Facebook Translate Error Lands Palestinian Man In Israeli Detention

from the bad-morning dept

Like many people today, I have a decent amount of experience using Facebook's language translations. With Geigners the world over, including an eyebrow-raising number of them in South America, I've found the translations to be a useful if imperfect way for me to interact with distant family members that reside in countries and continents far from the States. Imperfect is a key word there, however, as some of the garbled nonsense that results from translations can range from somewhat funny to downright perplexing. It goes without saying that relying on a website's translation alone to interpret someone writing in a different language is a harrowing experience fraught with error.

Or maybe I should say that all of that should go without saying, because it seems that Israeli police relied solely on Facebook's translation services to lead them to arresting a Palestinian man who appeared to simply try to be congenial.

A smiling Palestinian construction worker posted a photo of himself leaning against a bulldozer and holding a cup of coffee and a cigarette. He posted the photo on Facebook along with “good morning” in Arabic.

Israeli police, relying on Facebook’s translation service, believed the post said “attack them.” Haaretz reported, “The automatic translation service offered by Facebook uses its own proprietary algorithms. It translated ‘good morning’ as ‘attack them’ in Hebrew and ‘hurt them’ in English.”

To be clear, it took a lot of unhappy coincidences to get us to this story occurring in the first place. To start, the Arabic language differences between the two phrases mostly amounts to the difference of a single Arabic letter. Add to it that the man's Facebook post showed him in front of a bulldozer which has in the past been utilized as a weapon to attack Israeli people and buildings and you can start to see how the warning bells for Israeli Police had begun to sound. Now mix in that this Palestinian man was on the job constructing the Beitar Illit Israeli settlement, which itself has been a source of controversy in the past, and you might be tempted to forgive the Israeli police for briefly detaining this Palestinian man.

Except that pretty much every Arabic speaker that has taken an even cursory glance at the post immediately identified the translation error.

Haaretz explained, “Arabic speakers explained that English transliteration used by Facebook is not an actual word in Arabic but could look like the verb ‘to hurt’ — even though any Arabic speaker could clearly see the transliteration did not match the translation.”

Anyone who might want to suggest that the Israeli Police have no access to Arabic speakers they could have run this past does so at the risk of their own credibility. Put more frankly, relying on a Facebook translation to arrest a man who was in fact doing nothing more than being blandly amiable is pretty ridiculous. Given the reputation of Israel's security services, I would have expected better.

Filed Under: arrest, israel, palestine, translation
Companies: facebook

No Immunity For Cops Who Arrested Man Recording Them For Obstruction

from the words-are-like-moats-or-barricades-or-something dept

A case involving a bogus arrest stemming from a citizen's attempt to record officers has resulted in the denial of qualified immunity to the officers involved. The Eighth Circuit Appeals Court upheld the lower court's decision on both First and Fourth Amendment issues.

Plaintiff Brian Hoyland was awakened by the sound of police activity in his front yard. Opening his door, he found officers trying to arrest his wife, who was the passenger in a car suspected of being involved in reported drag racing. This is what Hoyland did from 30-40 feet away, ultimately resulting in him being arrested for obstruction. From the opinion [PDF]:

Out of concern for their safety, Hoyland moved his children to the back of the house and retrieved a cell phone to record the incident outside. He intended to remain inside but changed his mind when he believed he heard the officers yell “shoot” or “shooting.” He proceeded to switch the porch light on, open his front door, and hold his phone, which was recording, out in front of him.

And this is the reaction he got:

Within seconds, an officer shouted, “Drop the camera!” McMenomy yelled at Hoyland to go back inside the house. Hoyland remained where he stood and began screaming at the officers. He shouted, “You are in my yard!” and “What is this, a DWI stop, and you guys are doing this? Are you kidding me?” Hoyland also yelled that his wife was handicapped and demanded that the officers do their jobs “the right way.” McMenomy again ordered Hoyland to “stay inside.” Immediately following this command, with Hoyland remaining in the doorway, “the arrest decision was made” by McMenomy who shouted “you are under arrest,” and ordered Hoyland to raise his hands. About thirty seconds of time elapsed between Hoyland’s emergence from his house into the doorway and McMenomy’s pronouncement that he was under arrest. Hoyland did not resist, raised his hands and laid down on the ground, following the instructions given by the officers. He was taken into custody by McMenomy and Cho without incident.

Since the confrontation was recorded, there is little room for variances between Hoyland and the officers' testimony. As the court sees it, there is no question Hoyland did nothing even remotely approaching "obstruction."

Throughout this encounter, Hoyland never left the area around his front door, failing to ever come closer than 30-40 feet from the officers. He never told his wife or Illetschko to disobey the officers’ commands. He never ran away or resisted the officers as he himself was arrested. Finally, he never physically intervened, and never attempted to physically intervene, in the arrest of anyone.

The local prosecutor found the charge baseless. The prosecutor stated it was clear Hoyland came out to inform officers of his wife's disability while recording the event. At best, Hoyland's actions were nothing more than a "fleeting interruption." The Appeals Court comes to the same conclusion.

Having failed with the "it was obstruction" argument, the officers attempted to portray Holyand's arrest as a necessity for officer safety. The court finds this no more convincing.

Any fear of danger the officers felt due to Hoyland’s presence cannot justify an arrest for obstruction. McMenomy asserts that his mind raced in fear of an ambush when Hoyland emerged from the house. This fear, according to the officers, made Hoyland’s arrest reasonable after he refused to go back inside his home. But the officers are mistaken. However reasonable the command for Hoyland to go back inside may have been, his refusal to do so did not constitute obstruction. As Minnesota law makes abundantly clear, obstruction must be either physical obstruction or verbal conduct, such as fighting words, that has the effect of physically obstructing officers in the performance of their duties. Nowhere in Minnesota law does mere physical presence at a distance constitute obstruction. So arresting Hoyland for obstruction due to his continued presence in his doorway was unreasonable under state law.

Even when we consider his verbal conduct, no reasonable officer could construe his shouting as “physically obstructing or interfering” in the officers’ performance of their duties. See Krawsky, 426 N.W.2d at 877. Admittedly, he was shouting criticisms at the officers. But “[i]n a democracy, public officials have no general privilege to avoid publicity and embarrassment by preventing public scrutiny of their actions.” See Walker v. City of Pine Bluff, 414 F.3d 989, 992 (8th Cir. 2005). And none of Hoyland’s comments could be reasonably interpreted as rising above scrutiny to create a threat or a danger to police or to constitute obstruction.

This allows Hoyland to continue pursuing his Fourth Amendment claim. The court moves on to the First Amendment. Again, the officers argued there was no stifling of Hoyland's First Amendment rights because a) he was obstructing officers, and b) even if he wasn't, he had no Constitutional right to record a traffic stop. The court spends barely any time discussing the officers' obstruction bullshit. Instead, it concentrates on the officers' misguided assertions, which are backed by a previous court decision that's not nearly as helpful as the officers believe it is.

[T]he officers argue that, under Colten v. Kentucky, Hoyland “had no constitutional right to observe a [felony traffic stop] or to engage the [arresting] officer[s] in conversation at that time.”

[...]

But the officers’ reliance on Colten is misplaced for three reasons. First, the location of the traffic stop in Colten—a busy highway—implicated important concerns of public safety. Here, the arrest took place in a residential area with no other vehicles or persons around. And Hoyland was not standing on the side of a highway observing a traffic stop, but rather standing in the doorway of his own home trying to tell the officers that his wife was handicapped…

Here, Hoyland is not challenging the constitutionality of a statute; he is bringing a § 1983 claim against the officers for retaliating against him for exercising his First Amendment rights. Colten, on the other hand, was simply “refusing to move on after being directed to do so . . . without more.”

[L]ater Supreme Court cases make it clear that the First Amendment protects verbal criticism directed at police officers. See, e.g., Hill, 482 U.S. at 461. “The freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principle characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state.” Id. at 462-63. Thus Hoyland’s communications were protected activity.

The court goes on to point out Hoyland has a possibly legitimate argument the arrest was made to prevent him from exercising his First Amendment rights.

McMenomy’s deposition testimony clearly shows that the arrest decision was not made after Hoyland had ignored the initial order to go back inside. It was only after Hoyland had stood in the doorway shouting criticisms and messages about his wife’s physical disability that the arrest decision was made… The arrest decision was not made when Hoyland first disobeyed an order, but only after he had begun exercising his First Amendment rights.

Because the charge was bogus and the officers had no probable cause for Hoyland's arrest, both his Constitutional claims will have to be faced by the government defendants. As the court concludes, immunity is a privilege, not a right, and should be treated as such by courts and those seeking to avail themselves of it.

Police officers have a tough job. They must confront dangerous situations and make difficult decisions in short time frames. This is why we offer the protection of qualified immunity—to insulate officers from the constant threat of litigation while serving and safeguarding their fellow citizens. But to receive that protection, we must find as a matter of law that the officers acted within the confines of the Constitution. They must avoid arresting persons without at least arguable probable cause. They must not take adverse actions against persons for exercising their First Amendment rights. Looking at the facts of this case, we cannot hold as a matter of law that the officers acted constitutionally.

The court doesn't go so far as to establish a right to record police, but it does offer up enough precedential cases to make any arguments to the contrary unlikely to find sympathy with the judges. As for Hoyland, he at least has a chance to make his case at the lower level and receive some sort of compensation for an interaction with officers that began with them ordering him to stop filming and ended in a bogus arrest.

Filed Under: 9th circuit, arrest, brian hoyland, filming, filming police, immunity, shawn mcmenomy

Teenager Reports Laughable Flaw In Budapest Transit Authority's Ticketing System And Is Promptly Arrested

from the that's-just-mean dept

For some reason, this keeps happening and I will never understand why. For years, we have covered incidents where security researchers benignly report security flaws in the technology used by companies and governments, doing what can be characterized as a service to both the public and those entities providing the flawed tools, only to find themselves threatened, bullied, detained, or otherwise dicked with as a result. It's an incredibly frustrating trend to witness, with law enforcement groups and companies that should want to know about these flaws instead shooting the messenger in what tends to look like a fit of embarrassment.

And so the trend continues, with a teenager in Hungary being arrested after pointing out a flaw in the ticketing website for the group that acts as the Budapest public transportation authority, the BKK.

The young man discovered that he could access BKK's website, press F12 to enter the browser's developer tools mode, and modify the page's source code to alter a ticket's price. Because there was no client or server-side validation put in place, the BKK system accepted the operation and issued a ticket at a smaller price. As a demo, the young man says he bought a ticket initially priced at 9459 Hungarian forints ($35) for 50 Hungarian forints (20 US cents).

The teenager — who didn't want his name revealed — reported the issue to BKK, but the organization chose to contact the police and file a complaint, accusing the young man of hacking their systems. Police arrested the teenager in the middle of the night shortly after, even if the young man didn't live in Budapest, nor did he ever use the fraudulently obtained ticket.

Teenager discovers flaw, reports it directly to the group affected by that flaw, and subsequently gets arrested? And not only that, actually, as the BKK then held a press conference essentially to brag about the arrest before stomping its metaphorical feet and declaring that its systems were now "secure." Shortly after the press conference, an outraged internet did its thing and all of the sudden all kinds of security flaws in BKK sites began to emerge from Twitter users. On top of that, the IT company BKK contracted to put all of this "security" in place had itself sponsored "ethical hacking" contests in the past. If there is a more ethical version of hacking than finding exploits in public systems and reporting them immediately, I'm having trouble thinking of what that could possibly be.

Meanwhile, the Hungarian public got immediately pissed.

In the meantime, tens of thousands of Hungarians have shown their solidarity and support for the teenager by going on Facebook and leaving one-star reviews on BKK's page. While initially, reviews came from Hungarians, international users started leaving their own thoughts on BKK's page after the incident become a trending topic on Reddit.

"You should partner with better companies managing the security and reliability of your online purchase systems! Shame on you BKK!," said one user.

I would say this was something of a Streisand Effect except that much of it was kicked off by BKK's boasting press conference, so unless it is attempting to Streisand itself, this is more along the lines of an agency simply being as dickish as it possibly could after receiving what should have been deemed a gift from a security researcher and now getting slapped around publicly for it. All, mind you, while new security exploits are exposed by an angry internet.

Great job all around, guys.

Filed Under: arrest, blame the messenger, budapest, hungary, reporting, security, security flaws, vulnerabilities
Companies: bkk

Court: No Immunity For Federal Agent Who Made Elderly Woman Stand In Urine-Soaked Pants For Two Hours While He Questioned Her

from the tough-on-(moon-related)-crime dept

The Ninth Circuit Appeals Court has affirmed a lower court's stripping of a federal officer's qualified immunity in a… moon rock sting case. This is a thing. Relatives and friends of NASA personnel have received what they believe are gifts from them -- items containing moon rock pieces, or heat shield fragments, or whatever. The problem here is the government believes it owns anything related to its exploration missions.

It's not always illegal to be in possession of these items, but as Lowering the Bar's Kevin Underhill explains, it's almost always going to be treated as illegal by the federal government.

[I]f you have or even claim to have any lunar material, or some other piece of Apollo memorabilia, the government is quite likely to treat you as a criminal if it finds out—even if, as in this case, it had no proof at all that the suspect got it illegally (or even that it was what she claimed).

The "she" here is Joann Davis, whose late husband worked on the Apollo program. He was given two Apollo souvenirs by Neil Armstrong -- paperweights containing pieces of a moon rock and a heat shield, respectively. Davis was looking to sell the items to a collector to defray her son's medical expenses. She asked NASA for assistance, which turned out to be a mistake. NASA sent the feds after her.

Davis may have told the government what she was up to, but the government didn't return the favor. Instead, it decided to engage in sting operation, because that's obviously the best way to deal with a 74-year-old woman trying to pay medical expenses -- and who had made the government fully aware of her NASA-related items and her planned sale of them.

"Jeff," the government's undercover man posing as an interested buyer, met with Davis at a Denny's. Outside were six armed federal agents. The only person with Davis was her 70-year-old friend, Paul Cilley. From the opinion [PDF]:

Once Davis, Cilley, and “Jeff” were seated in a booth inside the restaurant and exchanged pleasantries, Davis placed the paperweights on the table. “Jeff” said he thought the heat shield was worth about $2,000. Shortly thereafter, Conley announced himself as a “special agent,” and another officer’s hand reached over Davis, grabbed her hand, and took the moon rock paperweight. Simultaneously, a different officer grabbed Cilley by the back of the neck and restrained him by holding his arm behind his back in a bent-over position. Then, an officer grabbed Davis by the arm, pulling her from the booth. At this time, Davis claims that she felt like she was beginning to lose control of her bladder. One of the officers took her purse. Both Cilley and Davis were compliant. Four officers escorted them to the restaurant parking lot for questioning after patting them down to ensure that neither was armed.

If this itself seems excessive, well… hold the government's beer.

Davis claims that she told officers twice during the escort that she needed to use the restroom, but that they did not answer and continued walking her toward an SUV where Conley was waiting. Davis subsequently urinated in her clothing. Although their accounts differ in some respects, Conley and Davis agree that he knew she was wearing urine-soaked pants as he interrogated her in the restaurant parking lot. Davis claims that she was not allowed an opportunity to clean herself or change her clothing, despite communicating to Conley several times that she was “very uncomfortable.”

Conley is Norman Conley, the federal agent whose immunity remains stripped. For whatever reason, Conley appeared to believe it wasn't enough to have both the disputed property in hand and a fully-compliant suspect who had already informed NASA about her plans to sell them.

Conley then proceeded to question Davis for one-and-a-half to two hours, during which time Davis remained standing in the same place.

In urine-soaked pants, lest we forget.

Conley apparently felt he just wasn't threatening enough. He brought more muscle for the urine-soaked, Denny's parking lot interrogation of a 74-year-old woman.

[W]hile Conley questioned her, another officer wearing a flack jacket stood behind her and pushed her each time she shifted her weight or stepped backwards. During the questioning, Conley kept Davis’s purse and car keys and told her repeatedly that “they still really want to take you in,” and that she needed to give him more information before he could release her. She was kept from going to her car. At least ninety minutes had passed when Conley told Davis she was free to leave.

Here's the depressing coda:

After the sting operation was complete and NASA lunar experts were able to confirm the moon rock’s authenticity, Conley opened a full investigation. The investigation was closed when the U.S. Attorney in Orlando, Florida, formally declined to prosecute Davis. Davis’s son died seven months after the incident.

As the appeals court points out, Conley's own admissions cancel out his qualified immunity defense.

At the time of the detention, Conley was aware of several facts that color the reasonableness of his actions. First, Conley knew that Davis was a slight, elderly woman, who was then nearly seventy-five years old and less than five feet tall. Second, he knew that Davis lost control of her bladder during the search and was wearing visibly wet pants. Third, he knew that Davis and Cilley were unarmed and that the search warrant had been fully executed by the time Davis was escorted to the parking lot. Fourth, Conley knew that Davis had not concealed possession of the paperweights, but rather had reached out to NASA for help in selling the paperweights. Finally, because all but the first of the phone calls between Davis and “Jeff” were recorded, Conley knew the exact content of most of those conversations, including that Davis was experiencing financial distress as a result of having to raise grandchildren after her daughter died, her son was severely ill and required expensive medical care, and Davis needed a transplant. Those conversations also revealed Davis’s desire to sell the paperweights in a legal manner and her belief that she possessed them legally because they were a gift to her late husband.

If Conley didn't want to be held accountable for civil liberties violations, the court says he probably shouldn't have violated them so thoroughly.

Because the moon rock paperweight had been seized and both Davis and Cilley had already been searched for other weapons and contraband, Conley had no law enforcement interest in detaining Davis for two hours while she stood wearing urine-soaked pants in a restaurant’s parking lot during the lunch rush. This is precisely the type of “unusual case” involving “special circumstances” that leads us to conclude that a detention is unreasonable. Conley’s detention of Davis, an elderly woman, was unreasonably prolonged and unnecessarily degrading.

There are multiple ways this could have been handled and Conley chose the path most likely to result in a civil rights lawsuit. Maybe he thought Davis would never go so far as to sue him. Maybe this is just how Agent Conley handles everything: with as much force and intimidation as possible, even if nothing about the situation warrants it. Whatever the case, Conley will now have to face Davis' allegations in court, with no shield in front of him. Hopefully, he'll find the experience to be nearly as uncomfortable as what he put Joann Davis through.

Filed Under: 9th circuit, arrest, immunity, joann davis, lunar material, moon rocks, nasa

Why Is North Dakota Arresting Journalists For Doing Journalism?

from the this-won't-end-well dept

Two years ago, we wrote about the ridiculousness of police arresting reporters for reporting in Ferguson, Missouri, even though courts had told police to knock it off. Even more ridiculous is that those reporters were eventually charged, leading to a ridiculous settlement earlier this year.

And yet... arresting journalists for doing journalism continues to be a thing. As you probably know, there have been a bunch of protests in North Dakota lately concerning the Dakota Access Pipeline. Back in September, after covering the protests and having some of her videos of an attack on the protestors go viral, famed Democracy Now reporter Amy Goodman found out an arrest warrant had been issued for her. It's pretty clear that this arrest warrant was solely because of the coverage reflecting poorly on officials.

On Thursday, Goodman said that she'll surrender to authorities next week. As Democracy Now points out, the criminal complaint against her is so transparently unconstitutional and so transparently about intimidating reporters, that it actually notes that "Amy Goodman can be seen on the video identifying herself and interviewing protesters about their involvement in the protest." Right. That's called journalism. Goodman was basically arrested for doing journalism that the powers-that-be dislike.

Organizations that fight for free speech for journalists are condemning all of this. The Committee to Protect Journalists notes that this is "a transparent attempt to intimidate reporters from covering protests of significant public interest" while the Freedom of the Press Foundation is demanding that North Dakota drop the charges.

And they may want to seriously consider dropping the charges and walking away. After all, Goodman was also arrested for covering protests back in 2008, and that eventually ended with the police and local governments having to pay her $100,000 for violating her civil rights.

Filed Under: amy goodman, arrest, first amendment, journalism, north dakota, pipeline, trespassing

Man Arrested For Parodying Police Department's Facebook Page Sues City, PD Over Rights Violations

from the bullies-and-crybabies dept

Because an Ohio police department couldn't handle being (momentarily) mocked, it's now being sued by the man officers arrested after he created a spoof of the department's Facebook page.

Earlier this year, Anthony Novak parodied the Parma (OH) Police Department's Facebook page, posting obviously fake announcements from the faux department like the following:

The Parma Civil Service Commission will conduct a written exam for basic Police Officer for the City of Parma to establish an eligibility list. The exam will be held on March 12, 2016. Applications are available February 14, 2016, through March 2, 2016. Parma is an equal opportunity employer but is strongly encouraging minorities to not apply.

The test will consist of a 15 question multiple choice definition test followed by a hearing test. Should you pass you will be accepted as an officer of the Parma Police Department.

Other postings not quite as charming, but definitely as fake, included announcements of the PD's new roving abortion van, a "Pedophile Reform event," plans to arrest anyone caught outside between noon and 9 pm, and a ban on feeding the homeless to better serve the city's plan to eradicate the problem through starvation.

Novak did copy the department's logo and the Facebook page did look similar… right up until readers read the posts, or noticed the fake department's motto: "We No Crime."

Rather than leave this in Facebook's hands (or just leave it alone altogether), the Parma police decided to greet the situation head on. It came up with a charge to use to go after Novak: use of a computer to "disrupt, interrupt or impair" police services. Then it went after him, mustering far more force than would seem to be necessary to handle a bogus Facebook page. Jacob Sullum of Reason recaps the stupidity.

Parma police...launched an investigation that involved at least seven officers, a subpoena and three search warrants, and a raid on Novak's apartment, during which the cops surprised his roommate on the toilet and seized two hard drives, a laptop, two tablets, two cellphones, and two video game systems. After his arrest on March 25, Novak spent four days in jail before he got out on bail, and then he had to report weekly to a probation officer if he wanted to keep his freedom.

The charge was obviously bogus. Statements made in defense of the PD's actions mainly focused on the derogatory nature of the posts. But very little was said about how a Facebook page that was up for less than two days and gathered only 300 followers made it more difficult for the police to continue servicing the community. It would seem the diversion of seven officers to a stupid investigation with obvious Constitutional implications would be far more disruptive to public service.

While the Parma police obviously found a judge willing to overlook their extremely questionable assertions when signing warrants, it had no similar luck when attempting to prosecute Novak.

Someone in the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office evidently had second thoughts about the case, because Novak was offered a plea deal under which the felony charge would have been reduced to an unspecified misdemeanor. Novak turned the offer down, by that point eager to have his day in court. By the time his trial rolled around, prosecutors had settled on the theory that Novak's Facebook gag had disrupted police services by generating phone calls to the police department—a grand total of 10 in 12 hours. The jury did not buy it, and everyone who was involved in the case should have known better than to let it get that far.

The end result is a lawsuit [PDF], which will definitely impair the community's trust in the police department. Novak alleges First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment violations -- all stemming from the warrants issued to the PD which, if determined to be bogus, support his Fourth and Fourteenth claims. As for the First Amendment, Novak's parody page was protected speech and the Parma police had no business using their powers to shut it down, much less arrest the page's creator.

As for the PD's supporting affidavits, they appear incredibly weak according to what's documented in the lawsuit. There was more made about the content of the page being "derogatory" than about the supposed criminal activity Novak (obviously didn't) engage in: disruption of government services.

That being said, it will be tough to prevent immunity from being awarded to most, if not all, of the participants in this censorious travesty. Unless the Parma police have specific guidance or training that encourages them to trample all over citizens' First Amendment rights, it's unlikely the allegations will survive a motion to dismiss. Then again, the PD didn't just tread lightly on Novak's free speech -- it steamrolled him with a trumped-up felony charge, seizure of all of his devices, and jailed him for four days. The city may find it more expedient to settle this quickly than take the chance of Novak prevailing completely.

The Parma PD should have limited itself to informing particularly stupid/gullible citizens that the parody page wasn't the real thing. Then it should have left it alone. Instead, it leveraged its power to avenge its hurt feelings, resulting in a tantrum that could prove to be very expensive.

Filed Under: anothony novak, arrest, free speech, ohio, parma, parody

Brazil Arrests Facebook Exec Because Company Refuses To Reveal Info On Whatsapp Users

from the arrested-for-not-doing-the-impossible dept

Back in December, we noted that, somewhat ridiculously, all of the super popular Whatsapp service (owned by Facebook) was blocked in Brazil, because Facebook refused to reveal information on Whatsapp users as part of a drug trafficking investigation. While the court only allowed the block to last for a little while, apparently things have escalated, with a senior Facebook exec now being arrested for failing to cooperate in this case:

Facebook’s vice president for Latin America has been arrested on his way to work in São Paulo, Brazil. Federal police picked up Diego Dzodan because Facebook disobeyed a court order to help investigators in a drug case that involves a WhatsApp user.

The arrest was made at the request of officials from the state of Sergipe, in Brazil’s north-east. In a statement, the federal police said Facebook/WhatsApp had repeatedly failed to comply with court orders relating to an organized crime and drug-trafficking investigation.

This reminds me, somewhat of the case where some Google execs were tried and convicted in Italy, because they didn't take down a video fast enough (the company took it down, just not fast enough). While the underlying issues are different, arresting execs of tech companies because you don't like the way they operate their business seems like a good way to make sure innovative internet services are not offered in your country at all. And, in this case, where Facebook relies on strong encryption in Whatsapp, it seems likely that the issue may be that it was impossible to comply with the court order in this case (though the full details are not yet known). Either way, arresting an exec over this seems extremely troubling -- especially in a country such as Brazil that has been trying to set itself up as a strong supporter of a free and open internet, and that had argued against surveillance.

Filed Under: arrest, brazil, diego dzodan, whatsapp
Companies: facebook, whatsapp

Social Media 'Terrorist' Taken Down By FBI After Reblogging A Pro-ISIS GIF

from the a-prison-sentence-for-your-(secondhand)-thoughts? dept

Social media platforms are the best (unwitting) honeypots. The FBI continues to prowl public posts on Twitter, Facebook, etc. for "suspicious" material. Whatever triggers the FBI's counterterrorism spidey senses is followed shortly thereafter with subpoenas for user info. This is then followed up by DOJ press releases announcing the successful capture of another dangerous individual.

An Akron, Ohio, man was arrested today on federal charges that he solicited the murder of members of the U.S. military.

Terrence J. McNeil, 25, appeared in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Ohio after being charged with one count of solicitation of a crime of violence.

The charge was announced by Assistant Attorney General John P. Carlin, U.S. Attorney Steven M. Dettelbach of the Northern District of Ohio and Special Agent in Charge Stephen D. Anthony of the FBI’s Cleveland Division.

“According to the allegations in the complaint, Terrence McNeil solicited the murder of members of our military by disseminating ISIL’s violent rhetoric, circulating detailed U.S. military personnel information, and explicitly calling for the killing of American service members in their homes and communities,” said Assistant Attorney General Carlin. “ISIL and its followers continue to use social media in an attempt to incite violence around the world, including in the United States. The National Security Division's highest priority is counterterrorism and we will use all of our tools to disrupt threats and acts of violence against our military members and their families.”

And just one day after Veteran's Day, as the press release points out. (That would be the arrest, not the post. The reblogging occurred on September 24th. Optics, people.) The complaint details McNeil's social media interactions and postings -- under multiple accounts. Tucked in amongst the banalities of everyday social media life are McNeil's more inflammatory posts (and reposts). The FBI already had him under surveillance by the time he posted the thing that bothered the agency the most.

As Ryan J. Reilly of Huffington Post points out, it wasn't even original user-generated content that led to McNeil's arrest.

A man from Akron, Ohio, who has supported the Islamic State online was arrested by federal authorities Thursday and charged because he allegedly "reblogged" a GIF on Tumblr that called for attacks on members of the U.S. military.

The GIF, under the banner "Islamic State Hacking Division," reportedly loops through "several dozen photographs, purportedly of U.S. military personnel, along with their respective name, address and military branch," according to a Justice Department press release.

"Kill them in their own lands, behead them in their own homes, stab them to death as they walk their streets thinking that they are safe," the GIF reportedly stated. McNeil allegedly reblogged the GIF on Sept. 24.

Is a "reblog" the same thing as uttering the threat yourself? This nuance is likely to be lost during the upcoming prosecution. Certainly, it will be argued that "reposts are not endorsements," to paraphrase the Twitter profile stock phrase slightly.

What's in the affidavit shows McNeil apparently had an affinity for ISIS. Whether or not it would have led to anything but spirited reblogging is impossible to determine. At one point, another Tumblr user asked whether his pro-ISIS postings represented the "real" him. His answer?

Somewhat about 60%, if it was 100% I would be in jail

McNeil obviously miscalculated this ratio.

The FBI's affidavit contains little more than a thorough recounting of McNeil's ISIS/Islam-related social media posts. There's nothing in there that suggests McNeil was anything more than someone who made a bunch of ill-advised posts about ISIS and Islam. Reposting someone else's threats isn't really the same thing as rolling your own. But it's apparently enough to result in criminal charges.

The FBI may yet uncover evidence of something more malicious lurking under McNeil's "talks big on Tumblr" exterior. An expansive search warrant attached to the affidavit not only grants the FBI permission to perform forensic examinations of every electronic device in McNeil's possession, but to seize nearly everything else in his possession, including papers, documents, bank records, receipts, weapons, ammo, photos, airplane tickets, "tactical head coverings," and, because this is the way the government does things:

United States Currency in excess of $500.00, precious metals and gems, gold coins, jewelry and financial instruments, including stocks and bonds, deeds of trust, sales contracts, vehicle instruments and artwork.

It looks like McNeil will be getting a public defender, since $500 doesn't buy much lawyering -- not in a case involving alleged threats to kill military personnel. The government hasn't secured a conviction and nowhere in its affidavit does it even suggest McNeil's money came from any other source than his job at a local hospital. But it's going to take it anyway.

As Reilly points out, FBI director James Comey hasn't exactly made it clear what sort of reposting/retweeting will more likely result in federal charges. This was his answer in response to questions after the FBI arrested a Virginia teen for retweeting pro-ISIS tweets. Comey believes the line between benign and nefarious is "pretty darn clear." It isn't, but it's the government that has the privilege of making the initial determination. The rest will be sorted out in court… unless, of course, the DOJ is able to coax obviously impressionable and not overly-bright young men into plea agreements, in which case, no further determinations will be made.

Filed Under: arrest, doj, first amendment, isis, reblog, social media, terrence mcneil, terrorism
Companies: tumblr

Argentina Rewards Programmer Who Exposed E-Voting Vulnerabilities With A Complimentary Home Police Raid

from the shoot-all-the-messengers dept

An Argentinian programmer who was trying to do a good thing in exposing severe vulnerabilities in the country's e-voting system was rewarded for his actions -- with a police raid on his home. According to Argentinian news outlet La Nación, Joaquín Sorianello informed MSA, the company than makes the Vot.ar e-voting system, that the SSL certificates used by the system to encrypt transmissions between the voting stations and the central election office could be easily downloaded, allowing for potential voting fraud (or just a good old-fashioned DDOS attack).

Sorianello, who says he never received a phone call from MSA after reaching out to the company to report the flaw, suddenly found his home being raided by Argentinian police, who seized computers, Kindles, and numerous storage devices (from a Google translation of the source):

"The truth is amazing, you notify the company that they have a failure in their voting system and the next thing they do is (raid my home) instead of looking for the real culprits..."I'm just a programmer, I'm not a hacker." Sorianello told La Nacion that he contacted the police station in Caballito to corroborate the raid: "They said yes, but they could not tell me why or how it was going to take." He also said he did not receive any call from the company (after having told them about the flaw a week) ago."

Sorianello has pointed out to numerous news outlets that he's a programmer -- not a hacker, and if he had wanted to hack into the systems to cause damage, he certainly wouldn't have informed the company of the flaw first. He's also repeatedly pointed out that it was the protected @FraudeVotar Twitter account that published the core details of the e-voting internals, not him. That apparently didn't matter to the Argentinian legal system.

This isn't the first problem facing MSA and its e-voting technology, which is being used in Buenos Aires elections for the first time. Two weeks ago, the source code for the company's Vot.ar technology was leaked to Git.hub. A number of researchers also discovered that a smartphone with NFC capabilities (pretty common at this point) could be used to create a specialized e-ballot, capable of tricking the system into counting a single vote numerous times. And this is all before you realize that in many instances, the technology Argentina is using just doesn't appear to work very well:

"Earlier today, the Argentinian site La Política Online reported that 532 polling stations were unable to transmit their results electronically to the central electoral office, and had to be transported there physically for the 184,000 votes involved to be included in the final result. As the article points out, although this failure won't change the outcome of the election for the head of local government in Buenos Aires, it will make a difference to the allocation of seats in the legislature and community boards."

So not only is MSA's e-voting system completely open to several vectors of fraud and attack, it works so damn well you need to physically move the machines back to the central office to count the tallied votes. Meanwhile, Argentinian locals are claiming that the same Judge that thought it was a good idea to authorize the police raid on Sorianello's home, has also ordered Argentinian ISPs to block many of the websites where details on the e-voting flaws and source code can be found (like justpaste.it). Surely if you stop people from discussing the obvious flaws, the problem magically goes away, right? As we've seen with countless other e-voting scandals of this type, you can't operate a secure, successful e-voting system without trust. And you certainly don't gain the public's trust by shooting as many messengers as possible and playing a futile game of Whac-a-mole censorship with those who point out your system is utterly and painfully flawed. What you do successfully accomplish is make it perfectly clear that you appear to like the fact your electoral process can now be rigged.

Filed Under: argentina, arrest, blame the messenger, e-voting, joaquin sorianello, security, vot.ar, vulnerabilities
Companies: msa

Teen Changes Wallpaper On Teacher's Computer; Gets Charged With A Felony By Sheriff's Office

from the CFAA:-Teen-Edition dept

Change a teacher's desktop wallpaper? That's a felony.

The Pasco County Sheriff's Office has charged Domanik Green, an eighth-grader at Paul R. Smith Middle School, with an offense against a computer system and unauthorized access, a felony. Sheriff Chris Nocco said Thursday that Green logged onto the school's network on March 31 using an administrative-level password without permission. He then changed the background image on a teacher's computer to one showing two men kissing.

Seemingly everyone at every level of government wants to talk about cybersecurity. Most of what's discussed is delivered in the breathless cadence of a lifetime paranoiac. (Won't someone think of the poor multimillion-dollar studios?!!?) This school is one level of government. So is the sheriff's office. Both felt the 14-year-old's actions were severe enough to warrant felony charges. Why? Because somebody hacked something. If you can even call it "hacking…"

Green had previously received a three-day suspension for accessing the system inappropriately. Other students also got in trouble at the time, he said. It was a well-known trick, Green said, because the password was easy to remember: a teacher's last name. He said he discovered it by watching the teacher type it in.

The teen changed a computer's wallpaper and was able to do so because the most basic of security precautions weren't taken. Multiple students took advantage of this lax security to access computers with webcams so they could chat "face-to-face" while utilizing the school's network.

The school got all bent out of shape because some of the computers accessed contained encrypted test questions. It turned the student over to law enforcement because it deemed his "breach" of its system too "serious" to be handled by just a 10-day suspension. It had him arrested because of things he could have done, rather than the thing he actually did.

One of the computers Green, 14, accessed also had encrypted 2014 FCAT questions stored on it, though the sheriff and Pasco County School District officials said Green did not view or tamper with those files.

And yet, Sheriff Chris Nocco is still looking to prosecute a 14-year-old for attempting to annoy one of his teachers. Here's the student's description of what he did.

"So I logged out of that computer [because that computer didn't have a webcam] and logged into a different one and I logged into a teacher's computer who I didn't like and tried putting inappropriate pictures onto his computer to annoy him," Green said.

Here's Sheriff Nocco's statement:

"Even though some might say this is just a teenage prank, who knows what this teenager might have done," Nocco said.

Well... you do know what "he might have done," Sheriff Nocco. And yet, your response to this situation is to hand out felony charges to a teen for something he might have done? Is that the way law enforcement is really supposed to work? [The FBI has issued the following statement: "That's the way it works for us. Almost exclusively."]

He told you exactly what he did and why he did it. Your own investigative efforts confirmed he never accessed the oh-so-untouchable FCAT questions. Incredibly, Sheriff Nocco wants to not only punish this student for something he might have done, but any other teens who might do stuff.

The sheriff said Green's case should be a warning to other students: "If information comes back to us and we get evidence (that other kids have done it), they're going to face the same consequences," Nocco said.

Sheriff Nocco: I will arrest and charge teens with felonies for annoying educators and/or exposing their inability to make even the most minimal effort to keep their computers secure. If I lived in this county, I'd be very concerned that law enforcement officials are keen on the idea of arresting and prosecuting teens for stuff they didn't do (access test questions) or things they might have done (TBD as needed for maximum damage to teens' futures).

Filed Under: arrest, chris nocco, computers, domanik green, hacking, pasco county, pasco county sheriff, students, teachers