DOJ Whines That A Warrant To Search A Mobile Phone Makes It More Difficult To Catch Criminals

from the amending-the-Fourth-Amendment dept

The US government has entered its reply brief in the US vs. Wurie case and its argument in favor of warrantless searches of arrestees' cell phones contains some truly terrible suppositions. Here's a brief recap of the situation in this case:

In 2007, the police arrested a Massachusetts man who appeared to be selling crack cocaine from his car. The cops seized his cellphone and noticed that it was receiving calls from "My House." They opened the phone to determine the number for "My House." That led them to the man's home, where the police found drugs, cash and guns.

The defendant was convicted, but on appeal he argued that accessing the information on his cellphone without a warrant violated his Fourth Amendment rights. Earlier this year, the First Circuit Court of Appeals accepted the man's argument, ruling that the police should have gotten a warrant before accessing any information on the man's phone.

As was noted by Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy, a lot has changed since 2007. The phone the police searched seven years ago was a grey flip phone with limited capabilities. Unfortunately, the Court is using this case to set precedent for a nation full of smartphones, which contain considerably more data and are roughly the equivalent of a person's home computer, rather than the address book the government refers to in its arguments.

The government agrees that times are changing but counterintuitively argues that only law enforcement is being negatively affected by this. Every argument in favor of warrantless searches contains some sort of lamentation about how tech-savvy criminals will be able to cover up or destroy evidence contained on their phones before the police can crack open these new-fangled address books and copy everything down.

[T]he Founding officers have conducted full evidentiary searches of individuals lawfully arrested on probable cause to find evidence of the crime of arrest, including the examination of objects, containers, and written material; (ii) that in an unbroken series of decisions from 1914 to 2013, this Court has recognized that this historical search authority applies categorically; and (iii) that if an officer does not search an unlocked cell phone as soon as she finds it, a significant risk exists that the police will never be able to recover evidence contained on the phone.

This speedy dismantling of the Fourth Amendment pursuant to law enforcement's desire to secure is only the preamble. As the reply brief rolls on, the government makes even more questionable assertions that view smartphones and technological advances as little more than escape vehicles for alleged felons. (h/t to Hanni Fakoury for pointing this part out.)

[S]earching an arrestee's cell phone immediately upon arrest is often critical to protecting evidence against concealment in a locked or encrypted phone or remote destruction.The numerous party and amicus briefs in these cases have not seriously undermined that fundamental practical point. Although the briefs identify various techniques to prevent the remote-wiping problem (none of which is close to perfect), they barely address the principal problem that the government identified: automatic passcode-locking and encryption.

The government argues that impartial technological advancements somehow favor criminals. As it sees it, the path to the recovery of evidence should not be slowed by encryption or wiping or even the minimal effort needed to obtain a warrant. The police are presented as forever behind the curve, despite evidence otherwise. Without a doubt, there's an ongoing arms race between deletion technology and recovery technology, but the gap between the two isn't nearly as large as the government portrays it.

But what really deserves attention here is the government's antipathy towards encryption and other protective technology. Together with the paragraph above, the government argues that any smartphone with the potential to be encrypted/wiped should automatically be relieved of warrant requirements. Encryption and wiping technology are inherently evil in the government's eyes.

But even if amici were correct in their premise that threats from third parties cannot justify the search of a cell phone incident to arrest, they ignore the principal justification in the government's opening brief—the threat of passcode-locking and encryption—as well as newer "geofencing” technologies that will enable individuals to preset their phones to automatically wipe in certain circumstances. Those tactics are not the actions of third parties, but rather automatic functions that an arrestee—potentially with police investigation in mind—can program into his phone.

Criminals might use these methods. That's a given. But what about anyone worried about their phone being stolen, especially considering the wealth of information stored on it? Does the government plan to take a stance against law enforcement's push for cell phone "kill switches?" This, too, could result in law enforcement being deprived of the opportunity to browse a person's smartphone while they sit in a holding cell awaiting booking or arraignment.

But it's the underlying assertion that such technology would be deployed mostly by criminals that's the most troubling. It's no secret government investigative and security agencies don't care for encryption. The NSA holds onto encrypted data "just in case," under the guise of counterterrorism. This argument puts non-criminal citizens in a unwelcome position: the presumption of hidden criminal activity whenever a police officer encounters an encrypted phone.

What's equally as worrying is the government's suggested remedies. The government brushes aside civil liberties concerns and points out that wronged citizens have plenty of recourse... provided they're willing to be arrested, charged, jailed until their court date and successfully argue their rights were violated in front of a judge.

The government first sets up the "remedies" by suggesting law enforcement will have to develop steps to ensure they're not getting more than they're looking for and that they're not intercepting communications while in possession of the phone. It suggests moving the phone to "airplane mode" before searching and encouraging officials to craft guidelines to address privacy issues. The nudge towards belatedly addressing constitutional issues is backhanded and backwards, especially considering law enforcement's usual attitude towards these considerations: protocols are only developed if and when public outcry reaches unacceptable levels.

The latter suggestion -- suppression of evidence -- places a delusional amount of faith in the justice system. Even worse, it places the burden on the arrested to ensure law enforcement follows its own rules.

Ultimately, law enforcement agencies will need to develop protocols to address that issue, and defendants will be able to enforce the limitation through suppression motions. No information indicates that agencies are not up to that task.

"No information," eh? There's plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Police the police at your own expense while under the threat of imprisonment. Yeah, that should go just fine.

The government wants a warrant-free ride for its law enforcement officers, who are apparently forever behind the tech curve. The argument against warrants doesn't get much more ridiculous than the following.

Respondent and his amici have even less to say about a scope-limited approach, in which officers would be permitted to search cell phones incident to arrest only to the extent reasonably necessary to serve the legitimate law-enforcement interests of finding evidence of the offense of arrest, identifying the arrestee, and ensuring officer safety. Under that approach, courts would remain vigilant against uninhibited "exploratory" searches that do not serve those interests.

Once again, your civil liberties can be argued... after the fact... in court.

Under a scope-limited approach, an officer could not peruse every area of a phone on the off chance that evidence of some crime might be found there. Rather, the officer would be required to articulate a specific reason to believe that evidence relevant to the offense of arrest, officer safety, or arrestee identity would be found in each area of the phone she searched.

Specific reasons that evidence might be relevant sounds a whole lot like the sort of things that would be present on a warrant request. Except in this case, the officer would have the luxury of arguing that after searching the phone. It's like asking for warrant after tossing the house. But the government's not done. It goes farther and attempts to portray warrants as the actual enemy of the Fourth Amendment.

If respondent's rule is adopted, at the time a magistrate issues a warrant, neither officers nor the magistrate will know what files or applications the phone contains. A typical warrant would identify information sought in the search (e.g., drug ledgers, customer lists, financial records, and evidence of a suspect's use or ownership). Officers would then necessarily need to conduct at least cursory searches of relevant areas of the phone to determine whether they might contain the object of the search—a process indistinguishable from the scope-limited approach the United States has suggested. A warrant-based approach would thus not limit the scope of any ultimate search, as compared to the scope-limited approach described above.

In the government's comparison, both are equally intrusive, but only one keeps cops from doing their job.

Rather, the primary function of a warrant requirement would be to preclude officers from searching a phone when they have reason to believe that it contains evidence of crime, but cannot establish the higher standard of probable cause—or cannot obtain a warrant before a phone locks and becomes inaccessible.

That's odd infuriating. I could have sworn warrant requirements were in place to protect citizens' Fourth Amendment rights, not to somehow screw cops out of diving into someone's cell phone just because they happened to be carrying it on their person. The Fourth Amendment protections are there for a reason -- for this exact reason: to prevent unreasonable searches.

Replace anything in that sentence and see if it still looks like the sort of thing the government of a free nation should be arguing.

Rather, the primary function of a warrant requirement would be to preclude officers from searching a RESIDENCE when they have reason to believe it contains evidence of a crime, but cannot establish a higher standard of probable cause -- or cannot obtain a warrant before the DOOR CLOSES.

The government views the Fourth Amendment as little more than a criminal's best friend. This is the entity that is supposed to protect civil liberties, not argue them away as pesky impediments to the pursuit of bad guys.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, doj, mobile phones, warrants, wurie

Judicial Branch Finally Acting As A Check Against Government Overreach

from the the-government's-been-skating-for-far-too-long dept

At long last, there finally seems to be a recognition by members of the judicial branch that they are, in fact, there to provide checks and balances against government overreach. We've already covered the recent orders by Magistrate Judge John Facciola, who has twice sent the government back to fix its overly broad warrant requests seeking access to email accounts and cell phone content. (This is tempered somewhat by another Facciola decision, which declared the law enforcement agency in question didn't need a search warrant for a supposedly "abandoned" phone.) Facciola isn't the only judge pushing back against the government's vague warrant requests, however.

In the past year, U.S. magistrate judges John Facciola in Washington, D.C., and David Waxse in Kansas City, Kan., have rejected or modified a number of applications for warrants to search people's emails and other electronic communications at Internet firms such as Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc.

The rulings go against the grain of a federal judiciary that has generally approved them, according to current and former law-enforcement officials. They also come against the backdrop of a legal and political debate over the scope of government surveillance that has raged since the National Security Agency's bulk collection of phone records was revealed last summer.

At issue is the Justice Department's two-step process of obtaining all emails and other electronic information in the accounts of a person under investigation, and then using names and keywords to sift through it in hopes of finding evidence of wrongdoing.

The judges have ruled the government needs to refine its requests to comply with the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches.

This has been the government's process for years: obtain everything and keep whatever is deemed "relevant" to the case. Both of these judges appear to realize that they are the last line of Fourth Amendment defense between the government and the public. Presumably, the Snowden leaks have played a part in this altered mindset. As both judges have pointed out in their orders, what the government has routinely sought is unbounded access to communications via unconstitutional warrants.

These two have suggested an alternate route, if the government can't manage to operate within the constraints of the Constitution.

Both judges have suggested Internet service providers and other Web firms could do their own searches based on specific guidance from the Justice Department, and turn over only the information that appears relevant to an investigation. They have also proposed systems in which a court-appointed official or others could perform the initial search, providing a buffer between investigators and bulk data.

Of course, the government thinks these are terrible ideas.

"I don't think ISPs or email providers have the institutional competence to conduct the searches of their customers for evidence of crimes," said Neil MacBride, a former U.S. attorney in Virginia who described the magistrate judges' rulings as "outliers."

Maybe. Maybe not. But it's clear the government is no better than the private sector at performing targeted searches. Instead, it simply demands everything and expects to be trusted to only take a look at what is pertinent. Despite the fact that the government routinely asks (or rather, expects) the judicial branch, along with those defending the accused, to simply trust it with petabytes of someone's personal data, it seems completely unwilling to trust a private company with fulfilling searches for relevant data on its behalf.

The days of the government simply saying "it's complicated" and running broad warrant requests past technically-incompetent judges might finally be numbered.

Judge Waxse said he believed more people would come around to his view if they better understood recent technological advances and how service providers operate. "What Facciola and I are saying is, use what is now developed, and you can comply with the Fourth Amendment," he said. "There are too many lawyers and judges who don't have a clear grasp of how it all works."

This is also part of the problem. Far too often, technically-ignorant judges have credulously accepted the government's arguments because they don't have the knowledge to challenge these assertions. They could seek the input of those who can parse the technological demands, but rather than do so, this crucial part of the system of checks and balances has simply allowed the government to portray its circumvention of the Fourth Amendment as unavoidable.

Following the revelations of the last several months, including documents showing the NSA misrepresented its bulk records collections for nearly three years straight, the government has been shown it cannot be trusted with unlimited access to people's data and content. Hopefully, this pushback from the judicial branch will become the new standard.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, courts, david waxse, doj, john facciola, overreach, surveillance, warrants

Eric Holder Admits That, If It Wanted, NSA Could Collect Internet Searches & Emails Just Like Phone Metadata

from the no-constitutional-issue-at-all dept

During a recent House Judiciary Committee hearing concerning oversight, Rep. Zoe Lofgren decided to quiz Attorney General Eric Holder about the federal government's surveillance efforts, starting off with a rather simple question. She notes that the bulk phone record collection program is considered to be legal by its supporters, based on Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows for the collection of "business records." So, she wonders, is there any legal distinction between phone records and, say, internet searches or emails? In other words, does the DOJ believe that it would be perfectly legal for the US government to scoop up all your search records and emails without a warrant? Holder clearly does not want to answer the question, and first tries to answer a different question, concerning the bulk phone records program, and how the administration is supposedly committed to ending it. But eventually he's forced to admit that there's no legal distinction: This is important. As you may recall, some of the attempts to deal with the phone record collection, including President Obama's, focus only on ending the specific phone record collection program, not the underlying law (or the interpretation of that law). This isn't to say that there are ongoing programs to do bulk warrantless collection of those other types of information, but it is worth recognizing that the government believes there would be no Constitutional issue if it decided to set up such a program.

All along, this has been the problem with Section 215. When it first was discussed, it was often called the "library" provision, as the example that people talked about was using Section 215 to collect the records of what books someone checked out of the library. However, as the phone collection program showed, it's been turned into something much, much broader. Fixing this interpretation is going to take a lot more than just ending one program. It requires changing what is allowed by Section 215.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, business records, emails, eric holder, internet searches, nsa, section 215, surveillance, warrants, zoe lofgren

DC Judge Smacks Down Government For Vague iPhone Search Warrant

from the 'with-a-computer'-doesn't-really-specify-a-search-method dept

Trying to pin down DC Magistrate Judge John Facciola is tricky. Early in March, he issued an order denying a government warrant for an email search, stating the following:

[T]he government continues to submit overly broad warrants and makes no effort to balance the law enforcement interests against the obvious expectation of privacy e-mail account holders have in their communications.

So far, so good, as far as upholding the Fourth Amendment goes. Then later in the month, Facciola appeared to switch sides, rejecting a warrant application for a cell phone search because, as he saw it, there was no need for the police to obtain one. This determination was based on the warrant application's description of the phone as being "abandoned" by the suspect, when in all reality, it may have just been dropped inadvertently. This strange order put the police in the strange position of being forbidden to obtain a warrant, something that could potentially jeopardize the prosecution's case if another judge later determines a warrant was, in fact, needed before performing the search of the phone.

That backwards step has now been followed by another step forward in terms of the Fourth Amendment. Facciola has again smacked down a government warrant request for being too broad and too unconcerned with potential privacy implications.

Although Attachment B provides a sufficiently particularized list of the data that the government will search for and seize, the Forensic Analysis section fails to provide this Court with the same level of detail as to the methodologies to be used to conduct the search. Specifically, the government fails to articulate how it will limit the possibility that data outside the scope of the warrant will be searched. For the reasons stated below, the government’s Application for a search and seizure warrant will, therefore, be denied.

Specifically, Facciola finds this warrant approved from others he has blocked in the past, but the government still seems hesitant to explain exactly how it plans to limit its search to just pertinent data and documents.

The Court also requires a search protocol for a separate Fourth Amendment reason—to particularly describe the place to be searched. In a broad manner, describing the iPhone and its specific IMEI number certainly describes the “place to be searched” in a particular manner. But an electronic search is not that simple. An iPhone 4 has either 16 GB or 32 GB of flash memory, 10 which could allow storage of up to around two million text documents. Obviously no one—especially not a college student—would fill an iPhone with text documents, but it is inconceivable that the government would go file by file to determine whether each one is within the scope of the warrant. Instead, as the government has explained in extremely general terms, it will use some sort of “computer-assisted scans” to determine where to look because those scans will determine which parts will be exposed “to human inspection in order to determine whether it is evidence described by the warrant.”

Facciola notes that the fact that so much can be stored similarly increases the chance of abuse. All he's asking for is for the government to be more specific in its description of how it will minimize accessing data not related to the case at hand, and all the government has provided so far is vagaries like "computer-assisted scan" and "keyword searches."

It tells the Court nothing about what will actually happen and does not provide a means of searching so that this Court is assured that it is the type of particularized search that the Fourth Amendment demands. What the government has submitted is no better than the vague explanation in In re Search of Odys Loox that it will “image each device, search them, and keep all files.”

If Facciola sounds irritable, it's probably because this is the third time he's sent the government back to work on this particular warrant request. And this is the third time he's had to make this statement, one which still seems to elude the agency making the request.

Until the government actually explains how the search will proceed, and thus how the government intends to limit its search of data outside the scope of the warrant, this warrant cannot be issued.

So, it appears Facciola's fighting for citizens' Fourth Amendment rights against a government that seems unwilling or unable to narrow the scope of its electronic searches. Of course, this protection seemingly only extends to citizens whose phones have been properly seized as evidence, rather than dropped/abandoned and claimed by pursuing law enforcement agents. If it's the latter, Facciola appears to believe it's an imposition on law enforcement to demand a warrant. Still, two out of three (in just this month alone) is a pretty good batting average for Americans' rights, something that tends to be subverted very easily by expansive judicial readings of the Third Party Doctrine.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, john facciola, search, warrants

SEC Is A Due Process Nightmare: Searches Emails Without A Warrant, Refuses To Share Exculpatory Evidence

from the the-sec-doesn't-like-the-constitution dept

Back in December, we wrote about the effort to push for ECPA reform by noting that one of the main government agencies fighting against it was the SEC, which wanted the ability to snoop through your emails without getting a warrant. If you don't remember, ECPA is an excessively outdated law from 1986, whose definitions make no sense in the internet era (especially one with cloud computing). The key example often given is that emails on a server that are over 180 days old are considered "abandoned" and thus no warrant is needed to access them. That may have kind of made sense in an era when people downloaded all of their email, but now that nearly all email remains on servers somewhere it makes no sense at all. There are other problems with ECPA similar in nature (opened vs. unopened emails are treated differently, for example), but it's clear the law is outdated.

Two stories popped up last week that raise serious concerns about the way that the SEC tramples on the Constitution. The first is that in a hearing, SEC boss Mary Jo White was asked why the SEC is so resistant to ECPA reform and what's wrong with getting a warrant, and more or less admitted that it's standard practice for the SEC to not get a warrant, but to rely on loopholes in ECPA to get access to emails. Prior to this, many had assumed that this was just a desire of the SEC, not that they were regularly doing it. But White's answer makes it clear that the SEC views this practice -- which seems like it should be a clear 4th Amendment violations -- as standard operating procedure. While she insists that the privacy issues aren't a huge deal, because the SEC tries to "give notice" to the subscriber whose email is being accessed, that still doesn't explain why paper documents require a warrant, and yet the SEC doesn't bother with the much higher standard (including judicial review) of a warrant for electronic documents.

Meanwhile, concerning a separate issue, Mark Cuban and his lawyer published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week, discussing the SEC's totally bogus case against him for insider trading, which got tossed out by a lawyer. The key issue they discussed is how the SEC had exculpatory evidence that proved Cuban had done no wrong from back in 2004 -- and then did everything possible to avoid turning over that evidence, as is normally required in legal proceedings.

In a criminal trial, the federal government has long been obliged to promptly turn over to the defense any evidence that could show that the accused did not commit the offense of which he is accused. The Brady rule (announced in the 1963 Supreme Court case, Brady v. Maryland), prevents one-sided prosecutions in which the defendant is kept in the dark about information that might show that he is innocent.

The government's job as criminal prosecutor is not to obtain convictions, but "to do justice," according to the traditional legal maxim. It should be required to follow the Brady rule in civil trials as well. But the SEC does not, even when it accuses a citizen of fraud. Had the agency complied with this simple rule in its recent insider-trading case against one of us, Mark Cuban, it is unlikely that a lawsuit would even have been filed, let alone go to trial.

At issue were notes the SEC had concerning the details of Cuban's conversation with the CEO of Mamma.com, the search engine Cuban had invested in (and then sold all his shares in), which showed that, contrary to the SEC's claims in the case against him, Cuban had never made certain promises. When Cuban and his lawyer asked for these notes, the SEC resisted.

The SEC, however, resisted the disclosure of these notes for the next three years. Even up until the time Mr. Cuban took the stand, the SEC continued to fight to keep the notes from being shown to the jury by asking the judge to exclude them from evidence. Fortunately, the judge disagreed and the jury ultimately cleared Mr. Cuban of a charge of insider trading.

So, reading both of these stories, we see that the SEC feels that it is free to ignore both the 4th Amendment (against search and seizure without a warrant) and the 14th Amendment (concerning due process). Don't we think that agencies of the federal government should be required to follow the Constitution -- especially basic concepts like protecting the privacy of individuals and giving them basic due process? And, for those of you who think this is no big deal, because it's the SEC, and the SEC just goes after big bad bankers and the like, recognize that the agency following right behind the SEC in fighting ECPA reform is the IRS. Do you feel it's similarly okay for the IRS to search your emails and electronic records without a warrant while also believing that it need not share any of the exculpatory evidence it finds, proving your innocence, while bringing a case against you for violating the law?

Oh, and just for the hell of it, let's take this a step further. Just a few weeks ago, the NY Times reported on an increasingly popular tactic of law enforcement to effectively use the SEC to trick people into effectively implicating themselves in criminal cases. It tells the story of a low-level guy who worked at a law firm, and was asked by the SEC to "help out" with an investigation. Only at the last minute, was it mentioned that someone from the district attorney's office would be present -- and at no time was there any indication that the guy was being investigated for criminal behavior. But thanks to the SEC smokescreen, the guy was indicted, and he's still not sure why.

So, now it's an SEC that ignores the Constitution, searches emails without a warrant, hides exculpatory evidence and surreptitiously uses these "investigations" to help build out criminal charges against people on a highly questionable basis. See the problem, yet?

The folks over at VanishingRights.com are fighting to reform ECPA, which would at least solve half of the problem above. Right now, the SEC and the IRS remain the main government agencies aligned against such reform. It's time to tell those agencies that they need to obey the Constitution too.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, due process, ecpa, ecpa reform, irs, mark cuban, mary jo white, sec, warrantless searches, warrants

60 Days After Being Asked, James Clapper Finally Answers Ron Wyden's Question About Collecting US Citizens' Communications

from the and-it's-a-'yes;'-it's-ALWAYS-a-'yes' dept

The game of 20 questions (National Security Edition) has finally paid off, weeks after the question was asked. Ron Wyden, one of the few legislators willing to pin down (or at least attempt to -- the NATSEC reps are a slippery bunch) exactly what the NSA is up to, has received a response to one his pointed questions. (Wyden's ability to ask precisely the right question has pretty much turned any intel official's answer along the lines of "we can't discuss this publicly for national security reasons" into a de facto "yes.")

[I]n a letter to Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the intelligence committee, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has confirmed for the first time this backdoor had been used in practice to search for data related to “US persons”.

“There have been queries, using US person identifiers, of communications lawfully acquired to obtain foreign intelligence targeting non-US persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States,” Clapper wrote in the letter, which has been obtained by the Guardian.

“These queries were performed pursuant to minimization procedures approved by the Fisa court and consistent with the statute and the fourth amendment.”

So, there's the admission Wyden was seeking back on January 29th, but the story goes back much further than that. This is something that has been denied and obfuscated since the leaks began back in June of last year. The NSA (along with other agencies most likely) can grab American's communications without a warrant. It claims this is all legit because the agency "reasonably believes" these communications serve its foreign intelligence directive.

Clapper disingenuously points out that this was discussed during the debate over the renewal of Section 702 late last year.

“As you know, when Congress reauthorized Section 702, the proposal to restrict such queries was specifically raised and ultimately not adopted,” Clapper wrote.

Of course, no one had access to this information as Clapper and others had yet to officially acknowledge this backdoor.

But someone did know about this backdoor, and he's known about it for months: new director of the NSA, Mike Rogers.

It has taken just 9 months for Clapper to admit that, contrary to months of denials, the NSA (and FBI, which he doesn’t confirm but which the Report makes clear, as well as the CIA) can get the content of Americans’ communications without a warrant.

But Clapper’s admission that this fact was declassified in August should disqualify Vice Admiral Mike Rogers from confirmation as CyberComm head (I believe he started serving as DIRNSA head, which doesn’t require confirmation, yesterday). Because it means Rogers refused to answer a question the response to which was already declassified.

Again, the NSA, for all intents and purposes, has no oversight. Ron Wyden serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee and he's one of the few in this position who will actually attempt to extract info from closed-lipped intelligence officials. Despite his efforts, it took two months for him to obtain an answer that was declassified in August 2013. That's how the system actually works, but those defending the obfuscation artists charged with national security keep foisting their utopian dreamscape of checks and balances on the agency's many critics.

Filed Under: admiral mike rogers, backdoor loophole, james clapper, nsa, odni, ron wyden, surveillance, warrantless searches, warrants

DOJ Describes Its Use Of Malware As 'Augmenting Content' As It Pushes For Great Ability To Hack Computers

from the augment-that-content dept

Over at the Wall Street Journal, there's a good article about the DOJ's push for greater powers to use malware and to hack into computers in pursuit of criminals. The key issue, as the DOJ sees it, is that it normally needs a warrant from a local judge in order to make use of a malware exploit -- and when you're talking about networked computers, it's not always clear what's local. Thus, at least one warrant request for installing malware has been rejected over privacy concerns when the physical location of a computer was unknown (other courts, however, have approved such warrants). Given that, the DOJ is seeking to expand the rules making it easier to use malware (and to use it across multiple computers, rather than just a single computer per warrant).

The article points to a massive 402 page document to the rule making body of the courts, in which it explains how it has used malware to find criminal suspects. Of course, this is the DOJ that we're talking about, so it's not going to come right out and say "hey, here's the malware we used and how we use it." Instead, as noted by the ACLU's Christopher Soghoian, the DOJ hides its description of malware on page 201 (smack dab in the middle of such a giant document) in a single paragraph using some rather incredible language:

In the normal course of operation, websites send content to visitors. A user's computer downloads that content and uses it to display web pages on the user's computer. Under the NIT authorized by this warrant, the website would augment that content with some additional computer instructions. When a computer successfully downloads those instructions from Website A, the instructions are designed to cause the "activating" computer to deliver certain information to a computer controlled by or known to the government. That information is described with particularity on the warrant (in Attachment B of this affidavit), and the warrant authorizes obtaining no other information. The NIT will not deny the user of the "activating" computer access to any data or functionality of that computer.

As Soghoian notes, if you blink, you might miss it. The DOJ calls its malware insertion man-in-the-middle attack by describing it as "augmenting" the content sought by the user "with some additional computer instructions." That's certainly one way to look at it, but you have to assume that less than technologically savvy judges aren't likely to understand what this means at all.

Filed Under: augmenting content, doj, legal authority, malware, man in the middle, warrants

Judge Rejects Warrant Application, Because He Thinks None Is Needed

from the this-is-troubling dept

Orin Kerr has a post about a bizarre decision by DC Magistrate Judge John Facciola, who decided to reject a warrant application not because he thought there wasn't probable cause, but rather because he didn't think that the government needed a warrant at all, and could do the search it wanted without such a warrant. This is problematic on a variety of different levels, and Kerr covers them all. The story involves a police chase of a suspect with a gun. During the chase, he threw away the gun. The police found the gun, and while they were at it, the guy's mobile phone. The warrant was to do a thorough search of the phone. Facciola said they didn't need a warrant since the phone had been "abandoned." Whether or not the phone was actually abandoned, the ruling is problematic (in part because Facciola has no way of knowing if the phone was actually abandoned). But, just in general, it seems that he doesn't have the discretion to make this kind of ruling anyway:

Judge Facciola seems to be assuming that warrants only should be obtained when the Fourth Amendment would be violated without them, and that he, as a magistrate judge, has the power to say ex ante when that will be. But I think that’s pretty clearly wrong. Magistrate judges do not have the discretion to deny applications if they don’t think one would be necessary. The language in Fed. R. Crim. Pro. 41(d)(1) is mandatory: “After receiving an affidavit or other information, a magistrate judge. . . must issue the warrant if there is probable cause to search for and seize a person or property” (emphasis added).

As Kerr points out, the law is structured to encourage police to get warrants (for the obvious reason of making sure such searches are constitutional). If a magistrate judge is taking it upon himself to decide that no warrant is needed, then it seems to be going against the Supreme Court's belief that police should be encouraged to get a warrant.

The second problem is that Facciola seems to be making a constitutional determination (i.e., there's no 4th Amendment issue here) based on seriously incomplete facts. He only has the request for the warrant, which just seeks to present enough evidence for probable cause for the warrant. He doesn't know anything beyond that, and he doesn't know the other side of the story. It's entirely possible that the search doesn't need a warrant, but that's not the kind of thing a magistrate judge should be determining at this stage, especially when the police themselves have asked for a warrant.

And, as Kerr notes, this actually puts the police in quite a bind about whether or not to do the search:

Further, Judge Facciola’s decision puts the government in a bind. Under his ruling, the police cannot get a warrant. But if they search the phone without a warrant, they run a serious risk that a future court will rule that Magistrate Judge Facciola’s prediction was wrong and that they should have obtained one. If so, it’s damned if you do and damned if you don’t.... The way out is for magistrates to issue warrants based on whether the government has satisfied the facial requirements of probable cause and particularity, as Rule 41 requires, not to hinge the issuance of the warrant on whether the magistrate expects such a warrant to be a legal necessity.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, john facciola, law enforcement, warrants

FBI Appears To Have Collected Tormail's Entire Email Database... And It's Using It

from the collect-it-all dept

We've mentioned in the past that, for all the focus on the NSA lately, the FBI may be equally, if not more, worrisome for its willingness to collect tons of data on everyone and use it. Back in August, it became pretty clear that the FBI had compromised the Tor Browser Bundle, and had effectively taken over Freedom Hosting -- a popular hosting provider for dark web tor sites -- in order to push out malware that identified Tor users. A month later, it was confirmed that it was the FBI behind the effort, which led to the closing of Freedom Hosting.

Now there are new reports, suggesting that along with Freedom Hosting, the FBI was able to get the full database of emails on TorMail, a popular tor-based email service that used Freedom Hosting and was shut down at the same time Freedom Hosting went down. The reports point to a new lawsuit, in which the FBI was able to get a search warrant to search TorMail using its own copy of the database -- which it clearly had obtained at an earlier date. This basically means that the FBI has a pretty easy time searching all those emails if it needs to:

The tactic suggests the FBI is adapting to the age of big-data with an NSA-style collect-everything approach, gathering information into a virtual lock box, and leaving it there until it can obtain specific authority to tap it later. There’s no indication that the FBI searched the trove for incriminating evidence before getting a warrant. But now that it has a copy of TorMail’s servers, the bureau can execute endless search warrants on a mail service that once boasted of being immune to spying.

This again highlights one of the problems of the "collect it all" approach. Rather than merely targeting a specific individual or group, the FBI now has all of those emails sitting in a database. Even if it's getting a warrant to search, it's now searching its own database, rather than having to go out to get the information from others who might challenge the requests.

Filed Under: email, fbi, nsa, searches, surveillance, tor, tormail, warrants

Verizon Finally Releases Transparency Report Showing Many Requests, But Scale Of Those Requests Is Missing

from the details-please dept

After quite a lot of pressure, both Verizon and AT&T agreed last month to issue transparency reports like those that Google has offered for years, and which most of the other large internet companies have started offering in the last year or two. Verizon released its first one today, showing that it's pretty busy handling government requests. These are the numbers from 2013:

• Suboenas: 164,184
• General court orders: 62,857
• Pen Registers/Trap & Trace: 6,312
• Wiretap orders: 1,496
• Warrants: 36,696
• "Emergency requests" from law enforcement: ~50,000
• National Security Letters (NSLs): between 1,000 and 1,999

The report provides some further explanation. For example, it notes that over half of the subpoenas requested customer info -- i.e., the name and address of someone based on a phone number or IP address. Verizon does not say how often it refuses to provide information in response to a subpoena. In terms of getting access to content, Verizon notes that 14,500 of the warrants were for "stored content" which would be things like emails or text messages stored on Verizon's servers.

Of course, what this leaves out may be more interesting than what's included. While it lists the numbers for these requests, it gives no indication how many of its users are targeted. A single subpoena could, for example, request information on everyone. While that may be an extreme example, the point is that the number of requests doesn't really tell you very much overall. Or, perhaps not an extreme example. This report doesn't show, for example, what Verizon hands over under orders from the FISC under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act and Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. We already know that Section 215 has resulted in FISA orders for metadata on every Verizon mobile phone customers. That's probably counted as one single "court order" in that big list above. Similarly, as has been revealed in the past, the NSA works with telcos to directly tap the internet backbone for information. Where is that included in the list above?

Point being, this isn't all that "transparent," because bare numbers don't really mean that much.

Filed Under: government requests, transparency, transparency report, warrants
Companies: verizon