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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.
I think the more important thing to consider here is that this implies people actually care about the Kobe Bryant trial.
Scary.
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)
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?"
This is what I thought at first but then I RTFA and learned it is about being able to access the phone company's log of what you text message. I trust my privacy to no one and just assume that any thing I type is recorded and can be easily accessed. I find it best to whisper the important things directly in the persons ear.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
I don't know about the US, but here in the UK, then if a court has found you guilty, then legally speaking you _are_ guilty, until and unless an higher court overturns that finding. It's called a "legal fiction" -- that is, it may not be true, but it is assumed to be for the purposes of running the legal system.
A similar thing is evident in civil procedures, where if you send a claim form to someone by first class post, it is assumed to arrive the next day. Even if it doesn't arrive until two weeks later, the counting of dates for procedure purposes still takes place from the day after it was sent. (Although in practice, the defendant can generally apply for an extension and will almost always get one).
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.
Actually, they may well be VERY relevent, depending on what the message contained.
There was a famous trial in the 1920's of a rags to riches hollywood comedian named Fatty Arbuckle, who was accused of raping a young woman with a coke bottle in his bathroom, during a party. He had actually gone to trial 2x on a hung jury, but on the 3rd trial, it was revealed that a star witness for the prosecution (a woman of dubious character) had sent a telegram to an associate a few hours after the alleged incident saying that she had Fatty over a barrel and was going to squeeze him, or something to that effect. He was aquitted on the third trial, although his career was destroyed by that time.
http://ms.essortment.com/arbucklefatty_rams.htm
My rights don't need management.
That joke sounds familiar...
You probably shouldn't click this.
> 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.
Well, yes, duh. But note the other part of Kagan's statement:
"I think in these days of corporate fraud and in these days of terrorism we're seeing more and more reason to store forever," Kagan said.
I'm reading that as a slip-up on his part. To me it says that there is already or going to be long-term data storage real soon now.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
- 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")If you are doing nothing wrong then there will be no probable cause to get the info.
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" has been used by governments the world over to justify eroding privacy for the sake of security. Whether the Fourth Amendment says anything about the legality of requiring text communications to be recorded, the intent is that the government must have good reason to suspect the person being searched, and be reasonably sure of what they expect to find and where they expect to find it. Requiring monitoring of citizens "just in case" they commit a crime flies in the face of that ideal.
It is eventually deleted and I'm not going to send anything important over something like a text message.
This is where "reasonable expectation of privacy" comes in. If a reasonable user of such a system is unaware that the messages may be saved, his expectation of privacy may be higher than if he was aware. If his conversations are being recorded without his knowledge, he is less likely to be careful about what he says. What makes wiretaps different from this is that the conversations cannot be recorded without him being a suspect first, and, theoretically at least, law enforcement must show reasonable cause that he is a suspect before the conversations can be recorded. Allowing law enforcement to retrieve conversations that took place before he was a suspect also violates this ideal.
The main problem, as stated in the article, is that most people aren't aware their messages can be retrieved as much as four months after they were sent.
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
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"
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.
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