DOJ Still Trying To Hide The Fact It Flat Out Lied To The Supreme Court About Domestic Surveillance

from the because-terrorism dept

Last year, we noted that US Solicitor General Donald Verrilli had lied to the Supreme Court in Amnesty International's lawsuit about warrantless wiretapping. If you don't recall, Amnesty International had sued about the program, but the US government successfully got the case tossed by arguing that Amnesty International had no proof that their communications were tapped, and thus they had no standing to sue. The Supreme Court appeared troubled by the fact that no one could sue unless they somehow knew for a fact they were being spied upon, but eventually sided with the government, in large part because of one of Verrilli's false statements.

Specifically, he claimed that others would have standing to sue, because if the government used the information obtained via such a warrantless wiretap (under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act) it would have to inform those who were being charged with a crime because of that information. It was only much later, when Dianne Feinstein was bragging about how effective Section 702 was in stopping "terrorists" (during a Senate debate on renewing the FISA Amendments Act) that it became clear that Verrilli had made false claims to the Supreme Court. Because in her bragging, she mentioned some specific cases that she said made use of Section 702 -- and the lawyers for the defendants in those cases quickly realized that they were never informed about that.

To his credit, Verrilli himself not only claimed that he was misled by national security lawyers, but ordered that the practice be changed, and some defendants have since been informed.

Of course, to some, that has been too little too late. Back in November, we noted that Senators Mark Udall, Ron Wyden and Martin Heinrich pointed out a second false statement that Verrilli made to the Supreme Court in the same case. Specifically, the DOJ and Verrilli told the court that the NSA would have to have "targeted the communications" of someone that Amnesty was talking to, and that was "highly speculative" for Amnesty to assume that was true. But, as the Senators pointed out, it was later declassified that the 702 program was not just about collecting the communications to or from "targeted" individuals, but also any communications about them.

While this may seem like a small deal, it's actually a very big deal, because it could likely mean that the communications of many Americans were collected without any sort of warrant. It turns out that in December, the DOJ responded, but that response has just been released. In it, the DOJ insists that lying to the Supreme Court concerning the fact that Section 702 allowed for the collection of purely domestic communications without a warrant if they were merely "about" a target (rather than to or from that target) was really no big deal at all and not relevant to the case.

Your letter raises questions regarding the now-declassified "about" collections that have resulted in the acquisition of some wholly domestic communications as a result of Section 702 surveillance and whether the government's representations in Clapper v. Amnesty International were incomplete or misleading for failing to refer to such collections. The government acted appropriately by not addressing the "about" collections in Clapper v. Amnesty International because the existence of this type of collection was classified throughout the period during which the case was briefed, argued, and decided, and because those collections did not bear upon on the legal issues in the case. At all times, the Department and the Office of the Solicitor General have a duty of candor in our representations to the Supreme Court, and it is a duty we take extremely seriously. The Department and the Office of the Solicitor General also have a duty to respect the classified status of information, and that is also a duty we take extremely seriously. In litigation, we must take pains to avoid discussing matters that are unnecessary to the resolution of matters before the Court when those matters might disclose classified information or undermine national security, while ensuring that the Court has all of the information relevant to deciding the issues before it.

The Department's briefing and argument in Clapper v. Amnesty International fully respected both of these duties. The Department described the surveillance authorized by Section 702 (and the provision's targeting and minimization requirements) accurately, and we made no statements that could be reasonably understood as denying the existence of "about" collection. Moreover, the possibility of then-classified, incidental collection of domestic communications, while of undoubted importance and interest to the public, was not material to the legal issue before the Supreme Court.

Wyden and Udall have now responded to the DOJ's letter and, not surprisingly, they're still very troubled by the DOJ providing false and misleading information to the Supreme Court in a key case challenging the NSA's surveillance under the FISA Amendments Act. First, the Senators note that, contrary to the DOJ's claims, both the briefings before the Supreme Court and the oral arguments included statements which actively misled the Court into believing Section 702 only applied to communications to or from a target -- and that clearly was not true.

More importantly, they note that, contrary to the DOJ's claims, it's pretty clear that this very much mattered as a part of the Supreme Court's reasoning:

The Justice Department's reply also states that the "about" collection "did not bear upon the legal issues in this case." But in fact these misleading statements about the limits of section 702 surveillance appear to have informed the Supreme Court's analysis. In writing for the majority, Justice Alito echoed your statements to the Court by stating that the "respondents' theory necessarily rests on their assertion that the Government will target other individuals -- namely their foreign contacts." This statement, like your statements, appears to foreclose the possibility of "about" colleciton.

We recognize that the inclusion of this misleading statement in the Court's analysis does not prove that the Court would have ruled differently if it had been given a fuller set of facts. Indeed, it is entirely possible that the Court would have ruled in exactly the same way. But while the Justice Department may claim that the Amnesty plaintiffs' arguments would have been "equally speculative" if they had referenced the "about" collection, that should be a determination for the courts, and not the Justice Department, to make.

While this seems like a technical issue, it's a huge deal. Effectively, the DOJ and Solicitor General Verrilli -- whether on purpose or not -- misled the Supreme Court on two key aspects of the 702 collection program, and it appears that the Supreme Court relied, in part, on both of those misleading statements in coming to its decision. The fact that the DOJ still appears rather unconcerned about how its misrepresentations may have impacted the courts is immensely troubling, not just because it may have resulted in an illegal and unconstitutional surveillance program continuing for many extra years, but also because it highlights the mendacity of the DOJ in trying to win cases at all costs, rather than actually trying to make sure the law is applied appropriately.

As the new letter from Udall and Wyden concludes:

As we have noted elsewhere, we are concerned that the executive branch's decade-long reliance on a secret body of surveillance law has given rise to a culture of misinformation, and led senior officials to repeatedly make misleading statements to the public, Congress and the courts about domestic surveillance. The way to end this culture of misinformation and restore the public trust is to acknowledge and correct inaccurate statements when they are made, and not seek to ignore or justify them.

It's unfortunate that it appears that so few in Congress are up in arms over this. The executive branch purposely misleading the judicial branch over constitutional issues is a very big deal, and most in Congress don't seem to want to have anything to do with it.

Filed Under: doj, donald verrilli, faa, fisa amendments act, mark udall, ron wyden, section 702, supreme court, surveillance, targets
Companies: amnesty international

Judicial Problem: Defending Free Speech Is More Likely When Justices Agree With The Speech

from the doing-it-wrong dept

Democracy, as they say, is messy, but I think the messiest aspect of the American political system is the Supreme Court. Maybe messy isn't the right word. Maybe baffling would be better. The reason for my thinking so is that, growing up, I was always under the impression that Supreme Court Justices were something they really aren't. I pictured them as men and women of such knowledge and character that they were almost super-human. After all, these are the supreme-iest judges in the land; you'd think they'd be so far beyond you and I that they'd be almost incomprehensible. An idiot Senator? Sure, I can picture that. Some jackass President? Hell, we jackasses are the ones that vote them in, so sure. But the Supreme Court? Gods, right?

Of course not. It turns out, much to my unfortunate shock, that SCOTUS Justices are every bit as human as the rest of us and that they're just as guilty as us when it comes to allowing ideologies cloud their judgement. One recent study looked at this, highlighting First Amendment cases to serve as an example.

The study considered 4,519 votes in 516 cases from 1953 to 2011. It was conducted by Professor Epstein, who is about to join the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis; Christopher M. Parker, a political scientist at Centenary College of Louisiana; and Jeffrey A. Segal, a political scientist at Stony Brook University.

That article highlighted Justice Scalia's voting record, noting that he voted on free speech issues in favor of conservative speech sixty-five percent of the time, but only twenty-one percent of the time in favor of liberal speech. That said, don't confuse that highlight to indicate that this is a problem only for conservative justices.

“While liberal justices are over all more supportive of free speech claims than conservative justices,” the study found, “the votes of both liberal and conservative justices tend to reflect their preferences toward the ideological groupings of the speaker.”

While this may represent a "duh" moment for many of us, it's not a problem we should be ignoring. This pervasive kind of group bias represents a very real threat to the supreme law of the Untied States and, if recent trends on the polarization of politics is any indication, it's only going to get worse. And, while many people might see this as (sigh) yet another opportunity to fall back on their stupid party lines and go to war with the guys on the other side of the aisle, here's the question specifically about free speech that the article doesn't address: what if the speech in question is something both sides disagree with?

Fun thought, right? The whole point of free speech rights is that they don't go away even if you disagree with the speech, yet the study shows that there is a tendency for Justices to vote against speech with which they don't agree. Take the famous case between the National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, for instance, and ask yourself whether you think that ruling, which allowed the Nazis to march and assemble in a largely Jewish community was the exception or the rule. It was an immensely important case, even though it allowed some truly horrific people to march in a community that would be most offended by their presence (though they never actually marched). That didn't matter. The First Amendment is the First Amendment.

Would that same ruling occur today? The study paints an unfortunate picture.

Filed Under: first amendment, free speech, supreme court

The Supreme Court's Real Technology Problem: It Thinks Carrying 2 Phones Means You're A Drug Dealer

from the how-can-it-judge-reasonableness dept

I spent a lot of the last week shaking my head at the commentary on the Supreme Court and its (lack of) technical expertise. Much of the criticism came in response to the oral arguments in Aereo, and broke down in two areas: it either misunderstood the nature of Supreme Court oral arguments and their transcripts, or mistook familiarity with a handful of Silicon Valley products with actual tech savviness.

But in a series of cases this week about law enforcement searches of cell phones, we caught a glimpse of the Supreme Court’s real technology problem. Here's what it comes down to: it's not essential that the Court knows specifics about how technology itself works—and as Timothy Lee argues, that might even tempt them to make technology-based decisions that don't generalize well. However, it is essential that the Court understands how people use technology, especially in areas where they're trying to elaborate a standard of what expectations are "reasonable."

So when Chief Justice Roberts suggests that a person carrying two cell phones might reasonably be suspected of dealing drugs, that raises major red flags. Not because of any special facts about how cell phones work, but because (for example) at least half of the lawyers in the Supreme Court Bar brought two cell phones with them to the courthouse that day. Should those attorneys (along with the many, many other people who carry multiple devices) reasonably expect less privacy because the Chief Justice is out of touch with that fact?

Contrast that with Justice Kagan’s point about storage location in the same argument. Justice Kagan suggested, correctly, that people don’t always know what is stored on their device and what is stored “in the cloud.” The actual answer to that question should be immaterial; the point is that it’s absurd for a person’s privacy interest to hinge on which hard drive private data is stored on.¹ Instead, the important fact here, which Justice Kagan recognizes, is that the distinction between local and cloud storage just doesn’t matter to many people, and so it can’t be the basis of a reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test.

If you’re feeling less generous, you might take Justice Kagan’s point as evidence that she herself doesn’t know where her files are stored. And in fact, that’s probably true—but it’s not important. You don’t actually need to know much about file systems and remote storage to know that it’s a bad idea for the law to treat it differently.

That’s not to say that technical implementation details are never relevant. Relevant details, though, should (and almost always do) get addressed in the briefs, long before the oral argument takes place. They don’t usually read like software manuals, either: they’re often rich with analogies to help explain not just how the tech works, but what body of law should apply.

What can’t really be explained in a brief, though, is a community’s relationship with a technology. You can get at parts of it, citing authorities like surveys and expert witnesses, but a real feeling for what people expect from their software and devices is something that has to be observed. If the nine justices on the Supreme Court can’t bring that knowledge to the arguments, the public suffers greatly. Again, Justice Kagan seems to recognize this fact when she says of cell phones:

They're computers. They have as much computing capacity as laptops did five years ago. And everybody under a certain age, let’s say under 40, has everything on them.

Justice Kagan is not under 40, and might not have everything stored on a phone (or on an online service accessible through her phone). But that quote shows me that she at least knows where other people’s expectations are different. Chief Justice Roberts’s questions show me exactly the opposite.

The justices live an unusual and sheltered life: they have no concerns about job security, and spend much of their time grappling with abstract questions that have profound effects on this country’s law. But if they fail to recognize where their assumptions about society and technology break from the norm—or indeed, where they are making assumptions in the first place—we’re all in trouble.

Reposted from ParkerHiggins.net.

1. That speaks to a need to revisit the sort-of ridiculous third-party doctrine, which Justice Sotomayor has suggested, but one battle at a time.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, cloud, computing, mobile phones, privacy, reasonableness, supreme court, technology

Government Presents Its Arguments For Warrantless Cellphone Searches, Thinks Officer Discretion Will Prevent Abuse

from the terrible-arguments-made-terribly dept

The other Supreme Court case dealing with warrantless cell phone searches heard oral arguments this week, with some intermingling from a lawyer presenting the US government's side in a related case (US v. Wurie). We recently covered the government's arguments for warrantless searches in US v. Wurie, a case dealing with outdated technology -- a flip phone. This case (Riley v. California) is from 2013 and deals with a smartphone, one that received a much deeper search by police officers.

In both cases, no one sought a warrant. The government argued in the Wurie case that a warrant "served no purpose" but to allow the locked-up criminal to erase evidence from a phone in police possession. Lots of technological speculation was presented, suggesting that every small-time crook would wipe or encrypt their phone to prevent the recovery of evidence. The government presented a tech arms race where law enforcement is always losing as the impetus for throwing the Fourth Amendment out the precinct window.

Strangely, in both cases, the government has made the claim that the officers involved already had enough probable cause to secure a warrant, but they simply chose not to. Jeffrey Fisher, arguing for Riley, points out that this is no excuse.

This Court has said time and again that the mere fact the police could have gotten a warrant but didn't does not excuse a Fourth Amendment violation.

If this "we could have gotten a warrant" excuse seems familiar, it's because it's been used far too often to justify warrantless searches. Earlier this year, the Tallahassee Police Dept., in its defense of its privacy-violating Stingray deployment, told a judge that it could have secured a warrant (but didn't) with all the probable cause it had in its possession, a statement that prompted this outraged response:

When the government attorney tried to argue in court that the police had planned to obtain a warrant to enter the apartment, one of the judges interrupted.

"No, no, no, no, no," he said. "I think this record makes it very clear they were not going to get a search warrant because they had never gotten a search warrant for this technology."

His fellow judge then interjected loudly, "Two-hundred times they have not."

So, there's the government antipathy towards warrants on full display. But the warrant process does something very important: it forces the police to justify the search, narrow the scope and put it all in front of a (supposed) neutral party -- a magistrate judge. In actuality, it's usually a very speedy process, but during these arguments, the government acts like it's a horribly laborious imposition.

In Riley's case, the lack of warrant requirement allowed the police to browse Riley's phone until it found something incriminating.

He [detective] said, at JA­11, we looked at a whole lot of stuff on the phone and that's just what, in his words, "caught his eye."

As Fisher points out, the government's idea of protecting someone's rights involves searching first and allowing questions to be asked later -- a complete inversion of how the Fourth Amendment is supposed to work.

What the government says is let the officer look and then have a back­end hearing where you just suppress all the stuff that he wasn't supposed to look at once you apply particularity requirements.

This attitude (also on display in the Wurie response) presumes people will make it to that point, rather than taking a plea or simply not having the resources to fight a suppression battle in court. This places the onus on the wrong party and puts citizens in the terrible position of policing law enforcement at their own expense.

As the justices point out during their discussion with Fisher, there are still exceptions available to police even if a warrant requirement were put in place. It's a big loophole but one that should be considered necessarily rare (which it probably won't be in practice): exigent circumstances.

During this discussion, an interesting point emerged. The state itself reached the same conclusion as Riley's legal team: there's no useful analogue from past cases that offers comparative circumstances for today's smartphones.

[W]e have an exploratory search where not even the State has contended the amount of information looked at is equivalent to what somebody could have carried around in the old days.

The government's favorite apples-to-oranges comparison -- the diary -- is even worse than simply saying the phone is nothing more than an address book with some pictures between the pages. Not only is it a relatively worthless comparison, but even the few originating cases are outliers. For the government to consider a phone to be a diary, it has to ignore huge amounts of context before beating the argument to fit and painting it to match, as Fisher points out.

The reason I think that you don't find diary cases when you look for them is because people hardly ever carry a diary outside the home with them. It was kept in a private drawer in the bedroom or wherever it might be kept, and in the highly, highly unusual circumstance where somebody did, you might have a hard case.

This… is the opposite world. The modern reality of smartphones is that it is an indispensable item for everyday life of a modern professional and, indeed, most anyone. You can't leave the house without it and be ­--­ consider yourself to be responsible and safe. And so you take ­­ to take a world where the police might try to say, we can get the stray diary because of the importance of the categorical rule under Robinson and try to apply that into a world where everybody has everything with them at all times…

Edward Dupont, representing California, advances a familiar government argument -- if it doesn't violate in a singular instance, then expansive searches pertaining to the same sort of subject matter doesn't suddenly result in a Fourth Amendment violation. (This has been deployed in defense of the NSA's surveillance programs.)

The theory, even if I'm carrying only five photographs or if I'm carrying two letters as was the case in the Chiagles case, for instance, that Judge Cardozo decided in the '20s, they are likely to be very personal, very private photographs. So I'm not sure that the expansion of volume increases the invasion of privacy.

On one hand, multiplication by zero. On the other hand, smartphones aren't just ostentatious data generators -- they have practical uses as well. To quote a decision from the Massachusetts Supreme Court which ruled warrantless access to cellphone GPS data was unconstitutional:

"People buy [cellular telephones] to communicate with others, to use the Internet, and for a growing number of other reasons. But no one buys a [cellular telephone] to share detailed information about their whereabouts with the police"

Justice Kagan asks if any arrest (a seatbelt violation in this instance) should allow police to search cell phones. Dumont calls that a "marginal case" and not relevant to the discussion. Kagan disagrees:

Your argument and the Solicitor General's principal argument applies to any arrest. And it applies to everything on a cell phone. People carry their entire lives on cell phones. That's not a marginal case. That's the world we live in, isn't it?

Dumont then argues that this particular case doesn't deal with an "entire life" on a cellphone, so this potentiality shouldn't be considered. Fair enough, in terms of particulars, but this is the Supreme Court -- the highest court in the land. What it decides becomes standard operating procedure for law enforcement from this point on. Dumont seems to think he can conveniently bury his head in this case and ignore the numerous implications it raises. Justice Ginsburg makes this point.

The Court is to make a rule not for this particular case, but for this category of cases. And I think what Justice Kagan pointed out is very nervous concern. [...] It's your rule, then, that the cell phone is fair game no matter what the crime, no matter how relatively unimportant the crime. Is it all misdemeanors, all misdemeanors and that opens the world to the police.

Dumont then claims that this case is "different" because it involved a "violent" suspect, rather than a lesser form of criminal. Justice Kennedy smacks that argument into the stands.

MR. DUMONT: I think you need to look at the generality of cases. And in the generality of cases, first of all, you will not be dealing with minor crimes. You'll be dealing with serious crimes. And second, you'll be dealing with police who are --­­ undo their job by booking ­­--

JUSTICE KENNEDY: Are you saying we're just resting on the discretion of the officer? Because if that's so, then that leads to the next question. Well, if that's so, then we'll get a warrant.

After that, Dumont tries to make the point that sometimes there's not going to be an opportunity to get a warrant, which apparently he feels is problematic enough that any warrant requirement should be eliminated. Kennedy reminds Dumont that he's wandered back into "exigent circumstances" territory, an option that will still be available even if the Court decides warrants are necessary.

Justice Breyer tries to nail down where the government actually stands on the warrant issue.

So there are three possibilities: Possibility one, smartphone, no, get a warrant, unless exigent circumstances. Possibility two, yes, it's just like a piece of paper that you find in his pocket. Or possibility three, sometimes yes, sometimes no. All right, which of those three is yours?

Dumont isn't willing to go quite as far as the government did in its filing in the Wurie case (warrants just prevent cops from catching bad guys) -- at least not while speaking directly to the justices.

[M]y in­between rule with the explanation is that for information that is of the same sort that police have always been able to seize from the person, that includes diaries, letters, all other kinds of evidence, purely evidentiary, photographs, address books, for evidence of that same sort, the same rule should apply.

That's not an answer, and the Justice Breyer knows it. The government is again arguing for LEO discretion, which isn't a place any court can (or should) draw the line.

Your rule is sometimes. So I say: Sometimes; what's that? And you say if it is the kind of thing that the police could have searched for if it wasn't on the computer, then they can search for it on the computer. Now, since they can search for everything in your pockets before when it isn't the computer, then why isn't yours everything? [...]

So I guess what you're saying is I thought it was category two, sometimes, but really it's category three, always.*

It certainly appears the government has exactly that in mind -- no warrant requirement. Ever. The lawyer claims "sometimes," but refuses to delineate further than "we'll know it when we see it." Here's Dumont again, attempting to craft the haziest bright line ever by arguing that simply being arrested -- never mind actually charged -- removes nearly every expectation of privacy.

[T]he fact of the arrest necessarily and legitimately largely abates the privacy interest of the individual and his person and anything he or she has chosen to carry on the person.

Now, modern technology makes it possible for people to choose to carry a great deal of information. But that doesn't change the fact that the reasonable expectation, if a person is subject to custodial arrest, is that the police will search the person and look at things that they find…

Justice Kagan in response:

In other words, one has to keep one's cell phone at home to have an expectation of privacy in it?

Dumont digs in, and the argument gets even worse. Now, he claims citizens need to expect that their cell phones are, for all intents and purposes, open books for law enforcement to avail itself of. If they don't like that "fact," they can just not use a cell phone.

No, we're not saying that at all. But what we are saying is that people do make choices, and those choices have consequences. And the consequence of carrying things on your person has always been that if you are arrested, the police will be able to examine that to see if it is evidence of crime.

This makes no more sense than the government's argument that a no-fly list doesn't violate anyone's rights because flying is a "convenience." The reality of the situation is that a cell phone -- much like air travel in a country of this size -- isn't really a choice. It's a necessity. But the government acts as though people are complaining about the downside of pure luxuries.

Michael Dreeben, also arguing for the government, thinks the reduction of privacy as the result of an arrest makes this all acceptable. But Justice Ginsburg wonders why, if the person is being detained, is it so impossible to just go and get a warrant?

But, Mr. Dreeben, if the --­­ the understanding was, when there's time, get a warrant. So here, you can seize the phone and you can secure the phone, and you could go to a magistrate and within an hour get permission to search. But what is the reason for cutting out the magistrate here?

In response, Dreeben presents the same hypothetical -- that a criminal will wipe the phone during the hour or so it takes to get a warrant. Dreeben presents only anecdotal evidence from the FBI and other stuff he "heard" from other state police in support of this theory that a majority of criminals have implemented wiping technology.

Justice Breyer:

[Y[ou're saying now we should allow searches of all cell phones because there might be a technology that hasn't yet in fact been used in any of the States that have this rule.

After a lot of arguing over whether the "no warrant" rule would apply to arrests for non-serious criminal activity (the government says it won't but obviously can't really make that promise), Dreeben says this lack of Fourth Amendment protection is the best thing for "society."

At that moment society's interests are at their apogee in locating evidence relating to the crime of arrest and apprehending related suspects, and the suspect has a highly reduced privacy interest.

In the interest of simplification and the establishment of a bright line, the "always obtain a warrant" would appear to be the correct decision, one that still provides Fourth Amendment protections. The government's fear of wiped phones and encryption seems to be largely based on speculation and anecdotes, rather than any documented evidence. There are ways to prevent remote wiping, but the government considers those to be too burdensome to entertain seriously.

The warrant process will always be accompanied by the exigent circumstances loophole, which would allow police to weigh officer and public safety as factors for speedier access. But in most cases -- and most certainly in this one -- there is plenty of time to obtain a warrant. In this particular case, the disputed search didn't occur until two hours after the arrest.

But the government doesn't want a bright line. What it wants is instant access and it expects the public to be perfectly fine with the decision resting in the hands of "officer discretion." But it's extremely doubtful the public has much faith in officer discretion at this point, and the government's own actions have indicated that law enforcement agencies tend to perform a lot of fishing expeditions simply because standing decisions allow them to. Reduced privacy expectations in all things has been the government motto -- it makes NSA surveillance "legal" and allows investigators to dig around in people's electronics.

The justices don't seem to be very moved by the government's assertions. There was a lot of pushing back, which is a good sign. The downside is that these arguments really made no headway towards a more thoughtful approach to modern technology, even with the justices throwing around terms like "Facebook" and "Fitbit."

Filed Under: 4th amendment, mobile phones, riley, searches, supreme court, warrants, wurie

Supreme Court Smacks Down CAFC Again: Says Courts Have More Free Rein In Awarding Attorneys Fees

from the this-text-is-patently-clear dept

Yet again (in what has become quite the trend), the Supreme Court has struck down a ruling by the appeals court for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) -- the court that is somewhat infamous for almost always favoring patent maximalism. In a related pair of cases, the Supreme Court has now rejected the CAFC's rather strict rules for awarding attorneys fees in bogus patent litigation. The Supreme Court, once again, seems positively mystified by the CAFC's interpretation of patent law, and the fact that CAFC's rules (which all but eliminated attorney fees) seemed to have no basis in the law at all.

As Justice Sotomayor's ruling (representing a basically unanimous court -- Justice Scalia didn't want to be a part of some random footnotes) notes, the CAFC's rules are way too "rigid" and go beyond what the law says (and what Congress intended).

The framework established by the Federal Circuit in Brooks Furniture is unduly rigid, and it impermissibly encumbers the statutory grant of discretion to district courts.

Our analysis begins and ends with the text of §285: “The court in exceptional cases may award reasonable attorney fees to the prevailing party.” This text is patently clear. It imposes one and only one constraint on district courts’ discretion to award attorney’s fees in patent litigation: The power is reserved for “exceptional” cases.

The problem, of course, is that CAFC redefined "exceptional" to mean something extreme -- when there was "material inappropriate" behavior -- which goes well beyond what "exceptional" means.

The Federal Circuit’s formulation is overly rigid. Under the standard crafted in Brooks Furniture , a case is “exceptional” only if a district court either finds litigation-related misconduct of an independently sanctionable magnitude or determines that the litigation was both “brought in subjective bad faith” and “objectively baseless.” 393 F. 3d, at 1381. This formulation superimposes an inflexible framework onto statutory text that is inherently flexible

Fee shifting is part of what's being fought over in the current attempts at patent reform. While it's good to see the Court make it slightly easier to get attorneys' fees, it would be much better if Congress went even further in making it abundantly clear that bogus patent suits will lead to awards of attorneys fees.

Filed Under: attorneys fees, cafc, patents, supreme court

Supreme Court Discussion In Aereo: At Least The Justices Recognize The Harm They Might Do

from the but-will-they-still-do-it? dept

The oral arguments in the Aereo case happened this morning before the Supreme Court and you can read the transcript here (it's still a travesty that there is no live broadcasting (or any video recording at all) of the proceedings, but that's a different argument for a different day). As with any such case, this discussion needs to be prefaced with the fact that reading the tea leaves from what Justices say during oral arguments is a unlikely to yield much that is useful. You'll often see large segments of the arguments discuss issues that later don't appear at all in the final ruling. In some cases, Justices are just testing out certain theories or pushing the lawyers to see how they respond. Oral arguments do matter, but not nearly as much as the underlying briefs. We still have a few months (probably) to find out how the Court will rule, but we can at least comment on some of today's discussion.

The important thing to get from the discussion was that the Justices, for the most part, seem to actually recognize that with copyright law the way it is today, finding -- as the broadcasters would like -- that Aereo is engaged in a public performance -- may have long term consequences for all sorts of other industries. It starts off early on, with Justice Sotomayor jumping in with a very different question, concerning whether or not Aereo is a cable company, which would include a different set of issues (in fact, this was exactly the strategy that Aereo competitor/predecessor ivi sought to take -- and ran into trouble). She points out that there may be value in avoiding the whole public performance question all together, since it could get messy:

If we take public performance, maybe we run into what Professor Nimmer saw as a problem. Why isn't what used to be called a phonograph record store that sells phonograph records to 10,000 customers a public performance? It seems to fall within that definition. But if it is, there's no -- no first sale doctrine and it's a big problem. So we could avoid that problem.

Meanwhile, Justice Breyer is clearly concerned about the possible impact on the cloud, again in discussing the possibility that the Court could avoid the issue by calling Aereo a cable company:

And what you've read in their briefs is they, in their supporting amici, have thrown up a series of serious problems not involving them, like the cloud, which the government tells us to ignore, and many others, which make me nervous about taking your preferred group.

Which bounces back to Sotomayor, who notes that the public performance definition the broadcasters want "sweeps up" an awful lot of other businesses where it doesn't make sense:

I mean, Justice Breyer has already asked you -- said he's troubled about the phonograph store, and -- and the Dropbox and the iCloud. I'm also worried about how to define or -- public performance or the performance of a work publicly, which I guess is the better way to do it, according to you. How do I define that so that someone who sells coaxial cable to a resident of a building is not swept up as a participant in this? Or someone who -- the sort of passive storage advisors that -- this is really hard for me.

Justice Kagan, also, quickly gets to the heart of the matter -- the point that we've been raising since the beginning with Aereo -- that this is all about the length of the cable. If someone were to do this at home -- with the same exact electronic setup, it's clearly legal. But the broadcasters want to make Aereo illegal, because the length of the cable between the "DVR" component and the "TV" component is much longer.

Suppose a company just gave the antenna and a hard drive, that's what they sold to the user, and the user was able to use the antenna and the hard drive in her own house or apartment in order to get all these broadcast programs. What would the -- would that be a performance?

When the broadcaster's lawyer pushes back, Kagan points out that it does seem odd that where the hardware sits determines if there's a public performance or not.

But then it really does depend on, like, where the -- where the hardware is. In other words, if -- if Aereo has the hardware in its warehouse as opposed to Aereo selling the hardware to the particular end user, that is going to make all the difference in the world as to whether we have a public performance or not a public performance.

Chief Justice Roberts highlighted the same issue:

Why isn't -- and I don't want to stretch it too -- but why isn't it like a public garage in your own garage? I mean, you know, if you -- you can park your car in your own garage or you can park it in a public garage. You can go to Radio Shack and buy an antenna and a DVR or you can rent those facilities somewhere else from Aereo. They've -- they've got an antenna. They'll let you use it when you need it and they can, you know, record the stuff as well and let you pick it up when you need it

There's then a discussion trying to see if there's a way to distinguish Aereo from the Cablevision decision (in the 2nd Circuit appeals court) saying that Cablevision's remote DVR was legal. The lawyer for the broadcaster says that he thinks the Cablevision decision was decided incorrectly, but the difference is that Cablevision already has a license. This is misleading, because the license in Cablevision was unrelated to the issue of the DVR feature. Furthermore, over-the-air broadcasts (which is what Aereo offers) have an implied license already associated with them (you don't have to pay to watch over-the-air TV for that very reason). So the distinction here is meaningless. Justice Breyer says that, even if that's true, there's still a real risk to cloud computing.

But then the problem is in the words that do that, because we have to write words, are we somehow catching other things that really will change life and shouldn't, such as the cloud? And you said, well, as the government says, don't worry, because that isn't a public performance. And then I read the definition and I don't see how to get out of it.

When asked similar questions, the Deputy Solicitor General, Malcolm Stewart, (again, bizarrely, the US is intervening on behalf of Hollywood for no clear reason), appears to admit that there's no clear line, and that things should be decided on something of a case by case basis:

I think you would have to -- you would have to know both the details of the service and you would have to be making a harder call there about how to draw the line, because I don't pretend that there is a bright line between providing a service and providing access to equipment. If you look, for instance, at the extremes of a person putting a rooftop antenna at his own home, everybody agrees that the rooftop antenna manufacturer is not performing at all and the individual is engaged in a solely private performance.

The other extreme is the cable company, one big antenna, makes transmissions to a lot of people; Congress clearly intended to define that as a private performance. Somewhere in the -- you could come up with lots of hypotheticals that look more or less like one of the other extremes, they are somewhere in the middle. It's an authentically hard call as to where to draw the line. So I don't have a good answer for you.

But that seems rather important, given that this case is asking for that line to be drawn. And the Justices were clearly struggling with that point. Justice Breyer responded:

How do we get out of the example? I mean, how do we get out -- what words do I write to get out of this, throwing into this clause a music store that distributes via Federal Express, a device, or the U.S. Postal Service or even someone over the counter, distributes to 10,000 people a copy of a record which they then will take and play it? They have, to the same degree, transmitted something that will electronically make a performance of the music. So are they when they sell the record violating the display clause?

This isn't to say that the Justices are in agreement with Aereo. They expressed plenty of skepticism about the whole setup, arguing repeatedly that the whole thing seems to have been set up solely to fit within the law, using a technological setup that makes no sense. Aereo, in response, sought to argue that there were technical reasons for its setup, but frankly, that's bogus. The technological setup is insane, but the insanity is not because Aereo is trying to "get around" the law, but the exact opposite. Because it's trying to stay within the law. If the setup of copyright law itself wasn't so insane, there would be much better ways to do what Aereo is doing. But thanks to a bunch of interlocking "rights" buried within copyright law, and caselaw that is basically duct-taped onto the statute every time a new technology comes around, actually innovative requires the Rube Goldbergian-approach that Aereo took just to stay within the law. It's ridiculous that that is seen as a suggestion of illegality...

When the broadcasters lawyer comes back to rebut Aereo's lawyer, he argues that if Aereo loses, it can just get a license or go out of business. But Justice Breyer notes that it's really not that simple:

Once you take them out of the compulsory licensing system, they're going to have to find copyright owners, who owns James Agee's pictures? Who owns something that was written by -- like a French silent film in 1915? I mean, the problem is that they might want to have perfectly good things that people want to watch and they can't find out how to get permission. That is a problem that worries me and it worries me again once you kick them out of the other systems

In the end, I think the Justices were rightly worried about how any ruling might impact the cloud. While there was some skepticism about Aereo's setup, Aereo's lawyer did a good job highlighting why those were wrong. Still -- and again, reading Supreme Court tea leaves is nearly impossible -- if I were going to guess, I'd guess that the Supreme Court will seek some sort of "narrow" ruling that tries to say that Aereo should get a license (possibly just throwing the issue back to the lower courts on the details), while doing everything it can to avoid a ruling that throws the entirety of cloud computing under the bus.

Filed Under: copyright, length of cable, public performance, retransmission, supreme court
Companies: aereo

Travesty: Supreme Court (And Senate) Deny SCOTUSblog A Press Pass

from the shameful dept

So we just had a story about a court recognizing that, yes, blogs are a part of the media, and noted how ridiculous it was that this is still an issue in 2014. However, it appears that the Supreme Court is still living in a different century (okay, maybe not a huge surprise, since they still haven't figured out email). If you follow issues around litigation, it's likely that sooner or later you'll read SCOTUSblog, which is (deservedly) the go to source for anything related to anything having to do with Supreme Court cases. On mornings when decisions come out, it's always the first source I check, and I'm hardly alone among legal watchers.

And yet... the Supreme Court has denied SCOTUSblog's request for a press pass based on a stupidly convoluted system for which the Senate is partly to blame as well. According to SCOTUSblog:

SCOTUSblog is not now, and has never been, credentialed by the Supreme Court. The Court’s longstanding policy was to look to credentials issued by the Senate. We pursued a Senate credential for several years, modifying several policies of the blog to address concerns expressed by the Gallery. Last year, we finally succeeded – the Senate Press Gallery credentialed Lyle as a reporter for SCOTUSblog. We then presented that credential to the Supreme Court, thinking that the issue was resolved.

But the Court declined to recognize the credential, explaining that it would instead review its credentialing policy. The Court has not indicated when that review will conclude.

This is complicated further by the fact that the Senate Press Gallery has now rejected SCOTUSblog's request for a press pass, and also told the blog it will not renew Lyle's press pass -- thereby cutting off the blog to both the Senate and the Court. SCOTUSblog's Tom Goldstein does note that the Supreme Court itself has actually tried to accommodate the blog's requests for public seats, despite not agreeing to give it a press pass. The situation is clearly ridiculous:

All that said, the Senate Press Gallery’s decision to deny us a credential is important to us. We wanted the credential in substantial part because we cover Supreme Court-related matters in the Senate. Most significantly, we do gavel-to-gavel, liveblog coverage of Supreme Court nominations. We also expect to cover hearings related to the Court’s budget. So those efforts are now more difficult.

So we plan to appeal the Senate Gallery’s credentialing decision. We do not have a written list of the reasons for the denial, which makes the process more difficult. Our impression is also that the appeal may go to the same group that denied the application in the first place. If the appeal is denied, then we expect to litigate the issue. We’re now coordinating all those efforts with other groups that kindly have offered to support us.

All in all, the refusal by the Court and the Senate to credential us have always seemed strange. No one seems to doubt that we are a journalistic entity and that we serve a public function. Winning the Peabody and other awards would seem to confirm that. And the Court for years has functionally recognized us, because obviously the overwhelming majority of Lyle’s work is for us. We do not want any kind of special treatment. Credentialing the blog doesn’t give us any special power or recognition; it just makes our jobs incrementally easier. All in all, it doesn’t seem to make sense to impose burdens on us that are greater than those that apply to others who fundamentally do the same thing.

I don't think "strange" is the right word. Shameful works better. Stupid would apply as well.

Filed Under: journalism, journalists, press pass, scotusblog, senate, supreme court

Supreme Court May Take A Shot At Defining The Point At Which Protected Speech Becomes An Unprotectable 'Threat'

from the yes,-there's-a-lousy,-dark-humored-joke-in-that-headline dept

The Supreme Court may take up the question of whether or not communicated threats are still threats even if the person making the statement doesn't necessarily have the ability or the intent to carry them out. In short, at what point does it turn from protectable speech into something the First Amendment won't cover?

The latest case involving the legal parameters of online speech before the justices concerns a Pennsylvania man sentenced to 50 months in prison after being convicted on four counts of the interstate communication of threats. Defendant Anthony Elonis' 2010 Facebook rant concerned attacks on an elementary school, his estranged wife, and even law enforcement.

"That's it, I've had about enough/ I'm checking out and making a name for myself/ Enough elementary schools in a ten mile radius/ to initiate the most heinous school shooting ever imagined/ and hell hath no fury like a crazy man in a Kindergarten class/ the only question is … which one?" read one of Elonis' posts.

This is a subject we've discussed several times previously. People (mainly teens) have made statements and comments via social media that have veered close to being threats, but once investigated, turn out to be nothing more than stupid kids being stupid. Prosecutors and law enforcement have made some questionable decisions in their attempts to portray youthful indiscretions as the words of would-be killers, such as withholding the surrounding context or willfully misreading the words themselves.

Elonis' case is a bit more complicated. For one, Elonis is 30 years old. While growing older doesn't necessarily make you immune from stupidity, the expectations are a bit higher in terms of online discourse. It's a little harder to claim you're running on the same high-octane concoction of hormones and blood displacement that teenage boys are. Not that all youthful indiscretions are excusable, but given that age group's tendency towards disproportionate drama in all things, it does make it more understandable.

In addition, Elonis' statements were directed at a variety of targets, any of which would seem to be a viable recipient for his anger. Not only did Elonis mention shooting up a school (specifically a kindergarten), but he also apparently had dire "plans" for his wife and local law enforcement. Again, the post-Sandy Hook law enforcement/judicial mentality further clouds the issue, raising the question that if Elonis had left out the part about the school shooting, would he still be facing 30 months in prison? (Of course, threatening law enforcement tends to create just as much of a legal mess, usually one far worse than simply threatening your estranged spouse does…)

But the odds are fairly long that the Supreme Court will find the ability to carry out the threat matters as much as the perception of everyone else but the person making the statement.

Only one federal appeals court has sided with Elonis' contention that the authorities must prove that the person who made the threat actually meant to carry it out. Eight other circuit courts of appeal, however, have ruled that the standard is whether a "reasonable person" would conclude the threat was real.

This long shot is also reliant on another long shot: that the administration will support this appeal. A similar case involving an Iraq War vet was greeted by the White House with a written petition asking the Supreme Court to reject the case. These two obstacles make it unlikely that the judicial system will start treating so-called "threats" any differently than they have in the past. And it's a very long past. David Kravets at Ars Technica points out that the statute being applied to these cases originated in 1932.

There are legitimate threats and these are rightly not treated as free speech. But there are others that are treated as legitimate threats even when there's no evidence the person uttering them has the ability, much less the intention to back up their unfortunate statements. Applying a 1932 statute to the wide open discourse platform that is the internet is doing little more than putting loudmouths and idiots in jail. Those who mean actual harm to others generally don't enlighten their future targets via Twitter, Facebook and forum posts.

By all means, potential threats should be investigated, but the courts need to come to the realization that these statements cannot be entirely robbed of their context (including intent and ability) and presented "as is" to the hypothetical "reasonable person." Reasonable people are completely capable of understanding that not every hurtful word can actually hurt someone, nor do they believe every "threat" is the sign of impending danger. Not only should the statute be reconsidered, but so should the court's "reasonable person" ideal.

Filed Under: first amendment, free speech, speech, supreme court, threat

Supreme Court Still Not Ready To Hear Case Challenging NSA Surveillance

from the not-yet,-not-yet dept

While the Supreme Court Justices seem to recognize that they'll eventually need to determine the constitutionality of the NSA's surveillance efforts, for now it's not letting cases about it jump the line to be heard. Back in November, it rejected an attempt by EPIC to skip the long process of first getting district court and appeals court rulings, and bring the issue straight to the Supreme Court. And now it's done the same thing in a case that tried to skip the appeals court step.

As you may recall, back in December, district court judge Richard Leon ruled that the program was likely unconstitutional in a case brought by Larry Klayman, but then agreed to stay the ruling until the inevitable appeals process played itself out. Klayman decided to take a shot at going straight to the Supreme Court, saying that the "case is of such imperative public importance that it justifies deviation from normal appellate practice and requires immediate consideration and determination in the Supreme Court."

The Supreme Court, however, appears to disagree. That doesn't mean it won't eventually hear such a case (potentially even this very case). But it does mean that the Court is in no rush to take on the constitutionality of the NSA's surveillance efforts, and will let the process play out in various district and appeals courts over the next few years.

Filed Under: larry klayman, nsa, supreme court, surveillance

Here's Hoping The Supreme Court Does Not Blow Another Opportunity To Fix The Software Patent Problem

from the ditch-those-patents dept

Four years ago, the Supreme Court had a chance to establish once and for all whether or not software was patentable. The Bilski case got all sorts of attention as various parties lined up to explain why software patents were either evil, innovation-killing monsters or the sole cause of innovation since the cotton gin and everything in between (only slight exaggeration). Rather than actually answer the question everyone was asking, the Supreme Court decided to rule especially narrowly, rejecting the specific patents at stake in the case and saying that the current test used to determine patentability (the so-called "machine-or-transformation" test) need not be the only test for patentability. However, it declined to say what tests should be used, leaving it up to the lower courts to start ruling blindly, making up new tests as they went along. And muddle along blindly they did -- right up to the height of pure absurdism in the CAFC (appeals court that handles patents) ruling in the Alice v. CLS Bank case, in which every single judge disagreed with each other. The ruling was 135 pages of confused mess where all justices only agreed on a single paragraph, which (like Bilski) said this particular patent was invalid, but no one could agree why.

In the wake of this, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal, and once again it appears that tons of folks are lining up on the various sides, pushing the Supreme Court to either validate, toss out or at least provide a more clear test on the patentability of "abstract ideas" within the software context. The specific question the Supreme Court is being asked to resolve is:

Whether claims to computer-implemented inventions – including claims to systems and machines, processes, and items of manufacture – are directed to patent-eligible subject matter within the meaning of 35 U.S.C. § 101 as interpreted by this Court.

The oral arguments were heard earlier today, and, as per usual, reveal little about what the Supreme Court is really thinking (trying to divine which way the court will land based on oral arguments rarely works out well). The Bilski ruling is mentioned repeatedly, and everyone seems to want to bend over backwards to not outlaw "software patents," but what we really need is for the Supreme Court to issue a clear ruling on what is and what is not patentable in this arena.

If you want to take a look at how we got here, including how the Supreme Court really outlawed software patents decades ago, only to then have the CAFC bring them back (in a big, bad way) while the Supreme Court was looking elsewhere, Tim Lee's final story at the Washington Post has all of the gory details. Jeff John Roberts, over at GigaOm has a nice compact piece on what's at stake directly in this case. Meanwhile, even the NY Times has weighed in with an editorial hoping the Supreme Court sets clear rules against abstract ideas being patentable.

Since the messy Bilski ruling, the Supreme Court has taken slightly more aggressive stances in ruling out controversial areas of patenting, including rejecting medical diagnostic patents and gene patents. While companies in both spaces have been trying to get around those rulings, on the whole, they were much clearer and more useful rulings than the messy Bilski ruling on software patents. While the current Supreme Court often seems gun-shy about establishing clear rules of the road on these kinds of issues, preferring to narrowly tailor rulings, hopefully the final ruling in Alice v. CLS Bank will not be the same mess the Bilski ruling left us with, which begat the CAFC's 135-page mess in Alice.

The Supreme Court had a golden opportunity four years ago to solve a big patent problem... and it blew it. Hopefully, this time it won't miss the opportunity.

Filed Under: bilski, escrow, patents, software patents, supreme court
Companies: alice, cls bank