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FBI Keeps Seized Computers up to Five Years
Zorro turned us on to an NYT article that says law enforcement agencies routinely seize hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of computers and hard drives as evidence, but have so few computer experts that confiscated equipment can gather dust for months or years until someone decides whether or not they contain criminal information. The story also says that, even if you're innocent, once the cops grab your computer they can keep it until the statute of limitations on the alleged crime runs out, which is typically five years. (Free NYT reg. required to read.)
coyote-san, thanks for answering calmly this post, which reads either like flamebait or from NAMBLA (or flamebait from NAMBLA).
... there is a grey area, and youngish people do have / can have sex. That's *not* to say "children," especially not "young children."
I also won't jump down the slippery slope about Traci Lords etc
mwalker did the right thing (and I say that as someone who generally distrusts the police at whatever level -- see the Steve Jackson references throughout this thread) and I am impressed that he doesn't sound angrier than he does.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
How would you accomplish that by writing things?
:)
Sorry, I think you mean Steganography
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
When I was in college, I hoped to become an FBI agent. It's been a few years, but here are some of the basic requirements I remember:
BS/BA Degree (I believe military service will qualify in place of a degree).
Two or more years of full-time employment with a single employer.
Exceptions are granted to the 2 year rule for people with degrees in law or accounting.
Clean criminal history, good character, and good physical condition (special agent training can be fairly rigorous).
Also, the FBI seems to place a lot of weight on academic credentials. I suspect they prefer to get Comp. Sci. grads with advanced degrees for their "computer expert" positions.
Do the math and figure out how many people meet all of the above criteria. Now subtract the number who are willing to accept roughly half of the salary they could be making in the private sector with the same credentials. Do you see a shortage?
Yes, there are intangible benefits to being an agent. Honestly, if a recruiter approached me today, I would still be interested. My experience with FBI recruiters, though, was that they were aloof and arrogant. This attitude is hard to take when private companies are falling all over themselves to hire you.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
...2 years.
.000 with this American citizen now immigrating to another country with more solid foundation in civil rights. Given my experiences with Federal investigators, I am beginning to believe that they either have WAY too much time on their hands (even more so than local-yokal law enforcement departments) or the FBI Training Academy's standards have fallen though the floor in the past 10 years.
And, boy, once your name goes into their tickler files, you are presumed guilty until proven innocent. They've batted a solid
Some of the Federal investigative agencies practices just aren't right (or legal, in my opininon). The majority of the population doesn't get to experience nice little things like property seizure and confiscate laws (which fund and add fuel to the fire), criminal record maintance (without conviction), post investigation cateloging of personal letters and papers obtained from computer equipment seizures and abuse of polygraph results in the absence of any real evidence. Once you fall out of that majority, (guilty or not) it's a long, hard fall to reality
The Second American Revolutions won't happen in time to mitigate technology's control of citizens, their thoughts and desires. Let's get one thing straight... Technology doesn't give a flying fsck about things like "Freedom" or "Liberty" or "The Pursuit of Happyness".
My recomendation:
Opt-in, becomming a part of the Federal investigative or enforcement power
or
Get out. Find somewhere else, on this rather large earth, safer and freeer to live.
Everyone else? They're just meat for the butcher's grinder.
The only way this is going to be solved is through legislation. Make it happen.
Any responsible accounting for confiscated equipment would show that returning a modern computer five years later would represent a loss of the majority of value. Is there a constitutional loophole for this or is it simply another violation of the takings clause of the fifth admendment?
At least in the cases where charges are dropped or the defendant is acquitted, shouldn't compensation for taken property be required?
Geeky modern art T-shirts
I wonder if this means the FBI might be in the market for some 'puter Savvy folks like us?
There's a lot more law enforcement agencies out there besides the FBI, maybe local law enforcement agencies are looking for help too.
And would accepting a job like that be selling out?
That depends on your ethics, for myself, I disagree with some laws but I don't think that everything the FBI or other law enforcement agencies does is evil. In fact, I really appreciate having local police around.
Is it ethical to assist in the prevention of certain 'crimes' if you don't believe they are crimes?
Probably not, I would have a hard time doing that.
What kind of penalties would there be if you claimed you were unable to crack a system because you believed the information it held should be legal?
I'm not a lawyer, but I imagine they could range up to dismissal and aiding and abetting criminal charges.
How much do you think the FBI would be willing to pay?
Government typically doesn't pay well, though I'm not sure about government contractors. On the other hand, you would probably have lifetime employment.
What I want to know, is where do I go for a law enforcement auction, I'd love to get my hands on obsolete computers?
Oooh, a 386, and the bidding is starting at $50!
George
(Having said that, said combination of open fires, kerosene lamps, straw and high explosives is somewhat unstable anyway. IMHO, all the FBI would have had to have done is wait until someone in there sneezed, and the whole lot would have gone up in smoke anyway.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I instruct law enforcement on the proper methods to seize computer systems during the course of an investigation. I can tell you beyond the shadow of a doubt that the investigators that do these seizures normally _hate_ to take a machine because of the amount of work required to investigate everything on the drive.
In fact, it's not surprising in most investigations to have computers go untouched because, in the officer's mind, the work required to sort through the storage devices and removable media on-site exceeds the value of the evidence he or she may find. Most officers (trained ones, not the average street cop, but the high-tech crimes investigators) only take equipment that meets one or more of the following criteria:
1) There is a good chance the equipment was used in the commission of a crime,
2) The equipment is stolen or presumed stolen,
3) Other evidence points to the use of the equipment in the commission of the crime being investigated.
Once the equipment is seized, trained officers will always image the drive and any removable media and perform the investigation on the copy. The reason the original is kept is because the officer must maintain full certainty that the evidence is pristine -- that is, that it has not been modified while in the possession of the investigator. These are steps trained officers -- indeed, the ones that _I_ train -- will take. I can't speak for every officer, though.
The trouble with keeping mahines is, many investigations take a long time to complete -- the evidence _must_ be kept pristine until there is a trial. Sometimes, as we all know, the courts don't exactly speed cases through. The fact that so much effort is expended on the part of the officer to maintain the accuracy of the evidence doesn't just protect _him_ in a criminal trial, it may protect the accused as well. If the accused has access to change the evidence after the investigation has been initiated, it casts a lot of doubt on that person's own veracity.
Still, I know abuses do occur. I know that sometimes officers keep equipment well beyond the times they should, and they sometimes do so out of spite. Some equipment is not returned even though there is absolutely _not_ going to be a trial.
If anyone feels that way, they should protest it to other law enforcement personnel as highly-placed as possible. In additon, if an officer during an investigation comes to take the machine, ask them if they hold professional certification from any of the common high-tech crime investigation associations (HTCIA, IACIS).
But, please, do realize these officers have to abide by the rules. The same rule of evidence which applies to computer equipment seized in a crime investigation also applies to any other piece of physical evidence: it must be kept pristine until trial -- however long that takes.
This a very important point. The governments ARE as paranoid about computer crimes as they are about drugs, because, once again, they are going right into a loosing battle at everyones cost.
/. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
The war on computer crimes (especially piracy) that the American government is so eager to step up, is just the "war on drugs" all over again, and it threatens to do to our computer networks what the latter has done to our city centers.
-
I thought that maybe a real-world testimonial from a slashdot'er might be of use here.
...they took the computer which was attached to a cable run 25 feet out of his room. A quiet computer with no monitor sitting in a closet.
I went to college at the University of College Park, MD. I lived on campus, which meant that everyone in my on-campus apartment had a 10baseT jack fed to a T3 line on the Internet backbone. Good deal.
I had two computers, a Pentium-60 running FreeBSD with no monitor (fixed-ip permanent uptime server) and a dual-boot redhat/windows box in my bedroom. My on campus-apartment housed four people.
One semester a new guy moved into our apartment. I don't want to make this post run on forever with details, so to make a long story short: we discovered that he was hosting approx. 6gig of pictures of very young children having sex on his computer through a password protected ftp server. We freaked. We called the police.
I think it was the right thing to do.
The police came. Lots of them. They had a search warrant. They took everything electronic in this kid's room. They took his alarm clock.
My computer.
When they were taking it I told the officers: "you'll need the passwords, it's running an IDEA encrypted filesystem" and wrote the root pwd and filesystem key on a 3m note. I didn't care, the crypto was for fun, my box was legal. I remember what the officer said:
"I'm pretty sure they can figure it out".
As if.
I got my computer back 32 months later. I kept in touch with the college park police department. They just said it was at the state computer crime facility awaiting testing.
I don't have to tell you what a P60 is worth today. I still use it as a server, but I lost upwards of two years of use on that box.
I don't mind law enforcement taking computers in some cases. I think my case was a good example of better-safe-than-sorry. But they DO have a responsibility to get their f**ing act together when it comes to data inspection and returning property to innocent people.
From first hand knowledge, I can say that this is a VERY real problem, and that it needs attention at a national level now. If the mere suspicion of misdeeds is enough to confiscate a computer until it is entirely worthless, then law enforcement has effectively bypassed our trial-by-jury system. The punishment comes swiftly and BEFORE guilt or innocence is determined, because the punishment consists of denying a civilian access to his property. It consititutes the same kind of loophole that RICO does.
(see Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act - search altavista)
The problem with punishment before judgement is that sometimes you punish the innocent.
It happened to me.
It could happen to you.
-walker
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
Which is probably why our "authority figures" get away with so much. People like you and the previous poster hold them above suspicion. If we believe they are behaving in a criminal manner, people like you tell us that we are paranoid and should get a life. I wonder who the real delusional person is...
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Currently we imprison a larger percentage of our population that any other country in the world (a little over one percent of our population, if I remember.)
According to this article in Scientific American, the U.S. prison population is 668 per 100,000 (~.7%). Only Russia has more, with 690 per 100,000. Check out the article, worth a read.
The original AC never mentioned his age, so I'm going under the perhaps false assumption that, since he's living with his brother, they're both minors. If this is the case, neither of you own those computers. Your parents do. The search warrant was probably served against them, which means everything on the premises is fair game.
If you two were adults, and just, say, roommates, the search warrant probably still covers the entire place. Since you both live there, the entire place can be considered his property (as well as yours), which again makes your computer equipment subject to the warrant just as much as anything else in the place.
Reread the article, asshole2.
This guy was not a stranger who mwalker squealed on, he was a *dormmate* who was apparently using mwalker's server to access the campus network. (It sounds like the campus was cheap and had installed a single 10baseT jack for the entire dorm suite. The seized computer was apparently used as a masquerading firewall to allow all of the dormmates to run their own system.)
In the US, a private citizen is *not* required to report criminal acts which they are not party to. If you think the current drug laws are insane, don't call the cops to complain about the smell of pot coming from your neighbor's yard.
But if the criminal act involves your own property, then failing to report a crime may make you an accessory to that crime. If the dorms had a 10baseT jack for each person and this server was directly attached to that jack (and the guy was in a different bedroom), then mwalker could walk away from the situation.
That's not what happened. Since that material only reached the web because of mwalker's actions and equipment, once he became aware of the likely criminal action he had to decide what to do. Report the guy, or risk arrest as an accessory? Simply asking him to stop was not an option because he could still be convicted of being an accessory after the fact.
Finally, I will not defend the "kiddie porn" cases involving a 17-year-old actress providing fake ID to the producers (e.g., Traci Lords). But the original article made it clear that this was a case that really did involve children. "very young children." There's no doubt that "very young children" are traumatized by sexual activity, and in a situation like this it's reasonable and prudent to check whether the adults in the picture are related to the owner of the system hosting them. After all, 6 GIGABYTES of pornography is a huge amount that wasn't acquired by downloading a mislabeled file or two.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Unfortunately in many cases even if charges are dropped or you are aquitted, you have to sue law enforcement agencies to get your property back. And suing them is very difficult because the whole system is stacked in their favor. They almost never have to even apologize, let alone pay for your hardship, inconvenience or actual damages they do.
I'm not saying that all law enforcement officers or employees are bad people, but unfortunately they are working in a system that has become so bloated and self serving and corrupt that it seems the honest guys can't get ahead.
Sad, we should expect better. We should demand better.
I hit the FBI.gov page and found this:
The I.T. environment at the FBI: It's not what you expect. In a world that is changing by the second, FBI information technologies solve ever-increasing challenges more intelligently, and at higher levels. So do the skilled professionals who provide the vision and the human intelligence. We invite you to join them at our headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Computer Science & Engineering Professionals:
Computer Scientists
Computer Specialists
Computer Specialists (Programmer)
Computer Specialists (Systems Analyst)
Electronics Engineer
Telecommunications Managers
High priority technologies...and compensation.
Equally as high profile as our I.T. impact are the compensation packages we offer. They are highly competitive, recognizing the unique expertise of today's brightest technical leaders. Consider:
Salaries up to $125,900
Sign-on bonuses available to those who qualify
Excellent group health & life insurance plans
Vacation & sick pay
Comprehensive retirement plan
However, the FBI has absolutely no e-mail address from their page for contacting them concerning job openings. They have a crime report form, but no e-mail address. How odd.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
What I don't get is why they would have to seize an entire computer. The only evidence would be on your hard drive... For example, in my brother's (Aaron Blosser, Alleged US West hacker or whatever they wanted to call him) case, they went so far as to seize his printer cable... like it contains evidence or something... I'd like to think that this violates some sort of unlawful seizure law somewhere. I mean, after 5 years, your computer is obsolete. So its basically like the government chooses to rip you off of a few thousand dollars worth of equipment... All of this in light of the possible recent FBI snafu involving some certain gas canisters and a flimsy wooden building... starts to make me wonder... Anyone else beginning to *fear* our government? Or am I just overly paranoid? ;)
If you trust Travan, you can get drives for $400
Travan seems like a bad value proposition to me, especially the media which is much more expensive than 4mm DAT media. Compared to a 4mm DAT drive, by the time you buy a dozen tapes, 4mm is cheaper than Travan. If you don't buy at least a dozen or so tapes and use a decent tape rotation scheme, you probably aren't going to do adequate backups. I've seen too many people with Travan style drives that only buy one or two tapes and they have no backup history or get screwed by a failed tape.
From what I've seen 4mm is also faster, quieter, more reliable, and more compact than Travan.
I have a 4mm DAT drive that I've had for a long time, and it has always worked great for me under Linux. Although for my backup use these days I mostly burn CDRs.
Even though the reasons for them taking so long are rather obvious, law enforcement should be financially liable when the person turns out to be innocent. That computer they seized five years ago could easily have cost $2000, but is now probably worth $200 tops. IMHO, law enforcement should be forced to pony up the missing $1800. Doesn't the constitution mention something about no property being deprived without proper compensation? Hmmm.
Anyway, I've stalled long enough. I have to smack some sense into the NT boxen on the network. Seems the little buggers aren't running Web Site Pro and Cold Fusion properly . . . sigh.
That really sucks.
Personally, I think this is one of those situations where what they SHOULD do, given that (as per another post on this thread) they need to keep the evidence "pristine," is give someone like you the cash to buy another computer.
Would that be an acceptable compromise?
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
I suspect that these heavy-handed enforcement practices will continue until they begin seizing the equipment of individuals with "highly-placed" contacts.
That's why Colorado has sane credit bureau laws. Critics had been complaining for years about the problems with credit bureau reports, but the industry would send a lobbyist or two to "prove" that the only people complaining where people trying to hide legitimate, if unpleasant, information in their credit report.
Until a state legislator was denied credit due to false information in her report, and she discovered first-hand just how difficult it can be to correct errors.
She introduced rather interesting legislation when the legislature reconvened. Even I thought it went too far, although I understood that sometimes it takes a 2x4 to get the mule's attention. (IIRC, the original bill involved daily fines for carrying false information!) The industry lobbied hard against any legislation, but there's absolutely no lobbyist more effective than a respected legislator with a legitimate gripe. The bill was toned down, but I believe it was still the most pro-consumer credit bureau law in the nation at the time it was passed.
Unfortunately, when you're talking about the FBI you need to nail someone close to a member of Congress... and the FBI is so political it's a near certainty that they treat members of Congress differently than the rest of the population. (This isn't *entirely* unjustified, since the damage caused by a congressman claiming that the president is misusing the FBI to harrass enemies might outweigh the benefits of stopping a relatively minor crime.) And it's far harder for a politician to stand up for someone under investigation for drug trafficking or child pornography than for someone falsely accused of being a deadbeat.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
You've made a common mistake. There is a huge difference between "innocence" (which only God knows) and "presumed innocence" (which the courts use when determining whether the police are acting in a reasonable manner).
If you're innocent, the police shouldn't hold any of your property against your will. Unfortunately God hasn't been answering His pages, and history shows that people who claim to speak for God are not to be trusted.
If you're "presumed innocent," the police can't dispose of your property against your will, but they still have the right to prevent *you* from disposing of property they believe is evidence in a criminal act.
Once you're found "legally guilty," the state can do whatever it wants with your former property that was seized in connection with a criminal act. You have absolutely no rights to it. I think they'll generally try to avoid actually doing so until appeals are exhausted, but it's no longer unreasonable for them to sell some items and, if you win your appeal, simply give you the current cash equivalence. The fact you lost all of your files, well tough luck.
As to the general "we don't return tools to bad guys" sentiment, that's just ignorance speaking. As others have pointed out, the state has an obligation to keep evidence in a pristine state. For all anyone knows, that disk is one use away from sudden catastrophic failure and your "convenience" copy will prevent the evidence from being used at trial.
That said, the government has become *extremely* abusive of forfeiture laws, and once someone is acquited *or the state declines to prosecute within a reasonable period* ( the statue of limitations period, since the latter was never intended to be used as an extra-legal bludgeon to punish people without the trouble of actually going to trial), cash, computers, cars, and the like should be returned. The current crap about "the seizure order is against the property, which doesn't have constitutional rights, not the person, who does" is just that - crap. Last time I checked the BOR mentioned both unreasonable searches *and seizures*.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
If you were never presented with a search warrant, and you didn't *voluntarily* let the cops in to do their work, then that information should have come out during the trial (or the appeal). If your lawyer didn't think that bit of information was important, perhaps he understood/knew something you didn't...
The only way these kinds of things are going to change is if people start writing letters. Send a letter to your congressmen explaining what happened. Write your local district attourney or the judge in the case. Write the FBI (or whoever it was that did this). Tell them what happened and ask them to change this practice. Tell them all that it's been 2 years (or however long) and that you'd like your stuff back. You shouldn't need a receipt. If your stuff was confiscated in a legal manner, all sorts of documentation was written about what was taken, where, when, from whom, etc. I'm sure your name is in there somewhere.
And sure, contact an attourney.
Vehicular seizure for mere suspicion of drug use has become a normal practice (one that, by the way, disproportionately targets blacks and latinos) - police in many states do not even need to arrest a suspect or charge them with anything, and they can simply take and sell their vehicle. It has become a very profitable enterprise for many departments.
The ACLU has a good resource page with links to information about some of the abuses - both illegal and currently legal - that law enforcement agencies are engaging in, but one of my favorite sites is this one, run by a former LA policeman who began documenting police abuses and racism after he was attacked by another cop while operating undercover - he now leads a non-profit group that 'stings' officers with hidden cameras and recorders in new vehicles being driven by black men, and the results are dismaying. It's a bit disappointing to me that many so-called libertarians seem a lot more concerned about getting rid of environmental and consumer protection regulations and lowering taxes, than actually protecting citizens from direct and overt abuses of power. The selectiveness of law enforcement is excrutiangly painful in light of the G.W. Bush debacle - the powers-that-be are more than happy to jail the rest of us for mistakes that they have the luxury to simply "outgrow."
Here's another story of police enforcement going out of control, and another.
Yarbrough said that it is not a valid use of limited government resources to spend time copying the hard drives of a suspect's computer just to be able to return it to them. "We don't give the gun back to a bad guy, and we don't give the computer back to a bad guy," he said.
This sentiment really irritates me, because this law-enforcement official seems to be forgetting something very important: the owner of the computer is INNOCENT of the crime he's accused of. At least, until proven guilty. Which means that the above quote is pretty much directly advocating theft (not to mention the technical differences between a gun and a computer...).
``This, too, shall pass.'' ---Eastern proverb
I remember when the laws concerning siezures were changed. I found them scary, but since i was a child I had no voice that would be listened to. I am appalled that we allow laws like that to stand. There should be no crime so heinous that it demands all citizens lose what is meant to be our constitutional rights. I found out a few years ago when i began to raise African violets that the grow lights I bought could be considered drug paraphenalia because they could be used to raise marajuana and could be siezed as such during a search.
Such heavy handed laws are justified to the public by saying that they help crack down on drugs and kiddie porn. We then also use programs like D.A.R.E. to make sure drugs remain as a big boogie so as the children of today grow up they will leave the seizure laws in place, and that anyone who opposes these laws will be considered by the public to support drug addiction and kiddie porn, so there is little motivation for politician to try to scale back or repeal these laws.
I think that the addiction survey the otherday that said if you use the internet over 4 hours a day is a sign of things to come. It seems to me that perhaps certain segments want computers viewed with the same unhealthy fear that D.A.R.E. teaches children to view alchohol. Read the numerous account of "Computers wrecked my marriage" in Ann Landers and Dear Abby. The sentiment is already out there waiting to be tapped.
Computers are becoming a big part of our culture. A battle is waging on how they will fit into our lives.
--- If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.
Then use stenography. If your "encrypted drive" looks like a tarball of fractal JPGs, nobody's going to know that it's encrypted.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Yeah, that's what I meant to type, but the keyboard moved. :)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I would certainly support some legislation that made police liable for excessive damage (assuming there isn't something along those lines already). Tearing cabinet doors from their mounts is something I would consider excessive. Scattering papers or dumping some things out of drawers probably isn't.
The legislation would need to protect the property of the searched from damage without hindering the abilities of the police to conduct a thorough search.
Write a letter to your state's congress.