Court Says Child Porn Clearinghouse Acts As A Government Entity, Cannot Perform 'Private Searches'

from the gentlemen,-start-your-affidavits dept

A recent decision by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals reaches two conclusions: one obvious, and one not quite so obvious.

The defendant, Walter Ackerman, appealed the district court's denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained through a warrantless search of his email. Unsurprisingly, the court finds [PDF] that the content of his emails are subject to Fourth Amendment protections. More surprisingly (and apparently to the government's complete surprise), it finds a private entity to be a government entity -- one unable to perform "private searches." (via FourthAmendment.com)

First, some background. Ackerman's AOL email account was flagged by the service provider when messages containing hashes known to be related to child porn images were discovered. AOL turned over the flagged email to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) as it is required to do by federal statute. NCMEC is the clearinghouse for any suspected child porn discovered by ISPs and works directly with law enforcement to locate suspects.

NCMEC is not a government entity. It is a nonprofit started and run (for the most part) by private citizens. However, it has additional duties imposed on it by Congress -- a total of "22 programs and services to assist law enforcement." The opinion details the close relationship NCMEC enjoys with the government, including the fact that 75% of its funding comes from the federal government and a number of government officials sit on its board. It also details the mandates Congress has handed to it, which require it to do exactly what it did in this case: confirm that flagged images were child porn and alert authorities.

Here we know Congress statutorily required AOL to forward Mr. Ackerman’s email to NCMEC; Congress statutorily required NCMEC to maintain the CyberTipline to receive emails like Mr. Ackerman’s; Congress statutorily permitted NCMEC to review Mr. Ackerman’s email and attachments; and Congress statutorily required NCMEC to pass along a report about Mr. Ackerman’s activities to law enforcement authorities. All at the government’s expense and backed by threat of sanction should AOL have failed to cooperate. All with special dispensation, too, to NCMEC to possess and review contraband knowingly and intentionally. This comprehensive statutory structure seems more than enough to suggest both congressional knowledge of and acquiescence in the possibility that NCMEC would do exactly as it did here.

NCMEC is also allowed to do something private citizens can't: retain and view child porn. While private citizens can come across child porn, preserve the evidence, and turn it over to law enforcement, they can't maintain a private database of images for cross reference like NCMEC does.

The government tried to argue that NCMEC's search of email given to it by AOL was a "private search," and therefore not subject to the Fourth Amendment. Private searches can be performed by almost anyone and these searches can sometimes be duplicated by a government agency without the need for a warrant.

AOL's hash-matching was a form of a private search, albeit a very cursory one that did not access the email's entire contents. It's somewhat the equivalent of a repair shop finding child porn while repairing a computer. In this case, AOL was required to give that information to NCMEC by federal law. NCMEC was required -- again by federal law -- to examine the images and determine the owner of the email account.

It's the insertion of federal law -- along with several other factors -- that turns a private nonprofit into a government agent. If NCMEC had done nothing more than confirmed the single image hash matched hashes in its database, it likely would have steered clear of this issue. But it opened the email and accessed three other attached images. A government agent can duplicate a private search without implicating the Fourth Amendment, but it has to remain within the confines of the original search. NCMEC's search went further than AOL's "private search" -- which only confirmed that one image matched hashes in the child porn database.

The government wanted to salvage the not-so-private search, but seemed completely confident that the appeals court would find in its favor. That's the only explanation for its lack of counterarguments when litigating on appeal. The appeals court, however, isn't obliged to make the government's arguments for it.

In the face of so much law and evidence suggesting NCMEC qualifies as a governmental entity, the government offers almost no reply. In fact, its only response is to question whether the question is properly before us.

[...]

Seeing the void left by the government, NCMEC offers a number of substantive responses to Mr. Ackerman’s entity theory in its own amicus brief. But ours is a party-directed adversarial system and we normally limit ourselves to the arguments the parties before us choose to present. Amici briefs often serve valuable functions, but those functions don’t include presenting arguments forgone by the parties themselves or effectively and unilaterally expanding the word limits established by rule for a favored party.

The NCMEC is a government entity for the purposes of investigating child porn tips. Even if it were to be considered a private entity, law enforcement would need a warrant to duplicate the searches it performs because NCMEC's investigative work goes beyond simply confirming hashes already flagged by ISPs. The government is not allowed to use private agencies to bypass warrant requirements. NCMEC can still do what it's statutorily required to do without violating the Fourth Amendment, but if law enforcement wishes to avail itself of the evidence the clearinghouse has obtained, it will need to obtain a warrant. The contents of the email accessed by NCMEC are protected by the Fourth Amendment.

No one in this appeal disputes that an email is a “paper” or “effect” for Fourth Amendment purposes, a form of communication capable of storing all sorts of private and personal details, from correspondence to images, video or audio files, and so much more.

[...]

Given the uncertain status of Jacobsen after Jones, we cannot see how we might ignore Jones’s potential impact on our case. And its impact here seems even clearer than in Jacobsen. After all, we are not dealing with a governmental drug test that destroyed but a trace amount of potential contraband. We are dealing instead with the warrantless opening and examination of (presumptively) private correspondence that could have contained much besides potential contraband for all anyone knew. And that seems pretty clearly to qualify as exactly the type of trespass to chattels that the framers sought to prevent when they adopted the Fourth Amendment.

[...]

So it seems that, whether we analyze the “search” question through the lens of the government’s preferred authority — Jacobsen and Katz — or through the lens of the traditional trespass test suggested by Jones, they yield the same (and pretty intuitive) result: NCMEC conducted a “search” when it opened and examined Mr. Ackerman’s email.

The court notes that this finding does not immediately preclude the government from successfully battling the suppression motion on remand. There are a host of questions not answered here, mainly because the government decided not to raise them.

Surely hard questions remain to be resolved on remand, not least the question whether the third-party doctrine might preclude Mr. Ackerman’s claim to the Fourth Amendment’s application, a question the government has preserved and the district court and we have reserved. But about one thing we can be very certain. There can be no doubt that NCMEC does important work and that its work can continue without interruption. After all, it could be that the third-party doctrine will preclude motions to suppress like Mr. Ackerman’s. Or that changes in how reports are submitted or reviewed might allow NCMEC to access attachments with matching hash values directly, without reviewing email correspondence or other attachments with possibly private, noncontraband content — and in this way perhaps bring the government closer to a successful invocation of the private search doctrine. Or it may be possible that the government could cite exigent circumstances or attenuation doctrine or special needs doctrine or the good faith exception to excuse warrantless searches or avoid suppression in at least some cases.

But, it goes on to state, this doesn't mean the government should continue to consider NCMEC as operating outside of the confines of the Fourth Amendment and using the nonprofit's statutory mandates to skirt warrant requirements. Given the nature of the NCMEC's investigative work, there should be little standing between law enforcement officers and the proper permission to view NCMEC's collected evidence.

[E]ven if not a single one of these potential scenarios plays out — and we do not mean to prejudge any of them — we are confident that NCMEC’s law enforcement partners will struggle not at all to obtain warrants to open emails when the facts in hand suggest, as they surely did here, that a crime against a child has taken place.

The case goes back to the lower court to discuss the defendant's motion to suppress. No evidence has been suppressed at this moment because the district court never gave Ackerman the opportunity to present a motion, due to its acceptance of the government's "private search" theory.

It's certainly an interesting decision as there appears to be little precedent for this conclusion. The NCMEC has been an integral part in the fight against child pornography -- so much so that the federal government has drafted it into service, funds it, and sits on its board of directors. This close relationship has its benefits for the clearinghouse, but -- at least in this circuit -- it can no longer act on behalf of the government while simultaneously being used by the government as a "private" party for searches.

Filed Under: 10th circuit, 4th amendment, child porn, ncmec, searches
Companies: ncmec

DOJ Deploys Highly-Questionable Legal Arguments In Attempt To Save FBI's Hacking Warrants

from the let-us-tell-you-how-to-read-the-applicable-statutes-and-precedent dept

The proposed Rule 41 changes recently adopted by the US Supreme Court can't go into force fast enough for the FBI. The changes -- if approved by Congress (which needs to do nothing more than literally nothing for this to happen) -- would allow it to hack computers anywhere in the nation by removing jurisdictional restrictions.

Its decision to keep a child porn site up and running in order to deploy a hacking tool to sniff out obscured user information now appears to have been a colossal mistake. The warrant for the search performed by the FBI's NIT was issued in Virginia, but the actual searches took place all over the nation. While the seized server may have been located in the state, the users identified by the NIT were located as far away as the opposite coast. The FBI's decision to ignore jurisdiction limits under Rule 41 is now costing it loads of evidence.

Judges in Massachusetts, Oklahoma and Kansas have found the searches to be illegal because they're based on invalid warrants. The government is now fighting these suppression orders. In Oklahoma, it recently entered its challenge of the court's decision to suppress evidence obtained with the NIT, using an interesting take on Rule 41 that attempts to align it with the infamous All Writs Act -- mainly that Rule 41 should be construed liberally to allow the FBI to do anything Congress hasn't expressly forbidden it to do.

Rule 41(b) is meant to be applied flexibly, not rigidly. United States v. Koyomejian, 970 F.2d 536, 542 (9th Cir. 1992). When emerging technologies create a situation in which the specific language of Rule 41 does not explicitly permit a warrant, the Supreme Court has concluded that Rule 41 “is sufficiently flexible to include within its scope electronic intrusions authorized upon a finding of probable cause.” United States v. New York Tel. Co., 434 U.S. 159, 169 (1977). The Supreme Court goes on to explain that a flexible application of Rule 41 is supported by Fed. R. Crim. P. 57(b), which provides in the absence of controlling law, “a judge may regulate practice in any manner consistent with federal law, these rules and the local rules[.]”

Just as the DOJ government would prefer we focus on a case that's almost four decades old (1979's Smith v. Maryland) when discussing bulk surveillance, Stingray devices and cell site location info, it wants us to page through late 70s court decisions when discussing the FBI's actions during the last couple of years.

In the middle of its paragraph stating that courts should be granting the FBI much more leeway when it deploys previously-unused investigative techniques, the DOJ slips in a reference to 1977's US v. New York Telephone Company -- the same Supreme Court decision it says justifies its use of the All Writs Act to force Apple to comply with demands to unlock encrypted iPhones.

The problem with the DOJ's argument is that this isn't a case where a warrant isn't "explicitly permitted." Warrants were permitted, but deployment was supposed to be limited to the jurisdiction where they were issued. The DOJ basically wants the court to forget its position as a check against government overreach and validate the FBI's invalid warrants. In doing so, it misleadingly portrays the Supreme Court's statements on the matter by selectively quoting from the decision. The wording surrounding the DOJ's pull quotes only shows the court determining that Rule 41(h) does not restrict warrants to justifying the search and seizure of "tangible items."

Although Rule 41 (h) defines property "to include documents, books, papers and any other tangible objects," it does not restrict or purport to exhaustively enumerate all the items which may be seized pursuant to Rule 41. Indeed, we recognized in Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 (1967),which held that telephone conversations were protected by the Fourth Amendment, that Rule 41 is not limited to tangible items but is sufficiently flexible to include within its scope electronic intrusions authorized upon a finding of probable cause. 389 U. S., at 354-356, and n. 16 See also Osborn v. United States, 385 U. S. 323, 329-331 (1966).

This obscures the real issue here: Rule 41(b), which currently limits deployment of warrants to the jurisdictions where they were issued.

Going beyond this legal sleight of hand, the DOJ also claims that the entire two-week period it ran the child porn site while it deployed its NIT was fraught with "exigent circumstances."

The magistrate judge’s Report and Recommendation rejects the assertion that exigent circumstances would have justified the warrant. The judge’s analysis identifies the underlying exigency as being the “downloading and distribution of child pornography,” exigent “only because the Government opted to keep the Playpen site operating while it employed the NIT.” Doc. 42, p. 27. The exigent circumstances that would have justified the use of the NIT, however, were tied to the on-going rape and abuse of children—as opposed to simply its depiction.

Even if you buy the DOJ's argument that a two-week period -- in which warrants were obtained -- is still somehow "exigent," you have to get over the hurdle that exigent circumstances is almost always used to salvage the results of warrantless searches. It can't be used -- or at least hasn't been used until now -- to salvage the warrants themselves. The court here declared the warrant to be "void ab initio," meaning the warrant was never valid at any point.

Circumstances cannot be declared "exigent" if the time exists to obtain warrants. The DOJ's argument here isn't even coherent enough to be circular. It's simply nonsensical. Either the situation is exigent and warrants must be put on the back burner, or circumstances are not exigent and warrants can be obtained. It can't be both things at once, even if it would be oh so convenient for the DOJ if they were.

Exigent circumstances or not, the warrant obtained was invalid. The DOJ is hoping to turn a search with a void warrant into a warrantless search in order to bypass the Rule 41(b) restrictions it argues one paragraph earlier shouldn't prevent it from performing its searches wherever it feels like it.

The worst case scenario, though, is what could happen if everything falls into place for the DOJ. If the jurisdiction limitations are removed with the Rule 41(b) changes, future NIT warrants would be valid and suppression would be nearly impossible. But if the court buys its "exigent circumstances" argument, the FBI may feel more comfortable relying on the exception... and begin deploying its hacking tools anywhere it feels like without ever running it past a judge.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, child porn, doj, fbi, hacking, nit, playpen, warrant

FBI Used FISA Warrant To Prosecute Boeing Employee For Child Porn Possession

from the regular-crime;-special-warrant dept

Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post has the disturbing story of former Boeing employee Keith Gartenlaub, whose home was searched for evidence of his alleged spying for the Chinese. Specifically, the FBI was looking for documents about the military's C-17 transport plane. Instead, FBI agents came across something else.

[S]ince the search in January 2014, no spy or hacking charges have been brought against him.

Instead, seven months later, he was charged with the possession and receipt of child pornography. He has denied the charges, but a jury convicted him in December.

Questions have been raised about the evidence obtained during the search.

In Gartenlaub’s case, the defense unsuccessfully argued that he could not be linked to identical copies of child pornography videos found on four hard drives in his house. Two of the hard drives had been in a computer that was kept at a beach house where numerous people had access to it, Gartenlaub said.

[...]

Jeff Fischbach, a forensic technologist for the defense, said there is no evidence that the child pornography was ever seen by anyone who used the computer, much less Gartenlaub.

The government’s own forensic expert, Bruce W. Pixley, said he could not find any evidence of the material being downloaded onto any of the computers, the defense noted. That means it had to have been copied onto the computer — but by whom is unknown.

The defense had more difficulty than usual in challenging the evidence. The search wasn't performed with a standard FBI warrant, but instead -- due to its supposed national security implications -- with a warrant issued by the FISA court. That the FBI found child pornography instead is unfortunate, but that fact shouldn't nullify the original warrant or result in the suppression of the evidence, at least according to the DOJ.

While the DOJ is correct in the fact that the FBI wasn't going to call off the search after it uncovered evidence of other wrongdoing, its defense of the way the evidence was obtained is disingenuous. Unlike a regular warrant, a FISA warrant is almost completely unchallengeable. The entire process is ex parte, including the submission of evidence obtained -- even if the evidence has nothing to do with national security.

In Gartenlaub's case, every submission by the government was done under seal. His legal representation had no access to the government's presentation of evidence. The possession of child porn is certainly nothing the government takes lightly, but once the focus of the investigation shifted away from alleged espionage, the process likewise should have changed. At the very least, the FBI should have had a new warrant issued, signed by a regular magistrate judge -- one that would have allowed the defense to examine the affidavit and the results of the search.

JoAnne Musick of Fault Lines points out just how much the FISA Court's involvement screwed Gartenlaub.

Once the warrant issued, there was virtually no means by which Gartenlaub could challenge the basis for the warrant. Of course, the court found the pornography material “obtained pursuant to FISA was lawfully acquired” and did not violate the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights. Additionally, after ex parte pre-trial briefings between the court and government, the judge found:

"[T]here is no indication of any false statements having been included in the FISA materials."

Surely the government would not have proven any false statements in their private discussions with the court. Perhaps had the defense had an opportunity to review or challenge the basis for the warrant, the court might have found false statements. Yet, we will never know as the defense was unable to review the evidence or otherwise challenge it. It’s disturbing that the accused was unable to obtain even basic information on how the information was obtained and why the warrant was issued.

The ability to challenge presented evidence is a key part of the justice system. Wrongs committed by the government during the search for evidence can only be righted through this process. But the use of a FISA warrant deprives the accused of that potential remedy. When it became apparent the investigation was no longer focused on matters of national security, the FBI should have unsealed documents and turned over evidence to Gartenlaub's legal reps. Instead, it chose to keep operating under the pretense it was investigating espionage and availed itself of all the advantages that come with national security-related investigations.

Then there's this: even though the FBI had enough evidence of child porn possession to prosecute (successfully) Gartenlaub and nothing in the way of evidence he was involved in spying for the Chinese, it still attempted to leverage what it had obtained to turn Gartenlaub into a government informant.

During his initial appearance in a federal courthouse in Santa Ana, Calif., the prosecutors indicated a willingness to reduce or drop the child pornography charges if he would tell them about the C-17, said Sara Naheedy, Gartenlaub’s attorney at the time.

So, not only did the government use its additional national security benefits to keep Gartenlaub from mounting a serious challenge to submitted evidence, but it also used evidence it gathered with an unrelated search to pressure him into admitting he was a spy -- something it had no evidence of at all.

Filed Under: child porn, fbi, fisa, law enforcement, national security, warrant

So Much For The Fifth Amendment: Man Jailed For Seven Months For Not Turning Over Password

from the enjoying-your-rights,-citizen? dept

The FBI recently spent more than $1 million for assistance in decrypting a device's contents. It may have overpaid. Alternatives exist, whether it's a $5 wrench or indefinite imprisonment for not helping the government with its prosecution efforts.

A Philadelphia man suspected of possessing child pornography has been in jail for seven months and counting after being found in contempt of a court order demanding that he decrypt two password-protected hard drives.

The suspect, a former Philadelphia Police Department sergeant, has not been charged with any child porn crimes. Instead, he remains indefinitely imprisoned in Philadelphia's Federal Detention Center for refusing to unlock two drives encrypted with Apple's FileVault software in a case that once again highlights the extent to which the authorities are going to crack encrypted devices. The man is to remain jailed "until such time that he fully complies" with the decryption order.

The Fifth Amendment should prevent the government from punishing a person for not testifying against themselves, which is what's being argued by the defendant's representation in its appeal to the Third Circuit. (Although it's actually indirect representation. The government's case is actually against Doe's devices ["United States of America v. Apple MacPro Computer, et al"] and his lawyer is hoping for a stay of the contempt order during the appeal process.)

Mr. Doe… has a strong likelihood of success on the second issue: whether compelling the target of a criminal investigation to recall and divulge an encryption passcode transgresses the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. Supreme Court precedent already instructs that a suspect may not be compelled to disclose the sequence of numbers that will open a combination lock — clearly auguring the same rule for any compelled disclosure of the sequence of characters constituting an encryption passcode.

Doe's rep also argues that the All Writs order obtained by the government has no jurisdiction over Doe or his devices.

Mr. Doe’s first claim is that the district court lacked subject matter jurisdiction. The claim stems from the government’s apparently unprecedented use of an unusual procedural vehicle to attempt to compel a suspect to give evidence in advance of potential criminal charges. Specifically, the government took resort not to a grand jury, but to a magistrate judge pursuant to the All Writs Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1651. (Ex. F at 1).

It is black letter law that the All Writs Act never supplies “any federal subject-matter jurisdiction in its own right[.]” Sygenta Crop Protection, Inc. v. Henson, 537 U.S. 28, 31 (2002) (citation omitted). It is equally well-settled that the Act has no application where other provisions of law specifically address the subject matter concerned. Pennsylvania Bureau of Correction v. United States Marshals Service, 474 U.S. 34, 40-42 (1985). The compelled production of evidence in advance of criminal charges is specifically addressed by Rules 6 and 17 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which authorize the issuance and enforcement of grand jury subpoenas; and by 28 U.S.C. § 1826(a), which specifies the authorized penalties for a witness who refuses without good cause to give the evidence demanded by the grand jury.

As it stands now, Doe is still being held in contempt of court for refusing to decrypt his devices for investigators. The district court that held him in contempt has refused direct appeal of that order, resulting in the labyrinthine legal strategy of using the government's case against Doe's devices as a vehicle for challenging the lower court's contempt order.

Doe has not been charged, yet he's in prison. Backing up the government's assertions for holding him in contempt are two dubious pieces of hearsay. One is from his estranged sister, who claims to have seen child porn on Doe's computer, but can't actually say whether it was located on the devices the government is seeking to have decrypted. The other is from some sort of law enforcement encryption whisperer, who can apparently see things in the scrambled bits.

The government’s second witness was Detective Christopher Tankelewicz, a forensic examiner with the Delaware County District Attorney’s Office. He testified only that it was his “best guess” child pornography would be found on the hard drives. (Ex. J at 346). According to Tankelewicz’s understanding of the Freenet online network (in which he admits having no training), there were signs on an Apple Mac Pro computer seized with the hard drives of a user accessing or trying to access message boards with names suggestive of child pornography. (Ex. J at 306, 311-312, 339-340). In rather ambiguous testimony, Tankelewicz did not appear to say this meant any image traded over these boards was on the hard drives. (See Ex. J at 303-317, 336-340, 345-350). Instead, he identified a single image he believed there to be a “possibility” was on the drives. (Ex. J at 308-309). As he described it, the image was of “a four or five-year-old girl with her dress lifted up, but the image itself was small so you really couldn’t see what was going on with the image.” (Ex. J at 308).

No one wants to see a sex offender walk away from charges, but at this point, Doe hasn't even been officially charged with anything more than contempt. The problem with that charge is it has no end date. He can either stay in jail or comply with the order, even when the order conjures jurisdiction out of nowhere and violates his Fifth Amendment rights. If the government doesn't have enough evidence to pursue a case against Doe, it should cut him loose until it does.

Filed Under: all writs act, child porn, contempt, encryption, fifth amendment, in rem, jail, password, philadelphia

Judge Says FBI's Hacking Tool Deployed In Child Porn Investigation Is An Illegal Search

from the can't-just-go-wherever-you-damn-well-please dept

The judicial system doesn't seem to have a problem with the FBI acting as admins for child porn sites while conducting investigations. After all, judges have seen worse. They've OK'ed the FBI's hiring of a "heroin-addicted prostitute" to seduce an investigation target into selling drugs to undercover agents. Judges have, for the most part, allowed the ATF to bust people for robbing fake drug houses containing zero drugs -- even when the actual robbery has never taken place. Judges have also found nothing wrong with law enforcement creating its own "pedophilic organization," recruiting members and encouraging them to create child pornography.

So, when the FBI ran a child porn site for two weeks last year, its position as a child porn middleman was never considered to be a problem. The "network investigative technique" (NIT) it used to obtain identifying information about anonymous site visitors and their computer hardware, however, has resulted in a few problems for the agency.

While the FBI has been able to fend off one defendant's attempt to suppress evidence out in Washington, it has just seen its evidence disappear in another case related to its NIT and the "PlayPen" child porn site it seized (and ran) last year.

What troubles the court isn't the FBI acting as a child porn conduit in exchange for unmasking Tor users. What bothers the court is the reach of its NIT, which extends far outside the jurisdiction of the magistrate judge who granted the FBI's search warrants. This decision benefits defendant Alex Levin of Massachusetts directly. But it could also pay off for Jay Michaud in Washington.

The warrants were issued in Virginia, which is where the seized server resided during the FBI's spyware-based investigation. Levin, like Michaud, does not reside in the district where the warrant was issued (Virginia - Eastern District) and where the search was supposed to be undertaken. As Judge William Young explains, the FBI's failure to restrict itself to the location where the NIT warrants were issued makes them worthless pieces of paper outside of that district. (via Chris Soghoian)

The government argues for a liberal construction of Rule 41(b) that would authorize the type of search that occurred here pursuant to the NIT Warrant. See Gov’t’s Resp. 18-20. Specifically, it argues that subsections (1), (2), and (4) of Rule 41(b) are each sufficient to support the magistrate judge’s issuance of the NIT Warrant. Id. This Court is unpersuaded by the government’s arguments. Because the NIT Warrant purported to authorize a search of property located outside the Eastern District of Virginia, and because none of the exceptions to the general territorial limitation of Rule 41(b)(1) applies, the Court holds that the magistrate judge lacked authority under Rule 41(b) to issue the NIT Warrant.

The government deployed some spectacular theories in its effort to salvage these warrants, but the court is having none of it.

The government advances two distinct lines of argument as to why Rule 41(b)(1) authorizes the NIT Warrant. One is that all of the property that was searched pursuant to the NIT Warrant was actually located within the Eastern District of Virginia, where the magistrate judge sat: since Levin -- as a user of Website A -- “retrieved the NIT from a server in the Eastern District of Virginia, and the NIT sent [Levin’s] network information back to a server in that district,” the government argues the search it conducted pursuant to the NIT Warrant properly can be understood as occurring within the Eastern District of Virginia. Gov’t’s Resp. 20. This is nothing but a strained, after-the-fact rationalization.

As the government attempts to portray it, the search was wholly contained in Virginia because the NIT was distributed by the seized server in the FBI's control. But, as the judge notes, the search itself -- via the NIT -- did not occur in Virginia. The NIT may have originated there, but without grabbing info and data from Levin's computer in Massachusetts, the FBI would have nothing to use against the defendant.

That the Website A server is located in the Eastern District of Virginia is, for purposes of Rule 41(b)(1), immaterial, since it is not the server itself from which the relevant information was sought.

And, according to Judge Young, that's exactly what the FBI has now: nothing.

The Court concludes that the violation at issue here is distinct from the technical Rule 41 violations that have been deemed insufficient to warrant suppression in past cases, and, in any event, Levin was prejudiced by the violation. Moreover, the Court holds that the good-faith exception is inapplicable because the warrant at issue here was void ab initio.

The judge has more to say about the FBI's last ditch attempt to have the "good faith exception" salvage its invalid searches.

Even were the Court to hold that the good-faith exception could apply to circumstances involving a search pursuant to a warrant issued without jurisdiction, it would decline to rule such exception applicable here. For one, it was not objectively reasonable for law enforcement -- particularly “a veteran FBI agent with 19 years of federal law enforcement experience[,]” Gov’t’s Resp. 7-8 -- to believe that the NIT Warrant was properly issued considering the plain mandate of Rule 41(b).

The court doesn't have a problem with NITs or the FBI's decision to spend two weeks operating a seized child porn server. But it does have a problem with the government getting warrants signed in one jurisdiction and using them everywhere but.

The decision here could call into question other such warrants used extraterritorially, like the DEA's dozens of wiretap warrants obtained in California but used to eavesdrop on targets located on the other side of the country. And it may help Jay Michaud in his case, seeing as he resides a few thousand miles away from where the search was supposedly performed.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, child porn, fbi, hacking, nit, warrant

Another Cop Treats Sexting Teens Like Child Pornographers

from the teen-would-have-been-better-off-engaging-in-sexual-activity dept

More sexting stupidity, this time in Michigan.

A Three Rivers, Michigan, teenager is both the victim and perpetrator of a sex crime. He might land on the sex offender registry, and face criminal charges, all because he took an inappropriate photo—of himself.

The boy is unnamed in local news reporters, which note that he is under 15 years of age. He allegedly took a nude photo of himself on a girl’s cell phone. That girl sent the picture to another girl, who sent it to another. Preliminary charges are pending for all three—the boy was charged with manufacturing child porn, and the girls with distributing it. A prosecutor is still weighing whether to pursue the charges.

Hopefully, the prosecutor will realize that pursuing the suggested charges could ruin a few teens' lives. The police detective working the case seems to want to destroy these kids' lives… for the good of other teens, or something.

Police Detective Mike Mohney told WBST.com that sexting is a serious crime because it leads to “bullying,” and “real severe things like people committing suicide or violent crimes against others because they're so embarrassed about it.”

As Reason's Robby Soave points out, Detective Mohney is a walking contradiction. Apparently, it's never occurred to him that bringing child porn charges against these young teens might result in bullying and suicide. Nothing makes the future look dim and hopeless like a long stint on the sex offender registry. Nothing destroys someone's reputation faster than being listed alongside criminals who manufactured actual child porn, rather than just took a photo of their own adolescent body.

For that matter, the preliminary charges make this teen's decision to photograph his own body and send it to another teen a far worse crime than if he'd simply showed up at the girl's house, stripped off his clothes and proceeded to engage in sexual activity with her.

Taking off his clothes at her house would have been nothing more than indecent exposure, a misdemeanor. More importantly, unless the person has been convicted for other sexual-related crimes, there's no sex offender registration tied to the charge.

Even if he'd pursued sexual contact with the other teen, it still would have been a better outcome than being branded a child pornographer. Michigan has no "Romeo and Juliet" law, so any contact between teens -- no matter their closeness in age -- could trigger statutory rape charges. (Obviously, if the sexual activity was not consensual, this would be actual rape, but there's no reason to believe a [possibly] unsolicited naked photo rises to the level of aggravated sexual assault.)

If the activity was consensual, the worst charge would be statutory rape, which does not require sex offender registration for teens.

[P]eople who are convicted of criminal sexual conduct based on consensual sexual conduct with children over the age of 13 who are not more than four years older than their victims are not required to register.

And, if the sexual contact contained no penetration, no criminal charges would be brought at all.

[A] 17-year-old who engages in consensual petting with a 14-year-old could not be prosecuted for a crime. However, if the parties engaged in oral sex, the 17-year-old could face prosecution.

So, this so-very-concerned detective has taken a digital photo -- taken by a teen of his own body -- and turned it into something worse than actual in-person nudity and/or sexual contact. That's a pretty fucked up way to show concern for sexting teens. Treating photos taken by minors and distributed to other minors as child porn is the worst possible way to handle a situation that, in all reality, should be left to the discretion of the teens' parents.

Filed Under: child porn, michigan, mike mohney, police, sexting, teens, three rivers

TV Station Educates Public On Dangers Of Teen Sexting By Exposing 14-Year-Old's Name... And Penis

from the an-hero dept

According to a recently-filed lawsuit, the media is apparently every bit as "helpful" as law enforcement when it comes to the responsible, logical handling of teens and sexting. Confusing "hurting" with "helping," Colorado's KOAA allegedly exposed not only the name of a teen involved in a sexting incident, but also the part that puts the "sex" in "sexting."

The station, KOAA TV, aired footage of the boy’s erect penis during a news report that was put together after his father’s girlfriend approached producers about an alleged blackmail attempt, according to a complaint filed Friday in U.S. District Court.

Producers were told on Feb. 24 by the woman that someone had tried to blackmail the teen, now 16, using sexually explicit material. That same day they arrived at the family house in Pueblo, Colorado to investigate the claims and interview the boy’s father, Elijah Holden. While on assignment, the suit alleges that the news team collected screenshots from the teen’s Facebook page, as well as images from the YouTube page where the blackmail video had been uploaded, to be used in their coverage.

The plaintiff and his father both asked that the name “be kept confidential through any report presented by Defendant KOAA,” attorney Matthew Schneider said in the filing.

Since law enforcement largely seems to feel sexting = child porn, the station should have found itself under investigation for distributing child porn. Instead, the only negative result of its allegedly terrible editorial practices so far is Holden's lawsuit.

Holden is seeking damages related to the outing of his name and sexual organs, with damages sought clearing the $1 million mark. In its defense, the station had this to say:

“Through a series of stories during the last several years, KOAA has informed its viewers about the dangers of sexting and cell phone security,” KOAA president and general manager Evan Pappas said in a statement to Courthouse News, where the suit was first reported on Tuesday this week. “At the specific request of the victim’s father, we ran a story two years ago about his son being blackmailed over a cellphone video.”

Well, I guess nothing better illustrates the dangers of sexting more than irresponsibly splashing a minor's name and penis all over the TV screen. Of course, considering these were tied to blackmail allegations by an adult, it would seem more -- much more -- discretion would have been in order. Instead, the TV station went the other way, displaying the name of the minor involved over a screen cap of his penis and topped it off by dragging his social circle into the mess.

The station claims the allegations are unsubstantiated, but there's really no excuse for using a minor's name -- even if the guardian gave permission to the news outlet to do so. But going past that, how does the station hope to explain its use of an explicit photo of a minor in a publicly-broadcast news report? According to the lawsuit, something that could be considered child pornography somehow made its way past internal censors and ended up on the evening news.

Defendant KOAA aired the thumbnail image of the YouTube video depicting Plaintiff's erect penis and his name as a part of the story shown on February 24th 2014.

While journalists have played an important part in exposing ridiculous prosecutions of sexting teens, there's no denying the lurid nature of the subject matter is also beneficial to the entities covering the stories. The implicit suggestion that YOUNG NAKED TEENS lie just beyond the next commercial break attracts additional viewers. This additional motivator might explain the apparent lack of discretion on the part of KOAA.

As of now, what we have is a news agency that claims it broadcasts these stories to educate the public on the dangers of sexting while apparently feeling compelled to drive that point home through its own actions.

Filed Under: child porn, colorado, kids, media, news, pueblo, sexting, tv
Companies: koaa

Courts Pretty Much OK With FBI's Occasional Stints As Child Porn Distributors

from the the-fine-art-of-honeypottery dept

Law enforcement agencies commit criminal acts while conducting criminal investigations. It happens all the time. With the blessing of their handlers, confidential informants routinely engage in criminal activity. Investigators act as co-conspirators in the planning of terrorist attacks and the robbing of imaginary "stash houses."

But many people are taking issue with the FBI's decision to use seized servers loaded with child pornography as honeypots rather than immediately shut them down. For some, this is the one unforgivable criminal act -- the possession and distribution of child porn.

This is something the FBI has done twice (that we know of). The first time was back in 2012, when it seized a server in Bellevue, Nebraska linked to a website called "PedoBook." It ran the site for three weeks while it deployed a Network Investigative Tool to find out more info about its users.

It did it again in 2015. Joseph Cox of Motherboard was the first to cover it, detailing the FBI's two-week stint as the new hosts of "Playpen," another child porn site accessible only to users utilizing the Tor browser. Again, the FBI deployed its NIT to gather information on the site's visitors.

One of those caught in the latest sting is arguing the FBI participated in criminal activity, tainting the evidence it seized.

[T]he Government engaged in illegal conduct by aiding and abetting the distribution of child pornography; and, considering the Fourth Amendment’s core reasonableness requirements and the totality of the circumstances, it obtained an unprecedently overbroad general warrant.

This is one of several arguments Jay Michaud's attorney is raising. It's also being argued that the use of the NIT violated Rule 41, which governs the use of search warrants. Michaud claims the FBI violated Rule 41's territorial limits by using its control of a server in Virginia (where the NIT warrant was issued) to access Michaud's computer in Vancouver, Washington.

The defense has never questioned the Government’s authority to seize “mere evidence,” assuming that other requirements of Rule 41 and the Constitution are complied with. Rather, this case involves the territorial limitations of Rule 41, a matter completely unaffected by the enactment of § 3103(a).

Finally, it is important to note that the Government has not disputed that Rule 41 applies to the NIT warrant or argued that some other law alters or expands the Rule’s requirement. Instead, the Government has argued that the Rule is “flexible,” despite its plain language, and has proposed several novel and unpersuasive interpretations of the Rule that cannot be reconciled with that language.

In sum, nothing in either of these statutes in any way alters or undercuts the territorial limitations of Rule 41 and thus have no relevance when applied to the facts of this case.

The Rule 41 approach was also explored by Joshua Welch, who was swept up in the FBI's 2012 operation. It was of limited success. While the Eighth Circuit Appeals Court found the NIT warrant fell under Rule 41's time limit of notification of search warrant targets (30 days), it was not enough to offset other evidence gathered by the FBI.

We assume, without deciding, that Rule 41 applies to the NIT warrant. The statute authorizing the magistrate judge to delay notice is perfectly clear–the thirty day extension runs from the execution of the warrant. 18 U.S.C. § 3103a(b)(3). This occurred on November 19, 2012, meaning notice was to be provided within thirty days of that date. Moreover, the "notice" provided by the government was insufficient. The government points to a hearing Welch attended in which an agent testified about the NIT and to the entry of the residential search warrant into evidence as notice "provided during the discovery process." But under Rule 41 Welch should have been given a copy of the NIT warrant. Of course it is plainly true that if agents were required to send a copy of the warrant to the subscriber address they obtained before they could search the premises and identify the individual user, Welch would have had ample time to flee prosecution, destroy or tamper with evidence, and otherwise seriously jeopardize the investigation. But these special considerations would have allowed for the magistrate judge to either specify a later date certain, which he did not do, or for the government to return for extensions of time under § 3103a(c), which it did not do. Therefore, the notice given Welch failed to comport with Rule 41.

If the FBI's use of NITs, especially in conjunction with its decision to act as interim administrators for seized child porn websites, is going to be challenged, Rule 41 seems to be the angle to take. The other route -- challenging the FBI's forays into child porn distribution -- seems far less likely to succeed. The courts have granted a lot of leeway to law enforcement agencies who engage in illegal activities during the course of investigations, as USA Today's Brad Heath has been pointing out on Twitter.

The FBI "hired a heroin-addicted prostitute" to become intimate with a suspect and get him to sell drugs. Court: OK. pic.twitter.com/0MbaBJu3xn

— Brad Heath (@bradheath) January 21, 2016

The FBI "hired a heroin-addicted prostitute" to become intimate with a suspect and get him to sell drugs. Court: OK.

Federal courts have given the government wide latitude to break the law in pursuit of criminals. From a #DOJ brief: pic.twitter.com/pZ8WiNtqJm

— Brad Heath (@bradheath) January 21, 2016

The footnote pictured in the tweet reads:

E.g., United States v. Esch, 832 F.2d 531 (10th Cir. 1987)
(holding that it was not outrageous government conduct to create a pedophilic organization, advertise for members, and encourage those members to create child pornography).

The latter would seem to be even more reprehensible than simply running an existing child porn site and allowing users to upload and download child porn. In the 1987 case, the FBI actually encouraged the production of child pornography. Yet the court found no reason to question or discourage this behavior.

And there will always be other examples of highly-questionable activity engaged in by law enforcement during criminal investigations. An entire cottage industry of sting operations is predicated on pushing potential suspects towards committing criminal behavior and arresting them before the imaginary scheme can be carried out. In stash house robbery cases, the contents of the house to be robbed are limited only to creativity of the agents participating in the sting. Prison terms are predicated on these nonexistent items, allowing the government to send someone away for decades for almost robbing an empty house.

While it is undoubtedly true the FBI would not have been able to uncover the identities of these child porn site visitors without allowing the site to run, one has to question whether it was all worth it. In the two weeks it participated in the hosting and distribution of child porn, 100,000 visitors were logged. But so far, it has only resulted in 137 arrests and far fewer indictments. Its 2012 investigation led to far less: 25 criminal complaints -- nine of which are still only identified as "Doe."

Filed Under: child porn, fbi, honeypots, porn

Administration Says Child Porn Provides A 'Model' For Hunting Terrorists Online

from the it-could-not-be-more-wrong dept

The administration is trying to draft tech companies into the War on Terror. Encryption -- despite being given an unofficial "hands-off" by President Obama -- is still being debated, with FBI Director James Comey and a few law enforcement officials leading the charge up the hill they apparently want to die on.

One of the aspects discussed was how to deter online communications involving terrorists. Trying to deputize tech companies is a non-starter, considering the potential for collateral damage. But that's not stopping the administration from trying to do exactly that, and it's willing to deploy the most terrible participant in its parade of horrors.

“I do have a lot of confidence that those companies that are run by patriotic Americans are not interested in seeing their tools or their technology used by terrorists to harm innocent Americans,” [White House press secretary Josh] Earnest told reporters in Washington before the meeting occurred. “That’s certainly not what they were designed for.”

[...]

“There is a precedent for us to confront this kind of problem,” Earnest said. “We know that there are some people who try to make money based on the selling and trafficking of child pornography and they are using websites to do that. And we have been able to work effectively with the tech community to counter those efforts.”

Earnest makes two implications here, both of them disingenuous. The first is that any reluctance expressed by tech companies should be viewed as evidence these companies just don't love America enough. The second is that an unwillingness to intervene on the US government's behalf is hypocritical, considering the voluntary efforts these companies undertake to identify and remove child pornography.

The problem is that alleged terroristic content and child pornography aren't comparable -- at least not to the extent that the administration portrays it. For one, child pornography -- for the most part -- is difficult to mistake for protected speech. One of the few exceptions to the First Amendment deals specifically with this content. In addition, most identified files have unique hashes which can readily be identified when they pop up elsewhere on the web.

The other problem is that even if files associated with terrorism or potential acts of terrorism are uniquely identifiable via hashes, that doesn't immediately elevate possession of these files to a criminal act. Jonathan Zittrain at Just Security points out that this makes all the difference in the world.

To be sure, child pornography filtering — and reporting — may be a place to draw a clear line. Not only is child pornography near-universally reviled and banned, but the matching algorithm for previously-identified images boasts no false positives, and, perhaps most important, possession of the file is not only clear evidence of the crime, but quite typically the crime itself. A terrorist to-do list is primarily only evidence, not itself a crime.

The hypothetical situation proposed in Zittrain's post -- that Google, et al begin to treat terrorist content like child pornography -- is a potential ground zero for all sorts of collateral damage. Google already scans email for child porn (as well as for potential advertising keywords), but adding terrorism to this short list would put dissidents, journalists, researchers and activists in the government's crosshairs. Possession of terrorist-related materials isn't a criminal act, but that wouldn't prevent unwarranted (in the original sense, not the Fourth Amendment sense [although that wouldn't be far behind…]) surveillance of citizens who aren't terrorists or terrorist sympathizers.

And once Google has expanded its dragnet to include terrorist material, it wouldn't take long for other aggrieved parties to jump on the proxy surveillance bandwagon. After all, a criminal offense is a criminal offense -- whether it's the circulation of terrorist-related content or anything else certain entities feel needs more policing on the Wild West Web.

If a search for contraband documents expands beyond the comparatively well-bounded area of child pornography, there could be little stopping it from progressing incrementally to an Orwellian level of invasiveness. For example, to prevent claimed copyright infringement, we could see services compelled to scan private communications for musical tracks or videos, or links to that content. Facebook has at times done just that for its private messaging service. Whatever one’s views on copyright, the upside of applying the search technique there is surely lower than that of catching murderers, though the logic underlying the search may ultimately prove powerful enough to make it common.

Add to that the fact that the government -- once it has persuaded Google, etc. to look for certain content -- will continue to add to the list of things tech companies should look for. Child porn is Patient Zero. Terrorism seems to be the next step. After that, mission creep is inevitable.

Zittrain does provide reasons why Google should scan for terrorist material, and they sound exactly like the reasons the government would state when pressuring tech companies to engage in further pro bono web policing: the additional searches would be minimally intrusive and could conceivably save lives. But the problem remains unaddressed by the "positives" of these tactics. Child porn possession is a crime. Possession of a circulated plan for a terrorist attack is not. It may be suspicious but it is not, in and of itself, a criminal act.

Finally, even with a tailored search for files with unique hash values, the search itself is still a general search. It would be an automated dragnet encompassing not only users of whatever service deployed it, but also those sending email/messages/etc. to users of that service. That's a "general search" -- the kind the Fourth Amendment is supposed to deter -- no matter how the government spins it. And it will spin it, if it gets a chance. That's why the pressure is being applied towards voluntary actions rather than legislated "fixes." If the government can talk Google and its competitors into performing its general searches for it, it can avoid dealing with the constitutional issues that would certainly arise if it chose to perform this on its own.

Filed Under: child porn, fbi, filtering, james comey, monitoring, terrorism, white house

Law Enforcement Wants To Be Able To Seize The Cars And Homes Of People Convicted On Child Porn Charges

from the good-intentions,-but-some-bad-implementation dept

Some odd news out of Massachussetts. Legislators and law enforcement are teaming up to push legislation that would give agencies permission to seize and sell property belonging to people convicted of sexual crimes against children.

A local sheriff and state representative are awaiting the review of a bill that would allow prosecutors at the conclusion of a child-exploitation case to seize and sell assets used by predators, using the proceeds for victim rehabilitation and therapy, education programs for children, or bringing the funds back into law enforcement.

Middlesex Sheriff Peter Koutoujian and Rep. James Arciero testified Tuesday before the Joint Committee on the Judiciary on the House bill. They are waiting for a favorable recommendation to move the bill forward.

"We feel that it's important to make sure that we have a zero tolerance when it comes to protecting our children," said Arciero, a Westford Democrat.

The bill would allow the court to seize and sell items, excluding hard drives, that are used to entice minors or to produce or disseminate child-pornography crimes. The proceeds of the sales would fund programs for Internet safety education, victim rehabilitation and therapy, and the purchase of technical equipment for law-enforcement agencies.

On one hand, what's being discussed here isn't the far more nefarious civil asset forfeiture, in which property is deemed "guilty" and seized without corresponding convictions. This would be criminal asset forfeiture, which can only move forward once the defendant is convicted.

The resulting funds would be narrowly dispersed, with some going to participating agencies but the bulk of it directly to the special investigative units that handle these crimes.

But there are some concerning aspects to it, not the least of which is the use of the phrase "zero tolerance," which tends to shut down all further critical thinking by those uttering it. For one, the list of items that can be seized is fairly broad. Even though the article notes hard drives will not be permitted to be sold, the statements issued don't specify whether other storage media will be put on the "not for resale" list. In fact, it appears other devices (cameras, cellphones) that formerly stored illegal material will be sold to the general public.

In front of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary, Koutoujian testified, "Massachusetts authorities can already obtain warrants and seize cameras, computers, cellphones, vehicles used by perpetrators in child pornography and enticement cases. But this legislation would allow prosecutors at the conviction of the case, with the court's permission, to dispose of the seized property and generate funds that could be put into three narrowly tailored areas."

While officials claim the devices will be "wiped" before resale, it's not difficult to imagine this eventually leading to someone ending up with an auctioned item that still contains illicit material. That's just human nature. Sooner or later, the wipe job won't be done as well as it should have been. Or at all. That alone is problematic.

Further problems present themselves in the expanded list of seizable/sellable items. Law enforcement will also take vehicles "involved" in "enticement." A narrow reading would only allow the seizure of a vehicle that has been used in the commission of the crime. But the bill doesn't lend itself to a narrow reading. It would also permit the seizure of property in "dissemination" cases, which means little more than using a torrent service to obtain the illegal material. Downloads and uploads are intertwined, making every illicit file sharer a participant in "dissemination" of child porn, even if that person did not create the images being trafficked or specifically intend to distribute them further.

So, this bill could be used to seize cars from people who've never molested a child, much less used their car to "entice" a child into participating in illegal sexual activity.

The bill also provides for the seizure of houses and bank accounts, using this same tenuous connection. While it is not uncommon for some forms of property to be seized as a means of providing retribution to victims of criminal acts, it's not always applied to criminals who have only viewed child pornography. Restitution orders have been granted to those whose pictures have been distributed, but this hasn't been explicitly tied to the forfeiture of assets.

The bill would effectively cut victims out of the loop, routing seized assets to the agencies participating in the arrest and prosecution. The only caveat that may allow for victim restitution is the fact that the agency performing the seizure needs to seek the court's permission before selling seized items and distributing funds.

The bill does provide a safety valve for families who are unaware of a family member's criminal behavior, hopefully preventing them from losing their houses or vehicles because of another person's activities. But it's very limited. Law enforcement wouldn't be able to seize these assets without it being shown that other owners of these items were aware (or should have been aware) of the defendant's behavior. But it doesn't say where the burden of proof lies, suggesting it might be wrapped up in the petition for property return process, which would place it on the other owners of the property, rather than on the state. (Other homeowners can also ask the court for a "homesteading" exception to prevent residences from being seized, which is probably a better route than challenging the seizure head-on. But this exception doesn't apply to other seized property like vehicles or bank accounts.)

It's also limited solely to owners, so spouses/children/relatives who aren't listed on titles can't challenge the seizure. It also sets a very low bar for government agencies when it comes to "proving" other property owners were "aware" of illegal behavior.

Proof that the conveyance or real property was used to facilitate the unlawful dissemination of visual material or the enticement of a child under the age of 16 on 3 or more different dates shall be prima facie evidence that the conveyance or real property was used in and for the business of unlawfully disseminating such visual material or enticing a child under the age of 16.

Houses are where computers are almost always found and one resident torrenting child porn on three different dates is apparently all it will take for state agencies to render unaware family members homeless.

While I can appreciate the Sheriff's complaint that funds seized are often routed towards the expensive upkeep of more glamorous drug interdiction units, SWAT teams and "task forces," this proposal still has a lot of flaws that need to be addressed. The narrow set of criminal acts it applies to, along with the conviction requirement, limits the potential abuse. But adding vehicles and houses to the list of seizable goods is problematic, especially when the underlying crime may be nothing more than possession of illicit images and the use of file sharing software.

Unfortunately, none of these questionable elements can fully be explored until the law has gone into effect. The bill still needs work, especially in terms of determining other property owners' culpability. Because, seriously, something happening three times in the same location is somehow "proof" that other property owners were aware of criminal activity -- criminal activity that is hidden from everyone because it's morally unacceptable everywhere?

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, asset seizure, child porn, criminal asset forfeiture, homes cars, massachusetts