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FBI Investigating Lamo Via Patriot Act Provision
umm qasr writes "Mark Rasch, a columnist for SecurityFocus wrote in his Register-reprinted column that the FBI has sent a letter, invoking provisions of the Patriot Act, to journalists reporting on the Adrian Lamo case: 'The letters warn them to expect subpoenas for all documents relating to the hacker, including, apparently, their own notes, e-mails, impressions, interviews with third parties, independent investigations, privileged conversations and communications, off the record statements, and expense and travel reports related to stories about Lamo.' Good to see that our First Amendment rights are being upheld by the FBI."
Mark Rasch has got some balls!
they're sending subpoenas, not going in and demanding all the info without. that means that they dont' need the patriot act at all! wtf!?!?!
am I missing something here?
If they've got probable cause, they can do just about anything. If you've murdered someone, I want the government to be able to find out how long it takes for you to shit if it will help them any.
He shouldn't have done anything with that virus. Period. Nobody should have. And if all his personal information will help them confirm that he did it and/or find leads to others that did, I say more power to them. They've got cause to believe he did it, they've got cause to be on his case. This isn't a story.
www.sitetronics.com/wordpress
They have a good overview of the USA PATRIOT ACT on their site and in the most recent EPIC Alert newsletter, there is this interesting paragraph (item 4):
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
because the media has deep pockets and can fight this shit (PATRIOT act); whereas, the little guy who's busted for whatever reason doesn't have the money, time, or other resources to fight for himself. Yes, he may get lucky and have the ACLU or some other organization with some money, but when it comes down to it, they don't have the resources that some large media company does. And hopefully, their civil rights will trickle down to us little people - I hope!
...are the instances of similar government overreaches that we *aren't* hearing about.
Transparency, tranparency, transparency. When a government, especially one theoretically existing by permission of the governed, can do things in secret and without accountability, be afraid.
Be even more afraid when your fellow citizens don't rise up against it.
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
Talking down to you is still better than just insulting you. Besides, condescension is a virtue. Speaking to someone beneath your station is a sign of an open mind.
The fact is that part of being a journalist is having integrity. It's part of the job description, just like being a cop or a fireman. The thing is, we lost the war with cops a long time ago, and we no longer expect them to have any. We still have high standards for journalists, and I want to maintain them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
is it time to invoke our god-given right to overthrow the government which has become destructive to the ends for which it was created, namely the preservation of life, liberty, and property? UP THE PROVOS!!!
Oh yeah, and IANAL, but let's be clear that you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand the law. (Or be a lawyer, for that matter.)
We're criticizing the FBI etc, but the truth is, they probably could have done all this without the Patriot Act.
The group we should be criticizing is the NYT. Aren't these the same guys that endlessly bitch and whine about freedom of speech? Aren't these the same guys that decried the Patriot Act as a neo-fascist con job? What about THEIR hypocrisy?
These guys are a private business which depends upon people buying their product every day. If you want to help out, all you have to do is let those jackasses at the "Paper of Record" know exactly how you feel. Hit them where it really hurts - their pocket book.
-ron
In Germany they came first for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me--and by that time no one was left to speak up.
...that every time the Feds go after "terrorists," all their guns are aimed at innocent citizens?
More like the "Investigation and apprehension policy unification act"
For all the whining going on here, most people can't see the forest from the trees. This law is not a bad law. It just makes the application of long-standing law enforcement investigation techniques more uniform over existing crimes, with the inclusion of terrorism.
So what if now the same standard applies to terrorists that formerly applied to drug dealer and racketeering investigations? So much the better. There is still a required judicial oversight, as a judge still has to sign warrants. This law probably reduces the paperwork required by not having to list a myriad of unrelated laws when applying for a warrant. USA Patriot Act, catchall, done!
Really, the supreme irony here is the fact that a "press" agency is getting the government to invoke this law against other "press" entities. If I didn't know any better, I would think that Lamo is just an excuse to give a court room test for this law.
The NY Times is run by a bunch of asshats, and now they are proving it by going after a nobody who was trying to help them. Real class acts.
-- Len
Actually, you should blame them. This runs counter to a whole history of case law that protects journalists' research material--and they damn well know it. Unless the government has a pressing reason to get at this information (i.e. it's not just going on a "fishing expedition"), they won't be able to get the notes of any reporter who cries foul. At the risk of getting modded redundant, here's a recent case that goes over this part of the law.
I, too, am seriously thinking about moving somewhere, though not to Mexico. At least in the US they pretend you have rights some of the time, in Mexico the Army is chock full of teenagers running around with automatic weapons and led by "generals" who are busy padding out their bank accounts.
In the US, if you get busted with an ounce of grass, it's not serious. In Mexico, they might take it, or they might just take you out back and shoot you.
I think Canada sounds a lot better than that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
To me this means that the FBI is having trouble proving their case. When Adrian surrendered to the FBI he wasn't so stupid as to bring any electronic equipment with him. He said he left his laptop and other personal belongings in a 'safe place'. Without his laptop and given the fact that he is "homless" and accessed the internet through many and unknown public access points I bet they are having trouble connected him and his alleged actions with any computer logs that they may have. They cannot at this point connect Adrian with any action in the server logs because they have no idea where he was, or have any of the equipment he may have used to do it. They are hoping to find a smoking gun confession that he made to a reporter, and/or track his movements and find out where he hacked from or where his computer is. I hope he has a good public defender.
-Matt
Sometimes being bold is fashionable. Other times, only the brave dare to be bold. . -- Donald Kingsbury Courtship Rite
I think that we are fast approaching the latter time.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
...and expense and travel reports related to stories about Lamo. I wonder if these expenses will be included in the list of "damages" caused to various organizations.
Don't forget about speakers corner in London! You can talk about whatever you want... except if you want to criticize the royal family, then you go to jail. :(
The Register has a good article related to this whole mess. Granted it's obviously got a heavy liberal slant, but it raises some interesting points. People have already pseudo-jokingly asked this question, but how IS the weather in Canada? Each day I realize my neighbors up north live in a country that's currently less scary than the great US is.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for SEGA. ..."
that teh Dark Tipper, aka Kevin from TechTV will be questioned as well about his private interview with lamo before he turned himself in. i bet d-tip's freaking.
a/s/l here. Sorry, adding domain tags to your s
Don't forget about speakers corner in London! You can talk about whatever you want... except if you want to criticize the royal family, then you go to jail. :(
heh I bet you're one of those people that thinks the Queen rules England or something.
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
I wonder what their take will be on this. Normally I'd look for them to get an interview just so they could tell the FBI to fuck off with their anti-american PATRIOT act bullshit. But in this case, I imagine they have a conflict of interest that they won't be able to deal with. I hope they are advanced enough to seperate wanting to press charges from agreeing that the PATRIOT Act should be used or is valid in this case.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
The result of this of course is that every journalist sued for not turning documents over as a result of the unconstitutional subpoena...
I think that there is a measure of confusion in the above statement which needs immediate clarification. The reason that the (mis-) use of provisions in the Patriot Act, to demand that the reporters in question preserve their notes, communciations etc. preparatory to turning them over has nothing to do with a lawsuit. Lawsuits are the results of 'Torts', acts of commission or omission where one party or another suffers some damage and seeks redress in a court through legal means.
What is scary about the article, if it is true, is that the FBI is using the Patriot act to demand that the journalists preserve their information to hand over to the Department of Justice and threatening them with prosecution for obstruction of justice if they refuse to comply.
Obstruction of Justice is a criminal act punishable by imprisonment and/or fine.
In a tort, you pull out your checkbook to satisfy a judgment against you. 'Satisfying the judgment' in a federal criminal proceeding more often than not requires that you surrender your person for use by the federal corrections system. In other words, you go to prison.
The thing that makes this ugly, shocking, egregious and a good reason to vote out the current administration A.S.A.P. is that the article demonstrates that the Patriot Act is living up to the worst nightmares of its detractors by having its broad application effect things beyond its scope (i.e., journalists treated as ISP administrators) while it is used as an end-run around the Constitutional protections afforded the Press which allow Americans access to information without government interference; this system allows journalists to access individuals without their being forced to aid in criminal investigations regardless of the severity of the individual's alleged crime.
The real problem here is that by using the patriot act to tunnel under the constitution and demand Journalist's records, the FBI is doing what they simply should not be able to do in the United States: they are threatening reporters with imprisonment for not turning over constitutionally protected information.
This could be ugly. If the Patriot Act can be used to turn news sources into nothing more than an advertisment board for Georgie's trips in flight suits we should all look up the procedure for asking Canada for asylum.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
I just hope that all of these journalists remember that when they were granted their Journalist Superpowers, they all swore the Journalist's Holy Oath to get assraped in federal prison in preference to compromising their principles and choosing to remain employable and so keep paying their mortgage and their kids' orthodentistry bills.
No... wait... that's in Bizarro World. On Planet Earth, journalists are just working joes, working long hours scraping a living selling the stories that the paying public (which by and large doesn't include Slashdot readers) want to read.
Before anyone gets confused over this, remember that the Slashdot editing team are technically journalists. If the FBI ever come a-knocking around here, you can bet the farm that each and every one of them will be pissing their pants in their eagerness to hand over the goods. In best Slashdot editor tradition, they'll probably even dupe the submission.
On this specific issue, which law did Congress pass that abridges the freedom of the press? That would be the Espionage Act of 1917, the Sedition Act of 1918 and the Alien Registration Act of 1940. The PATRIOT act is amateur hour stuff by comparison; it places no restrictions on journalists' freedom to publish whatever they like, and that's all that the first amendment requires.
I've always found the argument that a free press requires anonymity to be highly spurious. If you're getting your stories from unverifiable sources, then you may as well get your bullshit from your tax funded officials rather than from a freelance reporter who's selling you what you want to hear.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
"They need to offer him a job and put him in the Defense Department - use his skill 'for' us, instead of putting him in jail."
Um, no they don't. The guy breaks into other people networks, without their permission, then "graciously" offers to fix their problems for them, for free. While that last bit sounds nice, the first part (the breaking in part) isn't so nice. Especially not when he uses his access to run thousands of dollars in bills using that network to, basically, ego surf (he accessed the Times' Lexis account to lookup references to himself).
That is definitely not the kind of troublemaker we should have anywhere near the military. This guy needs to go to some nice little minimum security Federal prison for a few years, and grow up.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
We need to reach out and teach others how to use it, how to protect against government invasion of privacy. Teach others the politics behind crypto and teach others the practice of using good crypto and good key management. I'm making an effort to teach all people I correspond with and have been for several years. It's frustrating because most don't listen or don't want to listen, but in a few cases it really pays off. Crypto evangelism is now my evangelical topic over open source.
Imagine how much better of a state these reporters would be in if they kept all that they did not print strongly encrypted. Under the stress of the government questioning them, they may even forget their passphrase!
Revolutions are never about freedom or justice. They're about who's going to be top dog. -- Kilgore Trout