Feds Arrest Private Eye at HOPE

An anonymous reader writes "FBI agents today arrested Steven Rambam, the owner of a company that bills itself as the largest privately held online investigative service in the United States, according to Washingtonpost.com's Security Fix blog. From the story: 'Rambam was arrested this afternoon by FBI agents just moments before he was to lead a panel discussion on privacy here at the HOPE hacker conference in New York City. Rambam and three other panelists were to discuss how they dug up -- in just 4.5 hours of searching private and public databases -- more than 500 pages worth of data on HOPE attendee Rick Dakan, who agreed to be the guinea pig for the project.'"

Comments

Any information on charges?

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

AFAIK, digging up information on a willing person and presenting isn't illegal.

Re:Any information on charges?

[NixLuver]

That would depend on the means used to acquire said information. The fact that I give you permission to 'dig up what information you can' on me doesn't grant you immunity from prosecution for, say, social engineering data out of the county clerk (fraud), computer crime (hacking the hospital's database, for instance), or other process that's illegal by its very character. I can *give* you that information, of course, but then you're not 'digging it up', eh?

Reason?

[Xuranova]

No one has any idea why he was arrested? I read the article and there wasn't any hint at a reason.

Re:Reason?

[abaddon314159]

Last year at Blackhat after my presentation, FBI agents showed up (without a warrent) and started making demands for the video of my presentation and all the materials related to it, I don't doubt for a second that they would have arrested me had though known ahead of time that I was actually going to give my presenation...whatever he was going to present, someone was pissed about it...

After my experience with those clowns I have very little faith in their judgement or their respect for law...

--Mike Lynn

Not enough info

[YrWrstNtmr]

Maybe, he was being arrested on other charges, not necessarily linked to the presentation e was about to give.

How about we wait for more info before we start screaming one way or the other.

Re:Not enough info

[_Sprocket_]

You're not going to bait me in to some debate about the qualifications of this Administration with a rant on various unrelated issues. Just because Federal agents are involved in this particular case, it does not mean it is acting on the specific direction of those involved in your list of much more important and larger matters.

I'm no fan of this Administration. I am not one to defend it; I'll even agree that it has crossed the line on many issues. But if you wish to be an effective critic of this Administration, you'll have to refrain from knee-jerk reactions and get the facts. Such facts are not available in this particular case. Yet.

I would stress that my entire point is in response to someone's emotional rant in response to another having the audacity to call for informed decisions. I suspect this Administration acts too much on gut feelings and too little on facts. I'm not keen to accept the same behavior from its critics.

Stop the conspiracy posting... we know nothing yet

[plasmacutter]

I've already noticed that about 60% of posts are conspiracy theories about shutting him up..

we know nothing about the charges, and generally in high profile arrests there is a lag time between the actual arrest and the announcement of charges to the relevant media.

Now if he just disappears after this and we hear nothing.. then ill be worried, but as of now I see absolutely no red flags here.

Re:Show.

[Chris Tucker]

"Can you say "Police State"? I voted for George Bush because he promissed me a smaller and less invasive government. This is what I got."

<Nelson Muntz>"HA-ha! You're a gullible idiot!</Nelson Muntz>

Re:oh, I agree

[misanthrope101]

How long has Joseph Padilla been in jail? Have they had enough time yet? My credulity is a bit strained these days, I admit. But the current government has repeatedly claimed the authority to detain anyone, for any length of time, without having to meet any evidentiary or due process standard. If they come out with some dire claims about this arrest, you might think, "well, then there's something to this, after all," but until they present evidence, we have to assume that he's innocent. That skepticism has to be automatic and unconditional to be effective.

Yes, I'm advocating a bit of hostility towards government actions, because the preservation of freedom requires just that. Otherwise, we start trusting government, giving them the benefit of the doubt, a bit of time, a bit more time, and eventually you do reach a state where the government can detain anyone for an indefinite length of time without needing the formality of charging them. I'm not demanding that they explain anything to me, only that I'm going to assume that he's innocent until evidence is presented at trial, and he's convicted of a crime. The mentality that considers that unreasonable is what I was criticizing. You have to give someone the benefit of the doubt, and I give mine to the accused, every time. By definition the only alternative is to give the government the benefit of the doubt.

you're living in a pre-9/11 world, my friend

[misanthrope101]

Well, they can't arrest him without a warrant. So clearly they've got charges ready to file, and a judge has already been convinced he might be guilty of them

Now THAT was funny. No, they don't need a warrant, or probable cause, nor does an arrest, or being in jail for any length of time imply guilt of anything. He (and you, or I, or anyone) can be arrested and held in detention as long as the federal government wants to, without any charges. They won't come out and say "we don't need to charge him, and we'll keep him as long as we want," but they consistently deny any overt checks on their power to do so. This is a slam-dunk, already-passed, fait accompli type of thing. The precedent has already been set with Padilla and a few others, and once the feds discovered that there is no formidable public outrage, it's only a matter of slowly, ever so slowly, increasing the frequency with which it is done. If you arrest 10,000 people tomorrow without charge the public would never stand for it, but if you get them used to it gradually, they'll not only support it but heap scorn and contempt on anyone who would criticize something so critical to our "safety." By gradually acclimatizing the population to detention without charge, they slowly make it normal and acceptable, and eventually the practice can expand beyond supposedly one-off "emergency" cases like Padilla or the terrorist of the week.

The same goes for torture. Today, if you object to torture, you have to justify your position, because Gitmo and Abu Ghraib have inoculated everyone against the idea that torture is by definition wrong. Police states don't happen overnight, and as they develop into fruition, "normal people" won't recognize the status quo as a police state--it'll just be normal, a "nothing to see here" common-sense extension of what we see every day.

Re:you're living in a pre-9/11 world, my friend

[misanthrope101]

Soooooo I shouldn't note concerning developments until we have a full-fledged police state? I shouldn't say "if we're not careful, we'll end up with a police state" until we do, in fact, have a police state?

And you feel this proves the Fourth Amendment is going down the toilet? That we all should shiver in our beds because the Feds might arrest us at any moment, for no reason at all?

Well, no. I said neither, and implied neither. What I said is, in fact, correct, and you can be arrested and held without charge as long as the government wants to hold you. If they want you to be tortured, they can have you secreted away to a prison where there is no oversight, and no accountability if you're beaten to death. I know you'd like to rephrase this as "oh my god they're killing all the babies, everywhere, without exception!" so I seem like a lunatic, instead of addressing what I'm actually saying. Your problem is that what I'm actually saying has already come to pass. You're arguing not with a lunatic describing hypothetical doomesday scenarios, but a concerned person who is worried about individual occurrences that can easily become a trend if we don't oppose them on principle.

You see, I care about the principle, and if you care about the principle, you don't wait for x or x+500 cases, because it's wrong the very first time you see it. If that first time is met with swift correction, and the person is freed (or charged, so due process is honored), the people responsible fired or demoted, and a public committment made to due process, then no, you don't take to the streets decrying a headlong slide into tyranny. But when the President and Attorney General firmly stand by their decision, and repudiate any possible oversight over or check on this authority, then, well, yes, you moron, I'm going to be concerned.

At what point would you consider it a legitimate concern? 10 people? 100? 10,000? The U.S. is a nation of 300 million people, and we already imprison more than anyone else on the planet, so you're going to have to give me numbers. If you've read my other posts at all, you must notice that what I'm concerned about is the slow normalization of imprisonment without trial. Every one that goes unchallenged makes it closer to normal, makes it more acceptable, and raises the bar of what we have to see before we can raise questions without being called alarmist by people like you. Torture is already normalized in the public consciousness, so when I say it's wrong, I find that I have to justify what I'm saying. The problem is that what people are willing to accept will change to fit what they've already accepted. And my friend, I'm not accepting any of it.

Re:you're living in a pre-9/11 world, my friend

[Antique Geekmeister]

Where in the world do you get the idea that "civil rights" only apply to US citizens on US soil? And since the names of the prisoners are not published and legally *cannot* be published, nor can their cases be discussed with them without fighting one's way through an incredible stonewall of "national security", how can you tell who has been arrested where or what kind of citizen they are? And given that this sort of violation of the Geneva Convention and the US Military Code of Justice is in place, how can you begin to guess what other violations of international and US law are occurring in prisons? Remember, the US has been caught deliberately shipping prisoners to countries where torture is allowed, in order to question them without prosecution or a court hearing and to obtain vital information.

Given this behavior, and the continuing existence of illegal monitoring of our core Internet routers as described in the EFF vs. AT&T court battle, how can you have any confidence that this administration's prisoners actually committed or have even been charged with a crime? Under the Patriot Act, they don't have to be charged, and you can't even publish that you know what they're accused of in some circumstances without going to jail yourself!

you can't really call all of them "suspects"

[misanthrope101]

I call them detainees, not suspects. Some are no doubt suspected of crimes, but many in Gitmo and Abu Ghraib were caught up in sweeps, or are held because they are thought to have information. Holding someone because you want to interrogate them for information isn't the same thing as holding them because you think they themselves have done or will do something bad. "Interrogation" does not address guilt or innocence, and in fact any of us can be interrogated, regardless of our guilt or innocence. Some of these people have been the victim of a Kafkaesque "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" imprisonment. They knew a guy who knew a guy who was at this place this other person might have passed through, and ergo they might know something, so we'll hold them for a while. Since there is very little oversight, very little accountability for abuse, coupled with high accountability for failing to get information, in short order we have waterboarding and people being beaten to death. Calling them "suspects" makes us feel better about not caring, because we're at least halfway implying that they might have done something, but in reality being held for interrogation doesn't even assert guilt, much less provide evidence for it.

so when exactly do we close the barn door?

[misanthrope101]

By the time your conditions are met, it would be too late. If I knew a guy who used the word "nigger," and talked a lot about "state's rights" and "people not knowing their place," I'd publicly shame him and make every effort to call him out. What I wouldn't do is blow him off just because I haven't seen him lynch anyone. I know what the code words are, what the core ideas are for that worldview, and they aren't that hard to spot. Similarly, we know what the core structures of totalitarianism are: imprisonment without trial, torture, secret prisons, and so on. Just as I know someone's a racist even if they haven't lynched anyone, I know the roots of totalitarianism, even if we don't live in the society you describe in your post.

I'm not saying that we should man the barricades and break out the ammo, only that we have a responsibility to not let it get to that point before we say, "hey dammit, this is wrong." This is where the battle is, for the most part--with words. Ideas and principles matter. What we are willing to tolerate changes to accomodate what we've already tolerated, because we largely can't admit that we looked the other way. If we tolerate it on the small scale, what moral argument do we make to oppose the exact same practices on the large scale?

We have to recognize wrong and raise bloody hell about it, if only via a few posts on a lame blog or in a conversation over the water cooler at work. I'm not an activist, but when I speak up, here or in real life, it may give confidence to someone else who has been quietly thinking "you know, this doesn't look right." If I'm silent, that one quiet little voice caves into the raucous majority and eventually they don't have any doubts that it's okay for Padilla or anyone else to rot away in jail without the "privelege" of a trial. A voice of dissent, one who brings up the ideals we all ostensibly believe in, is more important than you think. If I followed your lead, I'd wait until no voice was possible. What do you want me to do, wait until I'm being herded into a black van with a hood over my face to cry out "golly, this is wrong?"

Re:oh, I agree

[pla]

Next time they should just deport without an appeal?

No, "next time" they should let the matter drop once a fair trial finds someone innocent, rather than petulantly deporting the poor bastard for daring to defend himself in court.

Same thing happened to Sami Al-Arian - A court found the DOJ's case against him basically nothing more than a trainload of cow dung, and as payback for winning, the DOJ gave him a "choice". After an innocent man had already spend almost three years in solitary confinement, he could either accept a plea on the weakest of the charges and accept another eight months plus deportation; or he could waste the next 20 years of his life, still imprisoned of course (respected professors pose a high flight-risk, dontcha know) fighthing retrial after retrial on a neverending stream of fictitious charges.


Perhaps you consider that "fair" - Just the system working like it should... I consider that a sign that if the system "should" work like that, we need a massive overhaul of the system itself. "Justice" needs to exist as a concept that doesn't overly burden innocent people; The weak shouldn't need to accept a plea on a bogus charge because they can't afford (in time, not just money) to fight it. No one should rot in a cage for years while the government tried to scrape together enough circumstantial evidence to intimidate the defendant into a plea. And once found not guilty, people shouldn't need to watch their backs out of fear of retribution.

Re:good golly no

[Pete]

Quadraginta:

Can the police walk up to you at a public function, where you're doing absolutely nothing illegal, just minding your own business, and showing no indications of fleeing the country -- and arrest you without a warrant? Never.

I'm not quite sure what to think about you. Do you live in some kind of fantasy world where police never break the law, where police never show any inclination to abuse their power just to be petty and vindictive? For fuck's sake, police are human just like the rest of us, and are (if anything) even more likely to be nasty little ethically-challenged pricks than the rest of humanity.

"Can the police walk up to you at a public function, where you're doing absolutely nothing illegal, just minding your own business, and showing no indications of fleeing the country -- and arrest you without a warrant? Never."

Never??? Seriously dude, you hardly need to look very far to find examples of police abusing their powers (and getting away with it). And the reason they can get away with it is because there's just not a lot you can (legally) do to stop an officer arresting you (you can hardly say "I refuse to let you arrest me, you don't have proper legal authority" and expect them to listen). And the only worthwhile option you have of fighting back (in most cases) is the risky, expensive and stressful option of a civil suit.

And as far as actually getting police charged with an actual crime... heh, good luck with that. Police are very very well aware of how far they can go without even the slightest risk of punishment to themselves. One lovely example is exactly what happened with this guy - arresting them early on the weekend (or late on Friday), so they have to wait out the weekend before having a chance to go before a judge. And even if the judge then immediately orders the person's release, the cops can still laugh "ha, we chucked him in jail for 2-3 days for no reason at all."