French Parents Face Fines, Lawsuits And Prison For Posting Pictures Of Their Own Children Online

from the bad-news-for-oversharers dept

As Techdirt reported recently, the controversial "right to be forgotten" -- actually more of a right to be de-linked in search engines -- is starting to spread around the world. But its spiritual home is definitely in Europe, where privacy concerns tend to outweigh other considerations, like freedom of speech, that are regarded as paramount elsewhere -- in the US, for example. Leading the charge in the EU is France, which has been pushing Google to de-link items even more widely. According to a report in The Telegraph, France's zeal in protecting everyone's privacy may turn out to have some rather unexpected consequences:

Under France's stringent privacy laws, parents could face penalties as severe as a year in prison and a fine of €45,000 [about $49,000] if convicted of publicising intimate details of the private lives of others -- including their children -- without their consent.

As if that weren't enough, French parents may also find themselves being sued by their own offspring for posting all those cute pictures of them when they were babies:

Eric Delcroix, an expert on internet law and ethics, said: "In a few years, children could easily take their parents to court for publishing photos of them when they were younger."

Grown-ups who sue their parents for breaching their right to privacy as children could obtain substantial compensation awards, according to French legal experts.

Leaving aside the question of whether it's really appropriate for children to sue their own parents for this kind of thing, there is another important point here: the fact that people are posting intimate pictures of their family life online with no thought for the immediate or long-term consequences. There's little awareness that once something has been disseminated online it's very hard to remove it afterwards. The good news is that Facebook, at least, is aware of the problem, and working on a possible solution:

Jay Parikh, a vice-president of Facebook, said the service was considering setting up a system to notify parents who put photographs of children online without restricting their privacy settings.

Mr Parikh said: "If I was putting online a photo of my kids playing in the park, and I accidentally shared it with everyone, the system could say: "Hey, wait a minute, this is a picture of your children. Usually you only send them to members of your family. Are you sure you want to do this?' "

Even here, of course, there are issues to do with Facebook's use of facial recognition capabilities, which would presumably be needed in order to provide this new system. But a gentle reminder that posting pictures of your children for all the world to see might not be a really wise idea -- just before you publish -- seems like a reasonable approach. It's certainly better than fining you, suing you or throwing you in prison afterwards, when nothing can be done about it.

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Filed Under: children, crime, france, parents, social media

DA Cyrus Vance Throws Encrypted Phones On Table And Hands In Air As Criminals Take Over New York City

from the admits-law-enforcement-will-never-solve-crimes-again dept

Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance can't stop griping about phone encryption. He's basically a one-issue politician at this point. His creaky platform is the coming criminal apocalypse, currently being ushered in by smartphone manufacturers. The only person complaining more about phone encryption is FBI Director James Comey, but in Comey's defense, his jurisdiction is the whole of the United States. Vance has only his district, but it encompasses the NYPD -- a police force that often seems to view itself as the pinnacle of American policing.

So, with the battle between the FBI and Apple underway in a California court, Vance is back at it, attempting to grab the national spotlight from his position on the opposite coast.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said at a news conference that investigators cannot access 175 Apple devices sitting in his cybercrime lab because of encryption embedded in the company’s latest operating systems.

“They’re warrant proof,” he said, adding that the inability to peer inside the devices was especially problematic because so much evidence once stored in file cabinets, on paper, and in vaults, is now only on criminals’ smartphones.

Tough luck, that. But considering the information inside is encrypted, it's a bit bold to declare that whatever's contained there that the NYPD hasn't seen would be useful to investigators. The assumption seems to be that if it's encrypted and on a device seized by law enforcement, then it must be composed of smoking guns and signed confessions in PDF format.

Even if we buy the assumption that the phones contain massive amounts of useful data, there are other pathways to this data. It doesn't have to run through the smartphone provider. And the efforts made to lock out cops (as it's always presented) also keeps criminals from accessing the personal data and communications of others. So, there's that.

Vance claims investigations are being hindered by encryption. Supposedly, the NYPD is sitting on 175 uncracked devices -- some of which were displayed during the press conference. But other than this number being cited, very little was offered in the way of further detail. Instead, Vance photo-opped a pile of supposedly inaccessible devices and let the press draw its own conclusions. Police Commissioner Bill Bratton was on hand to back up Vance's assertions with the sort of jailhouse hearsay Detective Vincent Hanna would find patently ridiculous.

Bratton said criminals are increasingly aware of the protection offered by their devices. He said a prisoner in a city jail was recently recorded saying in a phone call that iPhone encryption was “another gift from God.”.

Devastating.


It's a shame the Vance-Bratton loop doesn't seem to be interested in hearing from other law enforcement representatives about whether the government should be forcing companies out of the encryption business or a locked-up phone should be treated as an investigative brick wall.

Here's PoliceOne's editor-in-chief, Doug Wyllie, pointing out what's wrong with the FBI's efforts -- and every assertion made by other law enforcement officials who believe private companies should be forced to destroy the protective efforts they've built into their devices.

The Associated Press said in its report, “The dispute places Apple, one of the world’s most respected companies, on the side of protecting the digital privacy of an accused Islamic terrorist.”

Well, no. Apple is protecting its product for the hundreds of millions who possess Apple iOS devices, and it is protecting its own corporate interests. The company’s market position could be jeopardized by taking away one of the elements to its product that is most appealing to consumers (privacy and encryption) and thereby put the shareholders in financial jeopardy. As CEO, it is Cook’s responsibility to resist that.

Furthermore, the FBI may be using terrorism as leverage to secure Apple's assistance, but its insistence that key info is held on a dead suspect's phone suggests it's reading too much into things it can't actually see, as well as short-circuiting its own investigative processes.

The fact is that the probability that a terrorist would keep sensitive information about his plot/plans on his government-issued mobile phone is pretty preposterous. In the unlikely event that there is information relevant to the investigation on that device, the possibility exists that it resides elsewhere as well, such as with mobile carrier network records, or another person’s phone who spoke or exchanged messages with Farook. Consequently, the FBI should:

Vigorously pursue all of the other avenues of investigation.

Work to develop better decryption capabilities for future investigations.

Withdraw its petition to the court to force a private company to damage its products.

This is coming from the editor of a site that's so much of a law enforcement echo chamber that you're not even allowed to see comments unless you can prove you're a law enforcement officer or official.


When another closed, pro-law enforcement loop can see both the forest and the trees, it clearly exposes Vance's efforts here as little more than grandstanding. What Vance and Bratton want -- along with James Comey -- is for every impediment to investigations to be removed, either by courts or by legislators. Because they've chosen to focus on encryption, they're ignoring scalable fences while wringing their hands over the padlock on the gate.

And, once more it must be pointed out that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies solved plenty of crimes before smartphones -- much less smartphone encryption -- became the norm. They claim everything that used to reside in file cabinets and bedroom drawers now resides in encrypted devices. While many people's "lives" are contained in their phones, their lives encompass far more than their Companion Rectangles™. They still have computers and laptops that aren't encrypted, third party social media services/email providers, as well as friends, relatives and co-conspirators who may be able to offer more insight or access. But all people like Vance see is iNcriminating Device 5S standing between them and justice, even when multiple paths around it still exist.

Filed Under: crime, cyrus vance, encryption, going dark, law enforcement, new york city, nyc, nypd

How The Dark Net Is Making Drug Purchases Safer By Eliminating Associated Violence And Improving Quality

from the hidden-virtues dept

Despite a few daring experiments in the space, the dark net (or dark web, if you prefer) is generally seen as a dangerous, frightening place inhabited by terrorists, pornographers and general ne'er-do-wells. That makes a report in The Guardian about drug dealers moving online unusual, because it shows how the dark net can also be beneficial to society:

Research into internet drug markets by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) suggested the self-regulation of online markets such as Silk Road provide a safer environment for users and dealers of illicit substances.

Feedback mechanisms similar to eBay mean customers are able to hold dealers to account for the service they provide, the report said, while remote access to the market almost eliminates the risk of violence that has long been an integral part of the black economy.

Moving online not only safeguards drug users from violence and theft when they buy drugs in the physical world, it provides a natural way for customers to provide feedback on the quality of the drugs provided. Just as with traditional e-commerce companies, drug dealers who go digital can no longer risk bad customer reviews by providing inferior or dangerous products, since their future sales are likely to suffer. As a result:

Drugs available through darknet markets tend to be of a higher purity than those available on the streets.

The new report comes from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, which is funded by the European Union, and, as usual, is accompanied by an official comment from the relevant EU commissioner. Unfortunately, Dimitris Avramopoulos, the European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, trots out the usual unthinking reaction to drug sales that has made the long-running and totally futile "war on drugs" one of the most destructive and counterproductive policies ever devised:

We should stop the abuse of the internet by those wanting to turn it into a drug market. Technology is offering fresh opportunities for law enforcement to tackle online drug markets and reduce threats to public health. Let us seize these opportunities to attack the problem head-on and reduce drug supply online.

That blinkered attitude ignores the important advantages moving drug sales from the physical world to the digital one brings not just for for users and dealers, but also for society as a whole, which does not have to deal with the social and economic consequences of violence on the streets, or with the long-term damage caused by poor-quality products. Along the way, his remarks inevitably and unhelpfully reinforce the view that the dark net is evil, and thus is something to be destroyed.

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Filed Under: crime, dark markets, dark net, quality, safety, trust

The Nation's Criminals Can't Keep Up With The Government's Legalized Theft Programs

from the the-only-solution-is-a-more-productive-criminal-element dept

The Institute for Justice has released its latest report on asset forfeiture. Despite some recent legislative attempts to add a much-needed conviction requirement to the seizure of property, most of the country still allows law enforcement to proceed under the assumption that money, vehicles and houses are "guilty," even if those they take this property from are, for all intents and purposes, innocent.

The absence of this key factor has resulted in decades of nationwide abuse. The IJ's updated chart ranking states' asset forfeiture policies on an A-F scale shows only one A rating: New Mexico. The state's recent passage of significant asset forfeiture reform is the only highlight in the report. The rest of the nation continues on its path of underachievement, preferring to defer to law enforcement's best judgment on how to fight the Drug War. (While also occasionally used to target fraud and organized crime, forfeiture programs are now mostly deployed to take money from people/vehicles that smell like marijuana.)

The largest amount of resistance to asset forfeiture reform efforts come from the agencies that benefit most from the liquidation of seized property.


The highest grades correspond directly to states where local agencies have the least to gain from seized assets. Unsurprisingly, removing the incentive to simply take money/property has resulted in less abuse of forfeiture programs.

But these (few) speed bumps have done next to nothing to slow the asset forfeiture machine. It's been on a downhill roll since the late 80s, resulting in $12.6 seized at the federal level from 1989 to 2010. Since 2010, though, the year-to-year increases have been exponential. In 2014 alone, US Attorneys "forfeited" $4.5 billion. This dollar amount now places federal law enforcement at the top of the list of of "People Who Take Stuff That Belongs To Others."

According to the FBI, the total amount of goods stolen by criminals in 2014 burglary offenses suffered an estimated $3.9 billion in property losses. This means that the police are now taking more assets than the criminals.

Of course, there are several legitimate (i.e., tied to convictions) forfeitures included in that amount, whereas no burglary can ever be considered "legitimate." And, as the DOJ points out, some recent sizable seizures have produced gaudy forfeiture numbers.

A Justice Department spokesman pointed out that big cases, like the $1.7 billion Bernie Madoff judgment and a $1.2 billion case associated with Toyota, have led to large deposits to forfeiture funds in a single year.

So, there are mitigating factors in this law enforcement-to-criminals comparison, but that doesn't mean asset forfeiture programs are largely "right" or free from abuse. The federal government has argued it has the right to seize even "untainted" funds and a majority of cash seizures -- especially at the local level -- don't rise to "drug kingpin" levels. As was noted, when Washington, DC moved forward with asset forfeiture reform, its local police force more resembled pathetic stickup men than the dismantlers of drug empires.

In addition, the bill sets other limits. Vehicles may not be seized unless "clear and convincing evidence" exists that they were used in the commission of a crime. Cash amounts under $1,000 would be presumed "innocent," i.e., not subject to forfeiture. This stipulation cuts to the heart of the DC PD's abuse of asset forfeiture -- more than half of its $5.5 million in cash seizures were for less than $141, with over 1,000 of the 12,000 seizures being for less than $20.

Further watering down the comparison is this depressing fact: in asset forfeiture, the government (both local and federal) tends to place the burden of proof on the former owners of seized property. Arrested burglars, however, are given the Constitutional benefit of a doubt (presumed innocent) when they end up in court.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, civil asset forfeiture, crime, legalized theft, police

DailyDirt: What (Not) To Do With Smart Kids...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Last week, lots of people were outraged that a 14yo kid was handcuffed and arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school. Some folks tried to point out that such extracurricular projects should never be brought to school... because we live in a "day and age" of terror or something. That suggestion -- that kids need to somehow restrict their enthusiasm for trying to impress their teachers with something they've made outside of school -- is awful. The education system is often faulted for failing to improve test scores and leaving more than "no children" behind. However, Ahmed Mohamed's experience highlights that schools might want to start thinking more about how to identify talent and nurture skills that are valuable beyond taking tests.

• High-ability students have not been well-studied to determine how they might best be served by teachers. Should they be allowed to skip grades or just specific classes? Should teachers give them extra projects? Does class size matter for high-ability students? It's a shame that many gifted children are overlooked -- or that they are recognized (hopefully in a positive way), but that no one is certain quite what to do with them. [url]
• An 11yo boy in a gifted-and-talented program in Virginia brought a leaf to school -- that was mistakenly thought to be a marijuana leaf. The result was charges of marijuana possession in juvenile court, a year of suspension, and probation terms that mean he'll be searched for drugs every day, twice a day. Quite a punishment. For. A. Leaf. [url]
• Longer school days and more school days in a year seem like good ideas -- but making kids stay in school longer isn't necessarily a good thing. Learning is generally not taught as a joyful, fun thing to do, but a chore -- and making that chore more difficult and tiring isn't a recipe for creating a society of lifetime learners. [url]
• In 2013, a then-16yo Kiera Wilmot brought a science fair project to her high school in Florida. It wasn't a particularly novel experiment, mixing toilet bowl cleaner (some hydrochloric acid) with aluminum foil. However, the reaction (excuse the chemistry pun) was far greater than the smoke and gases. Wilmot was arrested, charged with two felonies, and had to attend a different school for troubled teens. Thankfully, she was allowed back to her original school for her senior year, and she's moved on to college without a criminal record following her. But how about we try not to jump to the worst conclusions about kids, especially when all the evidence points to nerdy hobbies that should be encouraged? [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: ahmed mohamed, crime, education, kiera wilmot, learning, marijuana, punishment, schools, teachers

Topsite Operator, Who Admitted To Operating Servers With Tons Of Pirated Movies, Gets Off With Just Probation

from the compare-that-to-the-pirate-bay dept

TorrentFreak reports on a somewhat unexpected end to a criminal case against an (oddly unnamed) 50-year-old Swedish man who was accused of and admitted to running the servers for the topsite known as Devil. As anti-piracy folks always like to remind us, topsites "sit at the top of the piracy pyramid" in the warez scene, as that's where pirated content is usually first leaked, before making its way out to the wider internet. In this case, investigators seized the actual servers with 250 terabytes of content and arrested the guy who ran all the servers out of his home. Slam dunk case, right? So that's the odd part: He ended up receiving just probation and some community service.

Given the scale of the case it was expected that punishments would be equally harsh but things did not play out that way.

Despite admitting that he operated servers at his home and in central Stockholm and the court acknowledging that rightsholders had suffered great damage, the man has just been sentenced to probation and 160 hours of community service.

The article admits that the guy may still face civil trials which could come with huge damages, but it's instructive to look at the results of the criminal case here and compare it to another case.

Remember, this is the same country that sued four guys who were no longer associated with The Pirate Bay -- which hosted no infringing content and was more of a search engine -- and not only found them guilty, but gave them jail sentences and millions of dollars in fines.

That seems... weird. The case against this topsite operator seems like exactly the kind of case that's actually a slam dunk. It's not going against a third party or intermediary. It's going against the people actually doing the infringing. One can question whether it's a worthwhile business strategy, but the legal strategy against this guy seems to make perfect sense -- as compared to the weird nonsensical legal strategy against The Pirate Bay -- which, again, hosted no infringing content and only acted as a search engine.

So why the different results?

If you've ever watched the documentary about the trial, TPB AFK, it quickly becomes clear that a big part of the trial against the four people loosely associated with the site was more about the fact that they didn't "respect the system." The situation with Peter Sunde is particularly striking. He had really, really strong legal arguments for why he was innocent. Beyond the fact that the site didn't host any infringing content, his role was as a spokesperson for the site, and he had little to do with the site's actual operations. But -- and this is the important part -- he recognized the whole trial was a joke and treated it as such, making fun of the proceedings and of the lawyers and judges for not understanding very basic things about how the internet worked.

To some extent, you could argue that he and the others were convicted for being smartasses in responding to the "very serious" lawsuit from a bunch of lawyers who clearly didn't understand the technological issues at play.

However, in this case -- involving an actual infringer where it was quite clear that he was, in fact, breaking the law -- things were different. This guy cooperated and treated "the system" with the deference it thinks it deserves:

According to Mitti.se, two key elements appear to have kept the man’s punishment down. Firstly, he cooperated with police in the investigation. Secondly – and this is a feature in many file-sharing prosecutions – the case simply dragged on for too long

The Pirate Bay case dragged on for quite a long time as well. Yet it still ended with huge fines and jail time. It's hard to look at the results of the two cases as anything other than the tax one pays for actually calling out a ridiculous system for being ridiculous, rather than sucking up to the system whose own credibility is called into question.

I'm a big supporter in the idea of an impartial judicial system with due process, and especially the idea that the judicial system is "blind" to all but the facts before it. But we all know that's an ideal that is too frequently not met. The widely different results in these two cases further highlights that divide. Play along with the system and get a slap on the wrist -- even if your actual activities clearly violate the law. Don't play along and mock the system, get a huge sentence -- even if your actions don't actually violate the law. In the end, all that seems to matter is the "proper respect" for a system whose own actions shows it deserves none.

Filed Under: copyright, crime, devil, prosecution, sweden, topsite
Companies: the pirate bay

Torrent Madness: UK Cybercrime Official Argues That File Sharing Is A Gateway Drug To Crime

from the moral-panic-du-jour dept

Perhaps it's time to make an update to Reefer Madness, entitled Torrent Madness. A totally out of touch and clueless -- but powerful -- UK official, Andy Archibald, who somehow is the deputy director of the National Cyber Crime Unit at the National Crime Agency, is going around spouting nonsense about how file sharing is some sort of "gateway" into more crimes for young people today (found via Ars Technica):

"If you think about the illegal downloading of music, of videos and DVDs, I think that practice is more common than we might imagine within the youth of today.

"That's criminality.

"It's almost become acceptable.

"That's the first stages, I believe, of a gateway into the dark side."

Considering how many people engage in file sharing, if it actually were a "gateway" into further criminal activity, you'd think we'd be in the midst of an incredible crime wave. And yet, here are the stats straight from the UK government: Obviously, correlation is not causation and yada yada, but doesn't that look like crime rates peaked just as file sharing really started taking off? If it were truly acting as a gateway to more crime, wouldn't that be showing up in the data somewhere?

But, no, good old Andy Archibald isn't troubled by the data. He knows that these evil hacker types are all showing up because of that no good file sharing:

"There are many of our young people, and not only young people, who are becoming highly skilled and capable in a digital environment," he said.

"It's important that they put those skills to good use and are not tempted to become involved, unwittingly in cyber criminality.

"They are members of forums and are exchanging ideas in a marketplace that criminals are looking (at).

"They are looking for people with technical skills who can compliment their criminal business.

"They are looking to recruit those people.

"They try to induce and manipulate them."

Yup. We've moved past the "child predators are grooming your kids" moral panic, into the "evil cybercriminals are grooming those file sharers" moral panic.

And, of course, it's all happening in that scary, scary place known as the "dark web" (boo!)

"When I joined policing ... you had drug trafficking, organised immigration crime, firearms trafficking, you knew where to go to sell stolen property, you knew where to go to hire a hit man, frankly.

"Actually, we could control that and we managed that by covert policing, overt policing and an infrastructure around it.

"All of those things I've just described are now happening in a digital environment in what is loosely termed the dark web.

"On the dark web we have criminals operating there, trading guns, trading drugs.

"That is where the illegal commodities are being traded."

But, he insists, the police don't want mass surveillance. They want "A narrative... that reassures the public." Funny, then, that it appears most of his speech was a bunch of nonsense designed to scare the public, huh?

Filed Under: andy archibald, crime, cybercrime, file sharing, gateway, uk

Should The Punishment For Falsely Accusing People Of A Crime Match The Punishment For The Crime Itself?

from the false-accusations-everywhere dept

Two very different stories, but both with some startling parallels.

First, Radley Balko's story about how police and attorneys in Louisiana apparently flat out lied to claim that a process server "assaulted" a police officer he was serving (in a police brutality case, no less). There are lots of details there, but suffice it to say, the process server, Douglas Dendinger, did not assault Chad Cassard at all -- even though he was soon arrested for it, and Cassard managed to present seven witnesses (including police officers and two prosecutors who witnessed Dendinger serving the papers on Cassard). Dendinger went through two years of hell because of this, before the case was dropped when cell phone videos made by Dendinger's wife and nephew showed that there was no assault at all. Police and prosecutors lying to protect one of their own? Sure, it happens. But now that it's been exposed, Balko has an important question:

Why aren’t the seven witnesses to Dendinger’s nonexistent assault on Cassard already facing felony charges? Why are all but one of the cops who filed false reports still wearing badges and collecting paychecks? Why aren’t the attorneys who filed false reports facing disbarment? Dendinger’s prosecutors both filed false reports, then prosecuted Dendinger based on the reports they knew were false. They should be looking for new careers — after they get out of jail.

If a group of regular citizens had pulled this on someone, they’d all likely be facing criminal conspiracy charges on top of the perjury and other charges. So why aren’t these cops and prosecutors?

I could be wrong, but my guess is that they’ll all be let off due to “professional courtesy” or some sort of exercise of prosecutorial discretion. And so the people who ought to be held to a higher standard than the rest of us will once again be held to a lower one.

Second, we have last week's story about Total Wipes sending an automated takedown notice to Google demanding tons of perfectly legitimate, non-infringing web pages be taken out of Google's index for infringement. Total Wipes blamed it on a "bug" in its program, which would be more convincing if it hadn't happened before.

This second story has Rick Falkvinge, quite reasonably, wondering why the penalties for false takedowns aren't equivalent to the penalties for infringement, saying that this is the way it works in other parts of the law:

The thing is, this should not even be contentious. This is how we deal with this kind of criminal act in every – every – other aspect of society. If you lie as part of commercial operations and hurt somebody else’s rights or business, you are a criminal. If you do so repeatedly or for commercial gain, direct or indirect, you’re having your ill-gotten gains seized. This isn’t rocket science. This is standard bloody operating procedure.

The copyright industry goes ballistic at this proposal, of course, and try to portray themselves as rightsless victims – when the reality is that they have been victimizing everybody else after making the entire planet rightsless before their intellectual deforestation.

The irony is that at the same time as the copyright industry opposes such penalties vehemently, arguing that they can make “innocent mistakes” in sending out nastygrams, threats, and lawsuits to single mothers, they are also arguing that the situation with distribution monopolies is always crystal clear and unmistakable to everybody else who deserve nothing but the worst. They can’t have it both ways here.

Of course, his claim that this is true in "every" other area is proven somewhat false by the first story above. But the underlying factors in both cases are nearly identical, and it actually goes back to a previous concept that Falkvinge has written about: the "high court" and the "low court." The "nobility" gets a special court when they break the law, with limited consequences. The lowly commoners have to go to the "low court" where the consequences are quite severe. Falkvinge's original point is that we still seem to have the same thing today, and that's clearly shown in both stories above.

If you're in power, you can lie about things to accuse others of serious things that can have serious consequences for them, and there's no real punishment. Instead, it's brushed off as not being important -- sometimes with expressions of understanding about how "these things can happen." I'm reminded of the phrase that we "judge ourselves according to our intentions, but others based on their actions," and that seems to be partly at work here as well (though I question the "intentions" of the prosecutors who lied above). The lies are written off as minor "mistakes," whereas those accused are given no such benefit of the doubt. It's a big problem in the copyright space, certainly, but it's true in many other areas of society as well.

Filed Under: assault, copyright, crime, false accusations, high court, lies, low court, process server, punishment, radley balko, rick falkvinge
Companies: total wipes

When We Call Criminal Acts 'Terrorism' We Destroy Our Rights And Sacrifice Our Principles

from the letting-the-terrorists-win dept

Every so often over the past decade or so in the "age of terrorism," someone has raised the issue of why we treat "terrorism" as somehow distinct from criminal activity. We let the intelligence community, rather than law enforcement, focus on terrorism (even as some in law enforcement -- notably, the FBI and the NYPD -- have tried to redefine their missions as being about terrorism). In the past, I've actually seen the wisdom of treating terrorism and criminal activities as separate, especially when terrorism was part of a larger, coordinated effort (especially when connected with state-level actors). However, these days, we're quick to call so much terrorism, it's really problematic. And not just because of the semantic argument. This hit home reading Hamilton's thought-provoking piece pointing out that "Terrorism Works."

His argument, in short, is that terrorism "works" because our reaction to it generally is the reaction of those who have been successfully terrified:

Two men with a rifle paralyze Washington, DC for weeks. Two men with a couple of homemade bombs paralyze Boston for days. One man on a plane with a dud bomb packed inside his boots has an entire nation taking off its shoes at the airport for years to come. A small group of religious zealots send three U.S. presidential administrations down a nightmarish rabbithole of drone war, torture, and total surveillance of the citizenry.

Terrorism works. Against us, terrorism works very, very well. Our collective insistence on treating terrorist acts as something categorically different than crime—as something harder to understand, something scarier, something perpetrated not by humans but by monsters—feeds the ultimate goals of terrorists. It makes us dumb. It makes us primitive. It is our boogeyman, and no amount of rational talk will drive it out of our minds.

That point, that we treat terrorism as different than crime really hits home. When there's a criminal spree -- bank robberies, burglaries, car thefts -- we may make certain changes in how we act (get better locks, security systems, etc.) but we don't seem to change our entire national psyche. We don't get terrified by crime. We take some actions to mitigate the risk, but we get on with our lives. When we call things "terrorism" we seem to let all perspective go out the window.

We switch from a mode of trying to minimize the risk to an absolutely impossible ideal of eliminating the threat entirely. That's dangerous. It tosses out anything involving cost-benefit analysis. It tosses out common sense. And, most importantly, it seems to toss out our rights, privacy and freedoms.

There's a way to deal with this and it's to treat most of these things as criminal activity, and to react accordingly. But that doesn't generate quite the same headlines or opportunities for politician grandstanding, so it probably won't happen.

Filed Under: attacks, crime, principles, rights, terror, terrorism

FBI's Use Of 'Sneak And Peek' Warrants Still Steadily Increasing, Still Has Nearly Nothing To Do With Fighting Terrorism

from the more-drug-warring dept

Another tool supposedly "crucial" to the War on Terror is just another lowly footsoldier in the War on Drugs. Some long-delayed reports on Section 213 "sneak and peek" warrants have finally been released by the US government, providing more detail on the constantly-expanding use of delayed-notification warrants by the FBI.

While Section 213 didn't originate with the regrettable PATRIOT Act, it did coattail ride the government-expanding legislation into legitimacy. Robert Mueller, director of the FBI at the time, made this statement in 2005 defending the ongoing use of these warrants.

While not scheduled to sunset, the USA Patriot Act's delayed notice provision, Section 213, has been the subject of criticism and various legislative proposals. The FBI believes that Section 213 is an invaluable tool in the war on terror and our efforts to combat serious criminal conduct. It is important to note that delayed notice warrants were not created by the USA Patriot Act. Rather, the Act simply codified a common law practice recognized by courts across the country and created a uniform nationwide standard for the issuance of those warrants…

Delayed notice search warrants provide a crucial option to law enforcement and can only be issued if a federal judge finds that one of five tailored circumstances exists. The FBI has requested this authority in several cases. In most instances, the FBI seeks delayed notice when contemporaneous notice would reasonably be expected to cause serious jeopardy to an ongoing investigation.

Legislators expressed concern about these warrants during a 2005 Senate hearing, pointing out the significant increase in the number issued.

Apparently, the department sought and received the authority to delay notice 108 times between April 2003 and January 2005, a period of approximately 22 months. By contrast, it sought and received this authority 47 times between November 2001, when the PATRIOT Act was enacted, and April 2003, a period of about 17 months. The 5-month difference in timeframe aside, these numbers clearly reveal a substantial increase in use.

If they could have peered a little further into the future, they probably wouldn't have bothered noting this slight increase. 2010's report noted nearly 4,000 requests for delayed notification. A year later, the number had lept to 6,775. Two years later and the number has nearly doubled -- 11,129.

From 47 times in 17 months to over 30 times a day over the last ten years. This is another limited-use, for-emergency-use-only tool that has been converted into a workhouse by law enforcement. To keep it from being killed off, FBI Director Robert Mueller cited terrorism and investigations being placed in "serious jeopardy," but in reality, it's still all about drugs, drugs and more drugs.

This was the ratio in 2010.


It hasn't gotten any better.

Out of the 3,970 total requests from October 1, 2009 to September 30, 2010, 3,034 were for narcotics cases and only 37 for terrorism cases (about .9%). Since then, the numbers get worse. The 2011 report reveals a total of 6,775 requests. 5,093 were used for drugs, while only 31 (or .5%) were used for terrorism cases. The 2012 report follows a similar pattern: Only .6%, or 58 requests, dealt with terrorism cases. The 2013 report confirms the incredibly low numbers. Out of 11,129 reports only 51, or .5%, of requests were used for terrorism.

Additionally, only 11 requests were rejected and the average delay was over 60 days. The longest recorded in 2013 was well over a year -- 546 days.

This was supposed to be an option of last resort -- something deployed when it was too dangerous to do otherwise. But it never was anything more than a way to skirt the Fourth Amendment for maximum FBI efficiency. Even in its early days -- not far removed from the horror of the 9/11 attacks -- the FBI was using delayed notice warrants to conduct routine investigations.

It would astound most Americans that government agents could enter their homes while they are asleep or their places of business while they are away and carry out a secret search or seizure and not tell them until weeks or months later. It would especially astound them that this authority is available for all Federal offenses, ranging from weapons of mass destruction investigations to student loan cases. That is what Section 213 of the PATRIOT Act authorizes. Indeed, the Justice Department has admitted that it has used Section 213 sneak and peek authority in nonviolent cases having nothing to do with terrorism. These include, according to the Justice Department's October 24, 2003 letter to Senator Stevens, an investigation of judicial corruption, where agents carried out a sneak and peek search of a judge's chambers, a fraudulent checks case, and a health care fraud investigation, which involved a sneak and peek of a home nursing care business.

So, the DOJ requests an inch, takes several miles, and searches citizens' homes and places of business several thousand times a year -- all without feeling compelled to inform its targets. The justifications the FBI offers (and has offered for years) are false. Are we actually supposed to believe the danger posed to investigating officers has increased at the same rate as the deployment of "sneak and peek" warrants? The defenders of this program can't expect anyone to believe anything that ridiculous. And yet, it continues -- not just unabated, but with steady increases.

Section 213 is just another way for the DOJ to keep the pesky public from impeding its forward progress. Anything hinting of rights or civil liberties is generally viewed as a loophole for criminals to exploit. This is more of the same. It's easier to execute search warrants when you don't have to bother serving them first.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, crime, drugs, fbi, privacy, sneak and peek, terrorism, warrants