Slashdot Mirror
FBI's Hacks Don't Comply With Legal Safeguards
An anonymous reader writes: The FBI hacks computers. Specifics are scarce, and only a trickle of news has emerged from court filings and FOIA responses. But we know it happens. In a new law review article, a Stanford Ph.D. candidate and privacy expert pulls together what's been disclosed, and then matches it against established law. The results sure aren't pretty. FBI agents deceive judges, ignore time limits, don't tell computer owners after they've been hacked, and don't get 'super-warrants' for webcam snooping. Whatever you think of law enforcement hacking, it probably shouldn't be this lawless.
Is there anyone in the world who does not believe the American CIA/FBI/NSA don't spy on whoever they want without regard to the legal process? When you have that kind of power and secrecy, you use it. And you don't let some pesky 200+ year old document stop you. Warrants are a mere formality; by the time they get around to getting one they already have the info they want. All the warrant is for is to make it legally admissible in court.
so they know about all my midget porn?
Only that they have those in power behind them. When law enforcement is not bound by law anymore, that is a police state, the precursor to a totalitarian state. The signs are well-known from past occurrences, as is the further story: Unless constrained very tightly by the law again, these people will eventually cause a total catastrophe. Checks and balances are not fluff, they are essential to keep the likes of these people in check.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Haven't we been reading about this for a few years now? LEO's not following the law when it comes to wiretaps and obtaining information from companies about customers they believe are connected to crimes they are investigating.
There's one thing missing in all these stories -- people at those agencies being held responsible for their actions.
The FBI doesn't give a shit about the law or the rules. Who's going to stop them?
You can't sue, because you can't prove you have standing. They use their illicitly gathered evidence to parallel-construct a case without ever revealing whatever hacks they used. They classify volumes of information to hide evidence of their own wrongdoing. They use secret tools like stingrays to gather secret evidence which they attempt to present in secret, sealed and off the record. And in the event that an "activist judge" calls them on it, they withdraw the evidence so as not to have it revealed, and then re-file charges a month later to go shopping for a different judge.
The police state is strong in America. Hoover is jizzing in his grave, I'm sure.
Our law enforcement in this country has become such a joke it almost isn't worth mentioning. I would not trust them to protect me. I would not trust them to save me. I would not trust them to do what is right. I would not report anyone to them out of fear that I would also get taken down also due to their incompetence. I wonder if FBI agents and the rest lie to their families about what they do for a living because they don't want to let their moms and dads down.
Behold this should come as no surprise. If the FBI gets away with this much, how much do you think the NSA is doing that they should not be?
Behold I tell you the ability to do this is to take away the necessary protection of the right to examine the evidence against you in court. With oversight this bad, who can say they are not making it up? "The government would never do that." Oh yes they would. It's been done. Look and see. Prosecution misconduct is a thing.
I wonder, if they hack someone's laptop, and one of their kids gets undressed in front of the webcam, does that legally count as creating child porn?
If they hack someone's computer and exceed their authority in doing so, are they protected from prosecution for creating child porn? No member of the public would be protected.
Remember FBI's cointelpro
Again we look the other way. We get the society we deserve, for now and the future
(.)-(.)
With the NSA and other nations providing total network access its hard to then undo the vast parallel construction effort with local malware on one computer to build a multi year case.
The problem for the use of digital and voice product in court is the mentioned "reasonable ex post notice to a computer’s owner" in an open court.
Soon the entire US judicial system and the press would be aware of methods, law enforcement friendly US developed operating systems and antivirus issues, malware providers and their experts in open court testimony.
Everyone of interest would quickly understand privacy and anonymity cannot be found on any US network or device designed or sold that connects to a US network.
Over the years many efforts have been made to support law enforcements own understanding that some networks and phones are 'safe'.
Even local, state and low level federal officials then understand and help propagate the no trapdoor, back door cover stories they saw in a local tech demo
The cover story that some brands, generations or easy to buy products are totally secure is often positioned as random talking points in the national media and on computer related sites.
The UK had many issues with advance phone tracking methods leaking from the court system in the 1970-80's as computer, phone and cell phone technology was been made public.
The US wanted to ensure the same would never happen with its cell phone tracking so it uses IMSI-catchers and light aircraft with dirtbox like units well outside the US court system. Every wifi, cell device and other signals over vast areas per year.
Onion router like networks face the same constant mapping and software/network OS layer issues.
Collect it all is the new cheap, easy way to map entire local communities every year. The real magic is keeping methods away from courts, the press, citizen journalism with walk in FOIA requests at a city or state level or other legal teams.
The hardware paper trail still exists in some city and regional bureaucracies just waiting for a correctly worded in person FOIA request.
The UK was much smarter as it centralized its expert help to law enforcement well beyond the courts, press.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Law enforcement can muse many times of malware which are bad programs that do things on people computers that they do not want or that they do not know about by stealth technologies often new and cutting edge but often not legitimate or accepted by most people who are not involved in its development or use since the users don't know they are using it or having it be running on personal or even the work computers such as that type of computer used in corporate or small business environments which do not always use the latest operating systems or technologies.
I find it odd that we're supposed to follow the rule of law, yet the very ones in charge of enforcing those laws seem to have no qualms at all about breaking them whenever it suits their needs. All under the guise of "protecting" us from $evilplot of course. :|
In the end, Orwell was right I guess. Some animals are more equal than others.
1. X is always right
2. if X is doing something illegal look at number 1 and change laws accordingly
Replace X with three letters.
This is the Wild West times for FBI cyber snoops, there are no real laws defining their limitations so they abuse every rule they can.
This won't go on for too long but a lot of people in power will have to be screwed before anything of significance happens.
In the old days they obfuscated their actions through 'parallel construction'.
The government should set an example, not violate the rights of Americans. What is worse is that the act involves tampering with evidence. Any evidence obtained thereafter should be thrown out. The government should never be able to grant a warrant to tamper with evidence, but that's exactly what the person who wrote this paper is suggesting. In fact the solution to one of the problems of failing to leave notice that a computer has been hacked (which is something that is required by law in a traditional non-computer situation where a warranty has been issued) is to change a users desktop background. YOU ARE MODIFYING CONTENTS ON THE DISK! It's not even just something that is being done in memory. Not that I think it makes any difference. Changing the contents of memory is too a violation in that it results in a change in evidence.
If you think I'm being paranoid one only needs to look at the evidence being used to convict people. Forensics "experts" are pulling strings out of corrupt data and turning a person who searches for a how to kill xyz into "the defendant searched for information on how to kill people" then pointing to the fact they searched for "how to kill", but what is missing, because of corruption is that it was the title of a fictional book. What is worse is that in many cases the actual defendant may not have even been the one who conducted that search and despite time stamps there is no sure way to know when that search was conducted.
Isn't FBI's primary method of hacking to browse the suspect's Facebook? (e.g. how they got the king pin of Silk Road)
Also, 99% of data on my computer comes from the internet. The other 1% I upload to Facebook.
r de haxx0rz nao
Giving it a fancy name like 'parallel construction' is to conceal its nature. That is perjury, that is falsification of evidence, an officer goes into court and lies about the evidence trail, in front of a judge and denies the defense the chance to cross examine the TRUE evidence trail.
Quit calling it "parallel construction" can call it what it is and that's typically falsification of evidence (a police officer lies about "bad driving" or whatever reason he invented to justify a stop), followed by perjury to back that lie.
And it gives the spooks leverage over the police too, they know the police officer lied, they know the crime that was committed, so don't expect the police force to police the military spooks. General Alexander lied to Congress and they practically wiped his ass they were so afraid of him.
Thanks god for Snowden, because Alexander was doing a tour like he was planning a Presidential bid. Snowdens revelations squashed all that. We'd have a Putin figure running for president with access to a file on his opponents. Snowden put a stop to that.
Just as we get to see for us plebs. Some people are unfit for handling certain responsibilities, so it gets taken away. From chemicals to electronic devices to fireworks and even certain kinds of ammunition and weapons. Outlawed because there have been some idiots who can't handle the responsibility.
So the FBI has shown that it cannot handle the responsibility to use the tools provided sensibly. Then they should have to do without them. Yes, that makes your life a bit harder and your job a bit more complicated, but sorry, it seems you are unfit of using the better tools, so get used to the inferior ones.
And be glad that we don't take that shit away too!
That's what would happen if the FBI was some sort of private organization or even a private person. Sadly, they are part of the government, so they are allowed to be as incompetent, obnoxious and destructive as they please without any repercussions.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
.. And their supporters. Civil fucking war motherfuckers!
When "law enforcement officials" break the law it makes it hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys.
On the contrary, choosing from only one category can only make it easier.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
It's time to face facts, America: you're fucked, and unfortunately that means the rest of us are fucked.
The US is rapidly becoming a police state, and the law is being treated as an inconvenient thing to be skirted around.
Your rights and freedoms don't exist, and your Constitution has been used to wipe the asses of fascists.
Stop pretending you live in a free society, and start hanging the people responsible for this crap. If your law enforcement has become a cancer on society, you need to fix this problem.
Start with a couple of public lynchings of the people who run these agencies, and work your way down.