New York Judge Rules Against Facebook In Search Warrant Case

itwbennett writes: Last year, Facebook appealed a court decision requiring it to hand over data, including photos and private messages, relating to 381 user accounts. (Google, Microsoft, and Twitter, among other companies backed Facebook in the dispute). On Tuesday, Judge Dianne Renwick of the New York State Supreme Court ruled against Facebook, saying that Facebook has no legal standing to challenge the constitutionality of search warrants served on its users.

Comments

Nonsense law still can't be ignored

[cloud.pt]

You reap what you sow, they say. The real problem was the conjuncture alignment that induced public interest letting pass such laws, and the lack of action, after its consequences are visible. I believe most tech companies are simply protecting their users to the best of their ability by attempting to stall such warrants. It's the only thing they can do, they can't be expected to win legal battles against solid, yet nonsensical legislation put in place that gives omnipotence for state supervision of private data. I can't even blame judges for this: a decent state lawyer only needs know the legislation which umbrellas the warrant, and provide proof all was done within its procedures.

Re:Nonsense law still can't be ignored

[Crashmarik]

You mean the 4th amendment ?

Amendment IV

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.

Re:Nonsense law still can't be ignored

[TheCarp]

This is why minimal interpretation of rights leads to not having any. The very idea that Party A is holding information about Party B, and the government can execute a search warrant now, claiming to be "served on B" but really, searching the effects fo party A.

Its BULLSHIT. If a warrant is being served to search facebook servers, it is ON FACEBOOK. Not their user. The very idea that someone or some entitity can be searched while having no standing to challenge it *IS* tyranny.

Re:Nonsense law still can't be ignored

[msobkow]

It is no more "bullshit" than a bank being required to open a safety deposit box when a warrant is presented against whoever is leasing the safety deposit box. That search is happening on bank property, but the bank does not have legal standing to challenge the warrant.

We do NOT need internet-enabled corporations running rampant over the law as if they had no legal responsibilities nor limitations on the scope on what they're allowed to do. There are often CLEAR examples of similar situations with physical property, but the weasels in the "new" digital world would like to claim that they're above those precedents.

Re:Nonsense law still can't be ignored

[njnnja]

This case has nothing to do with "nonsensical legislation." It is straightforward rules of evidence and criminal procedure. The judge didn't say the warrant was OK, she just said that:

1) an invalid warrant "on a computer" is the same as an invalid warrant i.r.l. Meaning that a properly issued warrant gets served, then the thing the prosecutor wants to search gets searched, then if the defendant has reason to believe that the warrant was improperly issued or the search was done improperly, then those issues get brought up at trial to determine the admissibility of the evidence obtained from the search. It's what you see in courtroom dramas when evidence gets thrown out at trial - note that it is getting thrown out at trial, not being prevented from being found in the first place.

2) Even if the warrant was improper, Facebook isn't the defendant here and isn't the right person to challenge it anyways. Let's say the prosecutors suspect that you used rat poison bought at the local mom & pop general store to poison somebody. And the mom & pop store doesn't have any computers - you paid cash and they just took an old fashioned carbon copy imprint of your credit card. So they get a warrant to go through all those paper receipts to prove that you bought the rat poison. The mom & pop store isn't in the position to challenge that warrant, only you are. This case with Facebook is the same thing just "on a computer"

If we want to hold that "on a computer" isn't anything unique or different for patent purposes, we can't argue that "on a computer" has a different meaning for rules of evidence in a criminal proceeding.

Re:Nonsense law still can't be ignored

[gstoddart]

You know, denying Facebook the standing to challenge the constitutionality of warrants on behalf of its users is a really bad precedent.

This means that the court didn't allow the constitutionality of the warrants to be considered, and instead of having the ability to have blanket protections based on "you're not allowed to do that", now it's a "serve unconstitutional warrant now and let each affected party resolve this later".

Basically this gives the government the ability to use general warrants, or otherwise specious legal arguments to claim any old damned thing ... and Facebook (and now nobody else) can say "hey, wait a minute, you can't do that".

This isn't corporations running rampant over the law, this is the law running rampant over your rights and then leaving you on the hook to fix it later. It's a shoot first and ask questions later interpretation where even if law enforcement comes in with a blatantly illegal search warrant Facebook and others can't challenge it.

This is a terrible fucking idea, especially since law enforcement has increasingly decided they don't really give a damn about the constitutionality of anything they do.

Do you want to live in a society in which the government gets to break the law first and then leave it up to individual defense lawyers to resolve that?

Re:Isn't all that info

[Opportunist]

Damn straight, and those government moochers wanted it for free!

Re:Makes sense to me

[mwvdlee]

Except that the defendant/accused isn't informed of the search warrant.
Effectively, this ruling says that NOBODY can challenge search warrants.

Re:Makes sense to me

[Ambassador Kosh]

That is the fundamental problem.

The only party served the warrant is judged to have no standing to contest it and the party that the warrant is about is never informed about the warrant.

It should be completely unconstitutional but in the end the world runs by might makes right and the constitution is just a piece of paper they pay lip service to.

Judges will not support the average person over their government and corporate interests.

Secret search warrants should not be allowed but I don't see any actual way to stop them. After the Citizen's United ruling any candidate that tries to run on the basis of trying to clean this kind of stuff up is going to get stomped by the other side since the other side will have nearly unlimited funds.

In the end money decides politics and politics are explicitly for sale to the highest bidder now. The supreme court even declared it is not bribery and we all know that it is. The system is corrupt from top to bottom and baked in. European countries are not any better with that either.

Re: Makes sense to me

[msobkow]

You're talking about something completely different. I'm talking about when you have the opportunity to challenge the validity of a warrant. If you're never charged and never defending yourself, I don't believe you have an opportunity to challenge the validity of a warrant.

But your argument is specious at best. There have been numerous examples of government agencies using information obtained by the secret warrants, only to claim it was a "traffic stop" instead of a targeted drug search. The abuse of information obtained by secret warrants is a known fact and not up for discussion just because you're a government shill.

Fishing operation: 2015 edition

[Kjella]

1. Pretense: Find or create some kind of probable cause for a warrant. Doesn't in any way have to be related to what you're really looking for or anything you think he's really doing, just plausible enough to get rubber stamped by a friendly judge.
2. Fishing: Search through third parties like cell phone records, bank records, email records, social media records etc. under NDA, since the person won't know he can't challenge them.
3. Parallel construction: Using the information gathered above, find some law they're actually breaking and "randomly" catch them in the act. Preferably one that'll let you go through the rest of their belongings.
4. Fine tooth comb: Most people break the law in many small ways, just hit them with all of them. And even ones that won't stick, just to get the total and the defense burden high.
5. Buy high, sell low: Have the prosecution offer you a "deal" where you can either take 10% of a ridiculous figure or try it in full court, knowing a few of the lesser charges will stick so the prosecution won't look like a total sham,

Only 62 of 381 in the Facebook case were ever charged with any crime. The remaining 300+ are still totally unaware the government has seen through everything they've done on Facebook, since it's all under NDA. You can't challenge or suppress a warrant until the government tries to use it against you in a criminal case. This reminds me of the NSA wiretaps, since they've officially never admitted to wiretapping anybody there's nobody with standing to sue. It's a nice end-run around the constitution, that's for sure.

Re:Makes sense to me

[jedidiah]

Except society has no rights.

The government also has not rights. It has a limited number of powers that are restricted by the constitution.

Modern pop culture has this flipped where government gets to do anything they want and it's individuals that are stuck on an ever shrinking island of rights that must be explicitly stated.

Re:Makes sense to me

[Ambassador Kosh]

I think the point was that the real world equivalent of the digital search would not be allowed. It would be considered a vast overstepping of bounds to search 381 houses and do it in such a way that the people that live there did not know that the police broke in and searched it.

I am not saying that real world warrants should be held to the same absurd standards as digital ones. I am saying it should be the other way around.

Digital warrants should be held to the same standard as real world ones. You should need all the same legal standards for each person you want to do a search on and each place you want to search. If searching hundreds of homes is not viable in the real world you should not be giving warrants for that in the digital world just because it is easier.

Terrorism is so rare that it should be handled as an exceptional event within the law and require a justification every time. The information should also be made public after a set period of time to prevent abuse. However, right now the police seem to see a lot of people as terrorists for things that don't involve terrorism at all.