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FBI Accidentally Received Unauthorized E-Mail Access
AmishElvis writes "The New York Times reports that 'glitch' gave the F.B.I. access to the e-mail messages from an entire computer network. A hundred or more accounts may have been accessed, rather than 'the lone e-mail address' that was approved by a secret intelligence court as part of a national security investigation. The episode was disclosed as part of a new batch of internal documents that the F.B.I. turned over to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit the group has brought."
Can any kind government access be considered unauthorized anymore? There have been so many executive orders, bending of laws, etc. that just about every form of government access to information is authorized by something.
Anybody want my mod points?
Still, it's reassuring to know that cockup still beats conspiracy, given enough time and sufficient monkeys.
Interesting definitions. To me chatting up a 13 year old who turns out to be an FBI agent is a "apparent miscommunication". Spying on the wrong people in violation of a subpoena (I assume a judge ordered this) is not "miscommunication" if it also "technical glitch". It can be one or the other, but not likely both. Somebody dropped the ball. Yes, it is a big deal.
Imagine if a sysadmin "accidently" rerouted the companies email to their competitors (which might even be legal, if stupid)... Would the FBI accept an "opps" excuse from our afore mentioned "child predator"? I think not.
When I read this, I wasn't wondering how that happened, or what the nature of the "glitch" was, or how many accounts were accessed. What I was wondering is WHY THE FUCK DOES THE UNITED STATES HAVE A SECRET COURT OF ANY KIND?!?!. Yeah yeah, to protect the children, save the whales, stop the terrorists, keep you safe, "our intentions are pure and we're really a bunch of big-hearted individuals who care about your well-being" etc... I still don't know what is wrong with the assholes who actually believe this shit.
And hell, I want to believe we have a good, honest government. The fact is, we don't. I don't understand what being in this level of denial is supposed to do to remedy the situation. There is a very good reason why the founding fathers intended for most of our interaction with government to come from the local and state level. The only thing the federal government can do that the state & local governments cannot do is resolve disputes between states, conduct foreign policy, regulate interstate trade, oh and it can slowly become a dictatorship too. Speaking of remedies, I'm betting that nothing will happen either to the FBI as an organization or to the individuals who made this "mistake", that at most they will receive a slap-on-the-wrist.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
The writer of this article, Eric Lichtblau, won a shared Pulitzer Prize for his work in exposing the illegal warrantless wiretapping program, authorized by the government and championed by the White House after 9/11. In fact, it was in existence even before 9/11, but that's another story entirely.
This program supposedly expired just yesterday when congress let the clock run out on its dependent legislation. The problem here, clearly, is that it doesn't matter if this program is never renewed; overproduction of data under FISA will still happen all the time. That's the entire point of this article. There are no checks and balances. There is no accountability. There is NOTHING. Total secrecy and legal immunity are all but guaranteed for the perpetrators. Period.
"The illegal we can do right now; the unconstitutional will take a little longer." --Henry Kissinger
The truth is that FBI agents are actually very, very busy people. They are often working a bunch of cases at once and they don't have enough time to go on illegal fishing expeditions that wouldn't be admissible in court anyway. It is almost certain that the FBI agents not only didn't read the email they weren't looking for, but actively stopped the problem and got rid of the excess because sifting through a mountain of crap would only hinder their investigation. In either case, the FBI did report the issue to both the court AND their executive oversight (that would be 2 branches of government).
You can wear your tinfoil hat if you want, but it really seems to me that the FBI didn't ask for it, didn't want it, stopped it when they noticed it, and reported the issue to the proper oversight authorities. I'm just not seeing a scandal here.
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It's not blind acceptance if you have evidence. To believe the FBI is lying about this, you have to also believe that they have voluntarily come clean about a situation where they could have just hidden all the facts by merely never bringing them up. They would have to be both honest and exceptionally punctilious, doing their full duty in accordance with the law, when it comes to some points we actually know, and dishonest only on one of the points we can't directly verify.
Yes, that's still possible, but since it leads to very complex plots that seem likely to unravel at the slightest glitch, or otherwise don't usually make a lot of sense, most of us figure the facts we observe support the FBI having played fair with the law, at least in this case. We extend them a certain amount of trust, because simply shutting up about the whole thing is a strategy a criminal organization would so likely use in a case such as this. That's not necessarily unlimited trust, but the action itself is definitely reasoned, not blind.
If I see somebody wearing an orange shirt and carrying a lit flashlight, and he claims he wasn't out to sneak around in the dark, I'm not blindly accepting anything to believe him.
Who is John Cabal?
...why do people still send sensitive email unencrypted?
This doesn't appear to be a FISA letter, so the FBI didn't "tell" the ISP to do anything the court hadn't authorized. Ok, sue the ISP. For all the harm it did you. The FBI got some records it didn't request in a lawful court order and it told the organization it requested the records from. The FBI may or may not have read every single one of the emails that it got unlawfully, but until they try to prosecute someone on those records it is a non-event. There is no story here. I have been reading /. for the last several years and finally decided to register. I really like the tech articles, but the whole tin-foil thing just has to go away.