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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."
Since their new guideline was published everyone is going to know about these changes in security. If only these bloggers would have kept quiet, the only ones who would know would be the millions who go through the airports. Someone has to pay for a lapse in secrecy of this magnitude!
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.
. . . but someone should have to fall on his or her sword over this. If those field agents acted on their own, it would be they; if not, then whoever they worked for that authorized the tactics should be holding a sign saying "WILL WAND YOUR CROTCH FOR FOOD."
Damn, I bet his machine is full of spying devices, including one where the audio card used to be.
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."
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.
in my mind is: Did they stop legal action against him because they FOUND the source of the leak?
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
It sounds like they knew they wouldn't find anything, so a few "accidental" drops to the laptop was their preferred interrogation method. While I do find this works sometimes on PC's, it rarely works on a laptop.
It sounds like they were looking to punish him for posting it, rather than actually looking for information.
At one company I worked for, we received a few computers from Europe. They had been shipped separately, just because that's how they arrived for shipment. One showed up at our office in pieces. The pieces appeared ok, but not a single part worked. I'm pretty sure they thought we were smuggling something inside the computer. Come on, was it necessary to remove and manhandle the motherboard, just to see that it didn't contain any drugs? We didn't get an apology, nor reimbursement for it. the US Customs stance was, "That's the way we got it, when we inspected it.". Ya, right.
Consistency is not in their methodology though. We shipped a lot of equipment around to various locations. Most got there fine. The occasional piece was mishandled by the shipping companies. Some were held for weeks by customs. It makes it hard to work, when you ship say 20 pieces, and only 15 show up on time.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
"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.
As I mentioned yesterday. the subpoena probably wasn't valid. Once one of the recipients announced he would challenge it in court, the TSA probably withdrew it because they were going to look even dumber when a Federal judge threw it out.
There are some real questions about a law enforcement organization having administrative subpoena power. In criminal investigations, subpoenas should come from a judge. Congress has repeatedly refused FBI requests for that power. I don't think that Homeland Security has it, either. But regulatory agencies with narrow remits often have it, so they can demand records relevant to whatever they regulate. The Department of Transportation had it for use in safety investigations and such. Typically they'd be asking for maintenance records.
When Homeland Security picked up the Transportation Safety Agency from the Department of Transportation, they got DoT's administrative subpoena authority in the transfer. That's what Homeland Security was trying to use here. That clearly went beyond Congressional intent. And in any case, the subpoena hadn't been approved by one of the short list of people authorized to approve it.