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'Full-Pipe' FBI Internet Monitoring Questionably Legal
CNet is running a piece looking at what they refer to as a 'questionably legal' internet surveillance technique being employed by the FBI. In situations where isolating a specific IP address for a suspect is not possible, the FBI has taken to 'full-pipe' surveillance: all activity for a bank of IPs is recorded, and then data mining is used to attempt to isolate their target. The questionable legality of this situation results from a requirement that, under federal law, the FBI is required to use 'minimization'. The article describes it this way: "Federal law says that agents must 'minimize the interception of communications not otherwise subject to interception' and keep the supervising judge informed of what's happening. Minimization is designed to provide at least a modicum of privacy by limiting police eavesdropping on innocuous conversations." Full-pipe surveillance would seem to abandon that principle in favor of getting to the target faster.
If you're doing something wrong, and they happen to catch you because they were looking for someone else -- then you shouldn't have been doing whatever it was you were doing.
That's fair.
What this means is that there are circumstances when ISPs cannot isolate IP addys or individuals, then it's ok to sniff the whole pipe. Why not? Why should the cops have to pussyfoot around BS red tape just to do their jobs?
Now if they do this when they had the opportunity to perform IP isolation calls properly -- then we have to apply a sober and proportionate response to that kind of human rights abuse. And that means we the people will have to have the particulars behind such cases when this method is employed, in full detail. Do you think we'll get it?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
May be they think it's a truck.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
If they only keep evidence found on the target (providing of course that they have a warrant of course) it might not be so bad. But somehow I doubt that will be the case though...say you and your neighbor both use municipal wireless, and your neighbor is into kiddie porn. The FBI collects all the traffic from your access point, and busts your neighbor for the kiddie porn - but also nails you for copyright infringment for downloading music or movies.
"...In situations where isolating a specific IP address for a suspect is not possible,..."
They have minimized the amount of data required to collect to preform their surveillance by limiting the block of IPs.
I was about to say the same thing.
If they are UNABLE to isolate the IP addy, but they have a good idea which ISP it's coming from , then doing a "full pipe" exam would be the logical next step, and the smallest step they could take. This would fit into the "minimalize" concept. I don't see what the big deal is here.
Now, if they were doing "Full Pipe" exams without CAUSE (IE: just out fishing to see what they can catch) then I would have a problem with that. But with cause, this is perfectly legit and appropriate.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
If you're doing something wrong, and they happen to catch you because they were looking for someone else -- then you shouldn't have been doing whatever it was you were doing.
That's fair.
No, it isn't fair, it's unconstitutional. Any evidence gained in this way should not be admissible in court or be allowed to be used to gain further evidence. Saying "if you were doing something wrong, you deserved it" is the same as saying "if you aren't doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide." Both of these arguments are just dead wrong.
If the FBI has a tap on your neighbor's phone, they can't tap your phone and listen to your conversations too just because they happen to be in the neighborhood.
I cannot in vision any scenario in which an ISP is incapable of isolating a single customers traffic.
At the most basic level the physical connection could be intercepted.
Thus they are not making a reasonable effort to minimize the scope of the tapping and are breaking the law.
If you're doing something wrong
Yes, because obviously if I'm having a discussion about the latest terrorist attack and because the feds only pick up parts of the conversation about bombs and killing people due to their "grab everything, data mine for anything that looks criminal" practice, I must be a terrorist.
What this means is that there are circumstances when ISPs cannot isolate IP addys or individuals
Is that so? Personally, I find that rather amazing, how would such an ISP manage to bill anyone?
And that means we the people will have to have the particulars behind such cases when this method is employed, in full detail. Do you think we'll get it?
No.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I am trying to think of a technical limitation where they could not be able to isolate an IP, or more specificaly, a MAC address. Can someone point out some? Maybe between two border routers or something?
While I'm not inherently subject to these laws/conditions, living in the UK, I can't see that they're in any way fair or balanced. If it's not possible to isolate the IP traffic of one particular individual I can't see that it's fair to violate the privacy of everyone else that happens to be in that pipe. I seem to recall reading that law/criminal justice is based on the presumption of innocence (naive, perhaps, but it seems to be the predicate...I could be wrong, of course, given current developments).
Whether I'm doing anything illegal or otherwise I don't expect to be subject to surveillance simply because someone else in the pipe I share is suspected of doing something. If it's not possible to isolate the suspect from the crowd then surely the surveillance is too broad.
Plus, as an aside, until I'm able to see the means by which such monitoring is over-seen then I don't necessarily trust those with the relevant authority to act on my behalf to protect my privacy.
While I agree that collecting "side evidence" from a "full pipe" exam is wrong, and probably inadmissible in court, it is NOT "Unconstitutional".
Unlawful, most likely. Unprincipled, absolutely. Unconstitutional, no.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
No, it isn't fair, it's unconstitutional. Any evidence gained in this way should not be admissible in court or be allowed to be used to gain further evidence.
Okay - reducto ad absurdum time.
Someone who lives with me robs a bank. The police find out who it was, and get a search warrent, and storm the place. As it turns out, they also find the body of someone I've murdered. The search warrant has nothing to do with the murder. In fact, nobody suspected I was a serial killer. Should the dead body and the testomony of the officers who saw it be inadmissable as evidence since the search warrant only covered the bank robbery?
Freenet and Gnutella? In such cases, you may not trying to nab the ISP's customer, but a user of a virtual network the customer resides as a node on.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
It's easy to find people who have unsecured wireless. Those cheap routers don't keep detailed log information about who is connecting to them. It's a law enforcement nightmare and I'm surprised that the FBI hasn't gotten very gungho about punishing people for not securing wireless connections. We're reaching a point where it can be all but impossible to determine whether or not the person is guilty of a crime until the humiliating arrest and prosecution. In some cases it's trojans, others it could be open wireless. Law enforcement still hasn't grasped the delicacy of the situation. You can tell from their tactics. If they did, they'd understand how easy it is today for computers to be hijacked such that there is no way to plausibly determine prima facie who really is doing it, even if they have the IP address it seems to be coming from.
One concern is how long do they retain this information, and how much of the "full pipe" do they save? If they isolate the information they are looking for, and then discard the rest, then that is fine. I can even see an argument for keeping additional data in escrow, in the event that further research is necessary.
However, if they retain the data and then perform new searches, then (IMHO) they are crossing the line. Considering what has happened in the past, there are reasons to be suspicious of their activities.
I'm sorry, but your analogy is flawed. As this is Slashdot, any analogy must involve cars in order to be valid. Try this one:
While driving on a public highway, you come up to a checkpoint where they are looking for an escaped felon. You do not consent to a search, but they search your car anyway, without your consent. They find a body in your trunk. Should that evidence be admissible?
What of the case where a suspect is bouncing traffic off of an ISP's customer, and that customer isn't the target? If an ISP doesn't have the tools to dynamically parse Gnutella or SOCKS traffic, or decrypt Freenet traffic, it's conceivable that they won't have the information law enforcement is looking for.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
If you're doing something wrong, and they happen to catch you because they were looking for someone else -- then you shouldn't have been doing whatever it was you were doing.
That's fair. I agree that the summary is misleading, sensationalized even, but I don't agree that it is fair. I think a fair, if fictional, analogy in this case would be if police had a warrant to search a house in my neighbourhood looking for evidence of a crime, but since they only knew what block the house was on, they were permitted to search all the houses on my block. In that case, only evidence which actually applied to the crime being investigated should be usable. Suppose that I am a criminal, unrelated to the criminal activity that the police are investigating. They search my house and find some evidence that they weren't looking for. It doesn't seem fair for that evidence to be admissible in court, and I think they should require a new warrant to search for that evidence in a separate investigation. In that case, the investigators actually lose because I would have a chance to destroy the evidence before the second warrant is produced. In the Internet case, people don't even know when their traffic is being watched.
The rules don't change just because someone in your neighbourhood or netblock may have committed a crime that is being investigated by the FBI, and that is the danger here. Just because I'm not a criminal doesn't mean that I want authorities snooping through my garbage. I know we're already far down the slippery slope, but we need to hold on to whatever freedoms we have left.
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
People, we really need to go back to teaching Government and Civics in high school. There are some people here who have been left behind.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Well, since sniffing the whole pipe on it's face violates:
"Particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized".
I would say, that once again, the FBI is overstepping it's lawfully delegated powers.
In other news, the sky is blue...
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Cops suspect illegal activity, say drug ring, but they do not know which apartment it is. Do the police have the right to search every apartment in the complex to find illegal activity? And what if they come to my apartment and find that I have a computer. Can they seize that to see if I am doing anything illegal in their search for the drug ring? No. Laws and the Constitution are two separate entities. Congress and states cannot make laws that abridge the freedoms set forth in the Constitution.
One of the problems with searching an Internet pipe is that the conventional methods and doctrines for search warrants don't apply easily or at all (i.e.: plain view doctrine). Search warrants have to be specific as to what the officers are looking for.
Example: if the search warrant is for a TV, and the officers look in a desk drawer and find kiddy porn, they can't take it. Now, what will probably happen is some of the officers will stay there (or close by) while another tries to get another warrant (with probable cause) for the material. It will all depend on whether the judge believes they had a right to be opening the desk in the first place; even if the search warrant is issued, it will definately be challenged by the defense in court. Subsequent grants for search warrants will also be scrutenized by previous requests for search warrants by the officer as well (i.e.: if Officer Joe has a history of leaving out details, writing poorly, or making frivilous requests in search warrants, they will likely be denied by the judge until the officer can get it right).
Just because the officers find evidence of some other crime while executing a search warrant, it doesn't necessiarly mean that that will be able to keep the evidence of the other crime (it depends on probable cause, whether the officer has a right to the evidence, and other court-established doctrines).
I don't reply to Anonymous posts; if you have something to say to me, identify yourself or I won't reply.
I don't have any mod points :(
Just remember - if the world didn't suck, we would all fall off.
Gah!
You're right. 4th Amendment to the Constitution. I need to re-read my copy again.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
How about, you're driving down the highway, past a couple patrol cars on the side of the road. The patrol cars are watching traffic, looking for a vehicle matching the description in an AMBER alert.
You're obviously speeding, and one of the officers clocks you. You get pulled over, and get a ticket.
As is tradition when the Government increases their spying efforts, it's time to listen to The Conet Project and then watch Enemy of the State while wearing a tin foil hat and eating a bucket of fried chicken.
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
If it's inadmissible in court, it is Unconstitutional by definition.
There's this thing called the Bill of Rights, which enumerates specifically some of the rights that the Federal government cannot violate. Included in these is the fourth amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits such activity, as has been previously ruled on by the US Supreme Court (who happens to have the responsibility to do so, as defined by, again, the Constitution).
Sorry for the sarcasm, but unwarranted search is indeed Unconstitutional.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
We all need to have a look at it from time to time.
No, it's not. It's called the plain view exception and has been found to be completely constitutional. I refer you to this page from the Justice Department (ok, no snickers) which references Horton v. California, 496 U.S. 128 (1990).
The relevant part is as follows:
How this exception would apply in the current situation will be up for debate but the exception of an officer finding evidence of another crime, while executing a search warrant for a different crime, is fully constitutional. For a further reading of just this subject, see Danny Weitzner's comments with a much more detailed discussion of the plain view exception.
What, you expect the cops to ignore the dead body missing its arms lying in the back room because they were only looking for the stash of cocaine in the house?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Think of this more as a roadblock when there is a big crime. The cops stop ya, ask a few questions, then you are on your way. Thats how I look at it... but I still don't agree with it.
You are all a bunch of idots.
But they're entitled to sit and watch traffic anyway. There's no expectation of privacy on a public road. There is in your own private human slaughterhouse.
What of the case where a suspect is bouncing traffic off of an ISP's customer, and that customer isn't the target? If an ISP doesn't have the tools to dynamically parse Gnutella or SOCKS traffic, or decrypt Freenet traffic, it's conceivable that they won't have the information law enforcement is looking for.
First off, if the traffic is encrypted (freenet/tor) then tapping all the traffic for everyone isn't going to solve a whole lot.
Secondly, if the traffic is coming from a client's misconfigured proxy like socks, then by sniffing strictly traffic involving that address should be all that's needed to determine the next address to tap.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Then "envision" a small ISP without the resources needed to setup the requisite surveillance connected to a larger ISP which can lets the feds sniff the whole pipe to the smaller ISP.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Aren't there mechanisms in place to deal with this?
In a situation where FBI has probable cause to believe a crime has been committed, they should still have to present their evidence to a judge and get a warrant.
If they don't know who is committing the crime, but they have specific cause, they can provide a specific description of what they're looking for and get a john doe warrant.
Let them rifle through the whole pipeline. But they can't use anything not on the warrant--including for the purpose of getting another warrant.
I suspect that in practice, LEAs try to game the system and get a warrant for anything interesting they might find. It's the judge's job to say "no, you're fishing". And if she's wrong, it's another judge's job to throw out the evidence.
Well, that's what I learned from "Law and Order"--any real lawyers out there?
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
I dont care if the FBI or MI5 or whoever is monitoring what goes on in my street, if I have a terrorist cell living next door to me too right they can pull all the traffic that is going down this street. If they find out im downloading illegal music do you really think they will be bothered by it... its not the terrorist information they are looking for. Its like if the police where raiding an apartment block on a guns raid and go into one house, and find someone smoking a joint they realy are not going to put on hold there aim to stop this person. My question for the people that dont like this idea is, WHAT are you downloading or looking up that is so bad that the FBI will look at your case and not the person they are mainly looking for?
Furthermore, they cannot use evidence gathered in the inadmissible investigation as justification for the warranted search of your property, unless that evidence was in plain sight from a public area.
I think the quasi-legal (IANAL) argument for justifying the admissibility of incidentally garnered evidence of a crime not covered by the original warrant in a full-pipe search is that the evidence is the technological equivalent of being in plain sight.
Not really in a case like this, since the data they are analyzing is not held by you, it's held by your ISP.
I totally agree with you re: the OP and their claim that it's fair if you're incidentally caught doing something wrong during the course of another investigation. It's not just about doing something "wrong," it's about doing something "criminal". What I fear is some kind of political activity being defined as a criminal act (you know, like protesting outside of a "free speech zone" during election season).
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Is because the government already have too much power. This scenario is one way to ask for more power.
Another reason for it being bad is that you have no clue what the government would think illegal and you have no veto over any new laws.
E.g. medicinal marijuana. Or breaking a copy protection scheme.
Not really. In the first case the person is doing something wrong and in the second case they aren't.
No.
This is a matter of Liberty and if you give any government a bit and they will try to take a GB. We need to stop the erosion of our rights!
Sounds more to me like a roadblock every time there's a little crime.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Suppose that I am a criminal, unrelated to the criminal activity that the police are investigating. They search my house and find some evidence that they weren't looking for.
But that's not a good analogy. First, let go of the notion of the police not knowing what house someone/thing is in, and yet somehow getting a warrant anyway - that's not going to happen. To make your analogy mean anything, a judge would have to issue a search warrant for your whole neighborhood. On the other hand, you have the very real possibility of multiple people using an access point or proxy. If you want your analogy to work, try this:
The police know that someone is running a gun smuggling operation out of a neighborhood that is served by one road. They don't know who, or which house, but they know that perhaps the vehicle being used has to be large enough to carry a certain payload, or leave a certain type of tire track, etc. So, the issue is considered serious enough to set up a roadblock. When they see a vehicle that matches the sought-for description, they've got probable cause for a search. And then you drive along with a bail of marijuana or a stack of kiddy-pr0n in the back seat of your car in plain view. There's plenty of precedence about how plain-view observations by a law enforcement officer who is in reasonable pursuit of something else don't violate search-and-seizure mandates. I think that bumping into packets carrying your illegal gambling operation's traffic while doing the narrowest search that the ISP can allow doesn't make your illegal gambling traffic off limits from prosecution.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
See, the problem is that you could easily interpert that (with out stretchign it much) to fit full pipe:
particularly describing the place to be searched
They have done that. They know the problem is with in this range of IPs, however they can not narow it down because the ISP can not help them with it.
and the persons or things to be seized
This is where it is sorta tricky. This part has been interpereted to say that anytihng found durign a reasonable execution (aka, no searchign in pill bottles for stollen TVs) of a warrent is admissable.
So if they only need to be checking web pages visited, and they start sniffing P2P traffic, that should be inadmissable, however if they fidn something durring a reasonable execution of the warrent, then it would be.
Note, I am not sayign I am for or against this as I honestly don't have enoguh information on it. I lean away from it as it DOES look like it is way to much of an invassion of privacy, but I can't say 100%.
The big deal for me is how the heck could an ISP NOT be able to tell you what IP you need to look at?
If you have the name/house/whatever the ISP should easily be able to pull up what IP(s) that person/place currently has assigned to them.
If you are working back from an IP you found doing something illegal, then the ISP should know who that IP was assigned to at the given time, and give you the current IP (assuming non-static).
I don't really like the ISPs trackign what we are doing and when, but I know they are, so why would this 'full pipe' warrent ever show up?
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
"If the FBI has a tap on your neighbor's phone, they can't tap your phone and listen to your conversations too just because they happen to be in the neighborhood.
"
Considering how easy it would be to plug a cordless phone into your neighbors house, or just run a wire.. It's kind of scary but I could see the fbi justifying tapping a neighborhood like that.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Quite frankly, I want individual wiretaps to require at least some individual physical effort and expense so that police have to make the decision of whether it is worth it or not.
Right. I have no faith whatsoever that information contained in any sweeping database will be utilized only as the initial purpose indicates.
Before long, the government will want to justify some "for the children" measures such as receiving information of everyone who searched for pornography online in an effort to investigate "child pornography" by building a database of people who view pornography in general.
What about the person who writes a scathing critique of the administration or who runs for public office and who has a bunch of dirt collected online that just shows up by a query to this database?
I can be honest and say that the government most likely doesn't care about what you do - unless you get in their way, or unless you become a threat in some way to the existing power structure. While they may search for some law you have broken, they may 'incidentally' find other information on you that is not illegal but can be used as fodder in the media.
I can see no justification for this system that outweighs freedom and responsibility in this country. The Federal Government should stick to its Constitutional mandate and let the states run their own business affairs.
"To work for libertarianism -- to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual -- used to be
They don't have "tcpdump -w " ?
Maybe they shouldn't run an ISP on windows then.
Sure they can. It's the job of the Supreme court to overthrow such laws, once made. And it will only get to the Supreme Court if someone brings it there, and even then it's not always guaranteed.
should have previewed ... lost some of my parameters to tcodump - but the point is still the same.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/01/25
You know it happens.
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
Firstly, wrong is in the eye of the beholder. Illegal is formally defined by law, although lately the definitions seem to be less precise than they should be. If the beholder has power over you, their definition of wrong can be deadly. Secondly, this is the FBI (i.e. federal government) we're talking about. So how long do they keep the data? Do they get rid of any data that ISN'T related to their target? And even if they say they do, can you TRUST that they do (consider while you formulate your answer the recent illegal spying activity the White House has been caught doing)? Lately the federal government has used up nearly all of their public trust in my view. And as my dad always said, trust once lost is very very difficult to regain.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Yes it is admissible if
a) the body was in plain sight
b) they find the body looking in place that is "Reasonable" for the search warrant on hand.
However... once they find the Dead body, the entire house becomes a crime scene, and all bets are off
Oh Yeah... IANAL
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
B-b-b-b-b-but terrorists!!!!
The value behind the words is pretty clear, or at least it is when you look at the words in terms of 18th century technology. In the big room, things are public. You can't assert privacy in the town square. But separate from that, are our personal domains that no one else should be able to enter without our permission; a man is king of his castle. If you're there without permission, you're trespassing. And the 4th Amendment says that government is a special case, that it can enter your space without your consent without it being trespassing, but this requires court oversight. Without that check in place, it is trespassing.
In 1789, it was really easy to tell the difference between public and private, only requiring basic common sense.
You don't even have to be an intelligent human to understand this. Even some really dumb animals know how to enforce ownership of their turf. It's that basic and easy.
When phone networks came, it got kind of blurry. I guess Congress and the Courts have made up their mind about that, generally taking our side (i.e. requiring warrants for wiretapping) but the reality isn't all that clear. No matter how you look at it, those phone wires are not just in your house and the house of the person you're talking to. The wires are in public. When we demand privacy on wires that pass through public, radio signals that go everywhere, etc, we're doing something very artificial. That doesn't mean it's wrong or an unreasonable demand; really, it's ok to assert our will over nature. But going beyond Natural Law isn't as easy as it looks, and the issues can explode with complexity.
When you get to the Internet, it's even harder. Anyone who knows anything about the Internet, knows that you really don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy. We desire privacy? Well, of course! But having an "expectation" is foolishly unrealistic. There are too many people who have access to your plaintext. You don't even know who they are! How can you expect respect and accountability from someone you can't even identify, doesn't have any sort of business relationship with you, etc? It's naive.
Contrast that to the situation of someone looking at papers on your desk at home. Nobody gets into your home without your knowledge or permission, so if someone even has the ability to violate the security of your effects and papers, it's because either you granted permission for them to be there, or because they're trespassing. Well, when you send a packet of plaintext out onto the Internet with blind faith that the routing protocols will somehow get the packet to its destination, you're granting permission for someone (you don't even know who) to at least have enough access to the packet to be able to get the job done. You might say you didn't grant permission for them to read your love letter, but you sure as hell did grant them just about everything short of that -- you very explicitly give them the opportunity. This is very unlike the situation with a love letter sitting on your desk at home.
Everyone knows this, and they've known this for a very long time (thus anyone who uses the words "Bush Administration" in this discussion shouldn't be taken seriously). Tech-heads made up their minds decades ago: you can't expect privacy, unless you take matters into your own hands, by encrypting. If you don't listen to tech-heads on this, you're a fool.
We don't have a reaso
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Here's why: the FBI probably uses this technique, in some cases, to track down child porn. True, most cases these days are probably copyright infringement cases demanded by the industry, but given today's power-hungry government and legislators who think their primary mandate is to keep their office, all the FBI has to do is say that they use it to combat child porn and no one but the district court or higher will touch it - and that takes months or years.
You may ask why I say this. Wikipedia COPA, COPPA, CIPA, Communications Decency Act (the parts that the courts struck down). Claim you're protecting children and you can get away with anything. Now, I'm not saying these laws are a bad thing - they're well-intentioned, but badly thought out and the difficulties of doing what they demand on the Internet were not considered.
There's an old saying that says pretty much whatever you want it to.
This is where it is sorta tricky. This part has been interpereted to say that anytihng found durign a reasonable execution (aka, no searchign in pill bottles for stollen TVs) of a warrent is admissable. The rule for physical searches is "in plain sight". If the police are searching your home for, say, a fugitive, and you have a bong on your table, that's in plain sight. Data mining is the exact opposite. It's taking a microscope to any minute detail you can find, but strip-searching not just an individual home, but an entire neighborhood. That's the kind of physical search that's explicitly prohibited. Does the principle apply to wiretaps? You'd think so.
Then why should there be expected privacy on the internet?
They are not MY pipes being sifted though, they are the ISP's, and most ISP's have a TOS that details things your not supposed to do with WIDE range paramters... If your illigal activities are on the internet, isn't that the same as the "Information Super Highway"
The way I see it is that you are only secure as much as you make yourself. What does that mean? Simple, DONT commit to media (_ANY_) anything you would be considered damning evidence. ie, talk to people in person... Don't use Phones. Talk to people in Person... Don't MAIL or Email instructions, notes, ideas, etc.. Don't STORE evidence that could be used against you on a computer... or ANY media (CD, Tape, Paper, etc)
In Short.. Keep all your little dirty dark secrets inside your own little head. Until they can meathack you, you'll be safe.
How many folks hear the story of the man robbing the bank puts a note on the back of his pay stub, etc... Or a Pedo that filmed himself having sex with victems to enjoy later, then found by police... or the politician who says she was co-erced into something only to have ealier tape out later with an personal explanation of exactly how she thought about the process in details that catch her in a lie...
Ok, and I guess #1 should be don't post to slashdot... BTW, None of these thoughts presented here are private, and may be viewed by millions on the internet at any time.
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
This is the sort of misguided logic that eats away at people's privacy rights every day. The logic basically goes like this:
The police must monitor ALL communication in order to be able to monitor ONE communication. Due to the restrictions of a subpoena, even if they find evidence of other wrongdoing they are not allowed to pursue it. In any case, you shouldn't care if the government monitors your communication if you aren't doing anything illegal.
The problem with this logic is that the people reviewing your communications are real people. If you wouldn't mind taking a private email from you to your wife and just leaving it on the street for someone to read then you shouldn't have a problem with some government bureaucrat reading it. However, if you have some communications that you consider private - things that you don't want other people to know, then you should have a big problem with this.
The problem with the logic that it inconvenient for law enforcement to respect privacy rights of citizens in pursuit of criminals justifies law enforcement oversight regardless of privacy rights. You're authorizing the government to surveil all of us in the interest of catching a minority of us doing something wrong. Personally that isn't a right I've resigned or a responsibility I've assigned to our government. Government is supposed to serve the people, not monitor them.
Even though law enforcement isn't supposed to act on information they gain outside of the scope of a subpoena, they shouldn't have any right to listen in on conversations they have no right to. If a law enforcement agency can't locate a specific IP why should that burden be passed to all the users on a block of IP's? Why shouldn't the ISP be responsible for more careful monitoring or logging? Why shouldn't the agency be required to deploy reliable means of locating that IP? Why shouldn't the government pay to install more sophisticated monitoring? Basically, why should the price of pursuit be the privacy of an uninvolved third party without their consent?
Sometimes, living in a free society makes it harder on law enforcement. There are certain prices we pay for liberty and this is one of them. Taxes are another price we pay for a civilization based on personal freedom. The "hassle" of following the Constitution and not just summarily executing bad guys that we KNOW are bad guys is another.
I'm sure it's a drag for police to have to get a warrant when they know someone is doing something illegal in their house. I'm sure the FBI gets very frustrated when they have to provide a judge with affidavits of Probable Cause when they KNOW that the bad guys are using phones to do bad things, just so they can put up a wire tap.
And it's a hell of a lot more than just a little hassle when our own freedoms allow really really bad guys to plan and execute a terrorist attack where thousands are killed. But it may turn out that too, is the price of living in a free society, God help us.
I know that as I sit in my neighborhood coffee shop, someone with a bomb strapped to their body could walk in and blow me to bits. I watched as fellow Americans (and a lot of innocent non-Americans) lost their lives on September 11, more than 5 years ago.
But I refuse to live my life in fear. And I absolutely refuse to give up one single bit of my liberty to make it easier for law enforcement to do their jobs, or to make it more convenient for our government to govern, or even to ensure that I can walk down the street without the fear of something bad happening to me. That's how important liberty is to me - more important than my security.
I see fear making a lot of people willing to live less like Americans and more like the residents of a gated community or the inmates of a prison. I mean, it's not really that bad if officials have to ask us to show papers on the street - not if it makes us safer. And it's not really that bad if someone in the Federal Government has to read my mail without my permission. And it's not really all that bad if the FBI has to sniff my packets because someone, somewhere else on the internet is doing something wrong. After all if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have to worry.
There a lot of people who have been convinced - we see them around here - that all those little freedoms just aren't worth having to be afraid. These people have wandered very far from the principles that made the US unique in the world and a beacon of freedom to those who live in safe places where they don't fear terrorists, or pornographers, or child molestors. Those people only have to fear their own government.
I'm not willing to trade, and I'm not willing to give up my freedom. I would really, honestly rather die a free man than live under tyranny. I don't blame those of you who have become so scared that you've convinced yourselves it's OK to be watched, because you're not doing anything wrong. But I absolutely pity you. It must be hell to be so afraid.
But that's just the kind of hairpin I am.
You are welcome on my lawn.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitut
Amendment in question: I've done a lot of reading of the constitution and the US code (mostly as a result of the link in my sig
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
I think this sort of scenario might involve circumstances where law enforcement know that a certain (dynamic) IP has been used over time to commit a crime, but by the time they get to the ISP any logs are lost or unusable (say the criminal is using wireless connections with other users). I can see the police having a tough time figuring out who the 'customer' is in these cases.
Quite the opposite. Data mining is like having a custome magnet that only attracts red rhombus's with acute angles between 16 and 23 degrees. It would completely miss the bong on the table.
Going back to the original phone tap comparison, if they tapped your phone instead of the neighbors, all evidence gathered is inadmissible, that would be outside the scope of the warrant. If you called your neighbors tapped phone while they were listening for drug intercepts and mentioned your plan to off your wife for the insurance money, that would be admissible.
Can't we just say that the constitution is a living document that has now "evolved" to permit such searches because the framers could not have envisioned the particular situations in which this kind of searches should be allowed? Face it people : the constitution has already been misused to such an extent that it has almost become worthless...
Oh wait this in USA? Sorry my mistake carry on.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
You are correct about plain sight, however plain sight often gets people messed up with the idea that you can't open stuff up. For instance, if I am looking for drugs, and I find AP bullets (those are illegal, aren't they?) in pill bottles, then it is admissable.
As for datamining to strip searching:
One of the precedents is that warrents are supposed to cover the smallest area possible (Searchign house? garage? office? what?), and what you are lookign for exactly. Datamining CAN be done as a strip search (examine EVERYTHING), however if you are sepecificly tryign to get me on sharing the latest britney spears album via bittorrent (disseminating that shoudl have me locked up), then there is no reason to be looking at web traffic or emails, and those SHOULD be inadmissable (if they are, I don't know, I should honestly look into it, I am not as familiar with wiretapping laws as I am with standard physical warrents/search/seziure/etc).
Also, the argument over searchign one house (taping one IP) vs an entire street (an IP Block) does not work all that well.
The idea is that they have a court order for the ISP to turn over the IP, however for some reason (I can't come up with a hypothetical that covers it) the ISP can (not will) NOT give out the IP. At that point they would be alowed to do a 'full pipe' search (however, even if this is legal, I still think that the datamining should be limited in scope).
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
Well, since sniffing the whole pipe on it's face violates:
"Particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized".
How does it violate it?
What to be searched is described: All of the class C that the suspect can get a DHCP address from.
The person is explicitly identified, even though often John-Doe'd because the identity isn't yet known.
The things to be siezed are explicitly listed: All packets from John Doe.
It fits the definition under the Constitution as you listed. What the issues are are irrelevant to that part. The FBI is required to not get more than they must. If there is a practical way to get just the person they are looking for's packets, then they are breaking the law. If there isn't a technically available solution, then they are within the law.
Of course, you can also debate whether John Doe warrants/subpoenas are legal, but that too seems to be a separate issue from what you brought up.
Learn to love Alaska
Your strawman doesn't apply... The issue is when the warrant's target IP cannot be isolated. For your phone example, what if you and your neighbors are on a party line? The FBI has the warrant to listen to your phone, but because of the way you're still using your phones, they have no choice but to listen to the SAME LINE that carries the conversations of your neighbors. Perfectly legal, and completely reasonable. The ISP is the party line; if the ISP - under a court-issued warrant - cannot break out your specific IP traffic for technical reasons, then the FBI gets to listen to all traffic to find your information.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
A full-pipe search is like a house-to-house search in that respect. It is justified in only the most extreme circumstances.
Because they've been shown to abuse their powers in the past when their capabilities were less constrained. There are very good reasons for that red tape, as we will discover (again) should it ever be removed.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Umm, govn't can create laws that FURTHER limit their powers.
Silly Example:
Warrents are provided for in the constitution.
The legislative branch could pass a law that states "Warrents may be issued at any time, however they may only be executed on mondays". This law is not unconstitutional (silly, but not unconstitutional), and thus any evidenced gained from a warrent executed on Tuesday would be inadmissible in court, however it would not be unconstitutional.
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
You're making assumptions:
- That the small ISP routes everything through a machine running tcpdump
- That the small ISP has the human & technical resources available to rapidly read through a warrant and setup something capable of filtering out what the judge has specified
Large ISPs are used to fulfilling these kind of requests as they most likely have done the same thing for years on telephone lines. Not all small ISPs are (but most of the small ISPs where this was true have disappeared/been absorbed into larger structures).
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
> It's employed when police have obtained a court order
Lacking the very important word "only", and for good reason.
> They have to be
They must only appear to be.
> If you're doing something wrong
If your neighbor is doing something wrong
> and they happen to catch you
(without first obtaining the court order with respect to you)
Then they get to play both sides of the fence.
Selective enforcement and abuse.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
If they can get a warrent that says so, then yes.
:particularly describing the place to be searched. Of course precedent (and possibly even law, though I am not sure) says you can't do this.
It does not actualy violate the constitution. The constitution just says that a warrent must be
The thing being is that I finaly actualy reread tfa and it says NOTHING about warrents, jsut that they are doign this b/c they can, and THAT is unconstitutional.
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
This reminds me of the new product I was thinking of releasing into the Washington DC market: ;)
Bill of Rights Toilet Paper with all 10 printed on each sheet. I bet I would....clean up
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
"Why should the cops have to pussyfoot around BS red tape just to do their jobs?"
Because my civil liberties are more important than their job being easy.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Well put.
---FourChannel---
Oh how I wish I had mod points. Great post.
Unfortunately there isn't a critical mass of people who think the way you do, so what we're stuck with is a creeping incrementalism. Just a little here, a little there, and soon the freedoms that we take for granted (in this case privacy) are whittled away to nothing.
I do not want to live in a society where it is impossible to get away with a crime.
Of course, I'm not saying that's what they're doing, just that it's plausible.
Just junk food for thought...
Your participation in our society has nullified your statements. Can you clarify what this means. Do you mean than anyone who lives in the US can't say anything about liberty?
---FourChannel---
Shouldn't that be full-tube?
>This extends the police's right to examine a crime scene, only.
It extends their power beyond examining a crime scene, permitting them to examine anything that might be a crime scene.
Unless the full-pipe records are held in escrow by someone independent of law enforcement, and unless courts enforce restrictions on what queries law enforcement can make of the escrow agent, then this is exactly the kind of driftnet surveillance that a free society won't allow.
>BS red tape
Nope: just a fundamental human right recognized for centuries. The US founding fathers didn't invent it, it was part of English legal thought already.
shoot, officer friendly, we can't get in that suspected drug dealer's house. okay, let's break into the neighbor's house so we can get a better view of the suspects home. nobody is home? no problem. lookie here, officer friendly... the neighbor's home has has this here new jazzy computer and 50" flat panel receipt - but it doesn't have sales tax charged for it...
let's submit it to the state tax office...
officer friendly, lookie here... those aren't pot plants in the suspect's house... those are roses.
time to go...
does the parent feel comfortable if it was his "fat pipe" neighborhood home that was illegally searched in order to spy on a suspected drug dealer that was growing roses w/o his permission?
oh, and this doesn't even consider the air craft carrier sized room for abuse...
By 2007 American standards, yes, probably Legal, given that we're "At War" and our Dear Leader exercises the right to violate ours at his slightest whim.
But by 1776 American standards? I'd say this bunch would be headed to the gallows for Treason.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
"How does it violate it?
What to be searched is described: All of the class C that the suspect can get a DHCP address from."
You left off the word PARTICULARLY.
particular (pr-tk'y-lr, p-tk'-) pronunciation
adj.
1. Of, belonging to, or associated with a specific person, group, thing, or category; not general or universal: has a particular preference for Chinese art.
2. Separate and distinct from others of the same group, category, or nature: made an exception in this particular case.
3. Worthy of note; exceptional: a piano performance of particular depth and fluidity.
4.
1. Of, relating to, or providing details: gave a particular description of the room.
2. Attentive to or concerned with details or niceties, often excessively so; meticulous or fussy.
5. Logic. Encompassing some but not all of the members of a class or group. Used of a proposition.
You cannot target a SPECIFIC PERSON by targeting 254 INDIVIDUAL PEOPLE.
The rights of the other 253 outweigh the hypothesized benefit to Law Enforcement.
Remember the 9th Amendment? We have a whole LOT of rights not enumerated in the Constitution, the 4th is just one example of how a specific subset are to be protected.
I'm in favor of the literal reading: Since the Constitution doesn't explicitly grant the power to tap our internet, they don't have it. This is the crux of the 10th Amendment, but it's in stark contrast to the way your Average Federal Employee sees it.
Of course, these egregious violations this will continue unabated, because obedience to The Law isn't for Government Employees, is it?
On that topic, when it comes to mistruths, 1/2 truths and outright fraud, they sent Martha Stewart to prison for less than Bush has done.
I suggest reading a copy of Elizabeth De La Vega's book, United States v. George W. Bush et al. for a further treatment of THAT topic. http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/1583227563
But I digress, and it's time for lunch...
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Isn't this analogous to searching every house in the neighbourhood because you don't know a suspect's address?
Suppose they do one of these "full pipe" searches and the investigator stumbles across evidence that another customer of the ISP is a child pornographer? Smokes dope? Is having an affair with his wife? Is a closeted gay co-worker?
Driftnet investigation is illegal for a very good reason. Only in the US would someone argue that it is in any way reasonable.
If you're doing something wrong, and they happen to catch you because they were looking for someone else -- then you shouldn't have been doing whatever it was you were doing.
That's fair.
It is only fair if I get to decide what is right or wrong.
I'll remind you that, for obvious reasons, the content of the collateral capture must remain confidential to everyone but the investigator (such as the one being cheated on by that good-for-nothing dope smoking hippie mentioned earlier).
If they have to comb through your internet traffic to get to the suspect's, so be it. If they come across your e-mail about purchasing some illegal, recreational vegetable matter in the process, they should be obligated to simply pass it by -- the warrant's not for you or anything related to your "hobby"; ergo they can't use your e-mail against you just because your personal communication happened to come between them and the suspect's.
I don't have the case law in front of me here, but...
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
I believe the current law is that if the police have a valid warrant to search the entire block to find the one house (unlikely hypothetical) and evidence for one crime, any other evidence they come across is legitimately admissible even if it is for a different crime. The logic employed says that the police went through the proper procedures of acquiring a warrant, and provided enough justification. They are then searching for evidence validly, it makes no sense to prevent them from using any and all evidence they find. The goal of excluding the evidence is to curb police misconduct, but there is no misconduct in this situation. If there is no misconduct, there is no reason to hamper police work. And if the police behavior does not change, the civil liberties of the innocent will still be violated, and there will be no extra protection.
I think the important point to note is that, protecting civil liberties is about protecting the innocent, not those guilty. But in order to protect the civil liberties of the innocent, improper police activities has to bear now fruit, so we give the guilty the right to exclude improperly acquired evidence.
Hooray for you - we all (apparently) need to be re-taught: Fascists Are Cowards. (or closet opportunists).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I have nothing to hide, but absolutely do NOT want my personal info being collected and sifted by the FBI.
Privacy is one of the founding principles on this country and I don't think the currect level of fear and paranoia should be used as a lever to lift this sort of activity into practice. To me this is no different than the FBI saying, "well, we don't know EXACTLY where this suspect lives, but we know it's in this neighborhood of 250 families, so we'll just search each and every house from top to bottom". Or, worse yet, "well, we know it's a white guy between 30 and 45 who lives in that neighborhood, so we'll just arrest and interrogate everyone of that description until something pops up".
Right now (well, for the time being, anyway) the police don't even have the right to search your person without probable cause, so why in God's name would I want them to be able to search through my digital info for no reason at all? I hate to sound trite, but give 'em an inch...
No it wouldn't. This would fall under the plain view exception. Even though the police were in the wrong place, they were excecuting a legal warrant and recognized the object of a crime in plain view. There are numerous cases out there where police enter the wrong house or apartment, find evidence of a crime in that wrong location and all the evidence seized is held valid.
As far as the second part of your question, this is where the courts are going to have to determine how far the FBI can go. I agree with your premise, is it lawful to look through innocent people's information to find the guilty party, but the same could be said of a cop looking through a dumpster.
Let's say that an officer believes that a particular store is dealing in drugs or stolen goods. Rather than get a search warrant, the officer goes to the communal dumpster and roots through, looking for evidence of wrongdoing from the store in question. Obviously, since it is a communal dumpster, the officer would be rooting through debris from people who are in no way involved in illegal activity to try and find evidence that one store is doing something illegal. However, courts have ruled that evidence found this way is legal as items in a dumpster or garbage can are considered abandoned by their owners with no expectation of privacy. After all, if you wanted to keep it private, you wouldn't have thrown it away, would you?
If a cop suspects that someone in your neighborhood is dealing cocaine, is it legal for them to search through every house, busting all unintended targets for any illegalities along the way?
Of course not. That is why they either try to find an informant or do their own undercover buying to narrow their search. Once they are sure they have things narrowed down, they apply for a warrant to search the one house.
Here is a bit more on search and seizure using warrants.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Because there are telecommunications privacy laws that protect us online. Hence the need for them to have a warrant for the original offenders.
What to be searched is described: All of the class C that the suspect can get a DHCP address from.
Why not just specify a Class A and be done with it?
It works the other way also.
If police arrive at a store to pick up a shoplifting kid and the cop happens to notice a guy walking around the store with a gun sticking out of his pocket then obviously the cop is going to do something about it and not just say "oh I wasn't looking for a gun robber so I'll just take this shop lifting kid and leave that guy to his business"
Except they aren't actually stopping you. Think of it more like watching the highway for a particular car that is known to be stolen.
I mean GP has made completely unfounded and inflexible statements about the importance of his liberty without acknowledging that by agreeing to be governed he has significantly diminished this "freedom." Critics place excessive weight to these abstract notions of liberty and freedom without ever explaining what they mean or detailing the necessary concessions required of civilized life. Yes, I know you don't want to be treated as a slave, whipped and beaten at the mercy of a tyrant. That's not what were talking about. Suicide bombers in American Cafes? Can we please be productive? Our government governs in a way that freedom will be exchanged with security, efficiency, and practicality among other things. Only a retreat into complete anarchy will dismiss this idea. It may be logical to reduce his definition to that outlined in the constitution, but this in no way diminishes the scope of the problem for me and perhaps makes it worse by requiring obtuse reinterpretations within nonexistent context. Our government is a complex beast, but it reduces to few available choices that are permeated many, many times. By eliminating one of these choices (with say an uncompromising appeal to freedom), we create an extremely unreasonable and ambiguous constraint. GPs sensational attempts at honorable and emotional rhetoric cloud any notion of reason in his argument. I fail to understand how such a rigid position could develop on any democratic principle, let alone some abstract which I feel he has not adequately defined.
In case anyone was interested about the garbage or communal dumpster issue, please see this link (federal) and this link (North Carolina).
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"If they are unable to isolate the perpetrator of a crime, then the next logical step would be to
imprison all the suspects."
I usually try to refrain from personal attacks, but you are a dope. There are plenty of rational arguments that can be made on both sides of this yet you chose a stupid one.
If you want an analogy, try "If you are unable to isolate the perpetrator of a crime, question and investigate all of those in the vicinity of the crime."
If someone ran out of a bank with 50,000 and into a crowd of 100 people, do you not think that the police should be able to question all 100 people? Search them?
For the record, I am not one for trading liberty for security. However, I do live in the real world and realize that the founders could not have envisioned every scenario. The general idea was to protect the populace from governmental corruption, not protect the criminals.
Nothing in this rule sounds excessive or unfair. I am tired of America needing to, not only take the moral highground over all of our enemies, but take it even further to the point where our enemies are treated better than our own.
Fergie (the ex-royal) was supposed to be in that building at that time.
For some reason she couldn't make it.
Odd that.
Your garbage-search analogy doesn't make much sense. Yes, police can search through garbage, but are we really "throwing away" our internet communications? I certainly have an expectation of privacy for my internet dealings, just as I have an expectation of privacy when I make phone calls, or mail a letter.
Well, because part of their job is to pussyfood around BS red tape. It goes by many names, but the most popular one is 'due process'.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
So far So Good.
If you're doing something wrong, and they happen to catch you because they were looking for someone else -- then you shouldn't have been doing whatever it was you were doing.
Wow, So if the cops are chasing a suspected murderer and pull over every blue car on the road, they can arrest every person "doing something Wrong"? O.K. Bad example you say. In my state they can search any damn car they want anyway (we give our permission by driving on the road and using the State Issued Driving License). How about same scenario but perp entered a subdivision on foot. Can they arrest everyone in the subdivision that is breakng any law? No they need a warrant to gather evidence of a crime, they are not allowed to do what you are suggesting (Search every house for a crime) for very good reasons thought out hundreds of years ago, thankfully by people with more wisdom than you.
What this means is that there are circumstances when ISPs cannot isolate IP addys or individuals, then it's ok to sniff the whole pipe. Why not? Why should the cops have to pussyfoot around BS red tape just to do their jobs?
Umm, Pussyfooting around the red tape is their damn job. It makes their job more difficult, maybe, but it also protects us from abuses of power. (Abuses of Power like this.
There is a great WhitePaper on this subject I believe the relevant portion goes some thing like: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
FTFA (From The Fourth Ammendment)
Ha, I cant believe I just called the Constitution a whitepaper, even in jest. Too many years in Engineering.
Really, Its people like you what cause unrest.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
But let's say, in arguendum, that this is fair. Isn't it also fair that the FBI has to pay compensation to EVERYONE who DIDN'T commit a crime for the invasion of privacy?
Surely THAT'S fair.
You seem to like throwing out links, so here's one for you:
S SC_CR_0455_0001_ZD.html
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/U
Still good law. Here's a taste: "Coolidge emphasized that the plain view doctrine applies only after a lawful search is in progress or the officer was otherwise legally present at the place of the seizure."
Hmm.. so if I know a criminial is hiding in a house somewhere in your neighborhood, it sounds like it would be ok with you if I kicked down all the doors of every house (including yours) and searched for him.
That is what I was getting at, not that they could go into the house next door, deliberately, and use any evidence found therein.
As far as the dumpster analogy, while we're not throwing away our pieces of electronic information, we are using a communal source.
Maybe a better analogy would be if police had a tip that a silver Honda Civic was going to be on a certain road and it would be carrying drugs. They also know that it would be driven by a white male.
They don't have a license plate so they have to stop every silver Honda Civic driven by a white guy that comes by until they, hopefully, find the right one.
In the current case, they are looking for one specific computer but can't narrow it down enough so they have to check everyone within a certain IP range until they find the right person.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Oops... meant to link to the main opinion, not the dissent. Oh well. The point is, plain view doesn't apply when the cops aren't supposed to be there in the first place.
I wish I had mod points to bump this up.
depicting The President Of The United States in an unflattering
manner?
We need more unflattering descriptions of the world's most dangerous criminal.
Thanks for your concern,
Kilgore Trout
If you're doing something wrong, and they happen to catch you because they were looking for someone else -- then you shouldn't have been doing whatever it was you were doing.
If they have a warrant to search your house for stolen merchandise and come across a few keys of cocaine, they can keep the coke but can't use it as evidence.
There is a local story today in the local paper about a coke bust gone bad. Not exactly the same, but similar. Two crooked cops gave a baggie to a judge and said it was proof of selling drugs and got a warrant. From TFA:
1. For the most part they have never followed the rules. They may be careful about what they do in public view, but in private if they have felt the need, they have always done what they felt was necessary - even if blatantly in violation of some do-gooder law. I used to make fireworks, and I can tell you as can any other pyro that my phone (and theirs) was tapped, that there have been unlawful entries into my house, etc., etc., etc., going back decades before 9/11. (I had a friend get really mad at me when we had a hooraahing conversation we felt very likely to be bugged and talked about the magical properties of resorcinal wood glue and a very expensive and brand new guart can of it went missing from his basement while he was out. I used to leave dust in my storeroom and other tell tales to check for entry, which occurred from time to time. Paranoid delusions don't make marks!)
2. The technology has existed from the mid-1960's to tap virtually any phone in the country from, say, the field office in Missoula, Montana. The technology is related to blue boxing, for those of you who remember the cheating the phone company of the 1970's. Not illegal from the phone companies point of view if you do it using a wide area telephone service line, where you have paid for the bandwidth, etc. This is why the White House went to a switchboard in 1967-8: to tap the oval office phone, you would have to tap 1500 or so lines, and this will attract attention (especially if there is a special watch for that kind of thing).
3. It is the stated policy of both the FBI and Homeland Security to look at the capability of an individual, and pay no attention whatsoever to motivation or likelyhood of their being a bad ass. You will be surveilled if you are capable of making trouble. The head of the FBI publicly reaffirmed this on camera within the last month or so - I didn't take note of the date. Meaning: if you have a tech degree and are thereby capable of making trouble, you will be watched as a matter of publicly announced government policy.
4. When I was in the military I had a high level clearance. I have had one (bullshit) traffic ticket in my life, and my only crime ever has been making pretty lights in a garage instead of a licensed fireworks facility. Yet I was subjected to objectively verifiable illegal surveillance for years before and after. Your name is on a roster of "usual suspects" and will stay there probably for life. This should give most tech college grads pause - if you have a tech degree, you are undoubtedly on a list of "usual suspects" and have been looked at from time to time over the years. (Back in the 1960's - before Viet Nam got to be a big deal even - in many states the FBI used to interview the school science teachers to find out who the bright kids were, "so they could track them so when they got a defense job it would be easier to give them a clearance.") Like I am confident is the case in my own situation, there is probably no way of following all of this, there is now and for decades has been so much, but if you are very observant there will probably be incontrovertable signs ("proof") on rare occasions, like the disappearance of that can of wood glue left in a definite location just after purchase and befofre leaving the house empty for a weekend - and which had been the subject of a staged phone call. (My first hint was back in the days of my mispent youth somebody solved a labor dispute in a nearby town with dynamite wired to a car starter and every pyro I knew suddenly got a reverberation and feedback on their telephone. An obvious old fashioned tap, not like the nice taps they have everywhere today.)
5. Most FBI agents notes are kept as personal files, and are not discoverable under FOIA, etc., because of this legal nicety - even if typed up by an FBI secretary and indexed for the agency, so if a message came through that they needed info on Billy Bad the secretary could tell the agent that he had info indexed on Billy Bad and it was wanted by someone somewhere. I was told this from
All the cops have is an ip range. No other information. Wouldn't a more fitting analogy be that the cops get a tip that a car filled with drugs would be on a certain 5-lane highway (no other information)? They then proceed to start searching every car that passes, hoping to find the one with drugs.
If the FBI has a tap on your neighbor's phone, they can't tap your phone and listen to your conversations too just because they happen to be in the neighborhood.
But if your neighbor's phone was multiplexed with yours in such a way that it was not possible to tap one without tapping the other they would be permitted to tap both. If it is not possible for them to monitor the specific IP without monitoring an entire subnet (which seems odd to me unless the tap was on something other then ethernet) then they court may allow the later. Encryption like arms should be a great equalizer here.
One thing I have not seen mentioned here is that there are limits to how they may search an area. If they have a road block setup to search vehicles for a fugitive, they may not indiscriminately search containers like glove boxes coolers that are plainly too small to hold the fugitive. Such searches unless justified outside of the search warrant would be invalid.
No they aren't overstepping the warrant.
...By a judge confirmed by Sen Ted-The-Truck
Not when it's issued to search the bearer of an alias 127.0.0.1
What the system needs is oversight committees that are not made up of, or influenced by, judges and lawyers. Then reasonable committees could say "Yes, the police did a bad thing in obtaining this evidence, but hey they got the right guy!", so be quiet. Or "Hey the police did something bad here and they need to go to jail!". If the Police had this type of consequence, then they be less likely to abuse powerful investigative powers and the people could rest easier in giving them that power. It's really all about balancing power. Something sadly lacking in this society today.
This case, while a plain view case, is completely different than police relying on a warrant but being in the wrong place and seeing evidence of a crime. To use your previous example, if the wrong address was put on a warrant, and the police relied on that information, then any evidence of a crime at that wrong address could be used. That would (or should) fall under the good faith exception.
In the case you sited, the cop admitted he only entered the apartment to confirm what he saw through the window, not to accompany the person to get identification or for any other reason. Therefore, he had no reason to be where he was to more cloesly verify what he saw through the window.
The general (very general) rule is that so long as police rely on what they perceive to be a valid warrant, even if the warrant is found to be defective after the fact, evidence found at the location will be held as valid.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
You left off the word PARTICULARLY.
Because it was unnecessary. They are describing the smallest and most "particular" specifiable area they know contains the suspect. If a warrant were to be ordered to nab me at work, it would include the capability of examining the entire area, annoying as many people as looking in a class C for a single user, in order to get me or determine I was not on the premises. If I had a note on my desk, "gone to the bathroom" do you think that the police wouldn't be allowed to look for me there because my desk is the only place they could go without disturbing others? Well, hell. We might as well just make it illegal for police to leave the station. All criminals, please turn yourselves in.
Getting something to the most granular they can with the information provided, not being invasive at all, and having a specific person they are looking for does fit any reasonable definition of "particular" I can think of, including the one you posted.
Learn to love Alaska
If you're doing something wrong, and they happen to catch you because they were looking for someone else -- then you shouldn't have been doing whatever it was you were doing.
If I'm doing something wrong and they catch me with one of these broad warrants, then too bad. We have rules against open ended warrants for a reason - if you can't limit what you're searching, then you had damn well better limit what can be done with what you find.
What this means is that there are circumstances when ISPs cannot isolate IP addys or individuals, then it's ok to sniff the whole pipe. Why not? Why should the cops have to pussyfoot around BS red tape just to do their jobs?
Because the FBI abused the hell out of this in the 50s, to the extent taht they had to wait for Hoover to die, and the British did even worse things in the 18th century. Watch for cases where they are 'unable to isolate an individual' to increase.
then we have to apply a sober and proportionate response to that kind of human rights abuse.
Proportionate in this case would be a rubber hose, right?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I mean GP has made completely unfounded and inflexible statements about the importance of his liberty without acknowledging that by agreeing to be governed he has significantly diminished this "freedom."
Well of course he's inflexible - he's already been denied a lot of his rights, so why would he compromise further? Come back when the US AG isn't trying to kill Habeaus corpus.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Depends on what the warrant covers in terms of search area. It would probably cover the whole house, so you'd be screwed (use the back yard for bodies). Whole pipe searches are really broad, so I'd argue that they shouldn't be able to use any side evidence, as the warrant is otherwise unlimited.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Just to be clear: cops stake out a house (201 Jackson Street), and have probable cause to believe that drugs are being sold on the premises. They fill out an affidavit, get a warrant, etc. By mistake the officer writes in 205 Jackson Street and not 201. The police bust down the door of 205 Jackson street, search the whole house, and find a small amount of cocaine in the bathroom. Are you saying that the cocaine would be admissible? This does not fall under the good faith doctrine! The officer did not in good faith believe that drugs were at 205 Jackson Street.
The problem I have with this line of thinking is that, since they're already listening in on a suspected criminal, they might as well scope out everyone on the pipe. How likely is it that there is at least one suspected criminal for each ISP ? Pay attention to the word "suspected". There "might" be a bad guy on the network, and as networks grow larger and larger, the probability of it harboring a criminal stretches toward certainty.
I'm usually not one to jump on conspiracy theories, but this opens one door that makes me very uneasy. Right now, they will use it properly, but as time goes by and the novelty wears off, the officials will request more and more power in the name of justics... eventually we will be monitored 24/7. This ain't Orwell or Clarke, this is human nature at its finest. We are disgusting, self-fearing power mongers; nothing more, nothing less.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
>> You left off the word PARTICULARLY.
"Because it was unnecessary. They are describing the smallest and most "particular" specifiable area they know contains the suspect. If a warrant were to be ordered to nab me at work, it would include the capability of examining the entire area"
I think you are confusing an ARREST WARRANT with a SEARCH WARRANT.
That said, My person, papers and communications are protected in exactly that case. They may have a warrant to search YOU and YOUR SHIT ( Or, if you are the employer I suspect the offices ) , but if they wanna touch ME or MY SHIT, they better have a warrant NAMING ME. Otherwise isn't it technically called a "Fishing Expedition"?
"Getting something to the most granular they can with the information provided, not being invasive at all, and having a specific person they are looking for does fit any reasonable definition of "particular" I can think of, including the one you posted."
If the information provided isn't granular enough to protect EVERYONE ELSE but the subject of the search warrant, it's not enough to get a proper warrant in the first place.
Freedom and Liberty are the DEFAULT options in a "Free Country". The Price of Freedom and Liberty is accepting the risk of Other People's Freedom and Liberty.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Really the bigger issue here - if some kook or cop digs in your trash or breaks into your house, you usually have some idea that your privacy was breached in some manner.
If some leet hacker or fbi digs into your traffic and looks at those awful websites you've visited while they were looking for the carding suspect, then you have a 99% chance of having not a clue that they were there.
I think this at least exposes the glaringly obvious problem that we have no idea who is looking at our info that gets logged on our ISP's. They could take more steps to show you who requested the info, but I doubt that they care about customer service here when they find it easier to avoid harassment from police and just give it up whenever they knock, warrant or not.
But they are allowed to perform surveillance on the whole apartment complex.
"If you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide, comrade...?"
Uhh, examining every packet of my internet traffic while a warrant only covers the guy down the street is in no way "plain view". There would need to be extensive analysis that's well outside of the purpose of the original investigation. That's kind of the point of requiring a warrant to view traffic. Anything they get that's not related to the person on the warrant shouldn't be looked at, and if it is, it should be tossed out. No, it's not perfect that some particularly nasty crimes might go unpunished, but if you want 100% punishment of crime, go live in a totalitarian state.
"Agreeing" to be governed?
You make it sound like he really has a choice. AFAIK all of the land on earth upon which one could sustain themselves has been claimed by one government or another. There are arguably a few places you could go where the government claiming the land would be too busy to come after you if you didn't make too much noise, but that's a big if. The only other option is to drop off the scope completely: Become homeless, have no job, and beg. That's even more of a non-option.
It is in the interests of governments across the world to ensure that there aren't any places for people to go do their own thing. If you don't believe this, please explain why there are dozens of uninhabited, almost completely barren Pacific islands that are claimed by the US alone.
Fill in your four or five-letter word of wisdom here _ _ _ _ _.
Fruit of the poisoned tree - wouldn't it suck to find all those bodies and then have them tossed as evidence because you exceeded your warrant?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
They don't have a license plate so they have to stop every silver Honda Civic driven by a white guy that comes by until they, hopefully, find the right one.
That's thousands of cars - no judge in their right mind would allow that.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Our "agreeing to be governed" (as you put it) is something that we renew on a continual basis. This is why we have elections. The compact that Americans have with their government comes from one direction: us to them. We give the government the right to govern, the government does not grant us rights.
And when I mentioned suicide bombers in American cafe's it's only because that's the rhetoric that's spewed nightly by the right-wing media. See, if we don't make war in Iraq, the terrorists are going to come here, right?
Well, I don't believe it either. But you can't support the notion when Michael Savage says it but then deny it when I use it to make my point. The reason I'm not afraid of being bombed while I'm drinking my coffee is because "it's almost certainly not going to happen", and in fact, on the ranking of risk in my life, terrorism is rather way down the list.
This is why I'm trying to exhort those Americans who have been seemingly scared witless by the current Administration (remember "Orange Alert"?) and the captive media who serve the Administration. "Don't be afraid" I am trying to tell them. The threat is not worth the loss of what has made America such a special place.
And regarding what you call my "attempts and honorable and emotional rhetoric", I will not apologize for my honor or my emotion.
And if you think the only type of tyranny is where you get "treated as a slave, whipped and beaten", I suggest you pick up a good history of the 20th century.
You are welcome on my lawn.
ip.src=209.56.124.23 || ip.dst=209.56.124.23
Isn't that supposed to be 'full tube'?
"Agree" yes. I never said it was easy to avoid. Homeless dirty bum, revolutionary, it doesn't matter. And there are plenty of places on earth you can live completely disentangled from the government, or any human for that matter. Perhaps not legitimately, but I would never expect a man of such uncompromising principles to be disturbed about breaking laws.
I'm not convinced of this. The shackles & chains have been in place a long awhile. It will take significant effort (beyond democratic) to alter the way we are governed. And regarding what you call my "attempts and honorable and emotional rhetoric", I will not apologize for my honor or my emotion.
Naturally. I would never be foolish enough to request or expect this. And if you think the only type of tyranny is where you get "treated as a slave, whipped and beaten", I suggest you pick up a good history of the 20th century.
These were simply the allusions I developed from your diatribe. You sound like a history book, the kind adults force upon children when it's dangerous to endorse children's critical thinking. The US has never been a shining "beacon of freedom." Using terms like this give me significant pause to think about your grip on reality. We were the natural evolution of western thinking society. We have at certain times had good sense, other times had good leaders, and quite frankly gathered our fair share of good fortune. I'm glad there are people with the beliefs you have as a balancing act, but I wish these beliefs were presented within the framework we have to live in. That is within the scope of a democratic government, containing uncertainties, and entailing all the competing beliefs about life, liberty, and happiness.
I'm not a centrist, but I do strive to be objective. I don't think I/we have anything to gain sensationalizing things to the effect of black & white. sic, the snide remarks
Who is overseeing Accountability for Misuse???
That is all you need to ask. If its anyone in the current Justice Administration, good Fucking luck with your privacy...
use one http://www.mysecureisp.com/
Unlawful, most likely. Unprincipled, absolutely. Unconstitutional, no.
"... particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." If that doesn't mean "no generalized snooping", fuck me and fuck you. Asshole.
I don't know how many of these are urban legends, but I do know of one that happened to my daughter and son-in-law.
Around three or so in the morning, there was a huge crash that woke them up. Some drunken clown had crashed his truck into their house and the one next door, not to mention totaling the SUV in the driveway. Then he backed up and took off. A neighbor who was just arriving home followed the clown across the SF Bay bridge until he could attract some cops in Berkeley.
It turned out not to have been necessary to follow the guy. The impact knocked out a window on the truck's camper shell. The window was left lying on the ground at the scene, along with the "For Sale" sign with the clown's phone number on it.
And if you happen to be driving by with an unpaid parking ticket, in handcuffs you go. If the warrant doesn't cover the traffic, it's inadmissible as evidence.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
You might want to re-read the parent's post again, and take the sentence "After all if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have to worry" in context. He was commenting on the ridiculousness of that belief, not trying to promote it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The question being asked is whether they have a right to search inside your home in the first place. I think that the arguments on both sides will reduce this issue to a case by case consideration. You cannot blanket-judge these situations, whether in your analogies to the physical or in the hi-tech realm. The judges need to be aware of what is happening every time.
What to be searched is described: All of the class C that the suspect can get a DHCP address from.
So does "all of the internet". Is that OK with you? "... all of planet earth and its moon." Still OK wih you?
Obviously you're the same kind of fucking moron as those who passed the goddamned Sonny Boner (now mercifully dead, so he can't do any further harm) copyright extension law. The bastards stood there with their bare, fat faces hanging out and said, Well, author's lifetime plus 70 years is a limit, is it not?"
Yeah. And four million years is a limit, too, is it not? Fucking meretricious pieces of shit.
If the bank robber lives with you, the cops would probably assume that he did the serial killing. After all, no one ever suspected that you were a serial killer. Bank robbers are criminals--who knows what they're capable of? ;)
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
How many IPs are in a full pipe?
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
Aren't there states where it's legal to walk around with a gun sticking out of your pocket?
We're talking about America, which has the right to bear arms, more or less. The cops couldn't bust a fella who was just walking around with a gun for planning a robbery. They could bust him for violating concealed-carry in some states, or for carrying a gun in a no-gun zone in some places, but that would be about it.
American cops should not arrest people for armed robbery until there actually is an armed robbery. They should only arrest someone for attempted armed robbery if he actually attempts it. In America, walking around with a gun isn't in itself evidence of criminal activity.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
How much water in a hose?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
There's one helluva big difference between tripping over a dead body in the middle of an empty room and sorting through ALL of the data that was just DOWNLOADED or DIRECTLY MONITORED AND CAPTURED (either being a proactive, intrusive action, requiring an internet hookup and special software, as well as datamining software and some VERY large storage systems - a separate SET of actions) to FIND wrongdoing that is NOT apparent to anyone who is NOT directly jacked into the internet. As such, searches of that type would, Constitutionally, require a warrant.
Here's why as I see it:
Because the internet is a datacommunications format and NOT a physical medium, such as a play, or a shooting that takes place in a restaurant, plain sight search, in this instance, simply does NOT apply, especially as the wrongdoing would NOT have been found EXCEPT by direct, intrusive monitoring of an ENTIRE ISP's pipe AND the use of datamining software to sort through ALL of the signals going through that pipe AFTER that data had been STORED on some sort of stroage medium, like a hard drive or tape.
Your analogy would be like someone invoking a plain sight search on a telephone trunk line. Which is impossible to do without the use of specialized equipment and hookups.
Hence, the plain sight exemption would not, nor should it, apply.
At least, that's how I would argue it, initially, before turning it over to a group of seriously dedicated attorneys...
This "full-pipe" setup is more like an apartment building search. OK, you have 123 Fake street with apartment A, B, and C. The bank robber is in A, the murderer & dead body is in B. C is some random dude's apartment. There's a directory at the building listing name and apartment, but mail goes to "(person's name) 123 Fake Street" without apartment listed, so the police have a name, but don't know what apartment the suspect is in until they're at the building. Full-pipe search with safeguards is like showing up, reading the directory, and searching A. No body found unless it's stinky. Full-pipe search without safeguards is like the cops saying "what the hell, we're here, lets search the entire building". They find the body in B, and get sued by C since they illegally searched his place for no reason.
As a non-analogy, proper safeguards for full-pipe would be capturing the data, using a mechanism to determine which ip the warrant target was using (maybe software would troll through e-mail headers, to see what ip the target's e-mail is being sent from/to..) and then the feds look through that ip addresses traffic only.. preferably with further filtering to protect confidentiality of communications unrelated to the crime being investigated. Without safeguards, the feds full-pipe some fat pipe, and start doing various word searches through the entire pipe's traffic.. this subverts the point of having warrants and is unconstitutional.
<quote>No, it's not. It's called the plain view exception</quote>
<b>if it was in "plain view" then they wouldn't need the "full pipe" exception</b>, supposedly necessary "In situations where isolating a specific IP address for a suspect is not possible"
When the police shot and injured Mohammed Abdul Kahar in Forest Gate (because they mistakenly thought he was a suicide bomber and raided his house) they most definitely announced that they had found child porn in the house when they searched it, and would be charging him with possession.
Although he wasn't finally charged with anything, this was more to do with not further inflaming public opinion, than the fact that they couldn't use the alleged child porn in evidence.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.
You say "It will take significant effort (beyond democratic) to alter the way we are governed."
Well, I'm game.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Funnily enough, no, AP bullets are not illegal to own. Just illegal to manufacture by your average Joe. And illegal to import, IIRC. And maybe illegal for a manufacturer to sell to civvies. Of course, it's a lot more complicated than that -- the definition of AP is enough to make a lot of people question what the law does/doesn't cover. It's complicated, but to the best of my knowledge, no, it isn't illegal to simply possess AP ammo.
Of course, I don't work for the BATFE, and this post is hardly long enough to contain all the details anyway. My real point is to go look at the laws. You'll be surprised what is legal, and what silly things aren't.
Fill in your four or five-letter word of wisdom here _ _ _ _ _.