Slashdot Mirror
TSA Withdraws Subpoenas Against Bloggers
wwphx writes "In the wake of public outcry against the Transportation Security Administration for serving civil subpoenas on two bloggers, the government agency has canceled the legal action and apologized for the strong-arm tactics agents used."
"We didn't realize our dick move would receive so much public attention."
Look here at my left hand, which is withdrawing the subpoenas everyone is upset about.
Over here, is my right hand, doing nothing at all (except issuing new ones to other bloggers).
Cooperate - and get two hours of grilling and a borked laptop. And the half-assed apology.
Tell the feds to go get a clue about procedure and return with a warrant - get the half-assed apology and keep your electronics in working order.
I can assure you, the best way to get rid of dragons is to have one of your own.
Will they also refrain from doing this kind of thing next time, or do so only if the victim doesn't keep quiet?
In any case, this blogger's refusal to keep quiet is inspiring.
Has there been an offer of compensation? Has anyone been fired?
If not, then it's not an apology, it's just regret at being caught.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
What, trust them to give him a replacement computer? Under the circumstances I'd request the CASH and buy my own laptop.
If it's a MacBook, then there's a little flap at the end of the audio jack. Behind that flap is an LED that is used to transmit SPDIF audio over fiber. (The Apple SPDIF adapter is longer than a standard audio jack, and pushes past the jack to the LED).
If you are exceptionally violent with the machine, I suppose it's possible to damage or dislodge the flap, which would cause red light to shine out the audio jack whenever the sound card is on. Between this, a broken keyboard, and a "ton of bad sectors," it sounds like they took the Israeli approach to handling people it thinks don't agree with its tactics. Except the TSA managed to actually destroy data.
As much as the conspiracy theorist in me would like to believe they added spying devices to the computer, chances are they just screwed up the hard drive in shipping. Of course either way it's unacceptable and they owe him the value of his time, fixing the thing, and lost data.
yeah, buddy.
Welcome to the age of social media on the internet, where not only does stuff *not* stay secret for long, it spreads faster and farther than ever before, and to people who otherwise wouldn't give a fit because a friend or family member they care about *does*.
This is the magic of still living in a (semi) free society.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
Hopefully the first in a long line of realizations that when you do something stupid publicly, you can't harass or sue someone for pointing that out.
Notice the guy who caved in to their threats ends up out a laptop.
The guy who didn't cave and refused to bend over still has his working computer hardware.
As always "never talk to the police" wins again. Even when you have done *nothing* wrong (and not just in the domain they are telling you they care about, across all domains) there are only two things you should say to the police:
1. No you may not search that/open that/have that/come inside.
2. I'm not saying anything without my lawyer present.
TSA = Thugs Standing Around
"We didn't realize our dick move would receive so much public attention."
This is AFTER they took the guy's laptop, imaged it and returned it to him with a corrupted disk, reportedly.. of course they don't need the subpoenas anymore.
then they should be fired for being idiots since
1 removing the hard drive is documented online
2 only a true idiot would try to get a FORENSICS QUALITY image from a system without some sort of write blocking inplace
3 a binary dump of the drive does not care about the disc format
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge