Slashdot Mirror
PA Seizes Newspaper's Computers
twitter writes "Computer equipment from the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal was seized for alleged improper data access and disclosure. From the article: 'If the reporters used the Web site without authorization, officials say, they may have committed a crime.' Journalist are understandably upset that confidential information, that has nothing to do with the investigation, will be found and used for retribution."
This seems to me like impounding your car to take it apart to prove that you drove 7Mls over the speed limit.
Or in other words: Harrassement!
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
That seems to be the slogan. After all, without them, some not really legal actions taken by governments could be more easily covered up.
So if you can give them the impression that even when a newspaper grants you anonymity, the feds will somehow find out who you are. Sure, you can still execute your freedom of speech.
But will you dare to when it pretty much means your career is over because it's this easy for the government to grab any kind of information they want? So take your share of the cake and shut up. It's better for you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If a newspaper company commits a crime, infiltrating password-protected government computers in this case, should it be allowed to continue because of the First Amendment guarantee of Freedom of the Press?
According to the 4th Amendment, the right to be secure in our belongings is still subject to the will of a judge to issue a warrant. The warrant was issued in this case, and the judge has taken personal responsibility to act as escrow for the information that reaches the prosecutors.
I don't know what else can really be guaranteed the newspaper, except that they will have their day in court. Their protests about informant confidentiality is a red herring, designed to take our attention away from the possibility that they were involved in illegal activities.
First off, if the coroner had indeed provided the system's password, wasn't he the one contravening security policy (if not the law)?
Their justification for the computer seizure doesn't explain it at all. If they were concerned about a possible breach (even one obtained through some fraud or password sharing), they'd be able to ascertain the truth more reliably and certainly via access logs from the host systems, or even the intervening logs from the newspaper's ISP. Period.
Searching through the hard drives would be a last ditch effort for a legitimate investigation, since the cache could have been modified or deleted (thus requiring a forensic examination of the suspect systems).
The investigators are either stupid or lying about their true motivations. I can smell a lawsuit of significant proportion.
in the Constitution. Freedom of the press means simply what it says, freedom of the (printing) press. It's an extension to freedom of speech. What good is a guarantee that you won't be imprisoned for speaking if you have to get a license from Congress to circulate your opinion?
The freedom of the press was also the freedom to publish books in our founders' times. There was no journalism as it has come to be known today. The "newspapers" back then were so bad they make the National Enquirer look respectable.
And sure, a free media doing reporting is necessary for a strong democratic system. Too bad we don't have one thanks to reporters' willingness to schmooze with politicians of both parties and obsession with certain political viewpoints over real reporting. Instead of hard-hitting information on Bush or Clinton, what do we get? "Rich white girl kidnapped, film at 11!"
Besides, what they did was a crime and they knew it. Who in their right mind would have accessed a private police network to publish public reports? Gee, you'd think as a reporter that maybe the coroner is setting you up there and you might want to contact the police to get him nailed and not you.
Is that the AG said that since the Newspaper did not show proof that confidential information exists, the Newspaper has no claim not to have the drives examined. (Say for confidential information about weak security at the police IT department.)
In similar news, I understand that Congress is going to pass a law making it a crime to disclose illegal spying by the government.
....what's that?
May the Maths Be with you!
It looks like the state is trying to investigate leaks from inside its offices. Last time I checked, wasn't there some sort of confidentiality/privlage attached when you're an "Unnamed Source" for a paper? Wouldn't this be violating a few people's Constitituinal rights?
Warning: Corny karma killing post above.
I wonder how many reporters are using encryption on their Filesystems these days? If they are not, now is the time to start. A bit of a hassle, but maybe less hassle than spending 3 years in prison.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
One of the lessons in this story is that any organization involved in investigative reporting needs to keep its data systems under heavy cryptographic lock and key. Quite separate from any possible legal wrongdoing on the part of one or more of their reporters, all their other stories and investigations are now severely comprimised by the seizure, as others have pointed out. Their whole business could be at risk because of the ease with which computer equipment can be taken away.
This inevitably brings to mind today's story about Amazon's new storage service. If Lancaster Intelligencer Journal had stored their encrypted records and work files on such a storage service, would Amazon (or Google etc) have got raided and their computers taken away?
Obviously not (I think), but where does the boundary between yes and no actually lie? What if LIJ stored their encrypted data at some small 3rd party outfit?
This whole area is likely to become a tangled quagmire, as well as sadly a legal goldmine.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Philadelphia does not control the Pennsylvania Attorney General and has no authority over Lancaster county - you know, where the Amish live?
Jeez.
Next up, "Rudy Guiliani orders torture of Al-Queda suspect at Gitmo"
Clear, Dark Skies
Whatever happened to 1st Amendment rights? Should people be afraid of what they write?
They need to contact http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
All I know is this'll sure make a good news story. Oh; wait, nevermind.
Pretty sad when newspapers in this country have to start worrying about encrypting their source data. Welcome to Republican Amerika, formerly known as the land of the free.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
It's not that nobody got it, it just wasn't funny.
What he means is that is your outward appearance. no matter how hard the feds look into you they can find nothing. It is really easy to do this but takes effort.
If you personally do what he said, but secretly do the opposite under a psudeoname that you change every time and use different ways of releasing it to the world then you are safe.
I.E. you HAVE to play the spy game. send encrypted hidden files to sources overseas afer you sent them the encryption key in a seperate manner earlier and from a throw away account or via a pair of relays through other countries, etc....
The only way to say out of jail is do everything in your power to keep your self 100% squeaky clean. your personal computer NEVER has anything in it. you do your subversive stuff from a live boot CD onto a USB drive or USB thumb drive that is encrypted.
Think deeper before you react. you haveto think like an opressed person because in america that is what you ARE!
I keep reading people write "Freedom of the press" like that trumps any illegal activity. Am I missing something here? A couple reporters gets the username/password of the local coroner (with or without his knowledge is in debate right now) and proceed to access a restricted web site. How is this not illegal?
/and on the subject of server logs... This is slashdot, I thought you guys knew better. Even if you track the IP back to the newspaper, all that says is someone connected to that IP accesssed the system, not which system behind the firewall it was (and do they have free wireless in their lobby?)
Is a reporter allowed to run red lights? Can they break into the mayors office to rummage thru his files? How is this any different???
On the one hand:
"This is horrifying, an editor's worst nightmare," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in Washington. "For the government to actually physically have those hard drives from a newsroom is amazing. I'm just flabbergasted to hear of this."We have the potential for confidential sources and other non-related data to be exposed to the light of day. On the other hand:
The grand jury is investigating whether the Lancaster County coroner gave reporters for the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal his password to a restricted law enforcement Web site. The site contained nonpublic details of local crimes. The newspaper allegedly used some of those details in articles.If the reporters used the Web site without authorization, officials say, they may have committed a crime.
We have reporters, eager to scoop the competition to drive up circulation by exposing little know details of crimes, committing a crime themselves in cahoots with the coroner, who must have been getting something out of the deal.
Either way you cut it, it's a legal quagmire and a constitutional nightmare.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I thought this was interesting, since the Intelligencer Journal's HQ is about 2 miles from my house. Anyway, it sounds more like the reporter's computers were stolen, rather than Intelligencer Journal's.
State agents raided Kirchner's home outside Lancaster last month and took computers, he said. He said he had had no other contact with authorities since.
I can see the issue of having confidential secrets being found by the government, but at the same time being in the press does not absolve you from having evidence collected on you. The best thing the government can do is find a 3rd party to do the evidence collection (that is trusted by both sides).
More chilling than law enforcement seizing assets from a newspaper for inspection is the sheer arrogance of individuals in the media industry believing that they are above the law. Literally. The first amendment has - time and again - protected our media from censorship. I cannot possibly imagine how one could arrive at the conclusion that the first amendment also protects the media (or anyone else) from criminal investigations. I'm a member of the computer forensics community; I know what is going to happen to the computers in Harrisburg, and the ridiculous allegations thrown about by a few individuals discredit the media community as a whole. I'm sure you're aware of the adage "A bad apple spoils a bunch?" It holds especially true in the media. You have a larger audience than a nameless person unheard by the masses. To see wild claims from someone in the media about government conspiracies and constitutional violations over a matter of criminal investigation do a great discredit to your once noble profession. If the seized computer's slack space, RAM, or more simple tracking means contain data showing access to the web page in question, someone (or several someones) are going to spend an exquisitely long time in prison. Invest in soap-on-a-rope now. Honestly though...simply for the belief that the First Amendment somehow grants the media immunity from criminal behavior, I sincerely wish that the rest of your industry would scorn you, decry you as unworthy, and distance themselves from such unethical beliefs. Unfortunately, I don't think they will. Thus, the growing scorn for American media. Thanks for being a part of the division.
I live in Lancaster myself, and I read the Intelligencer everyday.
There's ALOT more to this story then people see and read.
A high ranking person gave an illegal password to the intelligencer, who used it to get into confidential sites. However, the high ranking person is on trial for many many things, and they need to gather evidence against him
Nothing illegal whatsoever. The intelligencer is also willingly giving the computers over, not being forced.
While I don't disagree with the principle that seizure can be reasonable in the face of a real crime, the nature of seizure and of leaked confidential information makes this not so cut and dry.
Since businesses do a better job obtaining and preserving their protections than the public seems to do, just look to them for the precedent. They refuse to release things all the time claiming "irrepairable harm". Admittedly those are usually civil cases involving trade secrets and the like. However, the point stands. The Bill of Rights protects against unreasonable search and seizure for exactly that reason. Leaking information that can be used for retribution against citizen or, almost more importantly, against the press causes irrepairable harm. The belief of the paper is that the seizure, in this case, was far beyond what a constitution warrant would allow.
Admittedly computers and networks of them are very tightly integrated. It's hard to seize just the right parts of them. However, having witnessed the aftermath of a few police seizures of computer equipment I can assure you that it probably was overkill. People don't usually work well with things they don't understand. You can be that your average police department usually goes overboard in situations like this.
The claim could be made that the police made the most limited seizure practical, but I don't believe that's provides a defense against a clear Fourth Amendment claim (IANAL). The Fourth Amendment sends a clear message. Unfettered search and seizure is at odds with a citizen's ability to participate in a democracy because of the potential it creates for abuse. Any pretense of a crime can be used as a gateway to retribution. Especially considering that computers actually have made it easier to search and seize.
In the past, thousands of papers would have to meticulously found, catalogued, and archived. Now, digital copies can be made trivially, evidence integrity can be certified by third party signature, and search can be heavily automated. The sad fact is that the police are willfully ignoring the fact that they don't have to seize the entire computer so that they don't have to work as hard (not that they're lazy, but their resources ARE limited). Make no mistake, a single man can now seize libraries worth of data in minutes and search it just as quickly.
What nobody realizes about the Bill of Rights is that it was made to safeguard the ability of the people to revolt again if necessary. The government and courts has slowly disarmed the people, nibbled away at their speech protections, removed their autonomy, and generally preserve democracy by ensuring the government is subject to the will of the people--by force if necessary. This is always done in the spirit of "making people accountable", "keeping the peace", or "protecting people from criminals". The humbling reality is that every one of the founders of our government would have been dead if they were accountable to the government in their time. The peace would have been kept, it's true, but in a world where the people are made criminals for enjoying their freedom, what does it matter?
I think Mauve has the most RAM. --PHB (Dilbert Comic)