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

Government Seeks Do-Over On Win For Microsoft And Its Overseas Data

from the please-please-please-let-me-get-what-I-want dept

The DOJ wants the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to revisit the decision it handed down in July -- the one that's preventing it from forcing Microsoft to hand over data stored on its servers in Ireland. The DOJ hoped the court would read the Stored Communications Act as applying to the location of the company served with the data request, rather than the actual location of the data. The Appeals Court disagreed with the lower court's finding -- one that dragged in the Patriot Act for some reason -- pointing out that the purpose of the SCA was to protect the privacy of communications, not to facilitate the government in obtaining them.

The government has filed a petition [PDF] for a rehearing of the case, obviously in hopes of a reversal. Jennifer Daskal of Just Security has posted several reasons why the DOJ's desired interpretation of the Stored Communications Act is dangerous, along with other problems arising from this decision.

To begin with, the decision raises new logistical issues, both for the government and the private companies served with these warrants.

According to the government, companies like Google and Yahoo! now need to ascertain the location of sought-after data “at the moment the warrant is served.” If the content is stored abroad, it is now “beyond the reach of a Section 2703 warrant, even when the account owner resides in the United States and the crime under investigation is entirely domestic.”

The court's interpretation of the SCA theoretically means Google will never again have to turn over requested emails to law enforcement.

Moreover, in the case of Google, this data is also outside the reach of a MLA request “because only Google’s US-based employees can access customer email accounts, regardless of where they are stored.” (p.6) In other words, US law enforcement cannot access the data because it is outside the reach of the US warrant authority. And foreign governments cannot because they lack jurisdiction over the US-based employees that control the data. No law enforcement official can access it anywhere.

That being said, Daskal points out that the government also feels that just because it has a warrant, it should be able to demand the production of communications wherever, whenever. This flat assertion that warrants trump privacy in every case is every bit as one-sided as the DOJ's theory that Google now has the option to rebuff warrants at its sole discretion.

The DOJ's fears aren't entirely unfeasible. Companies that sell their communications tools with privacy-heavy sales pitches could simply offshore their data storage to put it out of reach of SCA-citing warrants, turning the 2nd Circuit's ruling into a middle finger to US law enforcement.

If this is going to be fixed in any sort of way that doesn't turn this into a one-sided victory for service providers or the government, it's probably going to need to be through legislation. The court's revisitation of the issue (courts have generally been favorable to rehearing requests from the US government) may come to that very conclusion.

Indeed, the DOJ has already begun pushing for a legislative solution, albeit one that heavily favors the government. The DOJ wants existing Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATs) modified so the FBI, etc. can continue to compel the production of communications stored overseas without tripping over reluctant US service providers or statutory limitations built into the SCA.

As Daskal notes, Congress is better off addressing this issue sooner rather than later. Should the court reverse its decision and allow the FBI to demand communications from foreign data centers using nothing more than a warrant issued by a local magistrate, other countries far less concerned about US privacy protections will be sure to utilize the same tactics.

Yet I continue to have concerns about the result of a governmental win: the government gets free rein to compel any US-based provider to disclose any user’s data, without any constraint based on things like the location or nationality of the target. This is a rule that will be watched, and likely mimicked, by others.

Consider the broader implications: The United States would (or at least should) be concerned if foreign governments unilaterally demanded the unilateral production of US citizens and residents data. And in fact current US law prohibits US-based providers from responding to those demands—requiring that the foreign governments instead employ the MLA process and ultimately obtain a US warrant based on the US standard of probable cause. Foreign government also have an interest in controlling access to their residents data. Those interests ought to be taken into account.

Unfortunately, Congress doesn't really have a great track record when it comes to legislative fixes for tech issues. We have a more technologically-adept set of legislators than we've ever had previously, but there are still many who won't see the forest of implications for the law enforcement trees. But the situation may become much, much worse if left unattended.

Filed Under: doj, electronic surveillance, ireland, jurisdiction, stored communications, warrant
Companies: microsoft

Another Judge Declares FBI's Playpen Warrant Invalid, Suppresses All Evidence

from the playing-fast-and-loose-with-the-Fourth-Amendment dept

Cyrus Farivar of Ars Technica reports that another federal judge has found the warrant used by the FBI to deploy its Tor-busting malware is invalid. This finding isn't unique. Multiple judges in various jurisdictions have found the warrant invalid due to Rule 41, which limits execution of warrants to the jurisdiction where they were issued. But only in a few of the dozens of cases stemming from the FBI's child porn investigation has a judge ruled to suppress the evidence obtained by the FBI's NIT.

A federal judge in Iowa has ordered the suppression of child pornography evidence derived from an invalid warrant. The warrant was issued as part of a controversial government-sanctioned operation to hack Tor users. Out of nearly 200 such cases nationwide that involve the Tor-hidden child porn site known as "Playpen," US District Judge Robert Pratt is just the third to make such a ruling.

In other cases, judges have found the warrant invalid, but have granted the FBI the "good faith" exception or found that the information harvested by the agency's hacking tool isn't protected under the Fourth Amendment. In one particularly memorable case, the presiding judge wandered off script and conflated security and privacy, suggesting that because computer hacking is so commonplace, the FBI should be allowed to peek into compromised computers (and compromise them!) and extract whatever it can without worrying about tripping all over the Fourth Amendment.

With hundreds of cases all over the nation (and many more handed off to foreign law enforcement agencies) stemming from a single warrant, this collection of rulings is far from coherent. But, more often than not, judges have found that the reach of the FBI's NIT deployment far exceeded its Rule 41 grasp. That all could change by the end of the year, making future investigations handled in this manner (running seized websites to deploy hacking tools) much less likely to be successfully challenged in court.

Judge Pratt's ruling [PDF], however, did at least shut down the government's Third Party Doctrine arguments.

There is a significant difference between obtaining an IP address from a third party and obtaining it directly from a defendant’s computer.

[...]

If a defendant writes his IP address on a piece of paper and places it in a drawer in his home, there would be no question that law enforcement would need a warrant to access that piece of paper—even accepting that the defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the IP address itself. Here, Defendants' IP addresses were stored on their computers in their homes rather than in a drawer.

Analogies to physical objects are seldom perfect, but Pratt's does better than most.

"Judge Pratt correctly interpreted the NIT's function and picked the correct analogy," Fred Jennings, a New York-based lawyer who has worked on numerous computer crime cases, told Ars. Jennings continues:

[Pratt] correctly points out that the usual analogies, to tracking devices or IP information turned over by a third-party service provider, are inapplicable to this type of government hacking. A common theme in digital privacy, with Fourth Amendment issues especially, is the difficulty of analogizing to apt precedent—there are nuances to digital communication that simply don't trace back well to 20th-century precedent about physical intrusion or literal wiretapping.

The evidence suppression will likely result in charges being dropped, as anything located on the defendant's devices would have stemmed from the invalid NIT warrant. Outcomes like these don't do much to appease the general public, as the actions alleged are often viewed as indefensible. But the ugliness of the crime has no bearing on the Constitution and the rules governing search warrants.

The FBI can't play by different rules just because the targets are less sympathetic. That's why the push back against the proposed Rule 41 changes is important, because alterations to jurisdictional limits won't solely be used to chase down the worst of the worst. It will greatly expand the reach of questionable search warrants and investigative tools and encourage magistrate shopping by law enforcement to lower the level of scrutiny their deficient affidavits might otherwise receive.

Filed Under: doj, evidence, fbi, nit, playpen, warrant

DOJ Pushes Out Legislation Proposal To Undercut Microsoft Case Decision About Overseas Searches

from the please-please-please-let-us-get-what-we-want dept

No sooner had the ink dried on the Second Circuit Appeals Court decision regarding Microsoft and its overseas servers than new legislation designed to undercut the court's finding has been printed up by the DOJ and presented to the administration.

Microsoft successfully argued that the US government couldn't force it to unlock a server in Dublin, Ireland, so it could rummage around for evidence. Nor could the DOJ force the company to act on its behalf, performing a search of its overseas servers for documents the US government couldn't access otherwise.

Since that decision obviously just won't do, the DOJ has presented proposed legislation [PDF] that would alter existing Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATs) so the agency can do the very thing a court just said it couldn't do.

The details are discussed in, um, detail over at the Lawfare blog by none other than a former DOJ lawyer (David Kris). Needless to say, the post skews towards "supportive," but the analysis is thorough and offers some excellent insight on what the DOJ hopes to open up -- and what it's willing to concede in return for this new power.

The law would limit searches to communications from non-US citizens located abroad and only for criminal investigations. This would prevent the altered MLATs from being used by US agencies to gather intelligence, restricting them only to gathering evidence of criminal activity. That being said, for every concession made, there's a DOJ land grab.

The heart of the proposed legislation is section 4, which allows for executive agreements between the U.S. and foreign governments. Where a satisfactory agreement is in place, the barriers to access in the Wiretap Act, Stored Communications Act, and criminal Pen Register statute are removed (by section 3).

Of all the places to remove existing limits, the DOJ has chosen three of its most-abused laws/statutes. The Wiretap Act has been rendered toothless by the DEA's collusion with a judicial rubber stamp in California and used by the DOJ to push American telcos into doing its spying for it. The Stored Communications Act was just another (failed) angle of attack for the DOJ in its fight against Microsoft. And the Pen Register Act has been used as a cover for Stingray deployments by multiple law enforcement agencies, all with the tacit approval of the FBI, which still acts as a middleman in every IMSI catcher purchase by local PDs.

From there, the DOJ offers a melange of legal authorities to govern its searches of foreign servers.

The foreign orders authorized by the agreement must meet several specific requirements. First, they must pertain to the “prevention, detection, investigation, or prosecution of serious crime, including terrorism.” This means that affirmative foreign intelligence gathering is out of bounds. Conceptually, the idea here seems similar to the split in FISA’s two definitions of “foreign intelligence information,” 50 U.S.C. 1801(e)(1)-(2).

[...]

Second, the foreign orders must use a “specific” identifier such as a name or account as the “object of the order.” This comes from the USA Freedom Act’s amendments to FISA, designed to prevent bulk collection, 50 U.S.C. 1841, 1861.

[...]

Third, the orders must be “based on requirements for a reasonable justification based on articulable and credible facts, particularity, legality, and severity regarding the conduct under investigation,” and must be subject to “review or oversight” by a judge or other “independent authority.” These elements seem to be derived in part from several U.S. constitutional requirements—e.g., those governing a stop and frisk (Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1967)), the definition of probable cause (Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213 (1983)), the requirements for a search warrant (including particularity and a neutral and detached magistrate, see Maryland v. Garrison, 480 U.S. 79 (1987)), and a proportionality requirement.

At first blush, these would seem to subject DOJ requests to multiple forms of oversight. But it most likely won't. The self-written loopholes allow for plenty of "search first, ask permission later" action.

Of course, the requirements are not exactly the same as those the Fourth Amendment would compel—for example, the reference to “review or oversight” by a judge or other “independent authority” would seem to permit after-the-fact review by a Parliamentary body rather than advance review of orders by a judge.

On top of that, the folding in of FISA language allows the FBI, et al to interpret "criminal investigation" very loosely.

Note, however, that counter-intelligence, expressly including counter-terrorism but also probably including counter-espionage, is included, because the language refers not only to “investigation” and “prosecution,” but also to “prevention” and “detection” of crime.

So, despite saying the MLAT alterations would be limited to investigatory work, rather than intelligence gathering, the new agreements could be read as permitting both. And, despite restricting agencies from using foreign government to obtain data or communications they otherwise wouldn't be able to access, the proposal does allow these entities to provide US agencies with data and communications involving US persons. Sure, there are minimization procedures, but they're apparently tied to restrictions built into foreign governments' laws rather than our own, and auditing for abuses of this access is limited to a review every half-decade -- hardly the sort of thing that stops abuse in its tracks.

And the minimization procedures deployed by foreign governments when handing over info on US persons are tied to a bunch of exceptions -- the usual parade of horrors agencies use to justify intrusive surveillance.

[A] foreign government “may not disseminate the content of a communication of a U.S. person to U.S. authorities unless it is relevant to the “prevention, detection, investigation, or prosecution of serious crime, including terrorism, or necessary to protect against a threat of death or serious bodily harm to any person,” and also “relates to significant harm, or the threat thereof, to the United States or U.S. persons, including but not limited to crimes involving national security such as terrorism, significant violent crime, child exploitation, transnational organized crime, or significant financial fraud.”

So, it can't be used for anything not included on the "serious crimes" list, which doesn't leave much. There's not a whole lot of criminal activity that can't be squeezed into this laundry list. Moving violations? Jaywalking? Lord knows anything drug-related will still be considered "dangerous," even if most of the threat is composed of overreacting drug warriors lobbing flash bangs into cribs at 5 am.

Obviously, the DOJ wasn't just going to stand by and let the Second Circuit determine how it's going to operate. This bill may have been a long time in the works, but its public debut is impeccably timed.

Filed Under: doj, ireland, jurisdiction, legislation, subpoena, warrant
Companies: microsoft

For The First Time, A Federal Judge Has Suppressed Evidence Obtained With A Stingray Device

from the get-a-warrant,-g-men dept

Evidence acquired using Stingray devices has rarely been suppressed. This is due to the fact that it's almost impossible to challenge. The reason it's almost impossible to challenge is because the FBI -- and the law enforcement agencies it "partners" with (via severely restrictive nondisclosure agreements) -- will throw out evidence and let suspects walk rather than expose the use of IMSI catchers.

Earlier this year, a Baltimore city circuit judge threw out evidence obtained with the Baltimore PD's cell tower spoofing equipment. And this was no run-of-the-mill drug bust. An actual murder suspect had evidence suppressed because of the BPD's warrantless deployment of a Stingray device. Without the use of the Stingray, the BPD would not have been able to locate the suspect's phone. And without this location, there would have been no probable cause to search the apartment he was in. You can't build a search warrant on illegally-obtained probable cause, reasoned the judge. Goodbye evidence.

"I can't play the 'what if' game with the Constitution," [the judge] said, lamenting that it protects people from illegal searches even when the defendant is "likely guilty."

Now, it's finally happened at a higher level. For the first time ever, a federal judge has suppressed evidence obtained by the warrantless use of a Stingray device.

U.S. District Judge William Pauley in Manhattan on Tuesday ruled that defendant Raymond Lambis' rights were violated when the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration used such a device without a warrant to find his Washington Heights apartment.

The DEA had used a stingray to identify Lambis' apartment as the most likely location of a cell phone identified during a drug-trafficking probe. Pauley said doing so constituted an unreasonable search.

"Absent a search warrant, the government may not turn a citizen's cell phone into a tracking device," Pauley wrote.

The opinion [PDF] notes the DEA first tried to locate Lambis using cell site location info but found it wasn't precise enough. So, it deployed a Stingray to track him down, ultimately ending with a DEA tech roaming an apartment's hallways with a cell site simulator until Lambis was located.

A few hours later, DEA agents showed up at the apartment, where Lambis' father allowed them to enter and Lambis himself consented to a search of his room and belongings.

It's pretty tough to work your way backwards from a consensual search to a suppression order, but Lambis' lawyer was apparently up to the challenge. But -- as in the Baltimore PD case -- the DEA would never have known which apartment Lambis was located in without the use of a cell site simulator, and that's where it all falls apart for the DEA.

The government tried to argue that two fairly recent cases involving thermal imaging (Kyllo) and drug dogs (Thomas) weren't applicable, as its "limited search" only disclosed information it could obtain without a warrant: cell site location. This is at odds with its reasons for deploying the cell site simulator -- which was that the CSLI it obtained wasn't precise enough to locate the suspect.

The court finds the government's attempt to route around these two precedential decisions unavailing, noting that the use of a cell site simulator is actually more intrusive than the search methods used in the cases the DEA's lawyers wanted to have ignored.

The Government attempts to diminish the power of Second Circuit precedent by noting that Thomas represents a minority position among circuit courts. But this Court need not be mired in the Serbonian Bog of circuit splits. An electronic search for a cell phone inside an apartment is far more intrusive than a canine sniff because, unlike narcotics, cell phones are neither contraband nor illegal. In fact, they are ubiquitous. Because the vast majority of the population uses cell phones lawfully on a daily basis, “one cannot say (and the police cannot be assured) that use of the relatively crude equipment at issue here will always be lawful.”

The court also points out that the DEA -- for whatever reason -- obtained a warrant for the cell site location info. It wonders why it didn't bother to obtain a warrant for the cell site simulator deployment, seeing as it obtained a warrant for information it could have obtained without one. It also notes that a warrant for CSLI is not the same as a warrant for obtaining precise location info via the use of sophisticated electronic equipment.

The fact that the DEA had obtained a warrant for CSLI from the target cell phone does not change the equation. “If the scope of the search exceeds that permitted by the terms of a validly issued warrant . . . , the subsequent seizure is unconstitutional without more.” Horton v. California, 496 U.S. 128, 140 (1990)... Here, the use of the cell-site simulator to obtain more precise information about the target phone’s location was not contemplated by the original warrant application. If the Government had wished to use a cell-site simulator, it could have obtained a warrant. And the fact that the Government previously demonstrated probable cause and obtained a warrant for CSLI from Lambis’s cell phone suggests strongly that the Government could have obtained a warrant to use a cell-site simulator, if it had wished to do so.

The government also tried to use the Supreme Court's horrendous Strieff decision to save the evidence, but the court notes that the "temporal proximity" between the illegal Stingray search and the consensual search of the apartment was too close to allow the illegality of the original search to dissipate.

The government also tried to use the Third Party Doctrine to salvage its warrantless search, but the court refuses to be sold on this bad idea.

This Court need not address whether the third party doctrine is “ill suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks,” United States v. Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945, 957 (2012) (Sotomayer, J., concurring), because even under the historic framework of the doctrine, it is not available to the Government here. The doctrine applies when a party “voluntarily turns over [information] to third parties.” Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 744 (1979) [...] However, the location information detected by a cell-site simulator is different in kind from pen register information: it is neither initiated by the user nor sent to a third party.

[...]

Unlike CSLI, the “pings” picked up by the cell-site simulator are not transmitted in the normal course of the phone’s operation. Rather, “cell site simulators actively locate phones by forcing them to repeatedly transmit their unique identifying electronic serial numbers, and then calculating the signal strength until the target phone is pinpointed.”

These points are good. The following, though, is even better. The court finds the government can't attempt to use the Third Party Doctrine when it has chosen to act as the "third party" in this equation.

For both the pen register and CSLI, the Government ultimately obtains the information from the service provider who is keeping a record of the information. With the cell-site simulator, the Government cuts out the middleman and obtains the information directly. Without a third party, the third party doctrine is inapplicable.

The Second Circuit has yet to make a decision on the reasonable expectation of privacy in CSLI. If this is appealed, it may finally have to handle that question. Then again, CSLI is only partially implicated here and it may be able to let the Fourth Amendment's reach be determined on a case-by-case basis until something more directly addressing the issue comes along. If nothing else, the ruling here should encourage more federal agencies operating in this district to get a warrant "just in case." Then again, the secrecy surrounding Stingray devices discourages the creation of paper trails, so it may be that the government will continue to roll the Fourth Amendment dice until a higher court tells them otherwise.

Filed Under: dea, evidence, raymond lambis, stingray, suppression, surveillance, warrant

Huge Win: Court Says Microsoft Does Not Need To Respond To US Warrant For Overseas Data

from the big-news dept

We've been following an important case for the past few years about whether or not the US can issue a warrant to an American company for data stored overseas. In this case, Microsoft refused to comply with the warrant for some information hosted in Ireland -- and two years ago a district court ruled against Microsoft and in favor of the US government. Thankfully, the 2nd Circuit appeals court today reversed that ruling and properly noted that US government warrants do not apply to overseas data. This is a hugely important case concerning the privacy and security of our data.

The key issue here is that the US government was basically on a fishing expedition for information hosted on Microsoft Outlook.com email servers. And there are a few really key issues, concerning jurisdiction, privacy and the all important difference between a subpoena and a warrant (something that many people seem to think are the same thing). Microsoft's own response to the lawsuit did a really good job explaining the issues and how the government wanted to pretend a warrant was a subpoena, and what that meant for the 4th Amendment:

The Government cannot seek and a court cannot issue a warrant allowing federal agents to break down the doors of Microsoft's Dublin facility. Likewise, the Government cannot conscript Microsoft to do what it has no authority itself to do -- i.e., execute a warranted search abroad. To end-run these points. the Government argues, and the Magistrate Judge held, that the warrant required by ECPA is not a "warrant" at all. They assert that Congress did not mean "warrant" when using that term, but instead meant some previously unheard of "hybrid" between a warrant and subpoena duces tecum. The Government takes the extraordinary position that by merely serving such a warrant on any U.S.-based email provider, it has the right to obtain the private emails of any subscriber, no matter where in the world the data may be located. and without the knowledge or consent of the subscriber or the relevant foreign government where the data is stored.

This interpretation not only blatantly rewrites the statute, it reads out of the Fourth Amendment the bedrock requirement that the Government must specify the place to be searched with particularity, effectively amending the Constitution for searches of communications held digitally. It would also authorize the Government (including state and local governments) to violate the territorial integrity of sovereign nations and circumvent the commitments made by the United States in mutual legal assistance treaties expressly designed to facilitate cross-border criminal investigations. If this is what Congress intended, it would have made its intent clear in the statute. But the language and the logic of the statute, as well as its legislative history, show that Congress used the word "warrant" in ECPA to mean "warrant," and not some super-powerful "hybrid subpoena." And Congress used the term "warrant" expecting that the Government would be bound by all the inherent limitations of warrants, including the limitation that warrants may not be issued to obtain evidence located in the territory of another sovereign nation.

The Government's interpretation ignores the profound and well established differences between a warrant and a subpoena. A warrant gives the Government the power to seize evidence without notice or affording an opportunity to challenge the seizure in advance. But it requires a specific description (supported by probable cause) of the thing to be seized and the place to be searched and that place must be in the United States. A subpoena duces tecum, on the other hand, does not authorize a search and seizure of the private communications of a third party. Rather. it gives the Government the power to require a person to collect items within her possession, custody, or control, regardless of location, and bring them to court at an appointed time. It also affords the recipient an opportunity to move in advance to quash. Here, the Government wants to exploit the power of a warrant and the sweeping geographic scope of a subpoena, without having to comply with fundamental protections provided by either. There is not a shred of support in the statute or its legislative history for the proposition that Congress intended to allow the Government to mix and match like this. In fact, Congress recognized the basic distinction between a warrant and a subpoena in ECPA when it authorized the Government to obtain certain types of data with a subpoena or a "court order," but required a warrant to obtain a person's most sensitive and constitutionally protected information -- the contents of emails less than 6 months old.

It was unfortunate that two judges at the district court level basically ignored this argument, so it's good to see the appeals court shoot it down completely.

For the reasons that follow, we think that Microsoft has the better of the argument. When, in 1986, Congress passed the Stored Communications Act as part of the broader Electronic Communications Privacy Act, its aim was to protect user privacy in the context of new technology that required a user’s interaction with a service provider. Neither explicitly nor implicitly does the statute envision the application of its warrant provisions overseas. Three decades ago, international boundaries were not so routinely crossed as they are today, when service providers rely on worldwide networks of hardware to satisfy users’ 21st–century demands for access and speed and their related, evolving expectations of privacy.

Rather, in keeping with the pressing needs of the day, Congress focused on providing basic safeguards for the privacy of domestic users. Accordingly, we think it employed the term “warrant” in the Act to require pre‐disclosure scrutiny of the requested search and seizure by a neutral third party, and thereby to afford heightened privacy protection in the United States. It did not abandon the instrument’s territorial limitations and other constitutional requirements. The application of the Act that the government proposes ― interpreting “warrant” to require a service provider to retrieve material from beyond the borders of the United States ―would require us to disregard the presumption against extraterritoriality that the Supreme Court re‐stated and emphasized in Morrison v. National Australian Bank Ltd., 561 U.S. 247 (2010) and, just recently, in RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. European Cmty., 579 U.S. __, 2016 WL 3369423 (June 20, 2016). We are not at liberty to do so.

In the full discussion, the court points out where the lower court went wrong, thinking that thanks to the PATRIOT Act, a warrant could apply to the location of the service provider rather than the location of the server. But the court says that's clearly wrong, and the Congressional record makes it pretty clear that it was looking to apply the law just to the United States. As for the idea that the warrant was really a subpoena in disguise, the court says that's not how it works:

Warrants and subpoenas are, and have long been, distinct legal instruments. Section 2703 of the SCA recognizes this distinction and, unsurprisingly, uses the “warrant” requirement to signal (and to provide) a greater level of protection to priority stored communications, and “subpoenas” to signal (and provide) a lesser level. 18 U.S.C. § 2703(a), (b)(1)(A). Section 2703 does not use the terms interchangeably. Id. Nor does it use the word “hybrid” to describe an SCA warrant. Indeed, § 2703 places priority stored communications entirely outside the reach of an SCA subpoena, absent compliance with the notice provisions. Id. The term “subpoena,” therefore, stands separately in the statute, as in ordinary usage, from the term “warrant.” We see no reasonable basis in the statute from which to infer that Congress used “warrant” to mean “subpoena.”

[....] We see no reason to believe that Congress intended to jettison the centuries of law requiring the issuance and performance of warrants in specified, domestic locations, or to replace the traditional warrant with a novel instrument of international application.

There is, of course, the further issue of Microsoft being a US company, but the court says that doesn't magically make its overseas data subject to these kinds of warrants, because the intent of the law is to protect the privacy of users' communications, not to make it easier for the government to snoop.

The reader will recall the SCA’s provisions regarding the production of electronic communication content: In sum, for priority stored communications, “a governmental entity may require the disclosure . . . of the contents of a wire or electronic communication . . . only pursuant to a warrant issued using the rules described in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure,” except (in certain cases) if notice is given to the user....

In our view, the most natural reading of this language in the context of the Act suggests a legislative focus on the privacy of stored communications. Warrants under § 2703 must issue under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, whose Rule 41 is undergirded by the Constitution’s protections of citizens’ privacy against unlawful searches and seizures. And more generally, § 2703’s warrant language appears in a statute entitled the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, suggesting privacy as a key concern.

The overall effect is the embodiment of an expectation of privacy in those communications, notwithstanding the role of service providers in their transmission and storage, and the imposition of procedural restrictions on the government’s (and other third party) access to priority stored communications. The circumstances in which the communications have been stored serve as a proxy for the intensity of the user’s privacy interests, dictating the stringency of the procedural protection they receive—in particular whether the Act’s warrant provisions, subpoena provisions, or its § 2703(d) court order provisions govern a disclosure desired by the government. Accordingly, we think it fair to conclude based on the plain meaning of the text that the privacy of the stored communications is the “object[] of the statute’s solicitude,” and the focus of its provisions.

The court goes on at length arguing that the Stored Communications Act's default is that communication privacy must be protected, and the exceptions are narrow.

All three judges on the panel agreed, but one -- Judge Gerard Lynch -- wrote a concurrence that tries to undercut the strong 4th Amendment/privacy arguments in the overall opinion, basically noting that he believes the decision doesn't come down to 4th Amendment issues or privacy protection, but merely how Congress drew up the law in the Stored Communications Act -- and basically argues that if Congress doesn't like this result, it can just rewrite the law.

It's also important to note that Rule 41 is the underpinning of much of this case, and that's the rule that the courts recently agreed to change to allow the DOJ more power to simply hack overseas servers. That shouldn't directly impact this particular case or similar situations, but does show how the DOJ is looking for ways to create endruns around limitations on domestic laws to try to get international data.

Still, for now, this ruling is a surprisingly good one, reinforcing privacy protections in overseas data. Kudos to Microsoft for going to court over this when it would have been quite easy for it to just give in and hand over the data. I assume that the US government will seek to get this ruling overturned, either via an en banc hearing on the 2nd Circuit or going to the Supreme Court, so the case isn't over yet. But, as for right now, it's in a good position.

Filed Under: 2nd circuit, 4th amendment, communications, doj, ecpa, email, ireland, jurisdiction, privacy, sca, subpoena, warrant
Companies: microsoft

Judge In Playpen Case: FBI's Warrant Is Valid, Even If Its Claims About No Privacy In IP Addresses Are Not

from the a-net-win-for-the-feds dept

Another court handling an FBI Playpen case has handed down its decision on a motion to suppress. Like other courts fielding prosecutions resulting from this massive investigation, it has found [PDF] that the FBI's NIT (Network Investigative Technique) is invasive enough to be called a "search." (via FourthAmendment.com)

The FBI must have felt its NIT deployment would be considered a search. That's why it obtained a warrant in the first place. But it's been frantically peddling "not a search" theories as court after court has declared its warrant invalid because the searches were performed outside of the issuing magistrate's jurisdiction.

In this case, the issue of whether or not the NIT deployment was a search has not been disputed by either party. The court addresses it anyway because it affects the reasoning that follows.

Before reaching the merits of Defendant's motions, it will be useful to address a preliminary question unaddressed by the parties: Was the deployment of the NIT a "search" of Defendant's computer within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment? If the use of the NIT was not a search, the Fourth Amendment was not implicated, no warrant was required, and any violation of Rule 41(b) irrelevant.

Rule 41(b), which may be drastically altered by the end of this year, restricts searches to the jurisdiction where the warrants were issued. The FBI is well aware of the deficiencies of its NIT warrant, which is why it presented this legal theory to court in response to an earlier motion.

The government in its response to Defendant's First Motion to Suppress never argues that no warrant was required because deployment of the NIT was not a Fourth Amendment search. See Gov't's Resp. to First Mot. at 15-38. In failing to raise this argument when it would have been appropriate, the government has likely waived it. The government does, in justifying the scope of the warrant, argue that Defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his IP address, even though he was using the Tor network.

The court blows past the "no expectation of privacy in IP addresses" for the moment, instead focusing on the execution of the FBI's NIT.

The "contents" of a computer are nothing but its code. In placing code on Defendant's computer, the government literally—one writes code—invaded the contents of the computer. Additionally, the code placed on Defendant's computer caused Defendant's computer to transmit certain information without the authority or knowledge of Defendant. In this manner the government seized the contents of Defendant's computer. Just as in Riley, it is irrelevant that Defendant might not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in some of the information searched and seized by the government. The government's deployment of the NIT was a Fourth Amendment search.

This key element having been decided, the court moves on to the warrant itself, as well as the government's contention that an IP address has no expectation of privacy. As to the latter, the court points out that the government obtained much more than just an IP address with its NIT and that it used an intrusive means to do so. The court ultimately agrees with the assertion about the lack of privacy in IP addresses, but does not agree that obtaining an IP address in this fashion can be considered harmless under the Fourth Amendment. Hence the nod to the Supreme Court's Riley decision. While many records contained on a phone may be subject the Third Party Doctrine and obtained without a warrant, they must be obtained from the third parties, rather than from the phone itself. Replace "phone" with "computer," and information with no built-in expectation of privacy gains a privacy shield due to where these "records" are stored.

The defendant's second motion to suppress brings up the Rule 41(b) issue. But it fails, spectacularly, because of the defendant's location.

Defendant argues that Rule 41(b) only allows magistrate judges to issue warrants for searches outside of their districts in limited, well-defined circumstances, none of which apply to the facts of the instant case. Second Mot. at 6-11. Of course, Defendant acknowledges that the website was being run from within the Eastern District of Virginia, that the magistrate judge sits in the Eastern District of Virginia, and that Defendant's computer was located in the Eastern District of Virginia when the NIT was deployed.

The legal theory advanced by the defense is that the warrant is still invalid, even when deployed in its proper jurisdiction, because it permitted the FBI to search an untold number of computers located all over the country. The court doesn't buy this rationale. In fact, it states it would have denied suppression even if the warrant had failed to hold up because the FBI took every step it could to ensure the legitimacy of its search.

The FBI agents in this case did the right thing. They gathered evidence over an extended period and filed a detailed affidavit with a federal magistrate in support of their search warrant application. They filed the warrant application in the federal district that had the closest connection to the search to be executed. The information gathered by the warrant was limited: primarily the IP addresses of those that accessed Playpen and additional information that would aid in identifying what computer accessed the site and what individual used that computer.

The judge doesn't let the FBI off the hook entirely. It also addresses the FBI's last-minute argument that the defendant shouldn't even have been allowed to challenge the warrant.

The government also argues that Defendant does not have standing to challenge the warrant because the alleged defect in the warrant, that it exceeded the magistrate's jurisdiction, does not apply to him because his computer was in the Eastern District. This seems to be a novel interpretation of standing law in Fourth Amendment cases. The standing inquiry in Fourth Amendment cases asks if the individual seeking suppression had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the thing searched. See Rakas v. Illinois. 439 U.S. 128, 133-34 (1978). Defendant's computer was searched, and he has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his computer.

The Playpen saga is a complete mess. There's nothing in this mixed bag of decisions that tips the scale in either direction. For every win about the lack of privacy in IP addresses the FBI secures, it loses another one to the invasive method it used to obtain these addresses. Every time a court grants its credit for "good faith," multiple courts countered with opinions finding the warrants invalid from the moment they were signed by a magistrate.

About the only "win" the FBI can definitively claim is that its NIT secrets are still mostly secret. And in order to achieve that, it had to watch its evidence be dismissed by a judge who actually believed the FBI had legitimate reasons for refusing to disclose this info.

And yet, it's unlikely that this will result in the FBI examining its investigation methods. As of right now, it has less than six months before the proposed Rule 41(b) changes are adopted by Congress. And there's a good chance they will be because Congress has to have the will and determination to "opt out" while distracted by an extended holiday season of shorter work weeks, the annual budget process, reelection campaigns, and a change in regimes.

Filed Under: doj, fbi, ip address, nit, playpen, privacy, warrant

Appeals Court: As Long As The Government Has 'Good Faith,' It Can Root Around In Your Digital Files As Much As It Wants

from the no-time-for-merits,-not-when-there-are-people-needing-to-be-locked-up! dept

A case dealing with a warrant issued in 2003, a subsequent warrant issued in 2006, and a whole lot of judicial work in between finally concludes -- with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals coming down on the side of the government's apparent "right" to seize everything, hold it for an indefinite period of time, and pore through unrelated documents in hopes of finding evidence of additional criminal activity.

The government, in the form of the US Army, first went after Stavros Ganias for billing improprieties and theft of copper wire. Over the next three years, this morphed into an IRS investigation for tax fraud, using the same hard drives the Army seized three years before the IRS showed any interest. The IRS obtained its own warrant and began looking for evidence related to its suspicions.

In 2014, the Appeals Court decided Ganias' Fourth Amendment rights had been violated by the government's multi-agency fishing expedition.

The Government's retention of copies of Ganias's personal computer records for two-and-a-half years deprived him of exclusive control over those files for an unreasonable amount of time. This combination of circumstances enabled the Government to possess indefinitely personal records of Ganias that were beyond the scope of the warrant while it looked for other evidence to give it probable cause to search the files. This was a meaningful interference with Ganias's possessory rights in those files and constituted a seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.

[....] The Government had no warrant authorizing the seizure of Ganias's personal records in 2003. By December 2004, these documents had been separated from those relevant to the investigation of American Boiler and IPM. Nevertheless, the Government continued to retain them for another year-and-a-half until it finally developed probable cause to search and seize them in 2006. Without some independent basis for its retention of those documents in the interim, the Government clearly violated Ganias's Fourth Amendment rights by retaining the files for a prolonged period of time and then using them in a future criminal investigation.

The DOJ immediately asked for a rehearing, claiming it should be able to dig through unrelated files because the seized hard drives were technically government property. Besides, it explained in its 86-page brief, this sort of fishing around in non-relevant files had once resulted in a child pornography conviction.

The Second Circuit's second take [PDF] doesn't necessarily align with the government's arguments. However, despite the opinion running 60 pages, the court spends very little time discussing the Fourth Amendment implications and a lot of time developing the government's "good faith exception" argument for it.

For whatever reason, the court mostly glosses over the lack of "good faith" in the Army's examination of files unrelated to is investigation and its extended seizure (in the form of mirrored hard drives) of non-relevant files. Instead, it focuses mostly on the IRS's warrant and search of the mirrored drives, finding that this warrant -- issued two-and-a-half years after the first one and predicated on the Army's peek at unrelated files -- was obtained and executed in "good faith." The end result is another win for the government's heart being in the right place and another loss for Fourth Amendment protections.

Ganias argues that the Government retained non-responsive data on mirrored hard drives acquired pursuant to a 2003 search warrant in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and that evidence acquired pursuant to a 2006 search of that data should thus have been suppressed. Because we find that the Government relied in good faith on the 2006 warrant, we need not and do not decide whether the Government violated the Fourth Amendment, and we affirm the judgment of the district court.

Further on in the opinion, the court inadvertently shows its hand -- pointing out that discussing "good faith" exceptions means it's not interested in examining the merits of the defendant's arguments.

Having noted Ganias’s argument, we do not decide its merits. We instead turn to the question of good faith.

The government gets credit for trying. The accused get nothing more than a brief tap on the shoulder as the court squeezes by them and their questions.

Judge Chin's dissent [PDF], for what little good it does for Ganias and future citizens in his position, at least makes some attempt to address the lack of merit in the government's arguments.

[E]nshrined in the Fourth Amendment is the foundational principle that the Government cannot come into oneʹs home looking for some papers and, without suspicion of broader criminal wrongdoing, indiscriminately take all papers instead.   

In this case, the Government argues that when those papers are inside a computer, the result is different. It argues that when computers are involved, it is free to overseize files for its convenience, including files outside the scope of a warrant, and retain them until it has found a reason for their use. In essence, the Government contends that it is entitled to greater latitude in the computer age. I disagree. If anything, the protections of the Fourth Amendment are even more important in the context of modern technology, for the Government has a far greater ability to intrude into a personʹs private affairs.

Chin is uninterested in allowing the government to shrug and say, "Technology is hard," before obtaining its "good faith" pass from the courts.

The majority opinion, however, makes it clear that as long as the government obtains a warrant, it can dig through non-relevant documents for an indefinite period of time. Because the court decided to pass on examining the merits of Ganias' Fourth Amendment arguments, the government will be able to use its "good faith" shield in the Second Circuit for years to come. It took Ganias several years of courtroom appearances to fight a search that occurred ten years ago. And while this has made its way slowly through the justice system, his life has been on hold. Tracing back to the point where he was first investigated for wrongdoing, that's 13 years of his life -- and all of it for nothing, thanks to the two words no defendant wants to hear: good faith.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, good faith exception, stavros ganias, warrant

Another Court Finds FBI's NIT Warrants To Be Invalid, But Credits Agents' 'Good Faith' To Deny Suppression

from the sure,-someone-screwed-up-but-it's-not-going-to-help-you dept

Yet another court has found that the warrant used by the FBI in the Playpen child porn investigation is invalid, rendering its NIT-assisted "search" unconstitutional. As USA Today's Brad Heath points out, this is at least the sixth court to find that Rule 41's jurisdictional limitations do not permit warrants issued in Virginia to support searches performed all over the nation.

While the court agrees that the warrant is invalid, it places the blame at the feet of the magistrate judge who issued it, rather than the agents who obtained it.

That Congress has “not caught up” with technological advances does not change the fact that the target of the NIT in Werdene’s case was located outside of the magistrate judge’s district and beyond her jurisdiction under subsection (b)(1). The property to be seized pursuant to the NIT warrant was not the server located in Newington, Virginia, but the IP address and related material “[f]rom any ‘activating’ computer” that accessed Playpen. (Gov’t’s Opp., Ex. 1 Attach. A.) Since that material was located outside of the Eastern District of Virginia, the magistrate judge did not have authority to issue the warrant under Rule 41(b)(1).

So, unlike other cases, this will not result in a suppression of evidence, thanks to the "good faith exception."

Werdene claims that the Government acted with intentional and deliberate disregard of Rule 41 because the FBI misled the magistrate judge “with respect to the true location of the activating computers to be searched.” (Def.’s Mem. at 17.) This argument is belied by both the warrant and warrant application. Agent Macfarlane stated in the warrant application that the “NIT may cause an activating computer—wherever located—to send to a computer controlled by or known to the government, network level messages containing information that may assist in identifying the computer, its location, other information about the computer and the user of the computer.” With this information, the magistrate judge believed that she had jurisdiction to issue the NIT warrant. Contrary to Werdene’s assertion, this is not a case where the agents “hid the ball” from the magistrate or misrepresented how the search would be conducted.

[...]

[T]o the extent a mistake was made in this case, it was not made by the agents in “reckless . . . disregard for Fourth Amendment rights.” Davis, 564 U.S. at 238 (quoting Herring, 555 U.S. at 144). Rather, it was made by the magistrate when she mistakenly issued a warrant outside her jurisdiction.

Added to this is another wrinkle that doesn't work in the defendant's favor. The court also follows Third Circuit precedent in finding that there is "no expectation of privacy" in an IP address, even if a person has taken measures to hide that information from others.

Werdene had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his IP address. Aside from providing the address to Comcast, his internet service provider, a necessary aspect of Tor is the initial transmission of a user’s IP address to a third-party: “in order for a prospective user to use the Tor network they must disclose information, including their IP addresses, to unknown individuals running Tor nodes, so that their communications can be directed toward their destinations.” United States v. Farrell, No. 15-cr-029, 2016 WL 705197, at *2 (W.D. Wash. Feb. 23, 2016). The court in Farrell held that “[u]nder these circumstances Tor users clearly lack a reasonable expectation of privacy in their IP addresses while using the Tor network.”

The FBI is struggling to keep its many Playpen cases from falling apart, thanks to bogus warrants, a tool it refuses to discuss, and unexpected pushback from usually ultra-compliant courts. The proposed changes to Rule 41 will remove jurisdiction limits, but it isn't law yet. (Fortunately, there's an actual effort to prevent this from happening, as it would only take Congressional inactivity to see it become codified.) This outcome doesn't necessarily hurt this particular case, but yet another judge finding the warrants invalid from word one isn't exactly a confidence-builder either.

Filed Under: doj, fbi, malware, nit, playpen, rule 41, warrant

Judge Tosses Evidence In Murder Case Where Suspect Was Located With A Stingray Device

from the because-no-one-ever-gets-a-warrant-until-a-court-decision-forces-them-to dept

This will likely be the most spectacular flame out of the Baltimore Police Department's long history of warrantless Stingray use. The Maryland Special Appeals Court recently found that tracking people's location using Stingrays is a search under the Fourth Amendment, meaning law enforcement will need to obtain warrants before using the devices. The fact that this finding doesn't affect use previous to this decision (and there was a LOT of it) doesn't mean other judges won't arrive at the same conclusion independently.

The Baltimore Sun reports a suspected murder will likely walk away from charges after the suppression of "key evidence" obtained with Stingray.

On Monday, Circuit Judge Yolanda Tanner suppressed evidence found in Robert Copes' apartment "with great reluctance." Investigators said they found the blood of 34-year-old Ina Jenkins in Copes' apartment. Jenkins' burned body was found dumped across the street.

Homicide Detective Bryan Kershaw testified that he had suspected Jenkins' killer lived nearby and sought a court order to trace a phone number she had once used to call a relative. The agency's phone tracking unit traced the phone to the apartment, and Kershaw testified that Copes, 39, let him inside.

Judge Tanner was indeed reluctant to suppress the evidence, but as she noted, without the warrantless use of the Stingray, the Baltimore PD would have had nothing more than a photo and phone number. Because they were able to track the location of the phone, they were able to find Copes. After speaking to Copes at the apparent murder scene, officers obtained a search warrant for the apartment, but nothing for device they had already deployed. Judge Tanner doesn't appear to be happy with the decision, but says it's the only decision she can reach with the evidence at hand.

"I can't play the 'what if' game with the Constitution," she said, lamenting that it protects people from illegal searches even when the defendant is "likely guilty."

Almost as surprising is Judge Tanner's denial of the Baltimore PD's "good faith exception" argument. Courts have excused far more egregious misbehavior in cases with far less "good faith" justification. In this case, there was no existing warrant requirement and Judge Tanner even granted the fact that the officers had acted in good faith under existing policies. However, she felt that was not enough to override the unconstitutionality of the Stingray search.

If nothing else impresses the seriousness of the warrant requirement on the Baltimore PD, this case probably will. No one likes seeing an accused murderer walk away from charges, especially when other evidence obtained with a warrant (but poisoned, thanks to the use of the Stingray to locate the suspect) pointed pretty definitively at Copes as the killer.

Closed prosecutions aren't likely to be challenged -- not with the warrant requirement only recently being established -- but the BPD has to be concerned about its chances with other Stingray-related prosecutions still pending or in progress.

But it does seem prosecutors are interested in having the last word, if not in this case, then with Copes himself. This decision will be appealed and it could very well be overturned, using the same good faith exception Judge Tanner found inadequate to support warrantless Stingray use. Prosecutors have already taken a look at Copes' jacket and found something else they might be able to lock him up for.

As the hearing concluded, prosecutors informed Tanner that police had filed new charges against Copes in connection with a rape that occurred in the 1990s.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, baltimore, robert copes, stingray, warrant