble and doing DNA tests. Do you really think that these reporters (most of whom are anti-American in their slant) are getting accurate numbers? And do you think there would be nearly as many civilian casualties if the Taliban and Al Qeida weren't using civilians as cover? When the US bombed those Red Cross warehouses, it was because the Taliban was using them to hide.
It's time you figure out who the good guys are here, you shithead.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
My god you are a dumbass. Just one more thing:
"NO TRIBUNALS HAVE OCCURED"
No, they haven't, but since they're secret, how can you be so sure?
Also, chill dude.
And also...
"WE HAVE NO IDEA HOW MANY AFGHANI CIVILIANS HAVE BEEN KILLED"
So do you think if only 1 civilian was killed that would be acceptable? What if one of your relatives or friends were killed by a stray bomb. Or what if a bomb landed in one your street and destroyed your neighborhood (because there was a terrorist living there). Would that be acceptable?
Think before you talk so callously about peoples lives.
You are making the extraordinary claim: that unbeknownst to everyone else on the planet, the government is engaging in secret tribunals and executions. Prove it. Or shut the fuck up.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
There is a world of difference between intentionally targeting civilians for mass murder and accidently killing civilians in a war zone because the enemy WHO ATTACKED YOU FIRST is using civilians as human shields. If the Taliban Afghans and Al Qeada Arabs you love so much cared about the Afghani people, why are they using them as cover for bombs? Why not turn themselves in and save the lives of their fellow Muslims, or at least carry the battle away from civilians. But they'd rather let them die. And idiots like you think these bastards are the good guys.
It's amazing how twisted you are.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
*cough*Watergate*cough*Iran-Contra*cough*Fidels assasination and many others is Latin America*cough*
"There is a world of difference between intentionally targeting civilians for mass murder and accidently killing civilians in a war zone"
If you were hit by a stray bomb and died would you care if it was intentional or accidental? Would you feel better if your found it was supposed to hit a military base?
Apparently, you are too stupid to know what proof of something is. Proof is not what someone else did 30 years ago. Proof is what you are doing now.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
And if I found out that a neighbor was a terrorist, and a family member was killed trying get the guy, I'd pitch in and try to find the motherfucking terrorist. See, I don't blame the victim like you do. I blame the source.
-jon
Remember Amalek.