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Precedent for Warrantless Net Monitoring Set
highcon writes "According to this editorial from SecurityFocus, a recent case of a drug dog which pushed the limits of "reasonable search" may have implications for Internet communications in the U.S. This Supreme Court case establishes a precendent whereby "intelligent" packet filters may be deployed which, while scanning the contents of network traffic indiscriminently, only "bark" at communication indicative of illegal activity."
The current rules on Internet snooping are based on the metaphor of an envelope... anybody can look at the addressing data on the outside of an envelope, but the contents within are private. This is a pretty nice metaphor, considering the possible options...
- Dog search metaphor: This is what the article is suggesting, a binary test can be used to see if the packet needs more inspecting. If the binary test comes back positive, it represents probible cause to break the seal.
- Postcard metaphor: An IP packet is really closer to a postcard, in that the datagram portion isn't really secured inside anything, it's out there for plain view.
- Shopping mall metaphor: The Internet is like a shopping mall. The government doesn't own the mall, but the owners might invite the police to establish a checkpoint at the door because any possible crime is bad for their business. Anything they see/hear from their perch there is fair game, especially if everybody sees that there are officers there.
So law enforcement can just sit with a packet filter scanning for the word "drugs"? That's just absurd. If law enforcement has reason to believe that an individual is committing illegal acts, they can go and get a warrant. Thanks to FISA, that's not the most difficult task. However, this isn't like a drug deal on a street corner; this is more analagous to being able to tap everybody's cell phone, hoping to find one or two people selling drugs.
A real blow to the Constitution.
my watchdog card scare off their stupid little poodle.
before it gets better with regards to all of this. Everyone should be writing their rep's, running for office, something so we don't start going down that 'slippery slope'.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety
The only way to protect our freedoms is by taking them away.
It's common for someone who has already been caught doing something illegal to be searched.
If the police randomly did a drug sniff at the local supermarket, they would get their asses handed to them.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Just in case:
Of Dog Sniffs and Packet Sniffs
Why a Supreme Court decision on canine-assisted roadside searches opens the door to a new regime of Internet surveillance.
By Mark Rasch Feb 08 2005 11:21AM PT
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is supposed to be the one that protects people and their "houses, places and effects" against "unreasonable searches." Forty-two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court held that attaching a listening device to a public pay phone violated this provision because the Constitution protects people, not places, and because the Fourth Amendment prohibits warrantless searches without probable cause if the target enjoys a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Last month the U.S. Supreme Court effectively decimated this principle in a case that could have a profound impact on privacy rights online.
The case, decided by the court on January 24th, had nothing to do with the Information Superhighway, but rather an ordinary interstate highway in Illinois. Roy Caballes was pulled over by the Illinois State Police for speeding. While one officer was writing him a ticket, another officer in another patrol car came by with a drug sniffing dog.
There was absolutely no reason to believe that Caballes was a drug courier -- no profile, no suspicious activity, no large amounts of cash. The driver could have been a soccer mom with a minivan filled with toddlers. Under established Supreme Court precedent, while the cops could have looked in the window to see what was in "plain view," the officers had neither probable cause nor reasonable suspicion to search Caballes' car, trunk, or person.
Well, you know what happened next -- the dog "sniff" indicated that there might be drugs in the trunk, which established probable cause to open the trunk, where the cops found some marijuana.
The government may soon deploy "intelligent" packet search filters that will seek out only those communications that relate to criminal activity.
Now here is where things get dicey for the Internet. In upholding the dog's sniff-search of the trunk, the Supreme Court held that it did not "compromise any legitimate interest in privacy." Why? Because, according to the court, "any interest in possessing contraband cannot be deemed 'legitimate.'" The search was acceptable to the court because it could only reveal the possession of contraband, the concealment of which "compromises no legitimate privacy interest."
The expectation "that certain facts will not come to the attention of the authorities" is not the same as an interest in "privacy that society is prepared to consider reasonable," the court wrote.
In other words, the search by the dog into, effectively, the entire contents of a closed container inside a locked trunk, without probable cause, was "reasonable" even though the driver and society would consider the closed container "private" because the search only revealed criminal conduct.
The same reasoning could easily apply to an expanded use of packet sniffers for law enforcement.
Currently, responsible law enforcement agencies limit their warrantless Internet surveillance to the "wrapper" of a message, i.e., e-mail addresses or TCP/IP packet headers, unless they have a court order permitting a more intrusive search. Looking at the "outside" of the communication has been treated as similar to looking at the outside of a vehicle -- and maybe peering into the window a bit. To peek inside the communication -- read the content -- required that you first get someone in a black robe involved.
The experiences of Mr. Caballes (the soccer mom, or me or you ) changed all that. The government is practically invited to peek inside Internet traffic and sniff out evidence of wrongdoing. As long as the technology -- like a well-trained dog -- only alerts when a crime is detected, it's now legal.
As context-based search technology improves, the government may soon have the ability to take Carnivore one better and deploy "intelligent" pack
The govmt can do whatever they want on the internet. If anything, I would think the lack of reasonable laws restricting invasion of privacy on the internet is what is influencing traditionally protected real world privacy (like car searches, etc).
Sure carnivore is no more, but you know thats only becuase COTS software and voluntary cooperation is sufficient to meet their surveilence needs.
When you can no longer rely on the law to protect your privacy the time comes to take things into your own hands. Should this get applied to the internet I see a rather good reason to push for the encryption of all transmitted data.
This is precisely what an IDS tends to do. Unfortunately, not only is it trivial to do, it's also something that's essentially COTS (commercial off-the-shelf).
Yet another reason encryption needs to be widespread not only in availability, but in practice.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
yet again....
As this anonymous post on security focus points out:
The obvious error in this analysis is that the relevant privacy protections that apply online are statutory, not constitutional. So they are unaffected by Caballes.
My pics.
Glad that I live in Soviet Canuckistan, instead of some police state.
I like this
Everyone who visited blackboxvoting.org before a year ago was supposedly put onto an FBI watchlist. There are more details on the website.
I say this because I know that this includes most slashdotters, and because it is on topic to the article. I'm not sure if is true, but I do know that recently I am 7/7 for getting frisked at airports. Perhaps it is possible that everyone who visited this website is now in the airline shit list database.
I don't mean to sound paranoid, but the issues here are very real whether people realize them or not.
Kerry would have had absolutely zero effect on this decision whatsoever, but it doesn't surprise me in the least that someone who wishes to make that connection would himself not have clue one about the Constitution.
Amendment 3: No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
illegal to Americans (Drugs) is not illegal to the rest of the world (I'll give you one guess where drugs are legal, that everyone knows..). You can't possiblely monitor all traffic from "just one country", because like it or not traffic on the internet bounces like a rubber ball. No one knows where the site is hosted untill the data has been sent/recieved in many cases.
While stuff like child porn is a HUGE issue in most of the world, some countries couldn't careless. Alot of people might even find it a good thing to have child porn online in their country. So do you go "Hey China, we found some guy looking at a little girl sucking off a guy.." and have them think you're spying on them, or do you just brush it under the carpet and get accused of being apolice state much like China currently is (being called)?
I like muppets.
The feds want to spy on wives heading down the road for some Ho-Hos?
Why does that not surprise me...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Ok, while this is possible I suppose, how exactly are they gonna implement it? I mean if they have a sniffer that goes off every time it sees the word drugs in an email, or sees "I'm gonna kill him" running across the net... well... basically they're gonna have a million false positives and it will be a prohibitive waste of time and energy to follow all those leads.
Maybe they can come up with a really solid filter.. but uh, really smart people have been trying to get a good binary filter for spam for what? 10 years now? And we still suck really bad at that. Searching for anything that could be considered "illegal" activity will also be prohibitively difficult.
The guy in the story shouldn't get off either though, I mean how often do cops set up random drunk driving road blocks? In Vegas (where I'm from) they do it at least 2 times a year on the freeways into and out of Vegas... They search everyone's car for alcohol, make people take breathalizers, search for drugs, all of it. When you go to the airport they don't have any reason to "suspect" you, but they are allowed to search through all your stuff. Anyway, my point is this sort of mass searching isn't really practical on the net, maybe it will become so, but right now they'd just end up arresting a bunch of people who ordered viagra through spam, or drugs from canada.
Speech about illegal activity, however, or fiction written about illegal activity, or speech regarding the need to zealously prosecute illegal activity, or examples of illegal activity which will trigger the Great Firewall of America, are all constitutionally protected. Even accepting that your magic black box language-scanning solution picks up only references to actual narcotics and not granny discussing her pill prescription, since there is a liberty interest involved in discussing illegal things (as opposed to *possessing* them) the Constitution protects your interest in doing it privately, EVEN IF you make the absurd logical leap to say that your magical black-box method will only fire off of discussions of illegal drugs (statement of which would cause us natural language researchers to collapse in fits of laughter).
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
The article brings up an interesting question: Can a machine violate your privacy?
Consider the hypothetical(?) packet sniffer that alerts on packets that contain evidence of criminal activity but lets all other packets go on without an alert.
If the authorities never see the contents of the packets for themselves, has a search really been made?
Can a machine/program violate your privacy if no one gets to see what the program has seen?
Just because technology makes my privacy easier to violate, does not mean that I now have none. If this is the direction that these rulings go, then they will not stand on review.
s/Morales/Caballes . I'm not awake.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
They legitimitely pulled over someone for a violation. Technically, when this happened, you are "arrested." If they were found to have been pulled over falsely, I would hope that the conviction would have been quicly overturned (for having no probable cause at all)
If the case were such that a dog sniffed a guy out in public just walking down the street, and he was detained and arrested for having a joint, then it would apply to random packet sniffing, but this is not quite the case.
I don't like the supreme court's wording (no legitamite reason for carrying contraband) Because, what if the dog incorrectly assessed this? If they opened the trunk, thanks to "probable cause" and it was a false positive-- well, then their rights have been seriously violated. It sounds like the court was operating under the assumption that the dog will be right 100% of the time, and to me, THAT is the biggest flaw in this-- not that it might be stretched dramatically to justify a carnivore-type prosecution..
As I've written in other comments on this article, the (weak and probably faulty) analogy is being made by the article, not by the Supreme Court. Thank you for recognizing that and wording your comment accordingly. (I'm not going to go into the substance of your comment, but only wanted to thank you for not pointing the finger at the Court just yet. :)
In other words, the search by the dog into, effectively, the entire contents of a closed container inside a locked trunk, without probable cause, was "reasonable" even though the driver and society would consider the closed container "private" because the search only revealed criminal conduct.
"Into, effectively" is a nice bit of scary rhetorical wordplay, but it is misused here. A drug sniffing dog does not sniff "into" anything, it detects the odors of drugs already present outside a container, but which the human nose cannot detect. From the dog's point of view, the car may as well have a "drugs in car" sign on it, written in dog-language, assuming the dog could read.
The cops searched in the trunk only after the dog sniff outside the trunk gave them probable cause. By contrast, packet sniffing is inherently intrusive, and would be the equivalent of the cops popping the trunk without a dog sniff. The analogy does not hold. So unbunch your panties, ladies.
If the government were to try and sniff a large number of packets in the manner described they would be impossible to collect ones that are only illegal. They would have the same sort of situation I experienced when I installed snort and turned on everything. Spade was freaking out at me about once every 5 seconds, I was getting warnings about unicast ARP attacks and port-scans all over the place. How can you tell what constitutes a packet containing illicit transmissions? There would be so many false alarms that they wouldn't be able to do anything with that data. What if it was an encrypted communication? They can't just flag all encrypted stuff because legitimate transactions are encrypted all the time. A lot of people doing nothing wrong would be put under suspicion no matter what algorithm they were using. Therefore doing what is described is next to impossible.
411 Y0UR 8453 4R3 8310NG 70 U5!! -NSA
Here's the correct link: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
Sit Ubu sit... Good dog.
Since the article seems to imply that the search was considered valid only because they found something illegal and therefore since it was illegal they had no legitimate right to privacy.
So, if they do the full search and find nothing, does that mean you can sue for unlawful search????
Actually, the implications of this is really scary. It, to me, seems that this eliminates any right to privacy anyone has, because any search that finds anything illegal (however big or small) can be considered legal now. Given all the laws on the books, it is quite likely they can find _something_ to "justify" their search.
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
A bug in such a system (left intentionally) would enable Big Brother to discriminate against certain populations. And they would be protected by law so that even if you are proven innocent, you have been processed thru the system. In the age of the Bish admin and the patriot act, anything is possible.
Think of it this way. If you want to rig an election, you will change the results (hack the voting machines) in certain areas only tip the balance (like they did in the last election) but not to give your candidate 99.99% of votes like they do in ME countries (that is called dum).
If you want to abuse such a system, you can leave a bug which works to your advantage.
We must insure that no one commits any non-government sanctioned act.
Support the President, repeal the constitution!
So now...Dogs can sniff the ethernet? My rotty is SO behind the times..."sook!"
You do know that Kerry is a Senator how can introduce legislation to change things he doesn't like, don't you?
IOW, all those things he said needed to be changed the he hasn't introduced bills to change he agrees with and he was just lying when he said they were bad.
With adware popping up sites for illegal Porn and Pharmacies, this makes everyone's traffic suspect.
Or maybe all the adware is part of the Man's Plan for arresting everyone in the US and ultimately the world who can't afford to buy their own justice and government.
The new version of Echelon does such decryption in real time for all internet communication, unless of course you are encrypting at 512 or above.
Ironically, the CIA is not permitted to do this themselves, so they hire other foreign intelligence services to do it for them and make the information available on a need to know basis.
The article author is the former head of the DOJ
computer crimes section. OF COURSE HE'S GOING TO
BE BIASED. This is not a precedent for use in
internet searches. Why? Because there are laws,
18 USC 2700 et seq., covering this. You can get
either a wiretap (payload) or a pen register tap
(routing/headers) if you meet a standard.
The question in the dog sniffing case was
WHEN THERE IS NO FEDERAL LAW, does the
Constitution come to the rescue? The
course said no, because they don't like the
Ganja, essentially. Whatever. But in the
case of internet snooping, THERE IS A FUCKING
FEDERAL LAW. If the feds violate that law,
the evidence is thrown out on statutory
grounds, not constitutional grounds.
Like I said, the author drank the CoolAid,
having worked at the CircleJerk division of
the DOJ for so long.
Perhaps we should all take a tip from the spammers:
Dear Anonymous Coward:
Please meet me at 4 pm at the park, I will bring a fine assortment of c0c41n and her01n.
Thanks,
Your friendly neighborhood dr u6 d34l3r
You know that the article writer is a hack because he's trying to write legal analysis and doing it outside of law review journals. And you know he's really bad because not only does not not cite any authority whatsoever in his article, but he doesn't even give the actual name of the case. He just says that a case about Caballes was decided by the Supreme Court last month. Lawyers are precise. Good lawyers are precise and correct. This guy is neither.
In case anyone is wondering, the actual case is Illinois v. Caballes, 73 U.S.L.W. 4111. It's not in the US Reports yet, apparently. The Lexis cite is 2005 U.S. LEXIS 769.
Lexis' short synopsis of the case and the Supreme Court's holding is: The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari on the question of whether the Fourth Amendment required reasonable, articulable suspicion to justify using a drug-detection dog to sniff a vehicle during a legitimate traffic stop. The state trial court concluded that the duration of the stop was entirely justified by the traffic offense and the ordinary inquiries incident to such a stop. The state supreme court concluded that because the canine sniff was performed without any specific and articulable facts to suggest drug activity, the use of the dog unjustifiably enlarged the scope of a routine traffic stop into a drug investigation. The U.S. Supreme Court held that the use of a well-trained narcotics-detection dog--one that did not expose noncontraband items that otherwise would have remained hidden from public view--during a lawful traffic stop, generally did not implicate legitimate privacy interests. The dog sniff was performed on the exterior of respondent's car while he was lawfully seized for a traffic violation. Any intrusion on respondent's privacy expectations did not rise to the level of a constitutionally cognizable infringement.
My personal and immediate thought on this is that the closest analogy to the Internet acceptable to the Court would be if you can tell from an IP packet header ("performed on the exterior") that its contents are suspect, then you can open it up for inspection. However, my opinion is exactly as binding on anyone's behavior as is the article - specifically, it isn't at all.
Do a google search for "Pen Registers" or "Tap and Trace". Apparently, back before the internet, the government decided that they didn't need a warrant to put a little device on people's phone lines that just gave them a list of the numbers that were called and recieved, as long as it didn't monitor the conversation.
This carries over to email. The FBI can request a list of everyone your email account emailed, and everyone that emailed you without a warrant. Yahoo has at least 6 employees who's entire job is to just give this information to the government all day. The figure I heard was about 1 request per thousand users per year.
You may say, "great, I use my own domain for email", but once 1/2 of all email goes to Yahoo, MSN, Google, and AOL, all the governement has to do is ask them a list of 1/2 the people you emailed.
I'm surpised that this doesn't bother more people. I mean, chances are it happened to a few slashdot users today.
Between the US Patriot (??) Act and John Ashcroft's computer program (I have forgotten the name), this is a very real possiblity. Here is the real problem. Everyone 'sins' - If they want to attack you they can do so with impunity now. It seems to me that this is how the Roman Republic and then Empire fell. Abuse of power by those at the top.. 1984 is not far away.
This message was brought to you by "Lack of Sleep."
Drugs drugs overthrow the government drugs drugs BOMB drugs
99 bottles of beer in 175 characte
Criminals will just use the best available encryption to cover their crimes. This kind of thing is only going to effect regular people and the casual criminal.
Drugs give off molecules that anything with a sensitive enough nose can detect. A drug dog need not actually inspect a package full of heroin to smell it.
Have you ever been someplace right after someone just finished smoking weed? Same principle, but dogs can smell much better than we can.
If they want to liken the internet and packet sniffing to drug dogs, any time someone's engages in illicit activity on their computer they would need to drop millions of post it notes declaring somewhere.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Of course the democrat in me says this is all Bush's fault. OOO he makes me so mad!
Of course the democrat in me says this is all Bush's fault. OOO he makes me so mad!
Bush is responsible for the article's poorly-crafted analogy with no legally binding effect on anyone whatsoever? Methinks Bush's only connection to the article is the incorrect choice of the word "dessert" instead of "desert" in its (idiotic and sentimental) closing.
Now, the libertarian (note the lowercase ell) in me will tell you this: every bad thing about Bush, Kerry agreed with anyhow.
The court ruled that because the dog only responded to drugs, that the search was perfectly reasonable and upset no privacy concerns. It is assumed that the dog discovers only drugs and that it is infalliable. Because all it does is look for drugs or no drugs, and there is no legitimate privacy concern around having drugs, the search is legit.
This is not applicable in many ways to the internet because the word drugs is not illegal. The words let's bomb the world trade center is not illegal. Nothing you do in your e-mail can be scanned, because nothing you do in your e-mail can be cleanly illegal.
On the other hand, if you're trading files, your MP3's might be checksummed and used against you in a court of law. However, this has already happened anyway, so what's the point in fighting this new justification?
This is an interesting non-issue, really.
The ______ Agenda
Seriously, if you look back a few years at private citizens who were using encryption on the net early on, a few of them were questioned by US Feds or related agencies alterted by US Feds because they couldn't read the packets and thought they might have been up to something. We've been in this situation for some time - now however it may become admissable evidence. You should never send anything on the net in clear text that you would not want read by some unscrupulous spook with embezzlement and credit fraud to suppliment their income - after all there is very little in the way of check and balances.
You, sir, have made me laugh.
The stuff you don't like them doing, don't let them get away with it.
The U.S. Government is suppose to be Of, For, and By the People. The People should be holding all the cards, not them.
If everyone resisted instead of being complacent, enough said.
really? The internet is Like a penis. Its information is available to anyone who wants it bad enough.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
So will my regular use of encrypted protocols cause the system to "Bark", thereby providing probable cause to further investigate my suspicious activities?
So literally your argument starts and ends with "don't go down a slippery slope." The level of discourse at slashdot is just mindboggling.
Really..I need help...I am DYING for a cigarette...
I have made it 4.5 weeks. I have 1 smoke left for just such an emergency, but I don't stop at one.
I really need some encouragement. HELP!!
You started to lose the moment Vietnam started and lost the moment it ended. It's been growing corporate-fascism after that.
If the routers on the internet may be used to look for potentially "criminal" packets, then new software with the potential for criminal use will have the option of point-to-point encryption. To be used by criminals and law-abiders alike.
Synergy is your friend
It surely isn't the Netherlands, since drugs (including softdrugs) are illegal over there as well.
It is a common misconception that drugs are legal in Holland, while actually all drugs are still forbidden by law. However there are a number of permissive regulations that state that:
- If you are an individual with less than 5 grams of cannabis (hash/weed), police will ignore you.
- You can grow your own plants for your personal use (maximum 5 plants, no technical aids such as lamps... otherwise everything will be impounded and you're fair game for prosecution).
- You can open an establishment for selling cannabis, provided you abide with a whole number of regulations (including: no commercials, no admittance to minors, no selling of alcoholic beverages -- hence the name "coffeeshop", no selling of harddrugs, no selling of more than 5 grams per transaction, no total stock of more than 500 grams).
These rules and regulations are set country-wide, municipalities can add more regulations (restrict coffeeshops to specific areas, opening times,Ironically, there's no legal way for coffeeshops to get their drugs so even that's illegal.
Police can still decide to prosecute for any of the above if it's causing problems in any kind of way (i.e.: you're stealing to get drugs, the clients of a coffeeshop are wrecking the street, ...)
While the Netherlands is pretty liberal and permissive about softdrugs, it's far from legal and you still can get arrested for it.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
I was expecting a pragmatistic and practical approach to the problem rather than a paranoia sermon, especially from an author who "...serves as Senior Vice President and Chief Security Counsel at Solutionary Inc - Solutionary is a leading provider of Managed Security Services. Our services detect and prevent IT security threats. We partner with organizations to help them reduce risk, safeguard information and protect IT applications and infrastructures. We make security manageable 24x7."
in the mean time play nice.
IOW, all those things he said needed to be changed the he hasn't introduced bills to change he agrees with and he was just lying when he said they were bad.
Ideally, yes. Mostly though Politicians just try to keep their head low and say whatever they think people want to hear. So not introducing legislation isn't necessarily an indication of personal belief - you can only count on that sort of behavior from a principled leader.
Of course, we could use fewer sniveling politicians and more principled leaders.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Well, what about the other two prongs to be considered?...
1)Dog sniffed out marijuana during a legitimate traffic stop.
2)Whether there's a legitimate privacy interest being protected.
The first prong would still require some appropriate reason ('probable cause' created by dog) to investigate an individual's packets, and only until a reasonable point (free from being unduly detained) under the Fourth Amendment.
Admittedly, an automated packet sniffer might fit this definition, although whether such a sniffer would be 'sui generis' like the dog, I don't know, but I suspect not. [Here is where a law review article might be useful.]
Second, the case here is over possession of drugs, whereas packets may be more like communication that would be entitled to constitutional privacy interests.
Besides, SCOTUS did decide to determine the question narrowly, saying "The question on which we granted certiorari, 541 U.S. 972, 159 L. Ed. 2d 84, 124 S. Ct. 2219 (2004), is narrow: "Whether the Fourth Amendment requires reasonable, articulable suspicion to justify using a drug-detection dog to sniff a vehicle during a legitimate traffic stop."" limiting its potential application to online packet sniffing.
cat's got my tongue.
It seems like "they" (lawmakers, judges, whoever has the power at the moment) are constantly redrawing the lines of the law. Now, looking at this, it could be argued that an enforcement official could be required to get a warrant to examine the contents of a packet that such a watchdog system had flagged, but that's ridiculous. They can just build up a vault full of data on each user, and when the time comes, they can find a violation based on the cumbersomely large volume of laws on the books. In the long run, little adjustments in what constitutes "right," like this, are just baby steps.
At what point will they finally abandon the rhetoric of "freedom?" At what point will the system at large collapse into totalitarianism on one extreme or anarchy on the other?
(I myself would prefer the anarchy, as then there would be a lag time before some charismatic group of jerks convinces a majority that their version of "right" is worth imposing.)
1) Get some weed from the nearest place.
2) Rub the weed on your car, trunk, etc ; dispose.
3) Speed down the highway.
4) Get pulled for speeding.
5) Dog performs the "sniff".
6) Cops perform the search.
7) Oops
8) Yeah
9) Sue the cops, the judge, the state, the govt.
10) Become rich.
Seriously, does anyone even believe that saying?
I mean technically if we blow up the planet, things WILL get better but as far as rights go, once they are gone, you can kiss them goodbye.
The difference between our world and the one from 1984 is getting smaller each year and the excuses will just be bigger and bigger.
The war on some drugs the past 30 years was a great boost as was the Patriot Act (well, we got Newspeak down to an art already). The next 'unfortunate event' will push it even a little further.
Short of taking up arms against the goverhment, your 'better' is not on the horizon.
dd
I work for a communications research team that is working hand-in-hand with a major metropolitan police department. We are currently developing tools that do just this.. alert authorities of suspicious activity. The idea is similar to you allowing an alarm company (Brinks and those other companies with monitoring services..) to notifiy the police when your alarm system notifies them that a break-in has occured. The idea is precisely the same. So don't be so freakin' alarmed.
It's like taking a satellite image of a major interstate junction and seeing that a traffic jam has occured. You don't know why its happening so you dispatch a cruiser to the site to investigate. No different..
What is your penile percentile?
This ruling will not change a thing for technology, because the dog detected something that was outside the car, there was no entry by the officer until a further search was warrented by the detection of trace drug molecules(sent) in the air(no entry involved). There is no way to examin trace evidence arround a packet to tell if what's in it is illegal. Therefore there doesn't seem to me that it would effect the digital world. looking at the header would constitute a tap and trace, and so would fall under a different law.
Hmm. I'm surprised nobody (I saw) mentioned the use of this to implicate people sharing copyrighted files. That seems to me to be the most likely use of this so-called 'intelligent' internet filter.
This is why things like Freenet (http://freenetproject.org/) ought to become more popular.
What this means, is that you shouldn't be waiting for the courts to uphold the 4th, because even if they do it, your privacy will still not be very well protected.
Everything should be encrypted. And if that happens to protect you against government intrusion, consider that a welcome side-effect.
The pot analogy is this: suppose your car is leaking an odor into the public air. Maybe this odor is of interest to police dogs, but remember that it's also of interest to insurance companies, blackmailers, thieves, marketers, gossipers, etc. You already have a problem, regardless of whether or not you're doing anything illegal, and regardless of whether or not the government is allowed to break into your car without your consent or a warrant.
Quit focusing on Big Brother when you have a dozen little brothers. You need to stop the information leak, not try to impose rules-of-honorable-conduct upon just one of the parties that may be spying on you.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
So now you could make your zombie network produce traffic which would trigger the alarms and tie up cycles. What will they dream up next to waste the money extorted from the people.
...I obey the laws of physics....
In upholding the dog's sniff-search of the trunk, the Supreme Court held that it did not "compromise any legitimate interest in privacy." Why? Because, according to the court, "any interest in possessing contraband cannot be deemed 'legitimate.'"
Is it my imagination, or does this sound a lot like the rationale of, "If you aren't a criminal, you shouldn't have anything to hide."
If this were an isolated story, I would probably not worry too much about it. But along with the warrantless GPS tracking article, the USAPATRIOT Act, and other such nonsense, it is obvious that we are not on the way to giving up our privacy and liberty at the whim of the government, we are already there.
I hope that this is just one extreme of a cycle that will eventually swing back towards moderation, but when a court sets a precedent like this, it is infinitely harder to overturn than if people just defend their right to privacy to begin with. This is why it is more important than ever to support organizations such as the ACLU and the EFF.
Supermarkets and "big box" stores like Walmart, Home Depot, Best Buy, et cetera don't usually own the parking lot. Their property starts at the front door. Their insurance is a lot cheaper that way.
My other first post is car post.
Thinking beyond the obvious and troubling privacy issues, I'm beginning to wonder if those wanting to stamp out crime completely would really want to live in a society where that wish came true. As the police, armed with tools like intelligent packet sniffers, become more efficient in detecting and rooting out criminal activity, criminals might get squeezed into a smaller and smaller corner of society. I'm not suggesting it's remotely possible, but if the world were so nearly perfect that all and only the truly guilty were ever brought to justice, I think we'd all be poorer for it. There's certain to be enough larceny buried deep in the hearts of most of us that just seeing someone get away with an occasional misdemeanor is a vicarious high, and that the opportunity to fantasize about doing it ourselves is essential to mental health. I'm certainly neither an apologist for, nor an advocate of, criminal behavior; but a world where all criminals are quickly and efficiently swept up and put away would be a miserable, sterile place. Perhaps crime is like the wilderness: even if you never intend to go there, it's nice to know the option is available. It could be that criminals, like mosquitoes and poisonous snakes, are essential to a society's "ecological balance". And as criminals become endangered, maybe we'll see political action groups dedicated to preserving their last remnants.
Don't be so smug.
MD5 was thought to be secure, but was broken.
Factoring isn't a provably hard problem, either. It's an open question.
If factoring breaks, RSA breaks. If SHA1 breaks, so does a lot of GPG/PGP and SSL. If you are using MD5, things are already broken for you.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Americans can only dream about having as much freedom as Russians had had during Stalin's era. USA - TOTAL TOTALITARISM.
Indeed.
Most people have NO idea how far things have already gone.
I have a friend in the eff bee eye, and he has told me some very interesting things, which I won't divulge here, because I really don't need a visit from his associates.
Suffice it to say that the truth is quite close to what most people would think are paranoid delusions. That is, if they even bothered to think, which most people, regardless of "IQ" don't.
When you buy your next new car, and watch your favorite TV shows, remember that you are just a chump for those who hold the real power...
Bye now.
So I made this argument in a submission over on Plastic on the second. I wonder if this article about it just came up by coincedence.
In any case I'm wondering if this means there is any actual legal merit in the speculation. It seemed a compelling argument from a logical case but I haven't heard from anyone who might have enough constitutional law experience to know.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
What can/cannot be done is spelled out in the US PATRIOT act.
Police are allowed to look at the TO/FROM(think an envelope) provided they have a reason, ie a current investigation.
To look at the content requires a court order, or permission of the TO/FROM.
It is really hard to come up with an analogy how this case will affect the ISP. The closest I can think of is if the FBI setup a major router and as messages were passing through they did not check each packet(no current investigation) put just recorded where thier router opened too and from and recored the count. Then based on the to they determine that some ISP is sending alot of mail to an suspecion site/country.(this is the dog sniffing during an otherwise lawfull stop) Using that information they then open an investigation against everyone on the ISP and start getting indivdual messages and then using that get court permission to look at content. And frankly that analogy sucks.
As you say the author of this article is hack.
Every single time I have visited the UK, I have been searched and questioned in these "random" searches where it is clear only a few people were selected; whether at JFK before I board, or if I come through the chunnel from France, easy jet flight from Amsterdam, etc. And yet, I can board a plane for anywhere else in the world and have not been inconvenienced or delayed in the slightest by our government or anyone elses ever to date. And I do travel to lots of strange and interesting places. Maybe the UK has a seperate list they dont share?
Imagine if cars came with one-way windows and super-effective air-tight seals on doors with air supplied by a special air filter unit as standard. You wouldn't be able to peek in a bit, in fact a dog wouldn't be able to smell anything either. The Internet version of this would just be everyone using encryption because it was the standard to use in all web traffic, from email to IM to even simple web-browsing.
Right now the government is far too paranoid, marijuana is, and lets face it, not very bad. I would regard someone with a parking ticket as a worse offender. Now if you disagree, fine, you obviously have warped logic and express extreme moral outrage at everything, but im sure even you can understand that possession of a substance that isn't in the least bit harmful to anyone else, is hardly a crime that needs your basic human rights to be violated. Your basic liberties are just about the most important thing around and unless the police have been told that a terrorist cell is planning to transport some bomb or bio-weapon down the highway and there's a description on the vehicle then there's absolutely no reason to violate peoples rights like that.
I see the Bill of Rights being kicked out in the next few years, either by Bush or the next republican. (remember republicans want 'less' government, that means 'less' bills of rights..)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Never. It's the veil they use to cover their activities.
I recently went on a flight for the first time in 20 years. When I got to the security checkpoint, there were dozens of people there going through metal detectors, having their luggage x-rayed and sniffed, and holding their hands up while guards waved those silly wands all over them.
Overhead were giant homeland security banners with pictures of soaring eagles that said "Freedom!". Wished I'd have had my camera.
The Court was right: there is no right of privacy to conceal illegal material.
If this driver had smelled of alcohol, a search of the car for containers of alcohol would have been appropriate. In this case, the dog was there, reported the odor of marijuana, and a search ensued.
This ruling should not be interpreted as carte blanche for police to search every car stopped for soe other violation.
The SecurityFocus piece that tries to expand on the packet "sniffing" metaphor is just one more obvious reason why geeks don't make good lawyers.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
'anecdote' is not 'data'. Please keep that in mind.
Cry of the sniffed, Keep off my network or i'll get on yours!
Crisis is the rule, not the exception.
Just simply make that bit high and we have a winner to award to those whose packets have been sifted through. Very good use, although I'm sure there would have been a better use later on, this one seems all too valid right now.
Anyhow, irregardless of what I just said: Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should! (Just because packet sniffing/shifting is possible, WHY?!)
How long before somebody sets loose a worm/voluntary screensaver thing that throws around a whole lot of packets containing "crack" and "terrorism" and the like. The scanners would be overloaded with junk data.
Yes, our government is evil, but they're also stupid. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
Mind you, this must be on about page 173 of my list.
What do you have to hide, comrade?
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Anyone I know is using gaim-encrypt, gnupg, etc. People who are still not using encryption to protect themselves against terrorists and totalitarian governments *cough cough* are plain stupid.
What can/cannot be done is spelled out in the US PATRIOT act.
But what the Patriot Act itself can and cannot do is spelled out in the US Constitution. Lower courts have already decided that parts of the Patriot Act are bogus - if the government bothers to appeal, it's likely to lose on 4th and 14th amendment grounds. Now, I haven't read the entire Patriot Act, but I know that not all of it is evil. We just need the Court to trim the evil parts for us. (Don't expect Congress to do so - even the Democrats and Bush-haters in Congress are big fans of the "more power for the federal government" Patriot Act.)
Oh My Gosh!!! Kerry was lying the whole time!? Who would have thought he would say a bunch of stuff he didn't really mean? (detect sarcism I hope)
This government has used the 'terrorism' excuse to implement measures that would have been unacceptable to the citizens of this country in any other era. Fighting this politically and through the courts is a waste of time. I feel that the threat from my own government far exceeds the threat from any 'terrorist' and I encorage everyone who believes that the government is going to far to take action.
The best way to fight the system is to make the system break down. Pollute the airwaves with bad stuff in such volumes that the Feds will spend huge amounts of time sifting through the chaff to find the wheat. Carry change through the airport check-ins. Force them to hand check everyone. Bring the system to a standstill. We can't vote our way out of this situation, but we still have the power to contain the government.
The government that would try to outlaw encryption and free speech would not be a legitimate government anymore, meaning its authority and laws would be void and it would have to be relaced with a free and democratic government that supports free speech.
If the goverment starts "sniffing" internet packets, unless the software is so good it never generates false positives, then a human will have to go in and verify that the packet did indeed contain some form of prohibited activity. That would violate expectations of privacy and probably get any cases dismissed on grounds of illegal search.
The dog snoop starts to fail when everyone gets
some coke or beef gravy on thier shoes.
Likewise a casual reference to Kill the president
or lets buy a bunch of cocaine and heroin can
set off the sensors.
Add those to your tag lines where ever you write.
You can add them inside cocaine
tags.
I advise you to read the opinion before getting to worked up - it was mid january, and Illinois was involved.
IANAL, but there seems to be a lot of language in there that indicates this decision is about permitting noninvasive search in traffic stops, not permitting search for contraband anywhere.
That having been said, I think I like the dissenting opinions more. The dissenting opinions raise some interest points, like the fact that drug dogs are far from infaliable, and that a search for contraband is not a search for something that poses a imminent threat to life and limb, which is apparantly part of the justification for the hilarity that may insue at a sobriety checkpoint.
Anyhow, give it a read. It's not overly difficult to understand, and by the end of it, you'll feel a little less offended.
The search was acceptable to the court because it could only reveal the possession of contraband, the concealment of which "compromises no legitimate privacy interest."
We've got a long way to go before sniffing algorithms are exact enough that they "only reveal the possesion of contraband" without accidentally mixing in pictures of aunt Sallie named "1337 H4X0r.jpeg"
All your base are belong to us!
You know that the article writer is a hack because he's trying to write legal analysis and doing it outside of law review journals.
All hail the priests of knowledge.
You know the parent is a hack because he is trying to do critical analysis outside of journals of criticism.
All hail the priests of knowledge.
The best part is you then give us your own legal analysis outside of law review journals, but with some practice lawyer disclaimer at the end.
But thank you for the Lexis cite, because I would have never found it searching for Caballes.
All hail the priests of knowledge.
One thing to factor in is that the stench of drugs was leaking out of the vehicle. Assume for a moment that transporting a dead skunk is illegal - would it be an unreasonable search if a cop got a whoof of dead skunk in the trunk?
I would say the difference between this incident and packet sniffing is that the drugs were passively detected - the dog couldn't help but smell the odor. The stench of the drugs was there out in the open for everyone to notice.
OTOH, packet monitoring would be an active search. While breathing, a dog/cop can't help but smell drugs that have been poorly packaged. But without cause, they have no business examining the entire contents of the car. Similarly, while doing it's job, a router can't help but examine the packet headers. Though examining more than the headers is unnecessary for the router to perform it's job and an invasion of privacy since it is clearly not the intended recipient. Examining the contents of a packet is like examining the contents of this person's car - it should be done only with probable cause.
The point, for those in the audience such as yourself who have clearly missed it entirely, is that my opinion is exactly as valid as that expressed in this article and exactly as binding a law.
One thing to factor in is that the stench of drugs was leaking out of the vehicle. Assume for a moment that transporting a dead skunk is illegal - would it be an unreasonable search if a cop got a whoof of dead skunk in the trunk?
You have just highlighted the exact reason this search was illegal. Or should have been illegal. If an ordinary unaided person smells a skunk from the trunk that is "plain sight". Using a drug sniffing dog is no different than pulling out an X-ray machine to search the contents of the car. That is an aided search and goes beyong human "plain sight". It exceeds the range of what is reasonably visible to the public, therefore it violates the reasonable expectations of privacy.
The courts reasoning is apparently that searches which only reveal contraband or other crimes "did not implicate legitimate privacy interests". As far as I can see that means the police can start hauling out X-ray machines so long as they are attached to some sort of computer image analysis system that only alerts on illegal contents. The X-ray machine would be OK so long as it didn't have a display screen allowing the police to see any legal contents.
Better yet, the police could release a team of robots to search the entire contents of your home. So long as the robots do not report/record any legal contents and activities in your home then the police would not require a search warrant. Hmmmm, lets get all 1984.... the police could have continuous spy camersa installed in every room of every home, so long as they were attached to a computer system that only revealed the recordings when it spotted contraband/crime.
While I understand their logic and desire in making this ruling, I think it is a very bad ruling.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I wonder if encrypted packets will cause the alarms to go off.
If not, just encrypt EVERYTHING.. and not worry about it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
For what it's worth, Kerry has submitted some bills over the course of his Senate career. However, every single one of them was of one of two forms: (1) "Let's name this Vietnam remembrance week!" and (2) "Let's save the whales by passing a law we have no authority to pass nor possibility of enforcing!"
We had to choose between a two-faced pussy and a poor-spoken redneck. And America is big on our rednecks.
This is bullshit. If that monitor is "intelligent", it has rights to be protected from cruelty, like a dog. Who's liable when it gets turned off, deleted, corrupted, infected with a virus? Obviously the damage is only to the people who own it, on whose behalf it acts, like a car with antilock brakes. These damn lawyers, and the deluded judges who love them, are giving rights to every entity that can pay them, all at the expense of humans.
--
make install -not war
and modeled after a chiuaua.
Firefox &
I hate to nitpick (well, I don't really, but it's just one of those things you say right before you nitpick), but how would the 14th amendment get involved? This is a federal statute. Have there been EPC challenges to PATRIOT? I figured most would be due process challenges which, in the federal system, come under the 5th amendment. That said, I'd be very skeptical that the courts will be willing to excise the "evil" parts for us. Even in Caballes Souter and Ginsburg were careful to note that they would not want to impede the government's ability to use bomb-sniffing dogs to detect "terrorists." The courts, just like congress, are going to want to do everything they can to look like good patriots that aren't impeding the government's ability to do whatever it wants in pursuit of "national security."
There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land.
Thanks to this ruling, encrypting your data just flags you as a potential terrorist or child porn user. Go ahead send your email encrypted, if it makes you feel better, but it probably increases your chances of getting a Federal "wake-up call".
So how far will things have to go before we start seeing support for opportunistic encryption in our programs?
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
That would be Portugal, then, and heroin would be the drug.
I had one, but the wheel fell off.
Helevius
I think it is very important that students read a play in school.
Shakespeare is not required, but some sort of play should be. There is a lot to be learned from reading a script.
You get to see what a playwrite does. Perhaps a more modern screenplay would be better where there are blocking notes, prop information, camera angles.... built into the script.
Anybody know? I want to call him and ask him how he learned to get over his lack of privacy.
Of course, the analogy is flawed, since a cop-dog is searching for a specific, legistrated crime (drug running), a packet sniffer is only looking for "suspicious" activity, to which can later be attributed to any crime the "dog" handlers wish.
It'd be like training a dog to sniff for halhal spices, then using that as "reasonable" cause for arresting the Middle Eastern gentleman, because he "might" be involved with terrorism.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Simply put a dog has an amount of free will regardless of training. Therefore a dog may perform a search that shouldn't have been done. This is without fault unless the officer specifically placed the dog there for that purpose. Therefore the evidence would be untainted.
However, code does in fact do NOTHING it hasn't been told to do unless it's broke (bug) and therefore it can be assumed to be under human control 100% of the time and can not innocently perform a search without probable cause.
Ward
. Silence! Be thankful thy species is unpalatable! .
What they have changed is that users (when found with less than 10 personal doses) cannot get arrested but instead are forwarded to a hearing by a comission. There the offender can get sent to treatment, imposed a fine or let off.
When police thinks that you're a dealer, you still can get prosecuted, even if you get busted with less than those 10 doses.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
IMO the ruling was wrong. Merely bringing the dog up next to the car's trunk constituted a warrantless search in itself. The officers obtained information they could not get from an inspection open to anyone.
We'll soon have pattern-recognition devices sensing and monitoring everything we do, and only "barking" when something illegal is being hidden - or so the claim will be made. We'll never hear about the many false positives, because most non-criminals will open their trunk and drop the matter when the cops find nothing.
The few who stand on principle and refuse to allow the search will be detained while a warrant is obtained, searched, and when nothing is found, further delayed and subjected to intense scrutiny to see if there is anything they've ever done wrong, in order to justify the search and punish the person for wasting the police officers' time.
We need a "privacy buffer-zone" law that says that "probable cause" requires more than an indication from an automated monitoring device. Those would not be prohibited - but could only provide information to the effect that an illegal act is suspected, with information pointing to the suspect - but no specifics (since revealing those to the police would constitute a search). Based on that, the police could start an investigation to gather information to justify a search warrant. Any direct use of sensory enhancment devices by a human being would be prohibited without a search warrant.
The court basically said that the dog would only sniff out illegal material. The court said that the cop could be walking down the street and if he smells pot in someone's pants, the cop can then search them.
The court has put a lot of trust in the ability of a dog to only sniff out illegal material. I don't see how the same could be true about packet sniffers. They would only be as good as the algorithms behind them. If someone has the words "murder", "kill", or "drugs" in an email, they could just as easily be talking about a computer game or an article they read in a newspaper. The authorities would have no reason to read that email based on that alone. The only problem is that if they decide to take this course of action, no one would know they were searching emails or reading innocent ones. We would only hear about the criminals caught using the tactic, not the illicit affairs the copsread about or Uncle Bob's hemmoroids the whole station had a good laugh at.
"DIC" And it was a little girl who said it, that was the creepy part. If you timed it right, just as the episode ended, you'd say "Suck my" and then "DIC" would come on screen and she'd say it. OK, I was like 11, it was funny then.
http://www.gnupg.org/
I feel it is appropriate to mention this page. It can also help with the spam filtering. Spammers don't sign their email :-)
The government has a huge database of checksums for all known child pornography images. When they bust a pedo ring, more are added. Now, suppose a carnivore style machine is installed between you and your ISP. Right at the entrance of your internet access. Any and all packets, incoming and outgoing, can be automatically filtered, reassembled and checksummed for a match. If your traffic matches the checksum, adios. It's off to federal pound me in the ass prison where Bubba will think you've got a cute mouth. You now risk serious consequences for reading any information where the sender may be anonymous. That includes email, usenet, slashdot, and well, just about everything else online that isn't encrypted. You are now free to choose. Unplug yourself from the internet, encrypt everything, or go to prison. Thanks SCOTUS! The DOJ couldn't have done it without you! America: Where Microsoft is free to distribute child pornography without penalty, while citizens are free to go to prison for accidently viewing it.
Ok, so a drug sniffing dog that has been taught to 'bark' when it smells drugs is reason enough to conduct a full search, because it can only detect the presence of criminal activity, and not the type or nature of the criminal activity itself. This was ruled acceptable by the Supreme Court because:
'it did not "compromise any legitimate interest in privacy." Why? Because, according to the court, "any interest in possessing contraband cannot be deemed 'legitimate.'" The search was acceptable to the court because it could only reveal the possession of contraband, the concealment of which "compromises no legitimate privacy interest."'
So, can somebody please tell me why this ruling could *not* be used by police to send one officer into your house to conduct a search for *ANY* contraband (or otherwise illegal activity), and simple tell (bark at) the other officers 'clean' or 'dirty'?
As long as the searching officer did not pass specifics regarding what illegal activity they found to the other officers, the other officers could then proceed to have 'probable cause' for a full fledged offical search?
In other words, this is one step shy of not ever needing a warrant again, as long as the police can detect the presence of illegal activity without alerting themselves to the specifics of the infringment prior to the search...
That is very...very....very....did I say very?..scary!
This case has nothing at all to do with the Internet or e-mail. But don't take my word for it, listen to Justice Stevens. "The question on which we granted certiorari is narrow: 'Whether the Fourth Amendment requires reasonable, articulable suspicion to justify using a drug-detection dog to sniff a vehicle during a legitimate traffic stop.'" Illinois v. Roy I. Caballes, No. 03-923, slip op. at 2 (U.S. Jan. 24, 2005) (citation omitted). The Court says that official conduct that does not compromise any legitimate privacy interest is not a 'search' for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment, and that possession of contraband is not a legitimate interest. Id.
The Supreme Court is specifically talking about drugs when they say 'contraband'. The Court cites U.S. v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109 (1984), which involved someone who mailed cocaine via private courier. The package was damaged en route, and the supervisor and office manager opened it up as part of the routine insurance process. Id. at 111. They found white powder inside, and called the Feds who determined it was coke. Id. at 111-12. They looked at the address on the package, went there, and arrested the people waiting for their drugs. Id. at 112.
The discussion is nowhere near the Internet or email. Now that we're not panicked, the Court points out that even some searches of contraband are illegal. It cites another case in which it held that using infrared imaging to search a house for pot plants is unlawful. Kyllo v. U.S., 533 U.S. 27 (2001).
The entire opinion is less than five pages long, and really quite straightforward. Justice Souter, on the other hand, spends eight pages to say that even the accidental detection of drugs by dogs should be an unlawful search. Caballes, slip op. at 1 (Souter, J., dissenting). His main reason, stated right up front: drug-sniffing dogs are fallible. Id. In a footnote, he cites Kyllo to explain that the government can't use a tool to get information on things for which they would otherwise require physical intrusion. Id. at 4 (footnote 3).
Justice Ginsburg's dissent, which Justice Souter joins, is nine pages. She worries about, among other things, police walking through parking lots and down sidewalks with drug-sniffing dogs, conducting sweeps without prior suspicion of guilt. Caballes, slip op. at 6 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting).
While the opinion is a fascinating study on the balance between our desire to catch crooks and our desire for personal privacy, it has absolutely nothing to do with the Internet or email.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
You do know that Bush is a Yankee, don't you?
He was not born in Texas and no one knows where he got his accent from.
Americans also get along fine with each other, except for Blacks vs Whites, Blacks vs Koreans, Whites vs Persons of pre-Columbian American Ancestry (I refuse to use the term "Native Americans", as I consider myself to be 100% native American. I was born in New Jersey; you can't get much more native than that), Whites vs Hispanics, White Supremesist Militia vs everybody, Libertarians vs Communists, Fundamentalist Christians vs Jews, Fundamentalist Christians vs Muslims, Fundamentalist Christians vs Mormons, Fundamentalist Christians vs Catholics, Fundamentalist Christians vs pedophiles (priest, pop star, and otherwise; and, yes, it's spelled "pedophiles" here in America. I don't know from where Brits get that extra "a" (probably the same place that they get the extra "u" in "color")), Fundamentalist Christians vs Foreigners, Fundamentalist Christians vs Evolutionists, Fundamentalist Christians vs Homosexuals, and the federal government vs its citizens.I get most of my news from the Daily Show with John Stuart.
The remainder comes from some homeless guy that I see downtown from time to time pushing around a shopping cart while talking on a hands-free cellphone so small that it appears as if he is talking to thin air.
(Just yesterday, I learned that "Charlie" is out to get us.)
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Yes, I know that. Wasn't he born in DE or CT? Regardless, I don't see the relevance of Bush's birthplace to Kerry's propensity for only actually submitting feel-good legislation. But even that's not all that relevant to the third amendment, which itself is entirely irrelevant to the actual story. How far off-topic can we get? ;)