Sheriff's Office To Pay $3 Million For Invasive Searches Of 850 High School Students

from the a-few-thousand-dollars-per-grope dept

It's been barely a month since news came to us of the Worth County (GA) Sheriff's Department's search of an entire school's worth of high school students. Over 800 students were searched without a warrant, subjected to invasive pat downs that included breasts and genitals by Sheriff Jeff Hobby and his deputies.

Sheriff Hobby thought there might be drugs in the school, but despite the search of hundreds of students and the use of drug dogs, no drugs were found. A class action lawsuit [PDF] alleging multiple rights violations brought by some of the students was filed in June. In October, Sheriff Hobby and two of his deputies were indicted for sexual battery and false imprisonment.

In a surprisingly quick turnaround, there's already talk of a settlement, as Susan Hogan reports for the Washington Post.

On Tuesday, a legal advocacy group, the Southern Center for Human Rights, said a proposed $3 million settlement had been reached in the lawsuit, pending a judge’s approval.

That number has nothing to do with the severity of the violations, but rather is the limit of the sheriff department's insurance policy. But it will be spread to cover a majority of the student body harmed by the actions of these law enforcement officers.

Each class member will receive a monetary award of between $1,000 and $6,000, with those students subjected to more invasive searches receiving higher amounts. Once any outstanding claims are resolved and attorney fees of 15% of the fund are paid, half of any remaining funds will be paid into a fund for the benefit of Worth County High School students.

This quick settlement can likely be chalked up to a handful of variables. One, Hobby and his deputies have been indicted, which gives more credence to the students' claims their rights were violated. Two, the entire 4-hour lockdown was captured on the school's surveillance cameras, all but eliminating narrative options for the law enforcement defendants. Three, Sheriff Hobby's own statements in defense of his and his deputies' actions make it very clear the sheriff supports the mass violation of rights through policies and actions.

The only reason Hobby didn't pursue another warrantless search of the entire school's student body wasn't because of concerns about students and their rights, but because people were angry.

When asked about that previous search that came up dry, Hobby said he didn't think that search was thorough, so he decided to do his own.

He said he believes there are drugs at the high school and the middle school, but also said that he will not do another search, due to response from community.

So, straight up, the sheriff believes he did nothing wrong. His deputies did nothing wrong. If anything's wrong here, it's the response from the community -- people who apparently don't understand civil rights are nothing more than obstacles that must be skirted or surmounted if we're ever going to win this war on drugs.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, georgia, high school, jeff hobby, search

Three Thoughts On EU's $2.7 Billion Antitrust Google Fine

from the thinking-this-through dept

By now, of course, you've probably heard that the EU Commission has fined Google €2.4 billion for antitrust violations, specifically regarding shopping search (there are at least two other investigations going on around antitrust questions involving Android and Adsense). The specific issue leading to this fine is that Google, for years, has been pushing its own comparison shopping results in response to searches on products, and other comparison search vendors feel this is unfair, as users are more likely to just jump to Google's shopping options in the boxes up top -- usually called the "onebox" (for what it's worth, I almost never click on those boxes, in fact, I almost never use Google for product search, preferring other, better, dedicated sites -- but that's a single anecdotal point, while the EU is citing some data it claims supports its position). Anyway, rather than digging all that deep, let's go with three thoughts I had in reading through the EU's announcement (linked above), Google's response and some of the other coverage.

1. I still don't understand why Google didn't handle this differently starting years ago. Three years ago, we wrote about this in connection to the antitrust fight over "place reviews" where Yelp & TripAdvisor made the fairly compelling (and data-backed) argument that Google users would prefer if the "onebox" were populated using Google's search algorithm, rather than only showing Google's review pages via Google Local/Zagat/whatever it's called. The same thing could apply somewhat to shopping search as well, and pull from other shopping search engines -- and, voila, no more antitrust issue. In that setup, competition in the market rules -- and if Google can produce the best results, it wins. If others can do better, then they win. Seems like a fairly straightforward solution as it would have eased the pressure on Google, and wiped out this kind of fine. Indeed, such a response would even feel more "Googley" in the early-2000's definition of "Googley" where the company seemed much more willing to drive people elsewhere on the web, rather than keep people in.

2. Even given that first point, I'm still... nervous about having European bureaucrats (or, really, any bureaucrats) telling any company how they can design their webpages. As Wired's Klint Finley points out, once bureaucrats -- who have no idea the realities of designing search results pages, let alone designing any webpages -- start telling websites how they can and cannot design their sites, trouble follows. I know that some are saying (and I've talked about this in the past) that this is just the EU slapping down big American companies for being "big" and "American" but I really think this is a case of EU regulators getting so deep in the weeds and then deciding that Google is too big and that they (the bureaucrats) don't like how its shopping search results work. That kind of meddling in webpages should worry everyone. Yes, you can say that it will only be used against giant companies... but once you open the door to bureaucrats telling you how your webpages can work, they might not stop at just the big ones. Danny Sullivan summed this up nicely:

   Next up: EU to decide a search engine offering news, image & local search is somehow a violation of being a "fair" search engine. https://t.co/hUAYAbO6V9

   — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) June 27, 2017

3. Given all that: will this actually change anything substantial? Even if Google accepts this and doesn't appeal (which it probably will...) it can easily afford the fine. But, more importantly, will this actually help other comparison shopping engines? That's much less clear. That same article (by Rob Pegoraro) has a number of interesting quotes, including a few from Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research noting that in the market for product searches (as in my anecdotal experience), most don't start at Google:

   “Around half of searches for products now start on specific e-commerce sites or apps, especially Amazon in the countries where it operates,” emailed Jackdaw Research principal Jan Dawson.

   Dawson also noted: "Although those comparison shopping sites still exist, they're far less relevant today, and even a change to Google’s search engine isn't going to turn that around."

So... if this isn't going to hurt Google and isn't going to help other companies in the market, then... what's the point exactly? Yes, Google could have done things differently, but this doesn't help really.

Filed Under: antitrust, eu, eu commission, fines, product search, search
Companies: google

Appeals Court: An IP Address And Some Alternative Facts Are A 'Reasonable' Basis For A Search

from the speculative-policing dept

The Eighth Circuit Appeals Court has handed down a judicial shrug [PDF] in a case where police decided an IP address was pretty much all they needed to search eleven occupants and their devices for child porn. Qualified immunity is upheld, despite the fact the officers searched rooms they possibly had no Fourth Amendment permission to search and despite the fact that no child porn was discovered anywhere on the multiple devices they seized.

The detectives had a warrant to search a single-family dwelling. This residence had been split into unofficial apartments. Despite there being some clear delineation between the multiple private spaces, the police decided the original warrant covered every separate "residence" inside the residence.

[Detective Jessie] Smith--accompanied by Minot Police Sergeant Dave Goodman and Detective Krista Thompson, plus six other law enforcement officials--arrived at the residence on the morning of May 6, 2014, to execute the search warrant. Once inside, law enforcement officials interviewed the persons present and learned that the residence had as many as eleven occupants, some of whom sublet basement bedrooms, and all of whom could access the internet service wirelessly. No child pornography was found during the search of the entire residence, including a basement bedroom that Doe and another person rented.

The court says there's nothing wrong with the law enforcement effort, even though it would seem more proper for additional warrants to be sought, rather than simply relying on a warrant whose sworn facts were no longer factual. It's not as though the police didn't have that option. Any concerns about evidence vanishing could have been mitigated using the same steps depicted here:

Doe was not present, but police were told that he was at work, and that he had a laptop computer which he carried in a blue bag. Smith, Goodman, and Thompson, who had been given a description of Doe’s vehicle, proceeded to Doe’s place of employment. The officers spotted Doe’s car in the parking lot, and saw a blue laptop bag on the front seat. Inside the premises, the officers met privately with Doe in a conference room, telling him about their investigation and asking for permission to search his vehicle. When Doe denied permission, the officers advised him that they would seek a warrant to search his vehicle and the laptop, and that he could not remove his vehicle while the warrant was being obtained. Doe was not told that he could not leave the premises. Smith then prepared another search warrant application, supplementing his original affidavit with the results of the initial search of the residence, information learned from interviews of the occupants, and his observation of the laptop bag in Doe’s vehicle; and a second search warrant was issued for Doe’s vehicle and for any computers and electronic devices located in it.

The decision to approach Doe at work had consequences. But only for Doe.

Goodman, Thompson, and Smith then executed the warrant and previewed the laptop computer on site. Once again, they found no child pornography. During this time, a period of about two and one-half hours, Doe was denied access to his vehicle. He was not arrested or charged with any crime. He nevertheless lost his job, and was forced to move out of his rented room.

Doe's life took a hit, thanks to officers working with little more than an IP address -- one shared by at least eleven residents -- and a warrant that should have been invalid the moment it was served. But the court insists moving ahead with a warrant that describes a living situation completely different than the one actually observed during warrant service is still a "reasonable" search that doesn't clearly violate established rights.

As the dissent points out, federal precedent says otherwise. When officers are faced with facts that contradict their sworn assertions, they're supposed to limit their searches to the confines of the warrant they obtained. Failure to do so is to perform searches not backed by probable cause.

Federal courts have consistently held that if officers obtain a warrant to search a building containing a single residential unit, and discover or reasonably should discover during the execution of the warrant that the building actually contains multiple residential units, they are required to limit their search to the unit or units for which they have specific probable cause… Here, once the officers arrived at the building named in the warrant, they realized it had been subdivided into separate units, with as many as eleven tenants and subtenants. All eleven could access the building’s wireless internet, and the officers had no information leading them to any particular unit, tenant, or device. Therefore, the chance of finding child pornography in any single residential unit—including Doe’s rented room—was substantially less than the “fair probability” required for probable cause, and the execution of the warrant was objectively unreasonable.

Likewise, the warrant obtained to search Doe's car and laptop was not supported by probable cause.

The only evidence suggesting that Doe might be the person who downloaded the child pornography was that he was one of at least eleven people who could access his building’s wireless internet, and that he had a laptop computer in his vehicle. This evidence falls far short of establishing probable cause, and “no reasonably competent officer would have concluded that a warrant should issue.”

By upholding the officers' qualified immunity, the court is basically stating it's fine to handle child porn investigations with the same sort of detailed rigor deployed by copyright trolls. Search warrants are apparently being handed out to law enforcement that contain little more than a subscriber's name and a Google Maps photo of the building at the address provided by the ISP. It's speculative policing, requiring almost nothing in the way of actual detective work. But this is very serious stuff. Child porn investigations should be handled much more carefully, considering the severity of the crime, the vulnerability of the victims, and the incredible collateral damage done to innocent people wrongly accused of this crime. Instead, it appears officers are rushing forward with way more enthusiasm than supporting facts.

The evidence here -- rather, the complete lack of it -- shows how dangerous it can be when assumptions are made about IP addresses and those who have access to them. Sure, it's not dangerous for the cops -- they have qualified immunity and tons of judicial slack on their side. But for those on the receiving end, it can cost them their livelihood, even when they're innocent.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, 8th circuit, ip address, privacy, search

AT&T, Verizon Feign Ethical Outrage, Pile On Google's 'Extremist' Ad Woes

from the manufactured-outrage dept

So you may have noticed that Google has been caught up in a bit of a stink in the UK over the company's YouTube ads being presented near "extremist" content. The fracas began after a report by the Times pointed out that advertisements for a rotating crop of brands were appearing next to videos uploaded to YouTube by a variety of hateful extremists. It didn't take long for the UK government -- and a number of companies including McDonald's, BBC, Channel 4, and Lloyd's -- to engage in some extended pearl-clutching, proclaiming they'd be suspending their ad buys until Google resolved the issue.

Of course, much like the conversation surrounding "fake news," most of the news coverage was bizarrely superficial and frequently teetering toward the naive. Most outlets were quick to malign Google for purposely letting extremist content get posted, ignoring the fact that the sheer volume of video content uploaded to YouTube on a daily basis makes hateful-idiot policing a Sisyphean task. Most of the reports also severely understate the complexity of modern internet advertising, where real-time bidding and programmatic placement means companies may not always know what brand ads show up where, or when.

Regardless, Google wound up issuing a mea culpa stating they'd try to do a better job at keeping ads for the McRib sandwich far away from hateful idiocy:

"We know advertisers don't want their ads next to content that doesn’t align with their values. So starting today, we’re taking a tougher stance on hateful, offensive and derogatory content. This includes removing ads more effectively from content that is attacking or harassing people based on their race, religion, gender or similar categories. This change will enable us to take action, where appropriate, on a larger set of ads and sites."

As we've noted countless times, policing hate speech is a complicated subject, where the well-intentioned often stumble down the rabbit hole into hysteria and overreach. Amusingly though, AT&T and Verizon -- two U.S. brands not exactly synonymous with ethical behavior -- were quick to take advantage of the situation, issuing statements that they too were simply outraged -- and would be pulling their advertising from some Google properties post haste. This resulted in a large number of websites regurgitating said outrage with a decidedly straight face:

"We are deeply concerned that our ads may have appeared alongside YouTube content promoting terrorism and hate," an AT&T spokesperson told Business Insider in a written statement. "Until Google can ensure this won’t happen again, we are removing our ads from Google’s non-search platforms."

"Once we were notified that our ads were appearing on non-sanctioned websites, we took immediate action to suspend this type of ad placement and launched an investigation," a Verizon spokesperson told Business Insider. "We are working with all of our digital advertising partners to understand the weak links so we can prevent this from happening in the future."

Of course, if you know the history of either company, you should find this pearl-clutching a little entertaining. In just the last few years, AT&T has been busted for turning a blind eye to drug dealer directory assistance scams, ripping off programs for the hearing impaired, defrauding government programs designed to shore up low-income connectivity, and actively helping "crammers" by making scam charges on consumer bills harder to detect. Verizon, recently busted for covertly spying on internet users and defrauding cities via bogus broadband deployment promises isn't a whole lot better.

That's not to say that all of the companies involved in the Google fracas are engaged in superficial posturing for competitive advantage. Nor is it to say that Google can't do more to police the global hatred brigades. But as somebody who has spent twenty years writing about these two companies specifically, the idea that either gives much of a shit about their ads showing up next to hateful ignoramuses is laughable. And it was bizarre to see an ocean of news outlets just skip over the fact that both companies are pushing hard into advertising themselves with completed or looming acquisitions of Time Warner, AOL and Yahoo.

Again, policing hateful idiocy is absolutely important. But overreach historically doesn't serve anybody. And neither does pretentious face fanning by companies looking to use the resulting hysteria to competitive advantage.

Filed Under: ads, extremism, moral panic, pearl clutching, search, video
Companies: at&t, google, verizon, youtube

This Won't Be Abused At All: Google Offers Tool To Flag And Downrank 'Offensive' Search Results

from the this-whole-thing-is-offensive dept

Google is constantly under pressure from all sides to change how it ranks just about everything. There's a massive SEO industry, a decent portion of which is dedicated into tricking Google into ranking some stuff higher than others (or downgrading content that someone doesn't like). And, then, of course, there are the "outside" interests. For years, the legacy recording and movie industries would misleadingly blame Google for piracy and demand that it downrank "pirate" links. Google caved in and did so, and the end result has been kind of a mess. Because it's based on DMCA notices in to Google, the company now gets flooded with an ever increasing number of DMCA notices -- many of which are completely bogus (and potentially just designed to mess with search rankings).

On top of that, in cases where it does downrank so-called "pirate" sites, since people are still looking for unauthorized content anyway, they end up going to more dangerous sites, where they're more likely to get malware. And, of course, as we predicted, despite caving in and giving the RIAA/MPAA a tool to shape search results, those industries still aren't satisfied. Because they'll never be satisifed. That's because they fail to understand that the problem isn't Google. Google is just a representation of what's on the internet -- and many people on the internet want access to content that is otherwise difficult to get. That's not Google's fault.

A couple of years ago, Google also announced that it would allow people to remove "revenge porn" results from search. And you can certainly understand why pretty much everyone would want this as an end result. But, still, once you make that tool available, there's reason to fear that it, too, will be abused. And even if a company as large as Google may be able to properly staff up to go through and review each request, this only puts pressure on everyone else -- including much smaller, less well-staffed, less well-resourced players to do something similar.

And now... for reasons that are unclear, Google has announced that it opened up a tool that will let people report "offensive" results and potentially downrank those results.

With the change, content with racial slurs could now get flagged under a new category called "upsetting-offensive." So could content that promotes hate or violence against a specific group of people based on gender, race or other criteria.

While flagging something doesn't directly affect the search results themselves, it's used to tweak the company's software so that better content ranks higher. This approach might, for instance, push down content that is inaccurate or has other questionable attributes, thereby giving prominence to trustworthy sources.

Again, at a first pass, this kind of thing absolutely sounds good. We should want better results, and the idea of letting Google's many millions of users help flag certain sites to be carefully reviewed for "upsetting or offensive" content makes sense. But... again, this definitely seems like the kind of thing that is open to widespread abuse. First off, what is "upsetting or offensive" anyway? That's a completely subjective standard, and one that we've seen people judge very, very differently. Second, what do you do if you really dislike a particular site? You open up a vote-brigade by a bunch of people to label it "upsetting or offensive." Trump haters can go after Breitbart and Trump supporters can go after the NY Times. Hopefully Google resists those kinds of vote brigading, but just the fact that this kind of tool is open to such abuse is concerning. And, again, when Google does something like this, it puts more pressure on other sites, with many fewer resources, to do something similar or get branded as somehow "supporting" offensive content.

Again, none of this is to say that Google must be promoting "offensive" content. It has the right to create its search results however it wants. But the more tools it opens up to the public to potentially downrank sites, the more the risk is that such tools get widely abused.

Filed Under: downrank, offensive, search, search rankings, vote brigade
Companies: google

Judge Rejects Warrant Seeking To Force Everyone At A Searched Location To Unlock Seized Electronic Devices

from the new-brute-force-method-revealed dept

Late last year, Thomas Fox-Brewster of Forbes uncovered a strange search warrant among a pile of unsealed documents. The warrant -- approved by a magistrate judge -- allowed law enforcement officers to demand that everyone present at the searched location provide their fingerprints to unlock devices seized from the same location.

In support of its request, the government cited cases dating back to 1910, as though they had any relevance to the current situation. The most recent case cited was 30 years old -- still far from easily applicable to today's smartphones, which are basically pocket-sized personal data centers.

The judge granted it, stating that demands for fingerprints, passwords, or anything (like encryption keys) that might give law enforcement access to the devices' content did not implicate the Fourth or Fifth Amendments. While the magistrate was correct that no court has found the application of fingerprints to unlock devices to be a violation of the Fifth Amendment, the other access options (passwords, encryption keys) might pose Fifth Amendment problems down the road.

Riana Pfefferkorn has uncovered a similar warrant request, but this one has been rejected by the magistrate judge. Pretty much across the board, the order is the antithesis of the one revealed last year. The judge finds [PDF] that the broad request to force everyone present at the residence to apply their fingerprints to seized devices to unlock them implicates multiple Constitutional amendments.

The issues presented in this warrant application are at the cross section of protections provided by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Essentially, the government seeks an order from this Court that would allow agents executing this warrant to force "persons at the Subject Premises" to apply their thumbprints and fingerprints to any Apple electronic device recovered at the premises. (See Attach. B, tT 12.) The request is neither limited to a particular person nor a particular device. And, as noted below, the request is made without any specific facts as to who is involved in the criminal conduct linked to the subject premises, or specific facts as to what particular Apple-branded encrypted device is being employed (if any).

The judge notes the government is able to detain and search persons located at the premises being searched, but that does not extend to forcing every single person in a residence at the time of a search to comply with attempts to unlock seized devices. Because the warrant affidavit contained no particularity about the devices or who in the household the government suspected of engaging in criminal activity, the court can't find anything that justifies the broad, inclusive language contained in the request.

This Court agrees that the context in which fingerprints are taken, and not the fingerprints themselves, can raise concerns under the Fourth Amendment. In the instant case, the government is seeking the authority to seize any individual at the subject premises and force the application of their fingerprints as directed by government agents. Based on the facts presented in the application, the Court does not believe such Fourth Amendment intrusions are justified based on the facts articulated.

The court has other problems with the affidavit -- beyond the government's unwarranted extension of Fourth/Fifth Amendment jurisprudence to cover any devices/fingerprints encountered at a searched location. Early in the order, it notes the government is deploying boilerplate nearly as outdated as its case citiations.

Despite the apparent seriousness of the offenses involved, the Court notes that some of the "boilerplate" background information included in the warrant is a bit dated, such as its explanation that "[t]he internet allows any computer to connect to another computer [so] [e]lectronic contact can be made to millions of computers around the world;" its explanation that a "Blackberry" is a common "Personal Digital Assistant" and its suggestion that the use of "cloud technology" is the exceptional way of transferring files and that transferring images to a computer by directly connecting a cable to a camera or other recording device is the expected means of data transfer.

The judge notes outdated boilerplate isn't enough to undo probable cause assertions, but it certainly doesn't help -- especially not when the government is requesting this sort of broad permission.

The inclusion of this somewhat dated view of technology certainly does not distract from the application's goal of establishing probable cause. However, the dated "boilerplate language" is problematic for what is not included. There is absolutely no discussion of wireless internet service and the possibilities and capabilities that wireless service presents in this context. For example, an unsophisticated intemet user, or a careless one, may fail to properly encrypt his wireless service or may share the password injudiciously. Such practices leave open the possibility that it is not an inhabitant of the subject premises that has used the internet to gather and distribute child pornography, but rather it is a person who has access to the internet service at the subject premises.

Obviously, this possibility holds true in all investigations that track the investigation outlined in the instant application. The limitations of this investigation are not fatal to establishing probable cause, but, in the Court's view, these limitations do impact the ability of the government to seek the extraordinary authority related to compelling individuals to provide their fingerprints to unlock an Apple electronic device.

Then there's the other assertions. The government's application does nothing to narrow down which resident it's seeking or what device(s) might contain evidence of criminal activity. What it does appear to be certain about -- for reasons not included in the application -- is that the devices it seeks are Apple products. A footnote in the order questions this assertion.

Why Apple devices are likely to be found at the premises is not explained. The Court is aware that Apple has a large market share in online hardware, but Microsoft's Windows operating systems continue to dominate the overall market share of operating systems used.

What makes these broad, unsupported assertions even worse, especially when combined with the outdated boilerplate, is that this is apparently the direction the government is heading with its search warrants.

In closing, upon presentation of the warrant application to this Court, the government identified for this Court that the warrant application was seeking the forced fingerprinting discussed herein. The government further noted "[t]his is the language that we are making standard in all of our search warrants." This declaration of standardization is perhaps the crux of the problem. As the Court hopes it is plain from the above, the issues presented here require a fact-intensive inquiry both for purposes of the Fourth Amendment and the Fifth Amendment.

More particularity, better probable cause, and fewer assumptions about the Fourth and Fifth Amendment's application in a post-Riley world are what's needed from the government, according to this order. Even though this application was rejected, it's safe to say this same approach has worked elsewhere. We've seen one approved warrant already and there are likely several more safely hidden from the public eye in the government's multitudinous sealed cases.

What's troubling about the government's assertions in this application is its apparent belief it's found an encryption workaround: one that blows past Fourth and Fifth Amendment concerns using little more than boilerplate that still considers cables to be an essential part of "cloud computing," and magistrate judges willing to buy its outdated legal arguments.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, 5th amendment, fingerprints, location, search, warrant

Turkey Is Building Domestic Replacements For Gmail and Google

from the national-culture-and-values dept

Turkey has a long history of blocking Internet services. It's become such a thing, there's even a site called TurkeyBlocks that is exclusively about this phenomenon. A couple of recent stories on the site suggest the Turkish government is aiming to tighten its local control over the online world even more. First, in order to prevent people circumventing social media shutdowns, the Turkish authorities are going after Tor:

The Turkey Blocks internet censorship watchdog has identified and verified that restrictions on the Tor anonymity network and Tor Browser are now in effect throughout Turkey. Our study indicates that service providers have successfully complied with a government order to ban VPN services.

But even that is not enough it seems. Here's the latest plan:

Turkey is building a domestic search engine and email service compatible with national culture and values, according to statements made by Ahmet Arslan, Minister of Communication, in a television interview on Friday.

Minister Arslan explained the urgency of the plans in the live show on NTV, citing the need to store user data within the country and ensure that communications can be analysed domestically. Details such as the service's name, logo and organisation structure have yet to be announced.

It's interesting to see data localization being invoked here, just as it was in Russia. Fear of surveillance by the US seems to be one reason for the move, but the second part about allowing communications to be "analysed domestically" is also noteworthy. It could be a reflection of the fact that Gmail uses encrypted connections that prevent the Turkish authorities from monitoring who is saying what. One obvious step would be to ban Gmail and Google completely in Turkey in order to force people there to use the new domestic offerings. That would allow the government to monitor its citizens more closely, and to control the flow of online data more strictly.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: blocking, censorship, data localization, email, fragmentation, search, surveillance, turkey

State Court Tells Cops Obtaining Consent Not Enough To Fix Suspicionless Vehicle Search

from the 99-Problems-all-over-again dept

Without citing the Supreme Court's Rodriguez decision, the Superior Court of Delaware has returned a ruling [PDF] that should serve as a deterrent to law enforcement fishing expeditions. (h/t FourthAmendment.com)

Two state courts recently held that extending an interaction beyond the objective of a traffic stop is unconstitutional, pointing out that it's not the length of the constitutional violation that's a problem, but the violation itself. There is no de minimis Fourth Amendment violation acceptable under the Rodriguez decision.

The court here could have found similarly but didn't even have to make it as far as the Supreme Court's decision to find the officers' post-traffic stop actions unconstitutional.

The defendant seeking suppression of evidence was pulled over for speeding. Everything about the stop was completely normal. As the court sees it -- according to the officers' own testimony and reports -- there was nothing else for them to do but issue a speeding citation.

Officer Hamilton stopped the defendant (John Geist) and asked for the usual documents. These were provided and the citation was written up. Six minutes after the initiation of the stop, Officer Hamilton to Geist he was free to go. Another officer showed up during the stop and asked Geist if he had any questions. Geist asked the officer what the dollar amount of the speeding fine was.

The stop's objective had been achieved and Geist had presented nothing that amounted to reasonable suspicion to justify further questioning. But Officer Hamilton proceeded with more questions, almost all of them focused on getting Geist to consent to a search of his vehicle.

At that point, the engagement of all aspects of the speeding violation had completed. Nevertheless, Officer Hamilton spontaneously asked Defendant if he had any weapons or drugs in his vehicle. Other than an unspecific “thought that he might be under the influence of alcohol,” Officer Hamilton had utterly no basis for any suspicion that Defendant was transporting anything untoward. On Defendant’s negative reply, Officer Hamilton asked Defendant if he could search the automobile. Defendant, after a fashion, consented.

Consent normally cures a lot of Fourth Amendment ills. But not in this case. Law enforcement isn't allowed to push for searches it has no articulable reasons to pursue.

Certainly, if there had existed any reasonable suspicion on the part of Officer Hamilton that any such contraband were present, a warrant to search, at least arguably, could have been obtained, and consent of the Defendant would have substituted entirely adequately. There was, however, in this case, utterly no basis for any such suspicion.

The state argued that a lack of suspicion shouldn't matter because the officer obtained consent for a search. It argued there were no coercive factors to tip the scale towards unconstitutionality. The court points out something few courts have: that the imbalance of power between law enforcement officers and members of the general public is its own form of coercion.

To say that a reasonable person, standing at the instruction of the officer outside of his vehicle, while wearing sandals, shorts and no shirt, confronting two fully uniformed and armed officers would feel no coercion effect simply flies in the face of reality. In that situation, “Mind if I look around” is not really a question. It is tantamount to the statement: “I’m going to look in your car to see if you’re telling the truth.” The coercion is the situation.

As to the state's assertion that a lack of reasonable suspicion shouldn't result in the suppression of a search for which consent was obtained, the court cites an earlier case that declared drivers aren't expected to put up with being harassed and harangued into "consensual" searches just because they've committed a moving violation.

“Travelers on our State highways should not be subjected to the harassment, embarrassment, and inconvenience of an automobile search following a routine traffic stop unless the officers has at least an articulable suspicion that the search will yield evidence of illegal activity.”

Fishing license revoked. The court never had to approach the Supreme Court's decision because it found the officers' actions wholly unreasonable given the facts of the case. Another win for drivers -- albeit one that it limited to Delaware residents and does nothing to prevent officers from using made-up laws to initiate traffic stops and all of the consensual jousting that usually comes packed with it.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, consent, delaware, police, probable cause, search

Convicted Felon Ask Google To Delist Multiple Government Websites Because His Name Is Protected By 'Common Law Trademark'

from the 'add-it-to-my-fuckups-tab' dept

You don't often see the FBI's website targeted by a DMCA takedown notice, but when you do, you can be sure there's someone with a criminal record behind it. The last time we saw this happening, it was convicted fraudster Sean Gjerde, who thought he could perform his own reputation management by copy-pasting the FBI's press release onto his own website as part of a "book" he was "writing," and then begin issuing bogus takedown notices targeting content he didn't create. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if not for all the reasons he was NEVER GOING TO GET AWAY WITH IT.

Enter Anthony Lewis Jerdine, someone with a bit of reputation to clean up. Over the past decade, Jerdine has been imprisoned for bank fraud, made the US Marshals fugitive list, been sanctioned for unauthorized practice of law, been called a vexatious litigant by the Ohio court system, and, lest we forget, formed a trust in his own name.

There are many reasons to form a trust. Jerdine's reason -- an apparent SEO gambit -- is none of them. Jerdine, like many people who don't understand search engines, the internet, intellectual property law, or the Streisand effect, seems to believe if he shouts "TRADEMARK and/or COPYRIGHT" loudly enough, magical things will happen.

Here's the text of his DMCA takedown request, which compares favorably to the word salad periodically passed around Facebook as a supposed way for users to "reclaim" their copyrights from Big Blue.

Copyright of trade-name/trademark ANTHONY LEWIS JERFIBE TRUST including any and all derivatives and variations in the spelling, i.e. NOT limited to all capitalized names: ANTHONY LEWIS JERDINE TRUST, JERDINE, ALJ, ANTHONY JERDINE, JERDINE ANTHONY, ANTHONY L. JERDINE, AJ JERDINE, ALJ JERDINE, ANTHONY LEWIS JERDINE, or any derivatives thereof are under Copyright 1989. Said common-law trade-name/trademark, ANTHONY LEWIS JERDINE TRUST

That's the "description" of the "work" Jerdine feels Google should delist, somehow misconstruing his granted trust (obtained April 2016) to be an IP shelter for his tarnished name and any variation of it that might appear on sites where his criminal misdeeds have been detailed.

You might be able to copyright/trademark a name, but you can't stop people from using it when writing about you. McDonald's is a trademarked name, but anyone can write about McDonald's without stepping on its IP protections. The same goes for Jerdine's name, attached or unattached to his trust.

Because there's no requirement that users understand the laws they're invoking when filing takedown requests, Jerdine is asking Google to go ahead and delist ENTIRE websites simply because unfavorable things about him appear somewhere in their pages. In addition to demanding Google remove the FBI's entire website from its listings, Jerdine also wants a large number of public records sites kicked (entirely) to the search results curb.

https://www.freecourtdockets.com/
https://www.hbcumoney.com/
https://www.usmarshals.gov/
https://www.justice.gov/
https://www.dln.com/
https://www.bustedmugshots.com/
https://www.plainsite.org/
https://www.yumpu.com/
https://www.static1.1.sqspcdn.com/
https://www.docketindex.com/
https://www.soldierx.com/
https://www.uscourts.gov/
https://www.sconet.state.oh.us/
https://www.gpo.gov/
https://www.intelius.com/
https://www.truthfinder.com/
https://www.beenverified.com/
https://www.courtlistener.com/
https://www.casetext.com/
https://www.cleveland.com/
https://www.ohio.gov/
https://www.mortgagefraudblog.com/
https://www.law.justia.com/
https://www.topix.com/
https://fbi.gov/
https://www.ffiec.gov/

Jerdine is so concerned about the "misuse" of his name he can't even be bothered to target the specific URLs containing information about him. Not that it matters, Google hasn't delisted anything and Jerdine's reputation, while under new mismanagement, hasn't really gained any ground.

Filed Under: anthony lewis jerdine, copyright, delisting, dmca, fbi, search, trademark
Companies: google

Granted Warrant Allowed Feds To Force Everyone At Searched Residence To Unlock Devices With Their Fingerprints

from the hello-dystopia dept

Thomas Fox-Brewster of Forbes has dug up an unsealed memorandum in support of a federal search warrant demanding… all the fingerprints of every occupant in the searched residence.

FORBES found a court filing, dated May 9 2016, in which the Department of Justice sought to search a Lancaster, California, property. But there was a more remarkable aspect of the search, as pointed out in the memorandum: “authorization to depress the fingerprints and thumbprints of every person who is located at the SUBJECT PREMISES during the execution of the search and who is reasonably believed by law enforcement to be the user of a fingerprint sensor-enabled device that is located at the SUBJECT PREMISES and falls within the scope of the warrant.” The warrant was not available to the public, nor were other documents related to the case.

The memorandum goes on to point out that simply demanding fingerprints implicates neither the Fourth nor Fifth Amendments. But the additional permissions sought certainly do.

“While the government does not know ahead of time the identity of every digital device or fingerprint (or indeed, every other piece of evidence) that it will find in the search, it has demonstrated probable cause that evidence may exist at the search location, and needs the ability to gain access to those devices and maintain that access to search them. For that reason, the warrant authorizes the seizure of ‘passwords, encryption keys, and other access devices that may be necessary to access the device,’” the document read.

Not only are the devices being seized, but so are any passwords, which does carry some implications, but not necessarily at the point of seizure. It's the refusal to turn over passwords or encryption keys in the face of a court order that can result in contempt charges, and it's still less-than-settled that access information has no testimonial value.

But even the seizure of these devices in hopes of searching them later (but securing fingerprints to unlock them first) is a Fourth Amendment problem if they're accessed in nearly any way during the unlocking process. One court found, post-Riley, that simply opening a flip phone constituted a search. In that context, forcing a finger onto the phone and viewing the screen's contents could be considered a search -- and a warrantless one at that.

Of course, the government cited plenty of cases to back up its seizure, detention of residents, and its taking of fingerprints -- most of them at least 30 years old.

It also cited Holt v. United States, a 1910 case, and United States v. Dionisio, a 1973 case, though it did point to more recent cases, including Virginia v. Baust, where the defendant was compelled to provide his fingerprint to unlock a device (though Baust did provide his biometric data, it failed to open the iPhone; after 48 hours of not using Touch ID or a reboot Apple asks for the code to be re-entered.).

As for the Fourth, the feds said protections against unreasonable searches did not stand up when “the taking of fingerprints is supported by reasonable suspicion,” citing 1985′s Hayes v. Florida. Other cases, dated well before the advent of smartphones, were used to justify any brief detention that would arise from forcing someone to open their device with a fingerprint.

This is the reality of what the government is seeking: law enforcement officers detaining suspects and non-suspects alike and forcing them to apply their fingers to all locked devices on the premises. If this is the new normal for warrant service, it's time for the courts to step up and be a bit more aggressive in holding the government to particularity requirements.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, devices, fingerprints, search, unlocking, warrant