Slashdot Mirror
Text Messages in the Courts
KennyG944 noted a story running on CNN which talks about Text Messages being used in the Kobe Bryant trial. This raises a host of issues about the phone company keeping these messages around and expectations of privacy.
That is why I never used text messaging in the first place. THEY are watching us everywhere we go.
Oh yes - text messaging to reporters with up-to-date almost live reporting, or messaging within the courtroom. HUGE implications.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Be amusing when the judge asks for a translation of gems like "OMG! U R SO HOT, M8 LOL! CU@MY PLACE 4 SUM SEX & I WILL FELCH UR ASS!"
I think the more important thing to consider here is that this implies people actually care about the Kobe Bryant trial.
Scary.
They went to the phone people, and they pulled up their text messages for the last 3 years. Then they traced the ip address, and located the hacker, and arrested him!!!! (Sadly, Law & Order's use of internet tech seems closer to reality than a "hip" show like 24.)
I think if you communicate over a network that is regulated by the company itself, as well as a federal orginization, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. (like now)
well.. by sending your text messages through your host it will get logged in their server stats, if police needs to see through them, they have the right.
Same goes with your data on your PC
This reminds me on, when the courts in Africa arranged, which "you i divorce" says three times by sms were not legally divorce. Sayings of "i divorce you" three times a certified divorce is, in the parts of the undeveloped world. I understand to separate they're, which goes, making it harder soon. you'll must it four times say.
Read journal when you are not understand
Judge: "Have the jurors reached a verdict?"
Jury: "Yes, your honor."
Judge: "Bailiff, please bring the vedrict to me."
(Bailiff brings paper to judge)
Judge: "Jurors, please state your verdict."
Jurors: "We find the defendant, Kobe Bryant, GLTY ON L CHRGS. LOL!!1! WTF?"
But why deosn't Slashdot inform us the number of reads and posts on particular posts? I have a feeling that some Slashdoters do not read them. They just post for the sake.
Disclaimer: I do not know what I am talking about.
Text messages bounce through the ether with no little or encryption, and can frequently be snooped upon with a little phone hardware hackery.
They're about as secure a form of communication as shouting across a room. A reasonable expectation of privacy would be "none at all".
"Don't ever say anything on e-mail or text messaging that you don't want to come back and bite you." Well Duh...
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
KBE DID IT
WHT R U DNG TONITE?
up 12 days, 22:30, 2 users, load averages: 993.20, 994.21, 994.56
*makes note to limit user processes...
I guess this will lead people to reconsider exactly what kind of information they pass along on an unencrypted channel such as text messaging, now that it looks like Big Brother is more than willing to access it in order to put you away for crimes you probably didn't commit. I can only feel bad for Mr. Bryant, who, on the eve of winning the NBA championships, has to deal with this nightmare of government-sponsored privacy intrusion and wasn't smart enough to know better beforehand. I hope this serves as a lesson to others, before more people get burned.
"What's in those messages could help determine whether the sex was consensual or whether Bryant is guilty of rape as charged."
The text messages will determine whether his is guilty of rape? How about, they'll determine whether or not he's FOUND guilty of rape.
His guilt is completely separate from those stupid messages. The idea that the courts determine whether or not someone ACTUALLY IS GUILTY is a stupid and common American fallacy. (I don't know what it's like elsewhere.)
By memorizing the PGP source code, I'm able to encrypt all of my SMS. You'd think that'd be hard, but the really difficult part is keeping everyone's keys straight in your head.
In South Africa, they have an electronic communications act in place that states that all electronic documents are to be treated in the same way as physical documents - that they all have the same legal strength in a court of law. Included in the definition of 'electronic documents' are email messages and sms's/texts. Its wierd to think of people in all these 1st world countries complaining about it when us South Africans have been subject to this for years now - and have gotten used to it.
i m inocnt ;)
Is this even admissible as evidence? I'm guessing that either the cellular service provider actually logs every text message (whoa), or that they just took one of the defendent's or plaintiff's phones.
For the former, we should be worried whether or not they had a warrant. For the latter, I couldn't care less as long as they had a warrant.
They proved their inability or lack of desire to cooperate when GRC.com was getting DDoS from that kid using an earthlink acct.
But it goes without saying that any public or private service you use (tech wise) is going to be logged and stored.
I really dont worry about it much... if I have to do some mission impossible stuff I certainly dont use my cellphone or my cable modem. Low tech is the way to go. Payphones and Juno (sorry Juno).
Boredom's not a burden anyone should bear.
The providers have a TOS that you sign to get service. If you sign it, you allow them to log everything you do with their network, when you turn on your phone, who you call, a recording of the call, text messages, internet access (using mMode and such), and more.
got sig?
It must be noted that it is the accuser's text messages that are being retrieved.
This is not like a defendant is having his own messages used against him.
t
there's a high probability that it's still around somewhere that someone can find it if they look hard enough. It's a fact. If you want something private, don't type it into a digital device, don't write it down... You probably shouldn't even think it since the CIA is working on reading your thoughts, too. We're all screwed. Have a nice day.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
How do they propose to deal with who actually was at the keypad? I mean, strong authentication is a real challenge with email systems, and is rarely employed. Forensics seems like an even bigger chore for SMS than it is for email. Or maybe it isn't?
Regardless of the outcome of this trial a lot of businesses are storing this data. Sarbanes & Oxley generated a lot of new rules for us. We now have retention rules for about everything, and restrictions on which IM and related packages we can use. I used to think quite a few are the result of overzealous or just plain fearful executives but then I forget just how much revolves around the legal profession and other people's money.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
How long before actual voice conversations are going to be stored, then be admissable in court? I can see server logs existing of the transmission, but logging the actual content seems to be privacy invasion.
Why aren't text messages treated the exact same way as voice, and simply track the transmission for billing purposes?
PS- this girl always wanted to be famous.... now she's getting her wish
The crazy thing is that in this age of EVERYTHING being recorded in some way or another (i.e. text messages, internet logs, etc.), there is no guarantee that your guilt or innocence is entirely accurate. I mean, although you might have a video recording of someone killing someone else, here's a news flash: YOU CAN EDIT VIDEOS! You can edit text. You can create a setup that will guarantee that someone will be thrown in jail, and there is nothing they can do to stop you. If, of course, you are skilled enough.
Note: I'm not claiming that Kobe is guilty or innocent, I'm just talking in general.
"In Conyers, Georgia, a 17-year-old boy was arrested for investigation of solicitation of sodomy after a 12-year-old girl's parents complained of sexually explicit messages she had received."
made me think out loud, "why does a 12 year old have/need a cell phone???"
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
-dunar
So you think that if I FedEx a letter to someone I should expect FedEx to open it, photocopy it and store it in an archive somewhere? Or that if I make a phone call, I should expect that the telco tapes it and keeps the tape for an indefinite amount of time?
It's the same thing here really - SMSs are basically condensed phone messages, and it is definitely a reasonable expectation that your phone conversation is confidential between you and the other party, and that it stays that way.
There's a huge difference between storing who phoned who (or in the case of FedEx: "person Foo payed for a package to be sent to person Bar at YYYY-MM-DD") and actually storing the contents. In a reasonable privacy climate, phone companies should definitely be busted for this... but with Ashcroft et al. in charge, it is more likely that SMS retention becomes law rather than a punishable act.
i didnt no they savd the txt msgs on ur svr 4 retrivl @ ny time. ill thnk 2x b4 sending confidnt info.
Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll...
Ryan Seacrest> Ryan Seacrest here with my friend Kobe Bryant. Hey Kobe, see that not so attractive girl in the hotel over there?
Anonymous Girl> Hi Ryan!
Ryan Seacrest> Let's text her and find out if she's available and wants to get it on!
<text messages and waits for reply>
Ryan Seacrest> And let's fine out what she said? "All your base are belong to us. You have no chance to survive make your time." See, isn't texting fun?
I don't understand why this happens with every new batch of technology that comes around. Be it email, phone calls, text messages whatever, it seems that a blanket set of laws should be able to apply. If a cop wants to read your email he needs a warrent. If they want to tap your phone they need a warrent (all this is not taking into account the US Patriot Act). The same should apply to text messages, and every other new technology that comes down the pike.
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
Well yeah, that's why you have to also go to "Empty Recycle Bin"
If you sent them, an email? left a voice message?
What about voicemail that is stored on the carriers system?
If you don't wan't something to come back to bite you in the ass
They also made no mention about what the content is, it may very well be that they are using the information to verify time, plaes, people, as opposed to the content of the messages
Just to save you all a lot of trouble ...
If you are planning or executing a serious crime DO NOT BROADCAST INCRIMINATING MATERIALS using that text messaging that's all the rage now. Sure it may seem cool, but think about what you're doing.
__ I'm pushing the car and everything thats left into the river now __
__ It is two miles north of the bridge __
__ I hope no one other than you reads this message __
Of course, it would be better to not commit the crime to begin with. I'll wave the consulting fee since this is our first meeting.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
I could send a message to anyone I know, saying "XXXXX just forced me to have sex with him".
Doesn't mean he did it, just means *I* said it.
"I just had sex with someone famous, I'm going to brag about it"
"I was just forced to have sex with someone rich, I'm going to tell someone about it".
A text message isn't evidence. One persons account doesn't provide sufficient evidence in my view.
Oh look, I just flew to into space. Can I claim my $10m prize now. Oh, you need evidence? But I said it...
I'm not saying he did do it, and I'm not saying he didn't do it. But it seems everytime someone rich/famous has an indiscretion that wouldn't impact most people in the same way, it ends up in the news, and if you are a little different (think M Jackson, M Tyson), you are even more inclined to be sued/have a public "outing".
You have privacy to a point. If they have a warrent they can get text messages, email, wire taps and all the rest. If there is a cause. Otherwise does it matter?
I come back to the argument. If you are doing nothing wrong then there will be no probable cause to get the info. It is eventually deleted and I'm not going to send anything important over something like a text message. Maybe to the gf to see when she is coming over. They can read those till they are blue in the face. As long as they don't show them to our parents.
Evolution or ID?
Its a well known fact that the feds watch txt msgs, as can be substanciated by the fact that people have been contacted by the authorities after sending msgs that looked suspicous, like secret messeges to start bombings and such. By using a cellphone, a communication device that broadcasts its information to a company that I have little/no control over, I assume I am being watched at any given moment, with both txt msging and the actual calls I make. If you believe that you have privacy while carrying around a device that easily allows someone to listen in on your convos and sends msgs in plain txt format, then you are rather naive.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
Don't expect *any* privacy unless explicitly stated somewhere exactly what information will remain private. Even then, policies can change.
What it really comes down to is that you do not have much control over data about your or created about you unless you are the keeper of the data.
Once data is transmitted somewhere it is probably logged, stored, and copied.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
"It's just a common practice," said Kagan, the telecoms analyst. "I don't know an instance where they delete them."
If the cell phone providers never see a reason or need to delete messages, they have way too much space.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Time to bust out the strong encryption!
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
whoa... that seems a bit harsh
I mod this +1, Creative, as being the first script-post in a really long time that doesn't somehow include "HOW ARE YOU GENTLEMAN??".
That joke sounds familiar...
You probably shouldn't click this.
I could send a message to anyone I know, saying "XXXXX just forced me to have sex with him".
Yeah, but if you wrote "I just had sex with Kobe Bryant, and it was totally great", then it's kinda hard to plea rape, now, isn't it?
Here in Norway the phone companies store all text messages and phone logs for 3 months. The most scary thing is that they also store your position, the police can ask for your (cellphones) movements 2 months ago and the phone companies will willingly deliver this information.
I have been dreaming about the phone that could run java or C code fast enough to do real time encryption using gpg or some other secure system. I want both audio and text messages encrypted. IM (=jabber, anyway) systems for computers can already use GPG, but I am having a hard time convincing people I know to use it. They simply don't see the point. Most of them don't even use GPG for mail even though there are plug-ins available for almost any mail browser (using GPG for IM is somewhat harder).
I'm not sure the majority of people would bother to invest in a phone that could do encryption if it cost slightly more.
This reminds me of another "hot" issue: The Everywhere Outdoors Video surveillance System. This is coming to your local neighborhood soon. When I debate with people about this issue most people just say "So What?" and "I don't really care, I've got nothing to hide". Personally I would prefer big brother not being able to read my mail, listen in on my calls and view my movements live on cameras at all times - even if I don't have anything to hide....
Back to the secure phone: I am convinced phones like this never will be sold. The authorities won't allow not being able to listen in. So this would would require a phone that could run c or java or other code fast (for games or something) enough so the GNU community could make a open source solution for encryption that would work even though the phone was not intended for making secure calls.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
You'll never believe who I just screwed. Kobe Bryant is going to pay through his nose
Exactly what i was thinking when i read the article...except...
u nvr guess who i fd. kobe r pay big bling
i r hoe
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
> If you are doing nothing wrong then there will be no probable cause to get the info.
You haven't been to the USA lately, have you?
So, we need phones with automatic end to end encryption. First text, then eventually voice. Of course it would be kind of expensive at first, and would only work between models of the same phone, but for security end to end is the only way to go.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
From the Article: ATT didn't keep the messages, but they have a backup storage system which automatically backs up everything - including the text messages.
So it's not that they wanted to keep the messages - they just forgot to tell the backup program not to back them up, or delete them after a certain period of time.
Very interesting. I would be surprised if the other wireless companies (which immediately claimed they didn't keep messages around) didn't have the same problem.
Any professional company would have a backup system for their main servers. You really think they would go through the trouble and remove the text messages from that? What if the text message can't be delivered instantly and the server crashes? You would want to retrieve them from the backup system of course. This is not a trivial problem - you would really have to give this some thought.
Do i really think that the marketing-drones who were quick to repeat the official company line really thought this through? No.
If the news media is to be believed it would seem that any and all electronic documents of this nature - log files, etc. - are accepted at face value, while in reality the documents in question are only text files that could be fabricated by anyone with a text editor and a sense of humor.
The burden of proof is on the person claiming that the evidence has been tampered with. That's the way it's always been. There are certain tell-tale signs that a video or picture has been edited. But to automatically assume that all evidence is completely worthless just because of "well it could have been edited ..." is just absurd and places a ridiculously high burden of proof on the prosecution and forces them to prove a negative -- that the evidence has not been tampered with.
For example, let's say that I'm on trial, and the prosecution thinks I might have sent an incriminating message to someone over AOL IM. AOL has logged this message, so they get subpoenaed for it. Once that text file finds its way into the court's hands, are you saying that I can actually claim that the evidence is not admissible because someone who works at AOL might have had a grudge against me and falsified the server-side logs? That's ridiculous. It'd be up to me to prove that the logs had been falsified. I could do this a number of ways. I could compare the server log to my machine's logs to find that the logs disagree or check to see if I was even logged into my computer at that time. If I was, check the IM process' logs to see if it recorded sending that message out at any time.
Just interesting, what's Chain of Custody rules going to be like for SMS?
(For those who've never seen this term, any legal issues dealing with digital technology have pretty complicated rules called Chain of Custody meant to ensure lack of tampering with evidence. I'm guessing same applies to non-digital evidence, but I only heard the term as applied to forensics related to computer security).
"The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it"-R.A.Heinlein
Death is more appropriate for rapists, etc than murderers because a person who kills can be rehabilitated. A rapist/child molestor is a deviant beyond repair.
Just what I thought too before I RTFA. I was going to comment on how someone used a Handspring at a SCO vs. IBM hearing to provide live coverage of the court proceedings via IRC.
Supposedly the person involved got permission from the bailiff since it was not a recording device. But the bailiff probably didn't really understand what the device was doing and probably shouldn't have allowed it.
I was hoping that the article was going to say that people were being allowed to text message reports out of a live courtroom. Especially since there's another SCO vs. IBM hearing today and I was hoping for another live report. =(
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
Don't trust centralized electronic communications services. Period.
You're better off sending your personal communications via a $0.37 stamp in a tamper-evident envelope.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
- sending people who looked like they might drive while intoxicated to prison for years;
- castrating people who we arbitrarily decided might commit rapes at some point in the future;
- executing people who we felt might commit murder in the future?
Actually, that last one would probably be a real time saver, since the trial would be much shorter than it is now ("Who do you think?". "That guy over there". "What, the one with the squinty eyes?". "Yeah". "OK, he'll do")Our country has been reduced to a giant open prison, with cameras monitoring our movements to realtime analysis of data and communication, sometimes i wonder what D-Day was all about, all those yanks/uk/russia/human beings died and for what ? fucking waste
no wonder i don't log in to comment
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/03/text_punk
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2004252004,,
By HARRIET ARKELL
and JOHN KAY, Chief Reporter
PUNK rock fan Mike Devine sent an innocent text message containing lyrics by The Clash -- and was quizzed as a terror suspect after it was INTERCEPTED.
Computer worker Mike, 35, was confronted by a Special Branch cop at his office and taken for a grilling.
He was stunned to be shown a printout of his text which contained the words "gun" and "jet airliner".
Mike, who in his spare time plays bass in a Clash tribute group, had sent the lyric from the song Tommy Gun to a bandmate a month earlier.
Grilled
The cop accepted his explanation and let Mike go. But last night experts said the amazing incident proved NO phone call or text was now safe from monitoring in the war on terror. Mike, of Bristol -- who works for mobile firm Orange -- admitted: "I was bricking it."
He told how his tribute band London Calling -- named after a Clash album -- had been struggling to remember a line in Tommy Gun. His text to singer Reg Shaw, 35, read:
"How about this for Tommy Gun? OK -- SO LET'S AGREE ABOUT THE PRICE AND MAKE IT ONE JET AIRLINER FOR TEN PRISONERS."
Mike told how he was leaving a meeting at work last week when a Special Branch detective introduced himself.
Mike said: "I was thinking, 'God, what have I done?' We went into a room and sat down and he asked me if I knew about Special Branch.
"I said, 'Yes' -- even though I didn't really.
"He asked me lots of questions about my phone, such as was this my number and did I use it at the end of April. Then he produced a printout of a text and asked me if I had sent it.
Punk idols
Picture: REX
"I said, 'That's the lyrics from Tommy Gun'. I explained, 'I'm in a tribute band and was sending the lyrics to the singer.'
"The bloke said, 'Oh I see' and looked a bit embarrassed."
The song, written in the late 1970s, is about terrorists.
Mike said: "It hadn't even occurred to me that it might look a bit dodgy. The man wrapped the interview up quite quickly. I was so relieved to find out that was all it was. It was quite nerve-racking for Special Branch to come looking for you at work."
Terrorism expert Chris Dobson said: "It is clear from this incident that the computers at the GCHQ listening operation in Cheltenham have been programmed to listen in on all vocal and textual mobile phone traffic.
"They are probably programmed to pick out key words like bomb and hostage.
"Having this kind of surveillance is the price we have to pay in a modern society to protect us from terrorists."
# ARMED cops arrested council worker David Grey, 59, in Lanchester, Co Durham, after he told colleagues at his leaving do: "The chief executive should think himself bloody lucky I'm not the kind of person to use a gun." He spent 17 hours in a cell before being freed without charge.
I realize you were trying to be funny, but apparently the phone companies ARE keeping track, as many have suspected anyway...
I wouldnt call that paranoia, id call it reality.. as now shown in a court of law..
Often paranoid's are correct, just a little extreme..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Something like this never has been a punishable act. Your comparison to FedEx is inane. The simple act of transmitting it means that multiple copies are generated all over the place. A better comparison would be calling somebody on the telephone and leaving a message for them when they are not home. You have no idea what happens to that sticky or who might happen to see it. Plus, the person who wrote the message down for you certainly is not obligated to destroy it or face criminal charges.
I always find it ironic that many of the people who are SO concerned about privacy are the same people who are always yakking on their cell phones, in public, about everything.
If you really want a private conversation with someone, you need to meet them face-to-face.
Proverbs 21:19
Maybe someone in the law firm is following the case on closed circuit TV and giving Kobe's attornies clues as to what to call the prosecutor on?
Hey wasn't there a movie like that, where the lawyer got sick and his friend posed as him, and he tried to listen in on a walkie talkie and honked the car horn to tell him what objection to use?
Or then again, maybe Kobe's lawyer is just a stand in, and is getting text messages from India where the real lawyer is? Gotta love outsourcing!
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
It would be nice of this was a standard part of the phone's firmware. I suspect many police/security services would not like it. They've successfully suppressed digital end-to-end encryption in the USA for all but "authorized" users.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
The article gives examples from Medford, Oregon and Conyers, Georgia in which the defendants Text Messages were used.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
It's not that terribly difficult to design a system that keeps no data past the transfer (assuming they don't use forensic methods on the disks, and iffy even then). This should be a major design requirement fo any communication system that doesn't have storage as a feature.
It's one thing for the FBI, et al. to want to wiretap someone under investigation. It's quite another for them to want to go back in history should you every come under investigation.
TW
is the fact that someone at the phone company or a cracker can create their own bogus messages and then claim you sent them.
How woud you be able to tell the difference in court anyway?
Kobe's accuser all of a sudden gets:
"I DUPED KOBE"
"KOBE IS MINE"
"KOBES MONEY IS MINE"
"KOBE FELL 4 R TRAP"
"WE SCAMMED THEM"
etc on her text messaging files stored on the server.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
with text messaging along with camera phones, we need to really revisit privacy, and what's allowed where. it used to be the 'video vigilantes', but now with everyone and their grandma being more wired and armed (with recording and communication devices) things are going to change for good as far as peoples privacy. will we be carrying around personal 'jammers' to scramble any pics that others are trying to snap of us as we walk around the mall? it could happen, and tin foil hat folks will appreciate the 'freedom' that the tech brings...
dcvsdf
free ipod and free gmail!
he's black, isn't that enough evidence for the goverment thesedays ?
still, iam sure he can look forward to some more interrogations into the matter
Satellites that can see your infrared image as you flee persecution. Cops that dress in military-style uniforms. Our local gendarmes look like a cross between US Marines and Batman: Jarheads with batbelts. And they're so on-edge that every "violater" doing 5 over the limit is for-sure cop killer (in their own heads), that they're ready to blow your head off in an atomic instant, one hand perched on their holster. By the time she gets to your car, her partner behind you maintaining a clear shot to the back of your head, she herself circling you like a mongoose approaching a snake, only to shine a 500 watt halogen flashlight in your eyes, then complain that you can't find your wallet (the light burned your retinas, but it's your own stupid fault for speeding). And they know, based on a quick "background" check, that your ATM card placed you at a convenience store in the last half hour and *know* that the address on your license is wrong even before they see it (the latter actually happened to me, but then again I was going 10 over).
Building-penetrating radar imaging. Cell phone tracking and triangulation. It goes on and on. The irony is that it's paid for by tax dollars and rammed-through legislation because of sensationalistic reporting like this Kobe thing.
It's not just the USA. I read somewhere the average Londoner gets photographed 300 times a day. Look out Australia, Canada, and every other place that thinks, "it can't happen here!" It probably already has.
It's merely a symptom of a much more significant syndrome: "Anguish of nations not knowing the way out..."
The FedEx example isn't quite the same. If you encrypted your text message so the carrier only saw a 'package' then yes it's still about the same. (could the accuser be made to 'decrypt' the message....that's an interesting question too)
But since the text message was essentially a postcard (and say they scan the card to read the address they've got the whole content) anyone along the way can read it.
As for storing phone conversations, don't you think that if the technology were in place to do it they'd require the TelCo's to do it? It's just not technically feasible with our aged TelCo infrastructure. VOIP will change that though. The right of privacy for phone conversations was something determined *later* by the courts. It doesn't apply to new mediums by default (though logically it should I agree).
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
OK, so what?
Well, the microwave propagation does not drop dead when it reaches the tower, it will keep on rollin'.
OK, so what?
The microwave links are not encrypted. Only the air interface between the mobile station (=phone) and the base station is encrypted in GSM. The microwave links COULD be encrypted but it costs peanuts, so nobody is going to do it.
OK, so what?
Get a suitable antenna to the LOS of some cell tower and you can listen in on the calls with suitable equipment. Like a satellite with a big dish, nice orbit and proper hardware... You don't even need to bother the operator, nor think about pesky warrants, because nobody will know.
This is how the big boys do it.
n/t
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
People care about Kobe because he is a phenomenal athlete. Corporations care about him because he (used to) project a great clean image and was a great spokesman for practically any product. Shoes, food, whatever. He could sell it.
To put it into perspective, Kobe Bryant is to the non-geek world as Linus is to the geek world.
The sad truth is that more people care about Kobe Bryant than will ever care about you or me. I personally am a fan of his.
I find it odd that putting Kobe on a pedestal is considered "barbaric" around here, but nobody questions putting Linus on a pedestal. While ultimately great athletic ability will not accomplish anything as important as intellectual ability will in the long run, it is still fun to watch athletic competition.
I don't understand why you people can't comprehend that. Many, many people (including a lot of nerds) enjoy watching sports, and yet there is a large faction here that looks down upon that. Why?
Oh, right. It's because you are so fucking lonely after getting Linux to run on your toaster that you furiously masturbate a couple times a day to take your mind off suicide. Carry on.
If you find this post offensive, don't read it! THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING! I am what I am because of how apes behave.
While it is true that a text message is open for viewing WHILE IN TRANSIT, that doesn't give the phone company the right to keep a copy of it when it reaches its destination. To extend the postcard anaology, it would be like the post office intentionally running all postcards through a photocopier. Its true that they do scan the card to get the address, they do not preserve that information. Everytime it goes through a mail sorting facility it gets rescanned and OCRd, just like keeping a copy of a text message is not required for it to reach its destination.
Buffering text messages for users that are out of range is another issue all together. It requires a short term copy to be kept until successful delivery, but following that, it should be discarded just like your mailbox is empty when you pick up your postcard.
Several people, who presumably didn't RTFA, have been making comments with AOLer speak. This brings up something that has been worrying me for quite some time; what laws apply to instant messages sent over the internet ie AIM, MSN messenger, Yahoo messenger, etc. Do the hosting companies keep records of these? Do ISP's? Are government agencies allowed to intercept them?
http://www.blackberry.net/. net/solutions/government/sec urity.shtml
http://www.blackberry
There should be a "mod +1 SCARY" option.
In one instance, text was recovered from the SIM card in a GSM phone.
Oh wow....maybe we should not try and convict the guy of rape-after all sex is PRIVATE. When you are talking about 20 years in jail for someone I think a bit of loss of privacy is reasonable to determine if he is guilty or not. The judge is even examining it in private to determine if it is first./
Once your message is deposited on a drive that someone else owns, you've lost the chance to protect your privacy.
You're at the mercy of the people with access to your messages. I learned that when, months after cancelling a broadband IPS account, I discovered that the supposedly-defunct email accounts were left active and that ISP employees had access to the usernames and passwords for those accounts.(It wasn't a mistake; they keep email accounts alive in case an old customer comes back, and employees -- supervisors, in this case -- have access to passwords in case customers forget them.)
When I asked about privacy issues, the ISP told me they'd fire anyone who abused access to those accounts. Of course, that's if they get caught. Since I thought the account was cancelled and stopped looking at it months ago, my chances of catching someone posting email on that account were pretty slim. Text messages are no different.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
As far as I can remember, all text messages are encrypted over the network.
Suppose you take this one step further. Lets say the woman accusing Kobe had used special code words to communicate with her friend or if she's really paranoid a one time encryption pad for the message.
Assume that all records are kept by the telephone company. They retrieve the message and its absolute gibberish (its been encrypted). Given the accusations made before the court, would the plaintiff be responsible for divulging the contents of the message?
involved a clique of high school bimbo girls that went bad over a boy (murderous "mean girls" basically). The leader bimbo was a psychopath and in a fit of rage beat the crap out of the bimbo that took her man, tortured her by burning her with cigarettes, then stabbed her several hundred times with cuticle trimmers until she bled to death.
During the investigation and questioning, cellphone records and instant messages were examined, and during questioning the DA lawyers let the girl know that if she kept lying they could examine the test messages that were sent from her phone to find out the truth.
In the show the murderer implicated a fat girl who they always picked on, and when they investigated that route, threatening text messages the bimbo sent to her were factors in the case.
Another interesting issue brought up in that episode was the use of cameras integrated into many cellphones. One of the ways they tormented the big girl was by taking her picture in the locker room after gym class and sending it to a bunch of other students' cellphones accompanied by nasty text messages. Brings up another privacy issue--not because of corporate recordkeeping but because of malicious cellphone users.
As a result of both these new cellphone features that cellphones are being banned outright from various places. At my gym all cellphones are banned from locker rooms because so many have cameras now. During government high school exams and all university final exams they are also banned because of "collaberation" that occurs via text messaging.
Sometimes I wonder if opening these nifty new cans of technology is worth all the worms that tend to come out as well. Technological advancement has been an immense positive contribution to society to be sure, but there are some thinge I can do without. I have used text messages before but I still fail to see what is so great about being able to send a sentence to another phone by labouriously pecking it out on a tiny 12-key pad when I could just phone the damn person and leave a voicemail if they don't answer. The one thing I DO use it for is to get email notifications but I've only ever sent a message from a phone less than a half-dozen times in my life. I'd be fine with receive-only, thanks.
I also fail to see what great benefit there is in being able to snap blurry, VGA-resolution pictures on my phone--very few people ever NEED to do that, and if there is indeed enough demand for it why don't they just put wireless/cellphone transmitters into REAL digital cameras? Then we'd only have to ban CAMERAS from locker rooms (which they have been for ages anyways).
Oh well, technology is grand nonetheless...
Why do you assume there wasn't a warrant involved, or that there weren't already laws in place to deal with the issue?
The linked article notes that there were in fact legal proceedings that went on prior to the text messages being provided. Furthermore, the judge will be reading them in private prior to their release to determine if they are in fact relevant to the case (the issue of whether or not the judge is an impartial, trustworthy observer is not addressed).
So you think that if I FedEx a letter to someone I should expect FedEx to open it [...] ?
Take the tinfoil hat off. If you're naieve enough to FedEx/fax/courier anything truly private (read: incriminating), you're asking for trouble. You have no reason to expect people whose services you are using to keep your information private for you.
--trb
It would seem that we need phones that use an open-sourced OS that supports customized encryption extensions, which would allow people to choose the type of security they want to use. But of course, the patriots would never allow that. I wonder if the market forces would allow it?
Cell phone companies are keeping a log of TXT messages? Really... I find that hard to believe.. but maybe they are. I mean as an ISP we don't keep copies of every single e-mail. yeah we have who it was sent to and where it came from but we dont store the content!
Google keeps multiple backup copies of users' emails so that we can recover messages and restore accounts in case of errors or system failure. Even if a message has been deleted or an account is no longer active, messages may remain on our backup systems for some period of time. This is standard practice in the email industry, which Gmail and other major webmail services follow in order to provide a reliable service for users. We will make reasonable efforts to remove deleted information from our systems as quickly as is practical
These days, it is very odd that a company "forgets" to do something, especially if there is a cost involved (such as storage for billions of messages). Even if that cost is only a couple of hundred thousand a year, I find it hard to believe that someone didn't see that they could save some cash by getting rid of the text field after a few days.
How about any phone that works over VoIP and SSL?
AFAIK, there aren't any yet, but it's a simple solution.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
ASCII files like emails/text messages are loaded directly.
Other documents, such as Word docs, faxs, etc. are OCR'ed (accuracy is not very good).
Next they run compelx searches for word combinations.
And low level lawyers/paralegals then read either everything, or sometiems just the search results, flagging things as Relevant/not-relevant.
The amount of data is HUGE. A certain level of Privacy is created by the hugeness of the data. The effect is similar to looking at an apartment building across the street, without optical aid. Someone might be naked with the shades open, but the amount of stuff you have to look at is is so much and your ability to retrieve fine detail is so little that you see nothing. Like it takes the binoculars/telescope to see the naked person, it takes a HUGE amount of cash to pay for man hours/computer time to wade through all the junk text to find the relevant details.
Now, if you know to start off looking at only a single person's stuff, from x date to y date, then you can find some interesting bits...
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
A better comparision is if you send a postcard, not a letter by FedEx. Email (and SMS)is like postcards - it's open by default.
It can sit in technology queues in provider servers and in logs at least partially for a relatively long time and be observable and retrievable by personnel. Copying a postcard is a moral and copyright issue.
A different story if you send an encrypted message... but it's not the case here.
Right. But most of the article is about the Kobe case.
Surely the victims can waive their right to privacy. While the messages may have been from the defendants, they were sent to the victims. While you may have a right to privacy, that does not bind the recipients to protect your privacy. If you send a text message, it is stored not for the sender but stored for the recipient and the only issue about redistribution at that point would be copyright which is irrelevant to a court proceeding. Look at it this way, if it was mail then all parties would expect confidentiality but the victims could certainly turn it over.
The other cases would have been more interesting if they had sent the text message to themselves.
t
At least for premeditated crimes this is utterly pointless, as even the most minimally clueful criminal would just have his henchman take the phone to "alibi location du jour" whilst perpetrating his nefarious acts. Can one use their phone's location as evidence in one's own defense, or is this a form of evidence only useful to the prosecution?
Ah well, even if so I'm sure the clever criminal could use it to frame someone else.
So you think that if I FedEx a letter to someone I should expect FedEx to open it, photocopy it and store it in an archive somewhere?
No, but you do realize the record of you sending a package to the recipient on that particular date WILL be kept. The difference is the word open. Go to the parent and look at the argument. The key here is reasonable expectation of privacy. You should have a reasonable expectation of privacy when you send a sealed envelope. When you send a postcard however, you do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Now I think it would be stupid for the post office to start scanning in all postcards for future reference, but I don't think it would be infringing on anyone's privacy. (just a waste of resources) If you want privacy, put it in an envelope and seal it.
The same goes for Text messaging. The idea that Telcos archive the inane drivel that passes through their hands seems an enormous waste of tape. It is not, however, an infringment on anyone's privacy. If you wanted privacy, you should have encrypted it. Not practical for text messages? Too bad. use an apropriate medium when you want privacy.
If this starts becoming a common thing in courts, wouldn't people realize that their text messages are being screened and intentionally make misleading comments in them? It's so easy to do - I don't see how text messages can be admissible in a court of law.
I beg to differ. There are scores of anecdotes about companies losing billions of dollars because they forgot to do something.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
This reminds me of another "hot" issue: The Everywhere Outdoors Video surveillance System. This is coming to your local neighborhood soon. When I debate with people about this issue most people just say "So What?" and "I don't really care, I've got nothing to hide". Personally I would prefer big brother not being able to read my mail, listen in on my calls and view my movements live on cameras at all times - even if I don't have anything to hide....
It cuts both ways. When you're accused of some violent crime, and then your defense lawyer notices that video surveillance evidence proves you were the other side of town when it was committed, you might just be grateful for those cameras, y'know?
This is important because the messages wouldn't have been available to just anyone, except that a judge found the evidence potentially important to finding the truth. A judge could also order that FedEx package opened, and it would be justified if it helped discover the truth in a case. It's also important to note that, for now, the only person reading these SMS messages is the judge himself, so he can decide if they are relevant. If they are, he turns them over to the lawyers so they can use them or prepare to argue against them. If they really aren't relevant, no one else will get to see them.
Boom Shanka
Imagine if the message was something neutral like, "So, how are you doing?" The defense would say it's relevant to show her state of mind, that she was acting normally and not upset just a few hours after the alleged rape. The prosecution would offer that maybe in a moment of overwhelming emotions she was just reaching out for a moment of ordinary normalcy. I can easily imagine scenarios where the relevance would be really, really difficult to determine.
I think the problem here is the unreliability of cell phones. It's not trivial to have a fault-tolerant encrypted stream like it is a plain audio stream. With traditional encryption methods, lose one bit and you're screwed.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
I have a feeling that some Slashdoters do not read them. They just post for the sake.
Proof again that people don't really care about free speech, only free beer. Or a Japanese alternative.
Could someone tell me what bearing this could possibly have on determining if Kobe is guilty?
If the messages contain something along the lines of "hey, I just got laid by Kobe, isn't that awesome?", then it would quickly dismantle the plaintiff's case. However, how can we be certain the messages have not been tampered with? If the messages indicate that the accusation is bullshit, then the plaintiff could simply say the messages were not her's. There could be no proof either way.
On the otherhand, if the messages express "hey, Kobe just raped me!", we still know nothing. If the victim is claiming she was raped now, how is a message at any point in time after the rape going to strengthen her case? The answer is, it does't. If I am lying at t[n+1], the same lie at t[n] does not make my statement true.
So what we ultimately have here is... nothing. You would think that a judge with a strong comprehension of logic would realize this and not even bother.
Join Tor today!
Many, many people (including a lot of nerds) enjoy watching sports, and yet there is a large faction here that looks down upon that. Why?
Remember that you're talking to the group of people who were always picked last when it was time to form teams in PE.
(Cultural reference: In the US, elementry schools have a process of deciding on teams for athletic contests, where each team has a "Captain" who chooses who is on their team. Each team's captain gets to alternate on choosing who is on their team. As expected, the best athletes get chosen first, and the people not very skilled at athletics are chosen last)
Man - I hate to be the one to break this to you, but the Patriot act allowed for just that. There was an article in our local paper (no link, sorry) about several companies that were working on a scheme to store telephone calls for up to (I believe) 7 years. The idea would be to retreive them with a retroactive court order. Disturbing to say the least.
Now - that is not IMPOSSIBLE, just DIFFICULT. They obviously saw a market for this and were actively working on it. I wouldn't be suprised if there wasn't a system such as this in place in various areas of the country - since I read about it in our Backwater, South Dakota newspaper (Rapid City, if you must know).
The burden of proof is on the person claiming that the evidence has been tampered with. That's the way it's always been. There are certain tell-tale signs that a video or picture has been edited.
..." is just absurd and places a ridiculously high burden of proof on the prosecution and forces them to prove a negative -- that the evidence has not been tampered with.
In reality, the evidence is only as good as its reliability. If the defense can cast enough doubt on the authenticity of the evidence, the judge or (more likely) jury will discount it. With the availability and quality of digital editing software increasing, you'll likely see a lot of photographic, and even video, evidence, once thought indisputable, being questioned by the courts as to its authenticity.
But to automatically assume that all evidence is completely worthless just because of "well it could have been edited
He doesn't have to prove that it wasn't tampered with, only that it was extremely unlikely or not possible without detection. DNA evidence can very easily be faked, but it is relied upon because the courts know that the procedures surrounding the forensic process make it difficult to do so.
Once that text file finds its way into the court's hands, are you saying that I can actually claim that the evidence is not admissible because someone who works at AOL might have had a grudge against me and falsified the server-side logs?
My understanding is that evidence is admissable unless it was obtained through non-legal means, or it is clearly not relevant to the case. Convincing a jury that the evidence is reliable is a different matter.
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
Would just a backup tape really prove that SMS message X came from user Y? I'm not overly familiar with how SMS messages work, but am familiar with spoofed emails, partial restores gone bad, etc.
Even then, wouldn't a court just be able to prove that a particular SMS message came from a particular phone? Not necessarily from a particular person? Unless the SMS message was cryptographically signed, and even then that would depend on the configuration of the client ( i.e. requiring a passphrase to send each SMS message, which seems impractical ).
A Human Right
the ability to record *a* phone conversation is well documented, but recording *all* of them is quite simply as you say 'difficult' to put it mildly.
;-) Imagine the beowulf cluster that'd be required to digitize every single call simultaneously. Or did you think they would have a tape recorder for everybody running?
If they were building the TelCo systems now, you're damned right they'd build this *feature in though.
I did say 'feasible' anyway
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
What everyone seems to have not taken away from my parent or learned from the OJ trial is that a new term that is now abused called "reasonable doubt" entered into the english language.
See, no eveidence amounts to hill of beans if the defense can confuse the jury. Do you guys honestly think that people understand all of this the way we understand it and know how to talk about it and hash it out?
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
This isn't meant as an ad (I'm not connected to them in any way, and this will only work on Series 60 and UIQ phones), but Fortress SMS may be something you might wanna look at (yeah I know, even though it's not open/free).
Boring. I wouldn't mind being efficiently monitored, for I do nothing of interest to the government.
No one persecutes me.
No one bothers me.
An efficient monitoring network would merely serve to validate my innocence.
Let me see...
I compose a text message and hit send. It is sent to the network. There is now two copies on the message - the one on my phone and the one on the network. The network determines the closest access to the recepiant and forwards the message - there are now three copies of the message. If the recepiant is not available, the message is transfered to storage instead of to the access point closest to the recepiant - still three copies, but now when the recipiant is available, the network forwards the message to the closest access point (copy four, now) for delivery.
For those with per-message pricing, there is additional accounting and possibly copies for use in billing disputes (RTFA, this is mentioned).
The postcard CAN be read by anyone handling it in the system but there is no need for copies to be made (same for th eFedEx example) while the text message REQUIRES copies - multiple copies - for delivery.
Interesting article from just two days ago...
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
I think the phone company would be silly trying to keep that sort of data hanging around. They're just wasting bits and bytes by hanging on to that Please get milk on your way home. messages, that will have no bearing on anything after then next two days. It sounds like a reason just to raise rates, so they can buy more drive space to store crap like that, don't you think?
As for the 0.00001% that they might need, sits, waiting, until there's a court order or Patriot Act event that allows the authorities to get into their 'wiretap' mode, which is effectively what a text message, via phones, is.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Well, the problem here is that the cell phone companies are expected to hold on to your text messages for a certain amount of time, anyway...otherwise, they wouldn't be able to deliver them nor store a history.
Obviously, Fed-Ex doesn't store a copy of every package you receive...but they do store a record of the package's delivery, and for quite a long time. This information can and has been subpoena'd. Something to think about next time you buy pot seeds from Manitoba.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
The phone I use is digital. If a bit in a packet is messed up, the whole packet is messed up and that part of the voice isn't sent. It works fine, much better than my old analogue phone. I know quite a bit about these systems because I worked on some of the first ones in 1994 at Bell Northern Research.
There are times when I'm out of digital range and have to use analogue. In those cases, you couldn't have encryption.
I would like to see end to end encryption, but I do wonder if it will ever happen. There wouldn't be much of a market force behind it. Phone to carrier, there is, because of credit card scanning and whatnot. But I don't see anyone but the mafia really paying for an end-to-end solution.
-no broken link
While others here correctly pointed out that an SMS is more like a postcard instead of a sealed FedEx package,
That the communication is easily intercepted does not give the government the inherent right to intercept it. Postcards are inherently more open than sealed envelopes, but it doesn't give the government the right to have an agent read every postcard going through.
This is important because the messages wouldn't have been available to just anyone, except that a judge found the evidence potentially important to finding the truth.
This is part of the point though. "Reasonable expectation of privacy" traditionally refers to the availability of the conversation to anyone, not just the government.
A judge could also order that FedEx package opened, and it would be justified if it helped discover the truth in a case.
The limitation in this is the time that the FedEx package is in transit. The contents are not available, except from the recipient, after the package is delivered. The government cannot subpoena the contents of the package from FedEx after it has left their possession.
It's also important to note that, for now, the only person reading these SMS messages is the judge himself, so he can decide if they are relevant. If they are, he turns them over to the lawyers so they can use them or prepare to argue against them. If they really aren't relevant, no one else will get to see them.
In this particular case, it is probably not an abuse of privacy, but the greater question is whether or not the government should be able to subpoena recordings of conversations that they did not have the legal right to record at the time the conversation happened. SMS messages are viewed by the user as a private conversation. Because they can be intercepted, the user should be careful what he says. That's just common sense. But the ability to intercept the communication does not give the government the right to intercept it. That's why we have wiretap laws. If the government would need a warrant to intercept the communication as it happens, they shouldn't be able to subpoena a third party recording of the conversation after it happens.
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
you could easily falsify your own logs, in this example, and then demonstrate that the (actually valid) log in evidence disagrees. It's a tangled web indeed.
In the future, juries will be required to render increasingly sophisticated judgements about the believability of technology-based evidence. Courts will have to accept all plausible evidence, and it will be up to a a group of people who were selected from a randomly drawn pool--not one comprised of qualified and knowledgable IT workers--to determine what weight to give the conflicting evidence. And just like in the OJ case, they will be making those decisions based on subjective intangibles, because technology will not be able to provide them with undoubtable answers.
I see the point you are making, because it can make it look like an illegal search of sorts. But we don't know if this was illegally preserved. It may have been allowed under her service agreement. They usually give the service providers a lot of latitude.
As for the need of a warrant, the subpoena for the messages is similar to a warrant. Both are issued by judges. Subpoenas tell the party to cough it up while warrants allow the cops to go get it. If it was a warrant, they would have probable cause to get it.
More importantly, in criminal cases, courts ought to have every right allowed by the Constitution to require evidence that might exonerate someone. There is no Constitutional provision at issue here. Illegal search and seizure would be it, if any, but like I said, this was a subpoena, not a warrant.
Boom Shanka
But we don't know if this was illegally preserved. It may have been allowed under her service agreement. They usually give the service providers a lot of latitude.
That's beside the point, though. The existence of the recording doesn't necessarily grant the government the right to have it.
As for the need of a warrant, the subpoena for the messages is similar to a warrant. Both are issued by judges. Subpoenas tell the party to cough it up while warrants allow the cops to go get it. If it was a warrant, they would have probable cause to get it.
This all presumes that the power won't be abused. I feel it is absolutely necessary to look at how it could be abused, otherwise we wouldn't need things like the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to limit government's power. Warrants for wiretaps require reasonable cause to believe the conversation they are looking for will happen. The inherent limit is in the architecture: they have to catch it as it happens. Allowing them access to third-party recordings of conversations that happened before they had reasonable cause gives them too much power. It's one step below requiring the phone company to record all phone conversations in case they need them later. Needing a subpoena to gain access to them is little assurance since the requirements for obtaining a subpoena could change at any time in the future. The bigger consequence is it is a presumption of guilt.
More importantly, in criminal cases, courts ought to have every right allowed by the Constitution to require evidence that might exonerate someone.
I agree with this, but I also have to wonder what would happen if the evidence gathered from such a subpoena helped incriminate the accused. Would it then be thrown out?
There is no Constitutional provision at issue here. Illegal search and seizure would be it, if any, but like I said, this was a subpoena, not a warrant.
The technical differences between a warrant and a subpoena aside, it's still the government demanding access to information they would not otherwise have. Allowing subpoenas of third-party recordings of conversations, especially those which neither party in the conversation may be aware of, is in my opinion, side-stepping the wiretap laws requiring warrants to record the conversation in the first place.
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
When talking about email I always teach people the postcard rule, which could be applied to SMS as well:
Never send anything by email (or SMS) that you wouldn't write on a postcard. You never know who's going to see it.
Right is wrong when left is right.
I think you maybe misunderstand either the wiretap laws or how these particular SMSs were acquired. Judges issue warrants for wiretaps. They decide if there is probable cause that discussions about illegal activities are taking place.
A judge issued the subpoena for these SMSs. If they were in a situation needing a warrant to get them, a judge *could* have issued a warrant in compliance with wiretap laws. It seems like when you talk about "the government" getting access to these messages, you are equivocating the judge with the prosecutor. Wiretap laws limit prosecutors. Judges just administer the laws. Limitations on permissibility of evidence are *only* there to protect a defendant from abusive searches, including listening on phone conversations. The fact is that the defense probably requested these messages. There is *no* Constitutional abuse here. In fact, it is supporting the spirit of Amendment VI by allowing Bryant to get access to evidence in his defense.
Not that you are necessarily guilty of this, but for some reason the general public believes it has this Constitutional right to privacy in all kinds of places where they *don't* have it. If you have said one thing in court, but there is evidence that you said something contradictory elsewhere, justice demands that the court gives access to it. If Bryant's accuser is lying, and these SMSs show it, she doesn't have a Constitutional right to keep them private.
Boom Shanka
I seem to remember Oliver North being found out by an ancient IBM PROFS system storing emails for much longer than Ollie North thought they would. He learned a long time ago that anything you type into a computer system ceases to be under your control. You can't determine if and when it is destroyed; who will read it during its digital life and who they might propagate it to. Nik
Seriously.
Who is he and why should I care that people are devoting millions of man hours caring??
I think you maybe misunderstand either the wiretap laws or how these particular SMSs were acquired. Judges issue warrants for wiretaps. They decide if there is probable cause that discussions about illegal activities are taking place.
I'm taking a broader look at the admissibility of saved SMS messages in general. I realize there is probably not any abuse in this case, but I am concerned that it could be abused later.
A judge issued the subpoena for these SMSs. If they were in a situation needing a warrant to get them, a judge *could* have issued a warrant in compliance with wiretap laws.
If they had issued a wiretap order to intercept the communications as they happened, I wouldn't have a problem. It's the access to the recordings of the conversations after the fact that concern me.
It seems like when you talk about "the government" getting access to these messages, you are equivocating the judge with the prosecutor. Wiretap laws limit prosecutors. Judges just administer the laws.
They are both agents of the government, though, and an accused person has just as much or more to fear from an over lenient judge as from an over zealous prosecutor. Assuming that judges will never issue a warrant incorrectly is a little naive.
The fact is that the defense probably requested these messages. There is *no* Constitutional abuse here. In fact, it is supporting the spirit of Amendment VI by allowing Bryant to get access to evidence in his defense.
There is that. As long as it is not used as evidence against the accused I don't really see a problem.
Not that you are necessarily guilty of this, but for some reason the general public believes it has this Constitutional right to privacy in all kinds of places where they *don't* have it.
I don't necessarily see privacy as a right unto itself as much as it is protection against an over zealous government. Privacy is a component of a free society. "Innocent until proven guilty" means that the government does not have the right to pry into every aspect of a citizen's life to make sure he's not violating the law. They have to have cause to believe a crime has or will be committed before they can start looking over his shoulder. The concept of privacy arose from the ideal that people should not have to live in constant fear from the law. I have privacy because they have no right to snoop, not the other way around.
If Bryant's accuser is lying, and these SMSs show it, she doesn't have a Constitutional right to keep them private.
In that she is not the one being accused, yes, you are right and I didn't mean to imply otherwise. If the prosecution were trying to subpoena Bryant's SMS messages in order to convict him, then I would have a real problem.
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
Bryant's lawyers are hoping that in the victim's highly emotional state just hours after the rape she lashed out verbally at her attacker by using the word 'nigger' in an environment she thought was private between her and her support network. By showing such a message to a jury they can try to claim that she is racist and set Bryant up as part of a premeditated racially motivated miscarraiage of justice ala the O.J. Simpson defense.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
From the wikipedia article: This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
The problem (if you can call it that) is they decided not to program in a timeout for the text message database, so that after the backup is X days or weeks old, the messages are deleted. Given that you generally don't want to be deleting stuff from backups, it's an understandable decision.
Think about it. If you've read the article, the text messages in question were from Kobe Bryant's alleged victim to two other people. These messages are directly relevant to the alleged victim's state of mind in the time period after the alleged rape, before the police were involved. Depending on their content, these messages could actually exonerate Kobe Bryant.
The real question is this: Should the alleged victim's right to private communications trump Kobe Bryant's right to a fair trial? To me it's no contest. Any communications from the victim to others could be admissible in court. If she had sent e-mails, left voice-mail messages still in the system, wrote letters, etc. All of these could be of evidentiary value.
Also, if you've read the article, the messages are not being handed over to Kobe Bryant's lawyers just yet. The judge is going to review them privately. If they are relevant, then the defense will get them to protect their client. If they are not relevant, Bryant's attorneys will never see them and the privacy rights of his accuser will not be violated at all.
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Picture this:
What if I was a terrorist(This is purely hypothetical, I know in America you can be arrested just for saying terrorist), and I wanted to send a bomb in the mail. Now, knowing that the postal service is a better band than government agency(sorry, they really are great!), I'd want to send my package through FedEx. When the bomb got there, and the police wanted to find out who did it, couldn't they suopena(sp?) the fedex records to see if I sent the package? I think that ANY communication, regardless of the type, is insecure. Someone can always be listening.
My point is not to start a flame war, but address an issue which most people overlook, which is a lack of privacy.
About 80% of phones world wide are GSM, and GSM includes encryption, so this clearly isn't a big problem, particularly with forward error correction techniques. However, this encryption is not end-to-end, has been cracked (in one variant) and in some countries is not available (due to crypto regulations) - phones switch down to lower encryption depending on what's available.
GSM was deployed throughout Europe in 1992 - how were you working on the 'first' ones two years later?
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
Frist, I was working on some of the first ones. I'm sure our competators had their version. Second, my phone uses PCS, and unlike using a high powered transmit and receive to reach a tower miles away, it uses low power to get to basestations less than 100 meters away (though they preferred less than 74 meters). The launch for PCS was in 1995 in Canada.
-no broken link
In the US there are hundreds of thousands of pages of federal laws alone, never mind all the ordinaces, many thousands of Executive orders, plus who-knows-how-many State and local ordinances, covenants, laws, and whatnot. And they don't all agree. There is always something a person is doing wrong, as any zealous prosecutor knows. Only a fool thinks that he is doing nothing of interest to the government. Only a fool thinks he knows what is of interest to the government. In fact it is implicit in general monitoring that everything everyone does, no matter how insignificant it seems to the average person is of great interest to the Government, otherwise they wouldn't monitor anything. Do you think that you are aware of every change in government motive, every secret initiative by the security forces, every effort to control the economy, personal liberty, so that you know you won't be identified as a subversive? Do even have the faintest clue that the concept of "liberty" has been redefined by Executive Order three times in the last 40 years?!? That's correct, by Presidential Decree, not by Congress, but just as enforcable.
History is littered with innocent people getting railroaded by "facts" assembled in a way that shows guilt falsely.
Only someone that will do anything a government tells them to do is unconcerned with being monitored by a government. Such people are the truly scary ones in my book. (See Stanley Milgram's experiments on what people will do, if simply asked. And the Stanford Prison Experiment too.)
Perhaps the best evidence that you are being insincere is that you posted as an Anonymous Coward. Got something to hide, O Paragon of Innocence? Or are you really just a true coward at heart?
"You have no idea what happens to that sticky or who might happen to see it. Plus, the person who wrote the message down for you certainly is not obligated to destroy it or face criminal charges."
No, this would be more like 3M helping themselves to a copy of the message for their records, purely because I purchased the sticky-note from them. That just isn't right.
When I go and buy a car, unless I expressly break the law (and get caught doing so) what business is it of Ford motor company how the hell I use their device, who I carry in it, or where I take it?
I'm comfortable with a message I send being stored for a short period of time to allow for network related delivery delays, but anything beyond 12 hours just shouldn't be kept. "They" have no right at all to know what I am saying to my workmates, family or friends, as they do not fit any of those categories.