Security, Due Process and Convenience

teambpsi writes: "CNN is running an article about ISPs' concern over having law enforcement present during a court-ordered search. Since we are an ISP, I can understand the concern, however, also being a privacy freak, I think it adds a certain weight to the decision of wether to file the search in the first place. It adds a certain levity. I'm not sure what percentage of these search warrants are unnecessary, but I think that having due process in place is important. Opinions?"

Comments

Hmm

[dj28]

"Since we are an ISP"

So which part of your body do you shove the fiber optic lines and tech support?

Re:Hmm

[lawyamike]

If we are going to pick nits, I'll add one, too: I cannot imagine that the presence of LEOs adds "levity" -- lightness of speech or manner -- to any event. Moreover, due process is of no concern here; the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable or warrantless searches, not the Fifth Amendment, is the applicable provision of the Constitution.

That said, the Minnesota case is wrong, and I don't expect that it will last very long.

Law Enforcement

[2names]

If the search is court ordered, it only makes sense that some law enforcement agency should be there to assist in carrying out the "warrant." However, the agency should only become directly involved if something illegal is found. They should maintain impartiality until some law has been found to have been broken, after all, in this country we are innocent until proven guilty, right?

Re:Law Enforcement

[hagardtroll]

If the police officer isn't present at the search, then there is a break in the chain of custody of the evidence. The ISP's credibility would be on trial. The investigation shouldn't be asking for a search if they aren't willing to put in the resources to ensure the evidence isn't tampered with.

Re:Law Enforcement

[quinto2000]

You miss the point, I think. The issue is that no search should be ordered without "probable cause...and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." (Find it, bookmark it). Individuals can circumvent this as long as they aren't considered direct agents of the police. No matter what, their duties to stay within Constitutional guidelines are much more minimal. So if a warrant has been issued, their better damn be a good reason for it. If they find evidence of a crime, they better damn well have expected to find that evidence. And allowing a private citizen to conduct the search allows it to become a "fishing expedition." This means that they can choose a random place to search without knowing if a crime has actually been committed, and because it's a private citizen who conducted the search, the evidence could still be used. It's a terrible idea. That's why the judge's ruling is an important one.

So, the point is that the law enforcement agency is the most impartial, not because they have no bias, but because the evidence they can use in a court of law is more restricted when they conduct the search. They shouldn't just assist in the search, they should be conducting it.

Re:Law Enforcement

[NoBeardPete]

This is an issue anytime evidence is aquired from someone who isn't law enforcement. This doesn't totally invalidate the evidence. It does, as you note, give the defense a new argument, namely that the ISP may have fabricated the evidence.

However, for most ISPs and most potential cases, I think the police would likely conclude that this is such a weak defense that they are better off spending the manpower in other places, and not having an officer stand around and watch the search. If there is some reason to suspect the ISP of being dishonest, they can send someone to supervise. I don't see why it shouldn't be at their discretion to decide if it's needed or not.

Re:Law Enforcement

[2names]

I didn't miss the point. Most of the time when searches are performed they are not performed by Police officers. These searches are carried out mostly by "officers of the court", such as coroners, forensic investigators, assistant DA's, and civil servants in related fields to the scope of the investigation. The Police officers are there simply to aid the investigators IF some evidence is found.

Re:Law Enforcement

[dughat]

In the computer security field, you have to jump through all sorts of hoops to preserve evidence if you want to prosecute a break in. Usually you have to pull the disk from the machine (without altering it) and lock it away. Trying to figure out what happened is a good way to make the crime unprosecutable. Shouldn't there be a similar requirement for this type of evidence gathering? Or do we just trust whoever answers the phone at some ISP to copy the correct files and correlate them with the correct users and never make a mistake. Here is one link, although not exactly what I was looking for.

Re:Law Enforcement

[gmack]

If you think having a police officer present wil fix this you are sadly mistaken. Any ISP would be able to alter the evidence prior to or even during a search.

Re:Law Enforcement

[cutecub]

Ahh, but thanks to Officer Carnivore ( Err, DCS1000 ), you can have an officer on-site 24 hours a day. Low cost. No hassle...

-S

Re:Law Enforcement

[feloneous cat]

These searches are carried out mostly by "officers of the court"...

But I think the point is that the staff of Yahoo, in fact most U.S. citizens, are not officers of the court.

I find it disturbing that:

a) someone appears to be advocating fishing expeditions
b) that the body of evidence can be mishandled, modified, or severely tampered with
c) that people are willing to trample the Constitution in the name of "getting pornographers".

But that seems to be the attitude post-9/11...

Re:Law Enforcement

[cybermage]

If the police officer isn't present at the search, then there is a break in the chain of custody of the evidence.

There are plenty of other precidences that say otherwise:

If the police want to know what numbers telephone X called, the phone company retrieves that information from their system and provides it. The same is true if they want to know who's phone it is.

Police may go to a gun dealer and say "Who bought this gun from you?" The dealer then retrieves the information from his records and provides it.

In these circumstances, the phone company and the gun dealer may be called upon to testify to the accuracy of the records; but, unless the business itself is being investigated, businesses are trusted to do the record retrieval themselves.

As long as the records are delivered directly from the business to law enforcement, there's no break in the chain of custody. This could be done as easily by fax as it can in person, if not easier.

Look. It seems pretty clear that there are legal reasons to request these records. While requiring law enforcement's presence may temporarily reduce the number of warrants, it's only a matter of time before a workaround is proposed. If law enforcement must be present where the records are kept, congress will create a national registry that ISPs will be forced to tie into. Then, police can execute warrants without leaving their desk.

It's one thing to give police a hard time if they're crossing some ethical line, and I support that. Requiring that they fly across country to watch you type is completely unnecessary. If anything, it'll violate more due process: Police arrest suspect; they discover ISP might have evidence that exhonorates suspect; police spend 48 hours retrieving evidence in person while suspect is abused in jail; or police leave ISP record retrieval to the public defender, preserving their budget.

Re:Law Enforcement

[WGR]

The way out is to have Yahoo deputize some of their employees to become "Officers of the Court" (proably internal security employees). To do this they would require proper training in forensics and rules of evidence, but this would be a good thing any way.

What then should happen is that a proper search warrant is provided to Yahoo etc., who then sends their deputized staff to retrieve it. Since the deputized staff have the equivalent training to police officers for this type of evidence retrieval, there is no break in the the chain of custody, but at the same time the ISP doesn't have to have police officers constantly on their premises getting in the way (or fishing for other evidence). It also lessens the ability of police officers to use their presence at the ISP to search other peoples files.

This is similar to to the way a phone company handles wiretaps.

Re:Law Enforcement

[aaarrrgggh]

Simple solution: Swear 'em in!

I agree that it should be a law enforcement official, but it isn't practical for a police officer to go to the console and get the data. Furthermore, people that are not properly trained should not be inside the data center.

Wouldn't a simple solution be to have employees sworn in as an official of the court, something like a notary public, to conduct the search? As long as there is no conflict of interests that the company or individual may have, what is wrong?

Re:Law Enforcement

[Dave Walker]

Mod him up. This guy seems to be the only one that gets it. If these search warrants are anywhere close to a 'fishing expedition', having an officer present for EACH search is going to cut down on 'going fishing'. If the FBI/CIA/Court System has a couple of dozen officers cooling their heels while three or four dozen search warrants are being executed, well... I say have one officer present for every five search warrants. That ought to cost them some manpower!

Re:Law Enforcement

[EvilAlien]

In these circumstances, Search Warrants are not used to allow law enforcement access to business premises to conduct a search, but to allow the disclosure of information. This disclosure, in the US at least, is a violation of privacy rights unless ordered by a Court.

The use of Search Warrants or subpoenas to order disclosure is similar in Canada, however PIPEDA seems to allow the disclosure of information without warrant when requested by the authorities. What would make more sense is an order simply mandating disclosure of information without being wrapped up in the auspices of a search warrant. The privacy policies of ISPs should reflect this type of scenario, which would, I'd think, invalidate concerns over unreasonable search and seizure.

Re:Law Enforcement

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that it should be a law enforcement official, but it isn't practical for a police officer to go to the console and get the data. Furthermore, people that are not properly trained should not be inside the data center.

One could argue that if the LEO (law enforcement officer) is not technically competent to understand the data he's getting, then the data should not be used in a court of law. Oh wait. It has been.

LEO's have limited constitutional powers. Citizens working with LEO's don't fall under those limitations, even if sworn in a court of law.

A better approach would be to deputize the techies making them officers of the court, so that they *can* perform searches of relevant data.

Re:Law Enforcement

[56ker]

At least its not as based as the laws in the U.K. surrounding ISPs and privacy.

Re:Law Enforcement

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, those damn based brits.

Re:Law Enforcement

[packeteer]

if i was broken into and i knew what to do about not mucking up the files i would first make a backup... if i cant do it i would have a qualified technition who could swear in court under oath that nothing was changed... then keep the backup and hand over the original... i know it would suck but thats how life is sometimes...

Re:Law Enforcement

[Anonymous Coward]

Having the cops there would only add levity if they were the Keystone Kops. I think you'd prefer they were adding gravity. Or, for the pols among us, gravitas.

Re:Law Enforcement

[Anonymous Coward]

That was a particularly vapid comment. Care to explain what you actually mean?

Re:Law Enforcement

[feloneous cat]

This is similar to to the way a phone company handles wiretaps.

Ah, but then that would ALSO apply to Time/Warner which petitioned the government recently (and got) a ruling that said cable was NOT like the phone company.

In other words, your analogy works if indeed Yahoo WERE like the phone company. But even you would be hard pressed to agree that they are.

Since the deputized staff have the equivalent training to police officers for this type of evidence retrieval, there is no break in the the chain of custody

This makes assumptions - that they will not have a certain loyalty to their paycheck. In the case of phone company wiretaps, they are rarely directed at the phone company itself. So again, I believe your analogy fails.

Precautions

[Limburgher]

Time to encrypt everything. 512-bit encryption ought to slow them down, especially on large files.

Re:Precautions

[doug]

Why start now? What does this change? If you feel that encryption is the way to go, you should have already been using it. If you don't think that it is worth the effort, what changed your mind? I thought that the article was pretty bland and it surprises me that anyone takes it as a call to arms.

- doug

Re:Precautions

[sir_troll]

doug sucks dick

hahahahahaha

Re:Precautions

[swillden]

Time to encrypt everything. 512-bit encryption ought to slow them down, especially on large files.

Where would you store the keys?

Re:Precautions

[Bios_Hakr]

On a slip of paper in a book at the library referencing another book at another library. The reference number is the ISBN multiplied by the reverse of the year on the Jewish calender I was born in. That book has a number in the front cover. That number of pages from the last full page of text towards the front of the book is a page with X paragraphs and Y words in the first paragraph. X chapters and Y pages into the Cryptonomicon is an underlined passage.

ROT-13 that to get my key.

Re:Precautions

[e40]

I sure wish I had mod points left today.... that's what I get for spending them too quickly.

Re:Precautions

[swillden]

So I just have to try ROT-13 of all correct-length passages of fiction. That's a seriously weak 512-bit key.

Also, doesn't it get tedious typing that ROT-13'd stuff in every time you want to read your e-mail?

Re:Precautions

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, doesn't it get tedious typing that ROT-13'd stuff in every time you want to read your e-mail?

Nah, he probably reads and writes ROT-13 in his sleep!

Re:Precautions

[peddrenth]

Time to encrypt everything. 512-bit encryption ought to slow them down, especially on large files.

So how do you run PGPDisk on linux? (no, seriously.)

Re:Precautions

[Shardis]

Okay, correct me if I'm wrong, but 512 bit crypto has been pretty easily breakable (depending on the type and alg ofc) for quite some time now hasn't it? At least for those with massive resources at their disposal? And afaik, even with new and better cryptosystems being created and used, longer messages are *still* easier to break than shorter ones. Known plaintext attacks and the like...

Not meaning to nitpick, if indeed I'm even correct, but I thought that a little more info might help for people that take this kindof thing seriously...

Re:Precautions

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.grcsecurity.net has a nice encrypted homedir howto.

ISPs...

[PepsiProgrammer]

ISP's should have no concern as to wether law enforcement is present in court ordered searches, unless they are doing something non-legit.

Re:ISPs...

[2names]

So, following this logic, only people who are breaking the law in their homes should be concerned about the police searching their homes? We all should be concerned. This type of thing is covered in the Constitution under illegal search and seizure. Besides, for a warrant to be issued in the first place there has to be some probable cause or at least SOME evidence or implication that a crime has occured.

Re:ISPs...

[BrookHarty]

Unless its a non-warrant search for terrorist activities.

And if you follow the propaganda, terrorists use almost every crime to raise funds. How to side step the constitution in 1 easy step, create a loophole.

The judge was worried about the person's rights, guilty or innocent. We seem to be a loop-hole country, our legal system isn't about justice, its about politics, money, revenge and religion. Not saying the system is all bad, we have many criminals, and the cops protect us every day. But when the special interest groups muddy the whole legal system, Judges that side on the constitution are trying to protect the innocent.

-
3019 dead in Sept 11. 4200+ Dead civilians in Afghanistan. - You stand with us, or against us - President Bush

Re:ISPs...

[quinto2000]

Here here! Post this link wherever you go! I'm going to make it my sig, in fact.

Re:ISPs...

[Anonymous Coward]

...wether law enforcement...

There's a wether law being enforced? Damn, I'd better hurry up and castrate those rams.

This might be a good thing

[drunkmonk]

If cops actually have to be there, and the city/state actually has to pay for their payroll, etc., maybe they'll be more careful and not just whip out a search warrant on a whim. I know that the local department probably wouldn't be happy having to use their officers for that rather than having them on the street doing their jobs.

Re:This might be a good thing

[SomeoneYouDontKnow]

Agreed. Also, if they have to have someone present at searches, it makes it more difficult to conduct large-scale fishing expeditions, since there are only so many officers to go around. Also, it can serve to protect the ISP, since if some police official later accuses it of not conducting the search in the manner they wanted it to, the ISP can simply respond by saying that if the officer who was there had a problem, then he should have spoken up at the time.

It might also not be a bad idea for the ISP to videotape the whole process to make sure no police officers do anything they shouldn't be doing. Document everything from the time the officer arrives at the front door to the time he leaves.

Re:This might be a good thing

[2names]

Since when has a lack of funds ever stopped the government from starting a program such as this? Look at the "war on drugs" for example. This program has cost BILLIONS of dollars and what have we gained? A few hundred thousand people in prison that we tax payers have to support now and virtually no reduction in drug trafficking. If the govt wants to investigate an ISP, believe me, cost is going to be the absolute LAST concern.

Re:This might be a good thing

[jred]

Yeah, videotaping the officer might be a good idea. They usually frown on that, though. It's surprising how quickly they get upset when they are being recorded. Sometimes they get so flustered they accidentally drop the video camera when they check it for hidden weapons.

Re:This might be a good thing

[SomeoneYouDontKnow]

Then you bill them for the damage. And if they do it often enough, it's going to look really bad in the media. Can you imagine the fun that will ensue when you call your local TV station to tell them to come over and see how the police destroyed your camera while you were trying to keep them honest by taping them? TV reporters absolutely love stories where a camera gets smashed and/or someone gets knocked down or pushed around. I can guarantee that it'll make the local evening news, and the police will end up looking either like buffoons or jack-booted thugs.

And if you think that something like this might happen, and if you want to catch everything, then you just use two cameras. That way, if they want to check one, then you have the other one rolling so you don't miss any action.

Re:This might be a good thing

[Darby]

Look at the "war on drugs" for example. This program has cost BILLIONS of dollars and what have we gained?

Oh come on, if you are in the construction business then you are making out quite nicely from all the new prisons we've had to build. There is even a private industry created to run these new prisons (Wackenhut). Can't you see that this is *good* for the economy.

A few hundred thousand people in prison that we tax payers have to support now

Actually as of the end of 1999 it is over 2 *million*. See, it's working even better than you thought.

and virtually no reduction in drug trafficking
In fact it has increased. Can't you see that we need *more* people in prison to help.....help.....
wait, why was it that we even have drug laws again?. When you offer suggestions, be sure to ask yourself if what you're suggesting is a problem with drugs or a problem with drugs being illegal.

Re:This might be a good thing

[Darby]

Slight correction. The over 2 million is total prison population. The drug laws "only" account for 65% of that.

More fun than hanging out at the Donut shop...

[sisukapalli1]

Imagine having to sift through tonnes of porn material, and getting paid for it. The job itself isn't really important because most of the search warrants would be over bullshit matters anyway.

S

"unreasonable" burden or not...

[quinto2000]

I tend to agree with the sentiment of the ruling judge in this case. Civillians shouldn't be given so much power over the conduct of a search. The police like to give them that power, because they aren't held to the same standards. When the number of searches increases, it's particularly important, however, that every search be held to a stricter scrutiny.

The police ability to hand off the search to a third party can easily be abused to circumvent fourth amendment protections. The boundary between an agent of the police and the police themselves can be fuzzy. This removes the question altogether.

Re:"unreasonable" burden or not...

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems the only reasonable thing to do is require that the person at the ISPconducting the search for the police, be certified and deputized in some way. I'm sure that most ISP's already have one or more persons who basically spend all their time handling these requests. Clearly sending your average traffic cop to supervise is rediculous. Perhaps some level of co-funding of salaries for these "Search Warrent Officers" should be offered by the government?

And I'm not an Anonymous Coward, I am just monumentally Lazy :)

Re:"unreasonable" burden or not...

[bourne]

Civillians shouldn't be given so much power over the conduct of a search. The police like to give them that power, because they aren't held to the same standards.

Not true - when a civilian is conducting a search in response to a search warrant, they are held to the same standards as law enforcement because they are a law enforcement proxy. An ISP's legal right to monitor traffic is actually reduced when law enforcement presents a formal request, because they have to start monitoring by the (stricter) rules that the government lives under.

IANAL BIPOOS

Re:"unreasonable" burden or not...

[gmack]

What a load of crap.. the case in question actually had an issued warrant so it wsan't circumventing anything.

Picture what your proposing for a moment.. instead of the system admin handing over the required information he has to instead hand over the root password?

Re:"unreasonable" burden or not...

[quinto2000]

No, that's not what I meant. I just mean we need to be careful that we hold civilians acting as agents of the police to the same standards that we hold the police, when it comes to the chain of evidence and proper search methods. One way to do that is to say an officer of the law should be present. I admit there are other solutions -- perhaps making clear that the warrant needs to be extremeley specific and limited? I.e., hand over the log for 10162001, and show only connections orginating from IP addresses in the block 64.34.56.*. Maybe that's too restrictive, but it's important that the police don't abuse this to allow improper evidence to be admitted. I don't see how the court can guarantee that without either micromanaging, or just barring this kind of search from happening.

Re:"unreasonable" burden or not...

[Anonymous Coward]

BIPOOS?

Re:"unreasonable" burden or not...

[gmack]

Well you have that anyways.. the warrant asks for a specific type of info and if the information doesn't fall within the required scope I'm guessing they just made competing lawer's day.

Re:"unreasonable" burden or not...

[quinto2000]

Not really...that is a pretty generous definition of "particularly describing" in most cases.

Re:"unreasonable" burden or not...

[quinto2000]

But I play one on Slashdot?

Re:"unreasonable" burden or not...

[bourne]

But I play one on Slashdot?

Bingo!

I personally think IANAL tags are stupid anyway, because if you aren't paying someone then you shouldn't be trusting their legal advice under any circumstances (and even then...), but posting anything vaguely legalize on /. without IANAL tends to rouse the hounds, and the bees, and the hounds that when they bark bees shoot out, ...

Re:"unreasonable" burden or not...

[Fat Casper]

The police ability to hand off the search to a third party can easily be abused to circumvent fourth amendment protections. The boundary between an agent of the police and the police themselves can be fuzzy.

Well, as my (hope I never actually need one) lawyer would ask the judge: just who actually executed this warrant that you signed? Finding information and giving it to the police is one thing; executing a warrant is something entirely different. Who conducted the search? The cop who had an envelope delivered to him? Hell no. Now it law enforcement just called up the ISP and asked for information, it'd be (arguably) legal. Anyone actually executing a search warrant, however, is an agent of the police, no matter where their paycheck comes from.

I can't ransack somebody's place just because some cop has a warrant. Why, because I'm not an agant of the police. If I had necessary skills that they don't, then they would approach me and ask me (the ISP) to execute their warrant for them. That would make me an agent for them.

That's all fine and good, but can't they work around all this with a well worded subpoena?

do they really need warrants?

[JeanBaptiste]

Couldn't they obtain all the information they need through other means? Carnivore, echelon, and so on...

Re:do they really need warrants?

[Anonymous Coward]

HOW in the H3LL is that flamebait?

Re:do they really need warrants?

[sir_troll]

I am sir_troll, hear me roar!!!

Whoever modded that down to flamebait, should have their eyes popped out and skull fucked!!!!!!

I mean, what is that faggot crap!!!


Just goes to show, that the moderators suck more dick than a room full of richards...
get some real moderators, and then I'll post nicely

Re:do they really need warrants?

[gmack]

It could have been account information of some sort.

Re:do they really need warrants?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you follow that logic, they don't really need warrants to search for physical evidence (knives, guns, drugs, etc.) They could just kick your door down, push you into a hall closet, search your domicile, and leave, all without a warrant.

Of course the evidence would get thrown out, as would carnivore evidence without a warrant, echelon evidence without a warrant, etc.

The police would stil need a warrant to do seruptitious electronic searches, they just woulnd't need to be present in your domicile.

hm

[tps12]

I think it adds a certain weight to the decision of wether to file the search in the first place. It adds a certain levity.

Aren't "weight" and "levity" opposites?

Re:hm

[shakah]

how about "gravity" in place of "levity"?

Re:hm

[Twister002]

I certainly don't see anything funny about someones weight.

Especially if I have to search them.

Re:hm

[Super_Frosty]

Yes, the statement is contradictory. He's saying that it would make the decision more important, but also more frivolous. How embarrassing!

Re:hm

[Dr Caleb]

Yes, and the other word is spelled "whether"; while we're correcting grammar, might as well do spelling at the same time...

Still...

[sofar]

I know it wouldn't help the ISP's a bit, but having an ISP return a blank note with the line 'sorry, this is all we found.' on it certainly doesn't constitute good law to me.

I'd suggest every ISP have sorta like a liason officer bound to certain laws, regular blind checks and stuff like that to confirm ISP are keeping their deal up too. Otherwise ISP's are free to act like they will

Re:Still...

[Avery_Zero]

Ummmm, that's rather like requiring every Mom & Pop convenience store to have a police liason officer... The last ISP I worked for had exactly 3 employees and 2 owners (2 support techs, one billing manager, and the owners backed up the techs and did the network management). Having a dedicated liason person is just inreasonable to expect from most non-national ISP's.

Avery_Zero

Re:Still...

[Anonymous Coward]

ISP's are not legally required to keep any call detail records for law enforcement reasons. The only reason that one particular wholesale dialup network service provider (and probably most providers) keep any call records at all is for spam investigations and in the event of billing disputes. Keeping call detail records on-line is expensive, and then searching through those records for subpoena compliance is expensive (and tedious). Yes, a faxed note saying "we don't have any record of that call" is perfectly legitimate (as long as there really are no records of the call). I do not know what the policies of most ISPs are, but keeping call detail records for unlimited usage users past a few days is silly. The only reason to retain the records for those few days would be for AUP enforcement.

Yahoo is down...

[aero6dof]

Please be patient, yahoo is down for search warrant maintenance. The system will be restored, minus any confiscated data, in a few hours...

Last time I checked...

[Manitcor]

you don't need rubber gloves and Vaseline to do a full search on a rack of server either

Might it?

[Glove d'OJ]

If my ISP is in Atlanta, but the court issuing the warrant is in New York, which cop shows up at my ISP? That is, which jurisdiction bears the cost?

And, since the laws about searches were written WELL before computers became commonplace, and that searches were physically examinations of locations, having police officers required makes sense--they are well trained in looking around. How many cops know their way around a web log or process list and the like?

Re:Might it?

[2names]

Many police departments now have officers who specialize in (I hate cliches) "Cybercrime." These officers would be perfect for searching through logs and the like. Being knowledgeable about computers is not limited to those people who work directly in the IT field. I'm certain that the FBI and CIA etc. all have IT specialists who would look at a trivial web log and laugh their spooky behinds off.

Re:Might it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy who showed up at our office to help prosecute a credit card fraud knew jack-all about logs and stuff :P (post anonymous just in case)

Re:Might it?

[Anonymous Coward]

"logs and stuff"

What are you, twelve? If you are unable articulate your argument, shut the fuck up.

Re:Might it?

[Fastolfe]

You assume that all Internet providers, web hosting providers, web content providers and the like all share a common mechanism for storing data that a court would be interested in gathering. Obviously they don't. The only practical way to collect information like this is to ask the provider to collect it. To require the police to come into a provider's offices, sit down at a terminal, and pull up the information he's looking for isn't very realistic, when that information could be in a million places in any number of proprietary formats.

Re:Might it?

[2names]

You show me ONE case, just ONE case where someone successfully kept the spooks from recovering the data they were after and I'll eat my freaking hat. I don't know your experience level, but I can say that if you have spent any time in the IT field then you know that if a disk isn't completely physically destroyed, the data can be partially if not completely recoved. The data isn't in "a million places", it's in one place: on the disk. Furthermore, as to the proprietary format argument, where do you live? If it's in the US, then you don't have encryption that the spooks can't break! Period. The fact is that if the govt wants your data, nothing short of breaking the molecular bonds that hold your disk together is going to keep them from it.

Re:Might it?

[Fastolfe]

It boils down to what is realistic. Yahoo says they get thousands of search warrants a year. Is it really realistic that every one of those warrants means some law enforcement department somewhere gets to come in, load up a few boxes full of hard drives, and truck it back to his office for a forensic investigation? How many of these warrants do you think Yahoo would survive through?

It's FAR more efficient and less costly for the ISP to look this information up and give it to the requesting office in a nice, easy-to-read format.

I might see your scenario played out where the ISP itself was being investigated, being uncooperative, or where there was a risk that the ISP might destroy or tamper with the data, but these are special cases, not the general case people are really concerned about here.

Re:Might it?

[GenCuster]

Can you say paid vaction? The New York cop goes to atlanta of course.

Nothing will probably come out of this

[jeffersonebell]

Since the US government and a whole mess of tech groups are against this, I'm doubting whether this lower court ruling from Minnesota will stand for very long. The application of this ruling would do nothing to ensure better due process and it would only waste time/money. It seems that this entire episode is JALL (just another legal loophole) that will soon be closed in the correct manner.

Re:Nothing will probably come out of this

[Anonymous Coward]

JALL (just another legal loophole)

Why do idiots have to invent a new acronym other than for the sheer pleasure of flaunting it? It's just another goddamned hapax legomenon. (Look it up; I'm tired of doing your homework for you.)

Things are really getting scary...

[keep_it_simple_stupi]

Not only is this going on, but surveillance is increasing, and penalties are being stiffened for "cyber-crime". More info here.

This is stupid

[NoBeardPete]

The defendant in the case subsequently sought to have that evidence suppressed, arguing that his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure was violated because it was conducted by civilians.

This is just stupid. If the ISP wants to cooperate with law enforcement, they could do so even without a search warrant. Once the search warrant has been drawn up, if the ISP wants to cooperate in the manner most convenient for them, and the law enforcement folks agree, there's no problem. I mean, given that the ISP is legally required to cough up the info, and given that they don't even really want to put up a fight about it, what does it matter whether or not some police officer is standing there scratching his ass while someone pulls up the data? It doesn't matter at all.

Things might be different if there was a legal concept of strong privacy between an ISP and its customers, as with Attorney-Client Privilege, confidential medical info, or communications between spouses. The fact is that there isn't, though.

Re:This is stupid

[bourne]

This is just stupid. If the ISP wants to cooperate with law enforcement, they could do so even without a search warrant. Once the search warrant has been drawn up, if the ISP wants to cooperate in the manner most convenient for them, and the law enforcement folks agree, there's no problem.

It's even better than that - if the ISP wants to gather evidence of wrongdoing related to their computer resources (say, someone hacking from their dialups) they have much greater leeway in their search, for they aren't bound by the fourth amendment. Once law enforcement becomes involved, it actually places limits upon what the ISP could do on its own.

Now, once law enforcement requests the cooperation of the ISP, then the ISP IS bound by the fourth amendment, because they are an agent of the government. So, as I understand this case, the defense should be attacking whether the data was gatherable under 4th amendment and under the particular warrant used, not whether there was a policeman there or not. Evidence gathered by an ISP in response to a warrant is held to fourth amendment rules, no matter who executes the search.

Consider this: You walk in on a convenience store shooting. Should you not be able to go up on the witness stand and testify because you aren't a law enforcement officer? As long as the defense can't prove the search was conducted in excess of fourth amendment rights, it should make no difference whether it was carried out by someone with a badge or not (assuming search was in accordance with warrant parameters, chain of custody was kept, etc. etc.)

IANAL - YANMM

Re:This is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider this: You walk in on a convenience store shooting. Should you not be able to go up on the witness stand and testify because you aren't a law enforcement officer? As long as the defense can't prove the search was conducted in excess of fourth amendment rights, it should make no difference whether it was carried out by someone with a badge or not (assuming search was in accordance with warrant parameters, chain of custody was kept, etc. etc.)

This analogy fails on several levels. First, merely walking into a store being robbed has nothing to do with the first amendment, because the robbers have no claim of 4th amendment protection within that context. Second, being a witness to a crime is very, very different than obtaining a warrant to gain evidence of a crime. One specifically has constitutional requirements placed on it, and the other just happens sometime.

Now, that isn't to say that a person does indeed enjoy 4th amendment protection at their ISPs, but that is another issue. The real issue is that without an actual agent of the government (not someone merely acting under government coercion, as subpoened witnesses do) being present, there is no real safeguard against what people have referred to as a fishing expedition. ISP techs would want to be able to fulfill the challenge of getting this info that is requested, and they will probably go beyond the breadth of the warrant, and that overbreadth will never be reported or monitored. That is the issue here.

It's the law...

[NorthDude]

I find it disgusting that someone can escape justice because of en "error" in procedure, but if it was not that way, we could all be prosecuted. It's better to have one bad guy escape the justice and all the others be free, then to abandon all of our rights for one bad guy. It's the investigators obligations to make things right and honestly to catch those who brake the law. If they were to not respect any privacy rights and other rights to catch the "vilain", we would live under siege. You MUST make sure that you, as an ISP, make things the way they should be. To respect others privacy and right. And in the end, it can only help to make sure that the bad guy wont escape law.

Re:It's the law...

[Jaeger]

A defense lawyer came to my high school government class to talk about the legal system and its exciting collaries. He told several stories of legal bumblings that let him keep various clients out of jail. At the time, he disgusted me -- he was using the letter of the law to wiggle his clients out of the punishment they deserved for the crimes they comitted.

But then it dawned on me: that defense lawyer was fighting the border war to protect my rights. He reminded the police that they can't do whatever they want -- that the Bill of Rights is important.

The guilty must be punished, but not at the expense of the rights of the people.

a certain levity?

[jasonkohles]

it adds a certain levity? Which form of levity would that be?

1. Lightness of manner or speech, especially when inappropriate; frivolity.
2. Inconstancy; changeableness.
3. The state or quality of being light; buoyancy.

Personally, I like the last one, law enforcement adds buoyancy.

Re:a certain levity?

[ultramk]

yeah... I think gravitas would be a better word.

Michael-

Even if...

[GeneralEmergency]

..the POOOO LEEESE were a-waitin in the lobby, the challenge would still be valid. The search was still conducted by non-sworn personnel and such "evidence" should be suppressed. Maybe the ISP technician just typed the crap up?

Re:Even if...

[NoBeardPete]

What the hell? If I have some information, or access to information, that might help in solving a crime, and I give said information to the police, the fact that I, myself, am not a law enforcement officer is more or less irrelevant.

The police get information from private citizens all the time. They ask if you saw someone in a certain place at a certain time. They ask an airline about whether or not a suspect was on a plane, or at a conference. They ask employers if an employee has a record of acting strangely or violently. They ask banks if someone had an unusually large deposit. They ask phone companies for records of phone calls to or from a given number.

All of this information is provided by non law enforcement. I don't think this invalidates any of it.

ISP stands for...

[kernelfoobar]

I looked in the FBI's dictionary and ISP stands for: Internet Search Providers. Oh, wait you mean it's not?

Procedure

[Shalda]

I would expect proper procedure to generally be issuance of a subpoena for records. A search warrant should only be issued when the subpoena is refused, or the ISP is being investigated as an accessory. IANAL, but I do watch a lot of cop shows on TV. Search warrants should always be performed by law enforcement personel. That's probably the biggest difference between what makes it a search warrant and a subpoena.

View Inside

[datastew]

I work for police as a programmer. So many times the decision on what to spend time on comes down a judgement call on the part of the officer.

This case really highlights the intersection of "virtual" laws and legal issues with real-life space-time constraints.

Re:View Inside

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for police as a programmer. So many times the decision on what to spend time on comes down a judgement call on the part of the officer.

This case really highlights the intersection of "virtual" laws and legal issues with real-life space-time constraints.


Totally fuckin' deep. dude. WTF did you want to contribute here?

what is the cost?

[mossmann]

It seems like the cost of complying with search warrants could grow exponentially for a business like an ISP with information resources relating to a large number of customers. Who pays for the time of the engineers to conduct searches? Physical world limitations used to keep these costs from getting out of hand, but now they no longer apply.

Wait, ISP don't have to search themselves

[Mr Guy]

Don't ISP's always retain the right to copy and comply with law enforcement with or without the court order? The court order is merely ask the ISP to comply, but the ISP is not REQUIRED to ask for one. Used to be every time you signed up even with a BBS they'd flash that fact in your face, that the sysop CAN read your mail.

The fourth amendment does not protect against companies looking at information they already have a contract with you, personally, to look at.

LE presence should be required...

[StenD]

If for no other reason than to force there to be an actual cost for LE in a search - I doubt that ISPs get to bill LE for the cost of handling searches. The cop may not be able to perform the search, but should certainly be supervising it - they aren't supposed to be sitting in the lobby eating donuts while the ISP techs are gathering data.

Re:LE presence should be required...

[cybermage]

If for no other reason than to force there to be an actual cost for LE in a search

Be careful what you wish for...

Adding costs to law enforcement means that either fewer crimes get solved or taxes go up.

If law enforcement is really required to be present for each warrant, you can expect a law to be passed requiring ISPs to connect their databases into some national registry; then, law enforcement can execute search warrants from their desk.

Aside from cost to law enforcement, what is different between the following:

• Law enforcement travels to ISP and stands around while ISP techs execute search warrant.
  
• Law enforcement faxes warrant to ISP and ISP techs fax back results.
  

In either scenario, the searching will ultimately be done by ISP techs. This is no different than asking any other company for information about a customer. Police present warrant; employee retrieves records. Surely no one wants to give police the necessary access to retrieve records themselves. So what's the difference.

Besides, who wants police standing around in their office. More to the point, who wants police, who just took the red eye to cross the country, standing in their office.

Re:LE presence should be required...

[doug]

Ah, the pragmatic approach to government. I like that.

The main problem with this, as pointed out elsewhere, is that the jurisdiction of the court and the ISP might not be the same. In this very article the court was in Minnesota and Yahoo is based in California. Which cops would be eating donughts in Yahoo's lobby? I don't think that ISPs are evenly distributed, so it won't just end up being a wash. The homes of AOL, Yahoo, eBay, MSN, and so on will have a lot more log hits than most other jurisdictions.

Hmm, is there a mechanism for one jurisdiction to pay another? By that, I mean could the California police department that had to send someone to Yahoo bill the Minnesota police department for doing its work?

Re:LE presence should be required...

[Fastolfe]

In order to properly supervise it, the cops are going to need to know what they're supervising. Who's going to pay to train the cops on every proprietary information system that any possible provider of any electronic data will use? If they aren't trained to know what they're looking at, they serve no practical purpose and might as well enjoy the donuts.

Re:LE presence should be required...

[zenyu]

Adding costs to law enforcement means that either fewer crimes get solved or taxes go up.


Hopefully fewer crimes are solved. Remember the police consider perfectely reasonable things like drug trafficing and looking at pictures. When they're forced to narrow down that list of crimes to physically hurting people and or stealing significant amounts of cash or goods we will all be better of.

Re:LE presence should be required...

[cybermage]

Hopefully fewer crimes are solved.

Actually, the time a police officer spends executing one of these warrants will result in scenario's like this:

• More speeders run red lights because of less traffic enforcement.
  
• Kidnapping pedophiles, who used the Internet account to lure a child, get extra time with the child.
  
• Law enforcement releases a suspected pedophile because it's too costly to fly to Yahoo to verify that it was his account distributing kiddie porn.
  

While you may disagree with how law enforcement spends its time. Forcing them to waste time and money won't change their priorities.

Thousands of warrants? WTF?

[Bonker]

The article stated that Yahoo! received litterally thousands of warrants in the course of a year. This is probably not an indication of any more crimes being committed using Yahoo's services, but is instead a reflection of the greater power LEO's have to violate individual's privacy, especially in the wake of the Patriot act.

The problem here is not that there are going to be police officers in a data center around the clock carrying out warrants. It's that there are that many warrants issued in the first place.

Re:Thousands of warrants? WTF?

[krlynch]

This is probably not an indication of any more crimes being committed using Yahoo's services, but is instead a reflection of the greater power LEO's have to violate individual's privacy, especially in the wake of the Patriot act.

No, it actually is a result of Yahoo begin big, cheap, and national in size. It has millions upon millions of customers, in (literally) tens of thousands of jurisdictions. That they receive thousands of warrants is no more surprising to me than hearing that Citibank receives thousands of warrants a year for credit card records....

levity or weight ?

[kelpie]

Which is it ?

Raw ISP Data Anyone?

[uberdave]

The Minnesota case involved a search warrant that was issued on Yahoo! in connection with a child pornography investigation. The warrant was faxed from Minnesota to Yahoo's headquarters in Santa Clara, California, where employees pulled up the requested information and sent it back to local prosecutors

So, apparently all you have to do is fax over a "warrant" and Yahoo will send you everything you ask for...

"Oh! What a world! What a world!"

Re:Raw ISP Data Anyone?

[MrRudeDude]

Yeah, and it's not like you'd get caught, because these big ISPs and other providers never tell the customer that they just handed over all that information. The problem is having an appropriately official looking yet annonymous way to receive the information back. I guess if you can arrange to receive fraudulently purchased mail order packages, you can figure that part out. Do they use empty apartments to receive packages or something ?

This could be a good thing....

[wowbagger]

Think about it - any police department has a finite staffing, usually very understaffed.

Now, imagine you are a police chief. You have five search warrents out against SomeISP.COM for stuff you feel is white-collar, victimless crimes.

On the other hand, you have five tips about meth labs.

Where do YOU send your officers?

Consider that the key part of a DoS attack is consuming all of some limited resource, be it bandwidth, sockets, Moderator points, or police officers .

Now, instead of the ??AA being able to crapflood the system with bogus warrents to be filled by (relatively) plentiful techs at small ISPs everywhere, they must be filled by (relatively) scarce police officers.

Would that not tend to limit this crap?

Re:This could be a good thing....

[quinto2000]

Umm..."white collar" criminals are a lot more dangerous than drug users. Drug users hurt mostly themselves, drug dealers at least a finite area (say several city blocks). Take a look at Enron for an example of the worst kind of criminal white-collar behavior. Corporate crooks destroy tens of thousands of lives at a time. The best a drug dealer can do is destroy hundreds.

Re:This could be a good thing....

[datastew]

Actually a funny, but true story:

I have a brother-in-law in prison for conspiring to rob an armored car. When my wife and I visited, the inevitable questions came up about whether he was guilty. He avoided the question, but in his defense, he said that "they weren't going to hurt anybody or anything, not like a drug dealer or something like that."

Flash forward a few years to my half-brother who is up for trial for manufacture of a controlled substance. He was angry that people dealing drugs are treated the same as bank robbers and other real criminals. At least, according to him, they weren't taking anything that actually belonged to someone else.

Re:This could be a good thing....

[GMontag]

Well, the police in Sarasota, Fla sent their cops to adult movie theaters all night and caught Paul Rubens, aka, Pee Wee Herman for indecent exposure and
masturbation. There were plenty of open homocides and other serious crimes to investigate at that time, but the detectives were used to look at adult theaters.

Beurocrats are not well known for efficient resource management.

Re:This could be a good thing....

[Anonymous Coward]

Beurocrats are not well known for efficient resource management.

And Slashdot posters are not well known for proper spelling.

Re:This could be a good thing....

[GMontag]

And Slashdot posters are not well known for proper spelling.

I spelled at least this bad long before I heard of Slashdot ;-)

Re:This could be a good thing....

[yintercept]

The article itself showed that same bias...saying the cops should spend its resources on "real criminals." Personally, I throw in the child pornographers in the pile of vilest criminals. I don't see why fraud committed online should always be whitewashed just 'cause it technically cool.

The other thing I found interesting in the article was this emphasis on burden and inefficiency. Once there is a operating procedure in place, online search warrants will probably be substantially more efficient than physical search warrants. The scary thing about online law enforcement is that it has the potential to be several magnitudes more efficient than traditional police work, making magnitudes more opportunities for enfringements of rights.

kd

Re:This could be a good thing....

[Rupert]

Who is the victim of the meth lab?

Re:sir troll

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU ARE A STiNKY DOO DOO HEAD!

You mommy boy!

Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

Complaining to the Wrong Branch?

[bagman]

If these ISPs are really worried about the long-term effects of a rule requiring the presence of law enforcement officers to serve warrants, they shouldn't complain to the courts. They should complain to Congress . . .

18 U.S.C. Sec. 3105. - Persons authorized to serve search warrant

A search warrant may in all cases be served by any of the officers mentioned in its direction or by an officer authorized by law to serve such warrant, but by no other person, except in aid of the officer on his requiring it, he being present and acting in its execution. (bold added)

The most telling part. . . . ..

[colonel]

The most telling part of this article is when the Yahoo! dickhead goes and says that cops shouldn't be at Yahoo! when they could be out catching "real" criminals.

He has just very, very clearly expressed bias. Who the fuck is Yahoo! to go around deciding that internet kiddie porn distributors aren't "real" criminals? He's publicly stated that Yahoo! doesn't have an interest in making sure that the interests of the law are looked out for.

What's to prevent a kiddie porn distributor from working at Yahoo! just so he can cover his tracks? What's to prevent Yahoo! from deciding that they won't aid in the prosecution of holocaust sympathizers in hate crime investigations?

Cops are sworn in for a reason. Yahoo! data entry clerks are not. Yahoo! should fire this bonehead for publicly stating that they're biased in favour of some types of investigations over others.

Real Criminals?

[Black Aardvark House]

We're saying that this ruling is bad public policy. It's wasteful, it is going to be a waste of government resources, and of law enforcement resources that should be out there catching real criminals.

Aren't the purveyors and consumers of child pornography real criminals? Upon conviction, do they serve hard time for their acts? In both cases, yes. (Or at least they should be!)

I have real issues with this sort of thinking.

Re:Real Criminals?

[Darby]

Aren't the purveyors and consumers of child pornography real criminals? Upon conviction, do they serve hard time for their acts? In both cases, yes. (Or at least they should be!)

Are the purveyors and consumers of drugs real criminals? Do they serve hard time for their acts?
In the first case, no. In the second yes.

If you choose to debate this point, subject your reasons to this question:
Are these problems the result of drugs, or the result of drugs being illegal.
I have yet to hear a single justification for the war on (some) drugs that can pass this test.

Certainly child pornographers are in a completely different category, but using an extreme example doesn't make the structure of your argument any more valid.

Law enforcement presence.

[Restil]

The ISP is being served the warrant, but they are not a suspect in the case. That is the difference here. Law enforcement is well aware that Yahoo is not in any way involved in the illegal activity, but they have information required by law enforcement. When they are served a warrant for information on clients, they cooperate every time by forwarding the requested information. There is no REASON for a police officer to be there, especially since they probably wouldn't know what was going on anyway. They'd be hanging around waiting for someone familiar with the system to call up the requested information, and it would then be faxed on, just as if the police officer wasn't there.

Where police presence IS needed is when the company/individual being served the warrant is suspected of illegal activity. If Yahoo as a company was actually intentionally distributing child porn, law enforcement could not expect them to voluntarily turn over all evidence of their illegal involvement in this regard.

As far as the 4th ammendment rights go, Yahoo has a privacy policy (as far as that goes) that states that they won't blindly hand over customer information without the customer's permission or a search warrant. If yahoo were to discover illegal activity, they could still turn over that information to the police without first being contacted by them. The 4th ammendment doesn't apply here at all. In fact, they could turn it over WITHOUT a search warrant if they wanted to. They could possibly get sued for contract violations, but it wouldn't/shouldn't save the ass of someone using their services illegally.

-Restil

Re:Law enforcement presence.

[5KVGhost]

There is no REASON for a police officer to be there, especially since they probably wouldn't know what was going on anyway. They'd be hanging around waiting for someone familiar with the system to call up the requested information, and it would then be faxed on, just as if the police officer wasn't there.

The whole fax-a-warrant thing worries me. Suppose a malicious employee within the ISP just makes up some data, or falsifies existing records to implicate/protect someone? I assume that's a crime, but someone could go through hell proving that it happened.

Then again, I assume that this same process has been used with telephone call records and financial-type information for a while now, so maybe it's not as open to abuse as I imagine.

Re:Law enforcement presence.

[HiThere]

Or maybe it's just hard to prove that abuse has occured. That would give the same results.

The problem is that evidence isn't proof, and the more weak links there are in the chain, the weaker it gets. Of course the other part of the problem is that there is a tendency to jump at the first plausible answer, rather than trying to prove it. Cops, prosecutors, judges, and juries all accept evidence that seems to me exteremely weak. Frequently. Generally, however, weak evidence will only be accepted if it tends to prove that things are the way that they would prefer that they were. However, it makes the job of all of the foregoing easier if they accept "probably correct" evidence as if it were proof. And sometimes they are even more eager to "just get things over and convict that bastard quickly" than others. I suspect that they usually just don't want to waste time. And I suspect that they most often jump to the correct conclusion. But there's a big difference between jumping to a conclusion and proving it. And this is frequently ignored. (Sometimes on purpose, e.g. the Rodney King affair.)

And it has happened that I have been convinced that a person was guilty, but also convinced that it didn't get proven. Conviction is common in such cases (though not invariable).

The chain of evidence needs to be as thoroughly documented as is at all feasible. It isn't. This leads to miscarriages of justice in both directions.

Re:Law enforcement presence.

[geekoid]

And if that perosn is innocent?
What about when someone yahoo at yahoo! who isn't trained it police work, gets bored and starts fishing for "crimes"?

Re:Law enforcement presence.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a lowly tech at your ISP and I am feeling
particularly bored today. I am going to spice
up your life for you since you seem so complacent.
The next search warrant that gets served is going
to have some information in it about you and your
child pornography habits. Go ahead and post about
your experiences in a few years after you have
been found Not Guilty in a court of law. Don't
forget to include the intimate details of what
happened that night that you spent in jail.

Seems reasonable to me...

[sirgoran]

They should be there to maintain the chain of evidence. It would also give them something to do.

About 5 years ago a radio station I listened to used to play a game called "Cop or Not." They'd get a listener to call in and have them choose "cop" or "not" and then they would ramdomly call donut shops around town and ask if there were any cops in the store. If the listener guessed correctly they'd win tickets or whatever the prize was that week. This went on for about two months until the police complained that they were "giving away their positions around town."

I say make them be there during the search. Better there than eating donuts.

-Goran

What about small towns?

[QuantumRiff]

Think about small towns!

What i'm reading into this is that if a small town of 1000 has their only police officer doing an investigation, he could be forced to fly to tokyo, finland, and south africa to obtain the info. Thats going to kill small town police budgets, and really cause manpower problems, with cops running all over the country instead of driving down the local streets. All because he wants to convict a ebay scam artist in his hometown.

There is the issue of police not issuing as many warrants, but in small towns with small budgets, thats not really a good thing, that lets real criminals go. I think slashdot readers have forgotten that not every person lives in a huge, technology driven megatropolis where the government is out to wrongly persecute its citizens. Not every crime that touches the internet somehow is from those cities either..

Due process != chain of custody

[bourne]

This doesn't really have to do with due process, it has to do with chain of evidence.

Oversimplification - Due process means that you get your trial, and that the trial follows certain rules. One of those rules is that evidence presented against you has to meet certain standards, such as chain of custody.

Chain of custody says that the evidence, once gathered, is kept track of in a way that ensures it is genuine. The original case here was trying to cast aspersions on the chain for certain evidence since it hadn't been initially gathered by law enforcement.

This new ruling should be thrown out, though, because it's certainly going way beyond the standard for chain of custody. Anybody can be part of the chain of custody as long as they follow appropriate procedures - keep good notes, don't allow the evidence to pass out of your control, make sure that law enforcement signs for it, be able to truthfully testify that no one could have tampered with it while you had custody of it. Frankly, I'm suprised any defense attorney would WANT this - they'd rather that Joe Schmoe from the ISP, who only gathers evidence once a blue moon, gets called on the stand so they can twist his words, rather than a professional law enforcement officer who generally knows the rules of the game a lot better.

IANAL, but I'm working on my SANS GCFA certification and there's a lot of coverage of chain of custody in there that I'm pulling from.

Re:Due process != chain of custody

[mikosullivan]

Frankly, I'm suprised any defense attorney would WANT this - they'd rather that Joe Schmoe from the ISP, who only gathers evidence once a blue moon, gets called on the stand so they can twist his words, rather than a professional law enforcement officer who generally knows the rules of the game a lot better.

Good point, but it doesn't apply to the specifics of this case. I.e. the attorney in this case got what his client wants, which is to throw out the evidence. I think in general, this will still favor defendents, or more realistically, could-be defendents, because it makes it harder for LE to ever get damning evidence to begin with.

A chilling effect my arse

[sanermind]

yahoo argued that the requirement could have a

"chilling effect" on their subscribers, who could be concerned that a constant police presence would impinge on their privacy rights.

???!?!?

I mean, how disingenous can you get? The whole point in requiring actual meat effort in order to execute a search [as opposed to massive automated electronic drag nets] is going to do nothing other than discourage any searches unless they are actually probably usefull in a real way to an ongoing investigation. By requring extra cost for the search on the part of the authorities, this isn't going to chill anyone!

How stupid do some lawyers think people are? (...or even worse, how stupid are they)

Search warrants at ISPs

[multimed]

IANAL, just a Law & Order junkie...
I can actually see both sides a little bit here. One one hand it's just stupid--having a cop waiting in the lobby (or even standing over a technician's shoulder for that matter) as the article says, does nothing to proect the data or anyone's Fourth Amendment rights. And I don't believe the person's rights were indeed violated by not having the police there--a search warrant was issued for his data, and the fact that it was executed in effect by proxy through a citizen doesn't make the search any less valid provided the warrant was kosher.

But, I can see how not having the police on site is a breach in "chain of custody." Then again, the defendant could always argue that the ISP had it out for him and tampered with the evidence to frame him, which may or may not be a believeable defense. But in that regard it is something to argue in court to the jury and not something that could be dismissed as a matter of law. Because of the opening it might provice, I can see how the police/DA would want some one there to eliminate that excuse.

By the way, I do very much disagree with the two comments towards the end of the article--the first was an implication that this would some how make searches more common. If anything, investigators will be more certain they're barking up the right tree if they have to actually be present during the search. And second, I really don't believe this will cause a chilling effect on ISP subscribers. Do I care if cops are present at my ISP while executing a search warrant? Of course not. As long as a search warrant is required and a judge (with accountability) believed the police presented enough logical reason for the warrant, I certainly don't care. Now if that's costing me more money through taxes and service outages or higher ISP bills, I might become more concerned.

steve

Re:Search warrants at ISPs

[martissimo]

Do I care if cops are present at my ISP while executing a search warrant? Of course not. As long as a search warrant is required and a judge (with accountability) believed the police presented enough logical reason for the warrant, I certainly don't care.

Exactly, there was a warrant presented and that's what really matters here. If they have a warrant the courts have allready ruled that they have a right to access the data, and it's not like Officer Bag O'Donuts is gonna have the technological skill to glean the data from a server anyways, even if he is present, he will just stand there while a admin goes thru and collects the data and then hands him the printouts of it. He will not have any more of a clue about how the data was collected than if he wasn't present.

There are far more troubling ISP privacy issues than this, such as the Cyber Security Enhancement Act of 2001 that we should be worried about

whom do we trust less?

[ketan]

The group's lawyer, Jonathan Band, said the Minnesota ruling would also disrupt normal business operations at Yahoo! and other companies while having a "chilling effect" on their subscribers, who could be concerned that a constant police presence would impinge on their privacy rights.

So the question is whether you trust the government or Yahoo less. Either we have Yahoo and similar companies eagerly submitting to laws invading our privacy (while doing it for their own ends as well) or we have law enforcement staring over their shoulders while they do it. Not exactly a choice I like having to make.

why is that flamebait?

[JeanBaptiste]

This is not flamebait either. I would honestly like to know how or why the parent is regarded as flamebait. It is not a particularily insightful or interesting comment, but flamebait?

Cops who know the Yahoo system?

[wraithgar]

From the article:
"The police officer waiting in the lobby while the technician works away on the computer does not in any way safeguard anyone's Fourth Amendment rights," the brief said.

But having the Officer watch the admin run a bunch of queries from a database or some logs that look like Gibberish to anyone but the admin will ASSURE that no tampering was committed?

This is only the tip of the iceberg

[sheriff_smith]

As someone who is involved with the law enforcement community I will point out that in almost every search warrant to obtain information from a third party source I.E.. Phone records, Cell phone traces, ISP logs, and many others you are always working with others to gain information. Those people that you work with may not always be police officers. If this holds up it will cause a large problem. Security freaks (such as myself) want and deserve our privacy. However, when people are thinking of hurting or killing others should that information be off limits? If a police officer was able to obtain information that would stop your mother, daughter, son, etc.. from being hurt or killed would you want to give the advantage to him or the police? The person that was released was a child pornographer. Was the law protecting the rights of the children or the sicko in this case? As Sir Robert Peel said

"...the community is the police and the police are the community"

It is ALL of our responsibility to protect the innocent. Some people are paid to do it for a living. If you could stop a child pornographer would you? That is what this is about. This CASE LAW is saying that only the police can protect the public. It is ALL of our duty to protect the public. You shouldn't let anyone take that right away from you.

Of course, an easy way around this is to temporarly deputize anyone you need and then they are a law enforcement officer for as long as you need them.

Re:This is only the tip of the iceberg

[sheriff_smith]

Addition to my last post... I have 12 years of programming PERL, HTML, C, and much more. Almost a degree in Physics (two semesters left), research under my belt in nuclear fusion, magnetic levitation, many years as a sysadmin for windows and all types of UNIX. So don't assume all cops are dumb. You don't know who they really are. This is to those people who hold a stupid bias toward police.

Re:This is only the tip of the iceberg

[zangdesign]

As I understand things, a search warrant is only served if there a compelling reason (ie., evidence to suggest that there is other evidence that can help to convict or clear a suspect). For the "fishing license" argument to hold would require several members of a department and/or several judges to work in collusion.

That's not to say it can't happen, but it does make the likelihood very low.

I think the greater problem here is that we are becoming more and more distrustful of EVERYONE and the police are an easy target because they have to do a very visible public task in a manner that is, at the time, unpleasant and confrontational.

Re:This is only the tip of the iceberg

[Anonymous Coward]

Truth hurts, doesn't it.

~~~

Re:This is only the tip of the iceberg

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, Sheriff, question:

How long do ISPs typically keep their logs for anyway? If it's only a couple of days, how useful is that to law enforcement?

Re:This is only the tip of the iceberg

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing draws moderators more than having thier incorrect belief that the police are all sweetness and light questioned. The profession does, in fact, attract those described--the bullies and the inept. Occasionally, a good man slips through, but he's quickly weeded out.

but how useful would they be?

[doug]

Are we just talking about regular patrolmen here? If so, what would they do? They would watch the ISP's technicians do the work. How is this holding anyone to a "stricter scrutiny"? While the cop can be confident that the techie is looking at something and not playing quake, what else can he say? Are we talking about specialized training for some cops and only sending them? Cops with video cameras to record the search?

While I agree with your goals and I am all for protecting the 4th amendment, I'm kinda fuzzy on how this would be implemented in a useful fashion.

- doug

Hence the "certification" of Carnivore/DCS1000

[robkill]

Like most other posters, IANAL, nor do I play one on TV. However, subpeona usually means "hand over data related to some specified person or event." Search warrant implies "I have the court's permission to search a specific premises and its contents based on probable cause of crime X." Law enforcement is going to be gravely concerned about evidence handling, especially in the case of a subpeona. The alternatives are either have an officer on site ensuring compliance, or have a "certified" program serve as the agent for law enforcement. By having collection hardware and/or software "certified" as compliant to minimization rules for search and seizure, installed at each ISP and remotely monitored, they can avoid this problem. If the ruling holds, look for law enforcement to pursue this next. I can just picture a legal battle in the future where the defense attorney argues that the MD5 checksum of the collection program doesn't match that of a "certified" collection program, therefore the search was invalid.

Cops...at our company?!?

[bubblegoose]

They better bring their own damn donuts!

cops in the lobby

[dimitri_k]

Cops lounging while techs execute search warrants doesn't sound like a good idea. Mostly because it is such an obvious waste of time and money. Having law enforcement compensate ISPs (from a fixed budget) for each warrant served would certainly be a more effective control on frivolous warrants than having a cop present.

Not to mention the desire most ISPs likely have to not have a lobby that looks like Dunkin Donuts.

How to frame 101

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear ISP

Not quite.

[sulli]

The yahoo guy's point was that it didn't make sense to have cops babysitting sysadmins while the sysadmins did the searches - not that computer crime was more or less crime than any other.

Re:a certain <strike>levity</strike>

[ch-chuck]

replace with 'gravity':

3. Solemnity or dignity of manner.

keep the cops involved, but...

[bigpat]

But what exactly does it mean to have police present for a search warrant, when the systems being searched might be scattered accross the globe or at least at some other location from the technicians performing the search? Does it mean that the police would just be looking over the shoulder of the technicians or would they actually have to go to where the data is?

Re:probable cause

[Anonymous Coward]

probable cause is no longer required.
check out the USA_PATRIOT act - there is
*no* need for probable cause for a data
wiretap

This is an easy problem to solve

[ReelOddeeo]

C'mon folks. Think!

If all ISP's simply provided a standard API to Law Enforcement (LE) so that LE could search anything they wanted, whenever they wanted, then this problem would be solved. We wouldn't even be discussing whether LE should be present.

It could even be developed as a standard module for popular OSes. For instance, for Linux, a Kernel Module which provided this remote monitoring facility would be beneficial for everyone. It would conform to the standard remote monitoring API.

Problem solved. This would be beneficial for everyone.

It saves your manpower. You avoid LE people at your facility. Your engineers don't need to waste time performing the search. It saves LE manpower, because they don't need to visit your facility each time they want to search something. In fact, for additional savings, LE could start obtaining search warrants retroactively.

Re:This is an easy problem to solve

[Corby911]

Yep. That way just about any governmental agency could search the ISP at any time without even having to send a note to the ISP. Sounds like a lot of fun to me. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not give them completely unrestricted access to all the ISPs data to be searched on a whim.

Re:This is an easy problem to solve

[vegetablespork]

I know you're trying to make a point with hyperbole, but this isn't far from what's been sought. Clipper with its LEAF (law enforcement access field), the Swiss with their email archiving requirements, and the PATRIOT act don't make an LE API based on XML web services (add buzzwords as needed) sound very farfetched.

Heck, I wouldn't be surprised to see it as a part of the Trusted PC specification.

Re:This is an easy problem to solve

[cperciva]

If all ISP's simply provided a standard API to Law Enforcement (LE)

There already is a standard API. It's called "you fax us a search warrant, we'll conduct the search and send the results back to you".

The only simple way to improve upon this would be to use digital signatures, in order that the fax could be replaced by secured email.

Penguin with a badge?

[westfieldscientific]

Wouldn't it be more practical for the police to deputize a linux sysadmin and have him telnet in?

Why would anyone have to be physically present in the server room? Specific data files in this context are the object of the investigation. Also, having a sworn officer conducting the search seems preferable to having ISP personnel involved.

All Yahoo or any other ISP would have to do would be to create an account with suitable privelages for law enforcement [only] use.

Physically present where?

[gelfling]

My cabinets are in a third party's cage house in New Jersey, their business office is in Santa Clara, CA, my provider CHQ is in NY, the service arm for me the customer is based in NC, the liason to the customer is in Florida and systems management is via Colorado.

How many cops do you want to send? All of them?

Re:Physically present where?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many cops do you want to send? All of them?

Don't be stupid. They send the cops to where the admin is parsing and searching through the logs and they sit next to him. This isn't anything amazing.

Ever wonder

[randomErr]

Ever wonder how much covert MS code is in CSV tree?

Re:Ever wonder

[vegetablespork]

I would expect it to be in a VSS repository rather than in a CVS tree. MS, after all, does eat its own dog food.

ISP's as police agents

[parliboy]

Here's a problem with overturning the ruling -- it would mean that ISP's have the powers of police agents. Whereas in the past, ISP's could voluntarily turn over information that it thought were part of an issue, now they're additionally doing so while acting in the place of police. That means that they should also now be subject to the same terms as police with regards to all of the civil rights they are required to observe.

Either ISP's are acting as "private" organizations or they're not. I want them off the fence, one way or the other.

I agree -- but this presents a quandry

[j-turkey]

If civilians can't conduct a search under warrant, and having law enforcement officers present places too much of a burden on ISP's -- I guess that search warrants shouldn't apply to ISP's :)


But seriously, its an interesting quandry. Technically, having law enforcement officers in ISP offices around the clock just to serve warrants could violate the 4th amenement in and of itself (remember, corporations are granted individual's rights). I don't think that either extreme is the right thing to do, so what is?

BTW, IANAL


-Turkey

Equivalent to POTS Warrants

[devnullkac]

IMHO, ISP warrant execution should be held to the same standards as local telephone service warrants. Both service providers store similar kinds of court-demandable information and both depend heavily on computers to extract it correctly.

IANAL, so I don't know what the POTS standard is, but I doubt police officers actually have to be present. Having a flatfoot on site won't help unless s/he's intimately familiar with the database query system.

This might be a good thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

If the government has to expend manpower for each and every warrant it issues, it might not be so quick to ask for them. This is especially important, because since 9-11 if an officer requests a warrant in a terrorist investigation(defined largely by the investigating agency, since the definitions of terrorism are so many and ambiguous and mutable), the judge is REQUIRED to grant it. So now, a warrant is really just a means of maintaining the paper trail.
I think the difficulty in serving warrants (i.e. the extra manpower the police have to put forth) may offset the ease with which they can now obtain them, and thus reduce abuses overall.

and when encryption becomes a red flag?

[nurb432]

So when it brings the attention of the man down on you? Or worse, when its made illegal to use it
at all...

Or wait.. it already IS a red flag.. you must be doing something illegal and we must watch you even closer now....

A Better Idea

[Bob9113]

Why bother with a warrant at all? Wouldn't it be easier for Yahoo! to simply always send copies of their nightly differentials to the authorities? Eliminate all that silly paperwork (which is slowing down the speedy execution of justice).

OK, that's a bit flippant, but how far off is it really? We recently eliminated the need for two branches of government to agree before issuing a warrant with the Patriotic American Jackbooted Thug Act.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to properly executed warrants. Heck, I may not even be opposed to a totally open society (IE: trivial search and seizure), but if we're going to keep the pretense of a right to freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, we should maintain the checks and balances that assure that those searches and seizures are authorized and executed properly. If we are choosing to make them trivial, then lets eliminate all the barriers at once and get it over with (and, of course, this should imply that the gloves come off regarding the privacy of our public officials: every sales receipt, campaign contribution, and bank transaction gets published).

the harder it is, the better off we are

[drwho]

Yes, the district federal court is correct and yahoo et al are wrong. A Chain of custody should be required, especially with digital data which can be tampered with without leaving any noticible signs that it was.

Civil Libertiarians should also consider this good: if cops have to show up at the ISP in order to have a search warrant executed, it would certainly make them think twice about doing so.

IANAL, and glad of it!

Police? Levity?

[brooks_talley]

What, this guy likes joking with cops? They'll all stand around reading some poor guy's email and laughing at how he was pretending to be a hot young girl in some chatroom?

Me, if police came to my workplace, I think it would add a great deal of *gravity* to the situation.

Chers
-b

Re:This might be a good thing - NOT

[Anonymous Coward]

The local police department that has to send the officers has no influence with the courts that issue the warrants. This will do absolutely nothing to reduce the number of frivolous search warrants issued.

My opinion...

[Anonymous Coward]

is that levity means lightness of manner or speech, esp. in an an inappropriate situation. A place where one can post his/her flames is provided below. Enjoy.

"Innocent until proven guilty"

[Macrobat]

Remember, "innocent until proven guilty" does not automatically prevent law-enforcement from taking any action. If it did, then they'd be forced to sit around during a bank robbery on the grounds that "they haven't proven in a court of law that the suspects did anything illegal." The standard flow of events goes: if police or other law enforcement have probable cause to suspect a crime is being/has been committed, they have the right to investigate; if they find evidence that someone has committed a crime, they can arrest him; and if a court of law determines that that evidence constitutes proof, they don't let him go.

I'm not a lawyer and I don't play one on TV, but it seems to me that if they've got a warrant, they already have probable cause.

Re:"Innocent until proven guilty"

[Happy go Lucky]

Remember, "innocent until proven guilty" does not automatically prevent law-enforcement from taking any action. If it did, then they'd be forced to sit around during a bank robbery on the grounds that "they haven't proven in a court of law that the suspects did anything illegal." The standard flow of events goes: if police or other law enforcement have probable cause to suspect a crime is being/has been committed, they have the right to investigate; if they find evidence that someone has committed a crime, they can arrest him; and if a court of law determines that that evidence constitutes proof, they don't let him go.

Close, but not quite.

We can open an investigation based upon anything. Until a seizure or search (within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment) is conducted, no evidence is required.

Upon developing probable cause to believe a person has committed a crime, a police officer may arrest that person or seek an arrest warrant from a judge, or (in Colorado), issue a summons and release.

Upon developing probable cause to believe that a given place contains evidence, contraband, or the like, an officer may obtain a search warrant from a judge. Under certain circumstances, the officer can also search without a warrant.

Certain types of non-testimonial evidence for identifying suspects can be taken on less than probable cause. Hair or blood for DNA, for example, can be taken from a person by court order pursuant to Colorado Rule of Criminal Procedure 41.1 or analogous rules in other states.

Even if a person is taken into custody, 99% of the time he'll be able to post bond. No-bond arrests are actually very uncommon in this state. It pretty much has to be a pretty serious felony for a no-bond hold. And for non-violent misdemeanors, we USUALLY will scratch a summons into county court and release him on his signature.

And if some officer has a warrant, then that means some judge is satisfied that the probable cause exists to support it. Warrants basically don't exist in the US until some guy in a black muumuu signs them.

Re:"Innocent until proven guilty"

[warpSpeed]

...but it seems to me that if they've got a warrant, they already have probable cause.

Well, they have convinced a judge that they think they have probable cause.... doen't mean that they do...

If the data don't fit, you must...

[John Murdoch]

Every time I see mention of evidence "from the Internet" or "from computer files" I wonder: how much evidence produced in court is actually genuine. We all know how impressed most people are with computer technology--and we all know how simple it is to create a simple text file. An email from Nicky Scarfo, Jr. admitting to loansharking? A trivial matter--just take any old email from Nicky, edit the text, and presto! "Direct" evidence that would impress 99 juries out of 99. While we're at it, why not have Nicky confess to financing the World Trade Center bombing?

This kind of thing isn't limited to email. Want to establish an alibi? If you have access to the database that stores key pass data (or E-Z Pass data) you can write a simple INSERT statement to add records necessary to prove you were on the Tappan Zee Bridge when the dirty deed was done (dirt cheap).

My point is that it is brutally easy to fabricate data--and I think the technologically unsophisticated are all too willing to accept anything that is presented as coming from "the computer".

A hypothetical example
Let's pretend that I'm a local police officer. I've been working a case for months--we've had several complaints about a man who might be a sex offender. But they're complaints of creepy behavior--nothing criminal. But I know--I know in my bones--that this guy is a ticking time bomb, just waiting to go off. And--being devoted to protecting the children of my community--I want to stop this creep before he hurts any (more?) children.

I'm in Pennsylvania, where judges are elected. A local judge who's up for re-election is likely to err in my favor when it comes to search warrants on suspected child molesters--so I get a warrant, and I seize the perp's computer. And--damn. The creep is evidently aware of the danger of computer evidence, because there is not a single shred of incriminating evidence on his hard drive.

Or is there? I can copy a few choice files into his temp directory, and copy a few incriminating cookies while I'm at it. Maybe I copy more than a few. All it takes is a floppy disk of helpful evidence and a moment or two alone with the computer--and who's going to believe the creep when he claims he never saw those pictures?

The chain of evidence? (The "chain of evidence" is a legal requirement that prosecutors be able to identify a particular person responsible for a piece of evidence from the time it is seized until it is presented in court.) I gave the perp a receipt for his computer. There's nothing that requires me to provide the perp with a listing of all the files--and no court in the world would let the perp do anything to that computer (like listing his files) when I seize it. I've provided a receipt for his computer--but who's to say what's on the hard drive?

Could this happen?
A frequent element of police fiction--and perhaps police reality--is that police officers carry "throw down" guns; a throw down gun is a firearm with no identifying numbers that can be dropped at a crime scene when a police officer shoots a suspect: the cop asserts that the suspect pulled a gun, but the cop shot first. There's the gun--and the suspect a) has an arrest record, b) is dead, or c) both. Who's to say?

In the same way, an overzealous cop or prosecutor could easily use "throw down" data to "tighten up" a case. The "bad guy" gets what he deserves--the entirely theoretical child molester gets sent to prison.

When the police come with the warrant
I have a client who pays me a few bucks to co-locate a server--which technically makes me an ISP. Ed hosts a couple of mailing lists, and while I seriously doubt any of these lists will ever be the subject of a search warrant, if I'm ever served with one I'm going to be particularly careful to maintain copies of what I provided to the cops. Sure--I'm all in favor of law and order. But fabricating computer "evidence" is so easy that it must be a temptation that is very hard to resist.

Re:If the data don't fit, you must...

[aebrain]

The chain of evidence? (The "chain of evidence" is a legal requirement that prosecutors be able to identify a particular person responsible for a piece of evidence from the time it is seized until it is presented in court.) I gave the perp a receipt for his computer. There's nothing that requires me to provide the perp with a listing of all the files--and no court in the world would let the perp do anything to that computer (like listing his files) when I seize it. I've provided a receipt for his computer--but who's to say what's on the hard drive?

IANAL but OTOH I have some professional familiarity with computer forensics, in particular, the obtaining of data from seized computers by the Police.

Here's what actually happens:

1. Cops/Wallopers/The Bill/MIB/FBI/Plods (plural) take the box or boxes, tape em or seal em.
2. Plods deliver the sealed boxes or bags to the forensics lab
3. Forensics technicians, logging every step and usually with a video record, dismantle the machine, mobile phone, faxmachine or whatever and then plug the storage media into some special hardware that cannot physically write to that media (no electrical path). They then make a copy of what's on the drive/ramcard/whatever. The standard way of doing this is with a tool called EnCase which includes MD5 checksums. After that, the original media is not touched and is put away in a secure area. Only the copies are examined. And a copy of the files (in fact, the whole bitstream on the media) is provided to the suspect on request, and it can be demonstrated on demand that any copy has the same MD5 checksum as the original.

What this means is that if Officer Plod is such an ubergeek as to be able to insert the data seamlessly into the media while it's turned off and sealed in a box, while keeping timestamps consistent and in the presence of other cops, then he can frame anyone.

Alternatively, you'd need a conspiracy. But you'd still need to know a bit more than just an MSCE course to do it without leaving traces, or need the techos in on it.

This basic methodology has stood up to some courtoom challenges.

Of course this is just the basic one-size-fits-all method used on luser kiddieporners etc. For military or "homeland security" vs some people with a geek index > 0.1 you need something more powerful, able to read dead magnetic domains etc. But that's another story

Security, Due Process and Convenience

[Anonymous Coward]

As a subscriber to an ISP, I have no problem with police being present during the execution of a search warrant or subpoena. As a taxpayer, I am outraged.

Unless the salaries of the police officers are included to the court costs and assesed against the loser, this is an unnecessary expense. The police officers will not understand what the ISP personnel are doing, and will contribute nothing to the reliability of the data. At a minimum, the cost should come from the court budget rather than the police budget.

Re:Security, Due Process and Convenience

[Anonymous Coward]

Having the least flawed judicial system in the world is not cheap, my friend. I bet you don't pay jack shit in taxes anyway, so what are you complaining about?

Several Issues Here

[thelizman]

For starters...kiddy porn? Don't expect me to have a whole lot of sympathy for the accused, pending the weight of the evidence. But, the followign issues are at stake:

1. Privacy - The other users have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and having an officer present during the search with the ability to view their records violates that privacy.
   
2. Agency - This idiot has a weak case, since the "unreasonable search and seizure" clause is to protect an individuals rights against the state, not their sysadmins. Try again. There are a handful or more of legal precedents which allow evidence gathered by someone whereas if that someone were an officer of the court or a cop, it would be inadmissible.
   
3. Person, Articles, Effects - none of those three should extend to the ISP's records unless the ISP is the defendant.
   
4. Cost of Administration - it cannot be expected that your average cop is also a sysadmin, so it would be up to the ISP itself to pay for the gathering of evidence - a cost which constitutes an illegal tax (not that illegal taxes aren't all the rage nowadays).
   

Re:Several Issues Here

[Todd Knarr]

Counterpoints:

1. Privacy: police officers in pursuit of a search warrant are subject to more stringent rules when it comes to exceeding the scope of the warrant. This may discourage trawling expeditions through material not covered by the warrant, including other users' data, and certainly would expose the agency requesting the warrant to punishment if they did exceed it's scope. This would all tend to protect the privacy of other users.
2. Agency: when the ISP is doing the search at the request of law enforcement in pursuit of a search warrant, they are bound to the same rules as law enforcement would be. If the police are asking for the information, I see no reason why the same rules shouldn't apply whether they're getting it directly or asking someone else to get it for them.
3. Persons, Articles, Effects: this would be much like saying that a video store's records of what you rented aren't covered. This came up in a case some time back, and the final fall-out was exactly the opposite of your position.
4. Cost: the ISP bears the costs regardless of whether there's police present or not. Making the police be present merely imposes the same cost on the police pursuing the warrant as if they had to make an ordinary search of the subject's home. This would bring some balance back. They could no longer cheaply search everyone they feel like, they'd have to do some work first and concentrate the searches on those they have good reason to suspect.

Goodness

[meggito]

It may actually force them to cut down on their searches! As a matter of fact they may go from the 'literal thousands' to a few hundred. There is NO reason for this many searches on an ISP. The problem is all the 'slandar' that poeple are suing ever, the fact that police try to find unnecessary evidence (the bank robber may have sent e-mail!), and the most important, that courts do not oversee the warrants. What to do, make Judges issue warrants, cutting down on the number of searches, and making a police presence during searches less than a burden.

Ah, yes...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the "for the children" argument. Every infringement on civil liberties is justified by pointing to the nasty pedophiles, the drug dealers, or the terrorists. I'm not buying it anymore. In the 20th century, governments who got too much power killed 170 million of their own citizens - now that's a threat I'll worry about.

Re: searches by law enforcement only

[peddrenth]

Sounds good. If police time is wasted each time a frivolous warrant is issued, maybe that will stop the dragnetting of private information.

I mean, it's bad enough that Yahoo! will let the U.S. police browse through my emails without any evidence of a crime, but for them to do it by fax is starting to push the limits of credibility.

Yes, I've now deleted all the email from my yahoo account. There are some people where it's not being paranoid if you don't trust them.

They're only rights

[Cyno]

Why do you all keep going on about due processes and the constitution, blah, blah, blah. They're only rights. I don't understand why they're so important.

levity doesn't exist

[Anonymous Coward]

The earth blows.

Big shit! They deputize one employee. Case closed.

[crovira]

This is a non-issue.

The Guvmint and the ISPs can deputize one employee who is granted autority (by the power vested ... blah, blah,) to conduct information searches while employed there.

The lawyers are shut up. The ISPs don't have a bunch of cops around underfoot. And the bad guys still get caught.

What's the problem here?

ten cop cruisers serve local isp warrant

[Anonymous Coward]

They surround the isp with s.w.a.t. and ten armed police draw their weapons and storm in your local isp. They demand root access and then push the 5'8 wirely geek out of his seat hitting his head on the table on his way to the floor. The officer then pulls the geek up and sits him down beside him saying, "you stay here, you can help answer the questions."

After finding out about their hidden internal chat server, they finally get the geek to admit the identity of ButterFingersBenji {Only after a quick round of russian roullete.)

ARGHh!

[phunhippy]

IASAFTOATGDFWLTS IANAL!!!!!
MINUIFLHOAOHIOA
CDCR LEDMOOK Y
K KE NL E
ID ES
N D
G

How about from now on.. on slashdot.. dunt say yert not a lawyer.. odds are if your reading and posting here.. your not a lawyer.. so we'll assume yer not.. and if you are lawyer.. then say you are and we'll be like.. ohh hey a lawyer.. wooo

yes i'm ranting..

get over it.

Are other businesses trusted?

[Kettleboy]

Does the police treat other businesses similiarily? IE: fax a warrant to the phone company, pawn shop, ect. then wait by their fax for the results of their "search"?

I bet not.