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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

from the regular-crime;-special-warrant dept

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

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

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

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

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

[...]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

House Votes Unanimously In Favor Of Requiring A Warrant To Search Emails

from the yay! dept

The push to reform ECPA -- the Electronic Communications Privacy Act -- have been going on basically as long as this site has been in existence (i.e. nearly 20 years). There are lots of problems with ECPA, but the big one that everyone points to is that it considers any communication that's on a server more than 180 days to be "abandoned" and accessible without a warrant. That perhaps made some amount of sense back in 1986 when the law was written, because everything was client-server and you downloaded your email off the server. But in an age of cloud computing and webmail it makes no sense at all. Still, the IRS and the SEC really, really liked the ability to use ECPA to snoop on people's emails.

In the past few years, Congress has kept supporting reform, but it always dies when some part of the administration complains and tries to block it. And yet, each time it enters Congress, it gets more and more sponsors. And, finally, the full House has voted to pass the Email Privacy Act. It was no surprise that it passed. The bill had an astounding 315 cosponsors. Seriously: Still, it's impressive that the bill ended up passing unanimously, 419 votes to 0 (and 14 missing votes). On an issue like this, that's surprising. You figured there would be some Congressional rep from somewhere arguing that this would let terrorists and child predators off the hook or something.

The bill is certainly not perfect, and could be improved, but it's nice to see the House get the basics right. Now, we wait and see what happens in the Senate... Will the Senate ignore a unanimous House and let this bill just die, or will it finally do the right thing and protect email privacy?

Filed Under: 4th amendment, congress, ecpa, ecpa reform, email, house, kevin yoder, privacy, warrant

Court: Border Search Warrant Exception Beats Riley In The 'Constitution-Free Zone'

from the protections-arbitrarily-applied-to-protect-inland-electronic-devices dept

The Supreme Court declared in 2014 that law enforcement could no longer perform searches of cellphones incident to arrest without a warrant. The exceptions to this ruling are making themselves apparent already.

The area of the United States where the Constitution does not apply -- while still being fully within the borders of the US -- apparently exempts law enforcement from following this ruling in regards to cellphone searches. The Southern District of California has come to the conclusion that border searches are not Fourth Amendment searches and that the government has no need to seek a warrant before searching a cellphone.

The court notes the Riley decision says one thing but the "border exception" says another.

Heading in one direction is the Supreme Court’s bright line rule in Riley: law enforcement officers must obtain a warrant to search a cell phone incident to an arrest. Heading on a different course is the border search exception. The border search exception describes an exception to general Fourth Amendment principles. It is the notion that the government may search without a warrant anyone and anything coming across its border to protect its national sovereignty.

Balancing the two competing interests in this case, the court ultimately finds the government's national security interest outweighs citizens' privacy interests. As it weighs this against cases dealing with more elaborate and lengthy device searches at the border, the court basically finds that if the Fourth Amendment is violated by "cursory" searches of devices, it is only violated a little.

Reviewing the totality of the circumstances, the Caballero cell phone search: (1) took place at a port of entry; (2) was based on reasonable suspicion of criminal activity; (3) was conducted manually and appeared to be a cursory search of the device’s contents; (4) did not involve the application of forensic software; (5) did not destroy the cell phone; (6) was performed in minutes, as opposed to hours or days; (7) was performed upon a device being brought into the country, rather than being taken out of the country; and (8) was performed approximately four hours after Caballero was placed under arrest. Other than the last factor, each of these factors was either similar to or less intrusive than the warrantless search Cotterman decided was reasonable.

The "border exception" the court carves out for a warrantless search of cellphones at the border somehow relies on exceptions carved out in the original Riley decision, despite saying Riley doesn't control border searches.

The two cases can be reconciled. The most obvious path for reconciliation is to conclude that the border search exception is among the traditional exceptions to which Riley’s warrant requirement does not apply. This approach finds safe footing in the Supreme Court’s statement that “other” “exceptions” may continue to justify a warrantless search. Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2494 (“Moreover, even though the search incident to arrest exception does not apply to cell phones, other case-specific exceptions may still justify a warrantless search of a particular phone.”). It also is consistent with the observation from Montoya de Hernandez, (473 U.S. at 539), about when balancing individual privacy rights against rights of the sovereign, the balance “is qualitatively different . . . than in the interior” and the balance is “struck much more favorably to the Government.” This approach also avoids the spectacle of deeming that Riley undercut 200 years of border search doctrine without even a mention.

Not as much of a "spectacle" as the California court would think, considering the Riley decision set aside years and years of the government relying on dubious analogies like "containers" or "pair of pants" to justify the search and seizure of anything carried on or near a person (like in their vehicle) incident to arrest. It may not date back 200 years, but it does date back to the Fourth Amendment itself, which is a controlling authority with more than 200 years worth of history.

The case here deals with an actual border crossing (Calexico, California) but the government has basically declared any area within 100 miles of a border can be called "the border" for the sake of searches and detainments predicated on reasonable suspicion or, in many cases, law enforcement hunches.

As for this case, it's hardly the ideal test for balancing Riley against the border search exception. For one, the defendant challenging the warrantless cellphone search was already neck-deep in reasonable suspicion, thanks to the discovery of drugs in his vehicle. Officers on scene had more than enough reason to detain him and likely had uncovered enough damning evidence to support a warrant affidavit. Of course, they did not seek one. Instead, they briefly browsed his phone until they found further suspicious content.

Some courts refuse to give officers a pass when they could have gotten a warrant but choose not to. Those courts are in the minority. This court is part of the majority.

Here, illicit narcotics had been discovered. Caballero had been arrested. Reasonable suspicion had jelled into probable cause. For the time being, he and his cell phone were safely in the hands of government agents. Other than the increased administrative work required, there is no apparent reason why Riley’s search warrant requirement could not be applied without undercutting the interests supporting the border search doctrine. One can certainly say that Riley casts doubt on Cotterman’s approval of warrantless searches where an arrest is made. Nevertheless, as long as this Court can apply circuit precedent without running afoul of intervening authority, it must do so.

Being within 100 miles of the border means never having to seek a warrant, even if the government has both the time and the probable cause to do so… at least until someone manages to push a challenge up to the appeals court level or beyond.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, border searches, constitution free zones, phone searches, privacy, riley, supreme court, warrant

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Judge Helps Ensure That The More Ignorant Law Enforcement Officers Are, The More They'll Be Able To Get Away With

from the useful-idiots-on-the-front-line-of-the-Drug-War dept

So much for the Fourth Amendment. Even though a field test for marijuana returned false results twice and a SWAT team raid of Robert and Addie Harte's house turned up no drugs or paraphernalia, the cops involved have been let off the hook by a federal judge. Radley Balko runs down the details of the decision in his post entitled "Federal judge: Drinking tea, shopping at a gardening store is probable cause for a SWAT raid on your home."

The family was held at gunpoint for more than two hours while the police searched their home. Though they claimed to be looking for evidence of a major marijuana growing operation, they later stated that they knew within about 20 minutes that they wouldn’t find any such operation. So they switched to search for evidence of “personal use.” They found no evidence of any criminal activity.

The investigation leading to the raid began at least seven months earlier, when Robert Harte and his son went to a gardening store to purchase supplies to grow hydroponic tomatoes for a school project. A state trooper had been positioned in the store parking lot to collect the license plate numbers of customers, compile them into a spreadsheet, then send the spreadsheets to local sheriff’s departments for further investigation.

[...]

On several occasions, the Sheriff’s Department sent deputies out to sort through the family’s garbage. (The police don’t need a warrant to sift through your trash.) The deputies repeatedly found “saturated plant material” that they thought could possibly be marijuana. On two occasions, a drug testing field kit inexplicably indicated the presence of THC, the active drug in marijuana. It was on the basis of those tests and Harte’s patronage of a gardening store that the police obtained the warrant for the SWAT raid.

The incriminating leaves were nothing more than loose-leaf tea. The Hartes were not drug dealers, nor were they using marijuana. Nonetheless, the federal judge decided the whole thing -- from cops camping out in the parking lot of a gardening store to the two bogus field tests to the fruitless raid of the Harte's residence all complied with the Fourth Amendment.

[Judge John W. Lungstrum] found that the police had probable cause for the search, and that the way the search was conducted did not constitute excessive force. He found that the Hartes had not been defamed by the raid or by the publicity surrounding it. He also ruled that the police were under no obligation to know that drug testing field kits are inaccurate, nor were they obligated to wait for the more accurate lab tests before conducting the SWAT raid.

The Hartes' lawsuit is still alive… barely. The judge granted a motion for summary judgment in favor of the defendant law enforcement agency, but the case has not been dismissed.

Orin Kerr, writing for the Volokh Conspiracy, took issue with Balko's "provocative" headline, claiming Lungstrum's ruling said nothing of the sort.

Yes, there was a legal decision, but it had nothing to do with visiting gardening stores or the culpability of drinking tea. Instead, the issue in the case was when the police can rely on positive field tests for THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. The judge ruled that officers cannot be held personally liable for searching a home with a warrant based on two positive field tests for marijuana, a week apart, from plant materials found in the suspect’s discarded trash, at least when the officers did not know about the risks that the field tests results were false positives

This basically says the same thing Balko's paragraph on the ruling does, only Kerr maintains that it does not show drinking tea and visiting gardening supply stores could lead to a SWAT team raid. The problem is that this is exactly what happened. So, while the judge's decision doesn't explicitly state officers are fully justified in using dubious field tests and inefficient garden store parking lot stakeouts as probable cause for search warrants, it absolutely does affirm that these elements are insufficient to show a Fourth Amendment violation.

Why? Because probable cause is whatever a cop says it is. This is an ongoing issue in states where marijuana has been partially legalized. In California, medical marijuana is legal. The cops can't seem to deal with this new reality. So, they find bogus reasons to raid houses, relying on multiple law enforcement-friendly exceptions to the Fourth Amendment to keep their busts intact… or at least minimize the number of times judges will find them culpable for violations. Cops say "upon information and belief" and magistrate judges nod in approval.

Here's attorney Rick Horowitz on the subject.

In my area of the world, I get a lot of what defense attorneys call “medical marijuana cases,” and prosecutors – enrobed, or not – call drug-manufacturing, or drug-dealing, cases. Because the voters of the State of California voted to decriminalize marijuana use for people who obtained recommendations from medical doctors for the use of marijuana, and because doctors give out (really bad) legal advice along with the recommendations, and because the cops don’t want to try to go after doctors who recommend marijuana to anyone with $150 bucks (or whatever the current going rate is), because they have the money to fight back, we have a lot of folks growing marijuana in the highly-conservative right-wing center of California (the San Joaquin Valley) where it is most definitely not wanted by those in power. And so a cop will talk to a judge about a house he’s heard about with a bunch of marijuana plants, and say, “Based on my training, and experience, no one grows this many plants unless they are actually marijuana dealers hiding behind the medical marijuana laws stupidly passed by the electorate.”

Boom! There’s your probable cause. The law be damned.

In this case, the probable cause was exceedingly thin. The Hartes went to a store where hydroponic gardening supplies could be purchased -- items that are used for legal gardening all the time. This simple fact was all that was needed for law enforcement to perform trash pulls. Items from the trash were tested and "found" to be marijuana, even though they weren't.

The only response offered by the sheriff's department for its field test failures is a shrug of indifference. If a cop tells a magistrate judge the tests are reliable, more often than not, a warrant will be issued, despite loads of evidence showing field tests to be notoriously unreliable. The officers simply say, "Huh. I've never heard of a failed test," and a federal judge forgives them for their ignorance and ineptitude.

Hilariously, the sheriff claimed these two failures on the same case are the only two times the department's field tests have been wrong, dating back to 1978.

The decision makes it clear the best thing cops can do to make bogus searches stick is to be wilfully ignorant of failure rates. They should do no research on the subject and should never question a positive test result. (They will likely remain skeptical of every negative result and re-test until the results confirm their biases.) Any information they might have that undermines probable cause should be discarded and wiped from memory. After all, the judicial branch has stated they're under no obligation to ensure statements made in warrant affidavits actually have any merit. Ignorance is bliss… or at the very least, good faith.

While Kerr is technically correct that a judge didn't say cops could go after anyone whose trash contains leaves if they also shop at gardening supply stores, the end result is basically the same thing. Kerr's view of the decision is summed up best by this comment on his post. (And credit where due, Kerr did point out that he enjoyed this comment.)

This is one more example of a case where the vast majority of people of good will review the facts and conclude there was an obvious and gross violation of justice while a pedant who is an expert in the 4th amendment assures us that "No, no, this is all very interesting, but..."

If you want a technical view of the ruling, Kerr lays it out best. But the decision runs contrary to many people's view of the Fourth Amendment: that they should be free from unreasonable searches. The problem is, what's "unreasonable" to the public is very much considered to be "reasonable" to law enforcement and far too many judges. That explains the outrage at the outcome. The law can't protect innocent people from law enforcers. The remedies are too limited, and far too often, removed completely by judicial deference to law enforcement's definition of "reasonable." Scott Greenfield explains.

That the judge who signed off on the warrant accepted the results of the test as being sufficient to show probable cause, that the test produced sufficient positive results, even if totally false, to support the issuance of the warrant, made Lungstrum’s ruling perfectly legally reasonable. The Fourth Amendment says get a warrant, and they did. It requires probable cause, and they had it based on the field tests. The police enjoy qualified immunity unless they knew their application to contain material omissions about the test, and they shrug and say, “science.”

Except the Hartes did nothing more than some veggie gardening and drink tea. All the twists of the law upon which summary judgment was granted against them not only failed to protect the sanctity of the home of two innocent people from a SWAT raid, and all that accompanies it, but provided no remedy after the accusations fell apart.

At the end of it, we're supposed to take comfort in the fact that at least a warrant was obtained. This piece of paper, no matter how ignorantly or deceptively obtained, will shield law enforcement from much of the potential damage. But everything about this decision says cops are better off stupid and idealistic, rather than cognizant of the deficiencies of their tactics and methods. Judges don't expect law enforcement officers to know the laws they enforce and this only further encourages them to remain ignorant on other subjects as well.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, addie harte, gardening, probable cause, raids, robert harte, swat, warrant

Connecticut Judge Says Cops Can't Get Real Time Cell Site Location Info Without A Warrant

from the which-apparently-law-enforcement-already-knew dept

It's a lower-level decision but it still means something. Well, a couple of somethings. First off, it appears Connecticut law enforcement probably shouldn't continue seeking "live" cell site location information without a warrant. It also appears the law enforcement agency involved doesn't have access to a cell site simulator (Stingray, etc.).

New Haven Superior Judge Jon Blue agreed to suppress evidence in an ATM robbery case, saying it was the result of Connecticut State Police improperly asking in advance to receive periodic live updates from the phone company of the location of the suspect’s cellphone

The Monday ruling comes in the case of Terrance Brown, 29, of Stratford, who was charged with robbing several automated bank teller machines in 2010.

T-Mobile was ordered to provide the location of Brown’s cellphone every 10 minutes during the time police were tracking him.

This sort of collection is nothing new. Many law enforcement agencies act under the belief that location information is just another business record, subject to fewer restrictions and a lower level of privacy protections. Generally speaking, courts have found the acquisition of historical cell site location data without a warrant to have minimal impact on Fourth Amendment protections. Using this information as a tracking device, however, has generated plenty of friction in the judicial system, something that probably won't be resolved until the Supreme Court tackles it.

In this case, the presiding judge found that the omnipresence of cellphones wasn't supposed to be viewed by law enforcement as a bold new world of exploitable tracking devices.

“The convenience of cellphones is well known; it is increasingly rare to meet someone who doesn’t carry one on his or her person,” Blue wrote. “But with this convenience comes the possibility of an Orwellian state.”

Currently, the state's laws only demand law enforcement offer "reasonable, articulable suspicion" in exchange for phone records, including location info. (This is the same standard the NSA is "held" to in its acquisition of phone records.) The ACLU would like to see that raised to "probable cause," but it's going to be an uphill battle against reams of legal precedent. Circuit splits on the issue of whether location data should be considered a business record complicate the matter, but for the most part, jurisprudence suggests location data -- especially historical location data -- may act as an ad hoc tracking device but still somehow lands outside of the Fourth Amendment's protections.

But using a phone as a GPS stand-in isn't quite the same thing, not when law enforcement is issuing subpoenas demanding periodic updates on futurelocation pings. Judge Blue notes the case's prosecutors admitted state law does not permit the warrantless tracking of individuals via their cellphone providers. Not that this admission means much when weighed against law enforcement's actual actions.

Using a 2005 "update" to a telecommunications record statute (referred to by some as Connecticut's Patriot Act), law enforcement could secure "ex-parte" orders to obtain phone records and communications. All that's required is reasonable suspicion. And use these orders law enforcement did -- more than 14,000 times since the law was enacted. An attempt to restore the warrant requirement died this summer in the state's legislature. Perhaps the judge's decision here will prompt legislators to take another run at restoring some Fourth Amendment protections to cell phone records.

However, the lack of a prosecutorial challenge suggests law enforcement knows the law doesn't specifically grant it the power to perform real-time tracking of individuals without warrants. Then again, knowing this didn't stop it from doing it, and the end result is the loss of its collected evidence, and most likely the case itself.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, cell site location info, connecticut, csli, jon blue, location info, warrant

Supreme Court Turns Down Opportunity To Straighten Out Cell Site Location Information Mess

from the Third-Party-Doctrine-still-mostly-intact dept

Appeals court rulings on the cell site location information are literally all over the place. (Also figuratively.)

What there isn't is any agreement on whether a warrant should be required to obtain this information. Some courts have come to the conclusion that this information -- broadcast by anyone with a cell phone, whether they realize it or not -- falls under the Third Party Doctrine. Others feel historical data is obtainable without warrants but real-time tracking requires additional paperwork.

The Third Party Doctrine is in play in the US v. Davis case. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reached the conclusion that there is no expectation of privacy in data collected by third parties (under the questionable assumption that cell site location info is given up "voluntarily" by cell phone users). The defendant, Quartavious Davis, appealed the appeals court's en banc decision.

Had the Supreme Court picked this up, we might have been looking at a final decision on warrants and cell site location data in the near future. The Supreme Court's Riley decision suggests there's an inherent expectation of privacy in the contents of a cell phone. It's not much of a stretch to believe the Supreme Court might find this expectation carries over to the massive amount of information generated by today's cell phones, despite the final storage location of the auto-generated location data.

Unfortunately, it could now be years before we see this resolved. The Supreme Court has decided to pass on Davis's appeal.

The nine justices turned away an appeal filed by a Florida man named Quartavious Davis, who was convicted of participating in a string of 2010 robberies in the Miami area and was sentenced to 1,941 months, almost 162 years, in prison without possibility of parole.

Davis challenged his convictions in part on the grounds that police did not seek a warrant when they asked his cellphone provider, MetroPCS Communications Inc, for location information that linked him to the seven different crime scenes between August and October 2010.

The likelihood remains that the Supreme Court will have to address this issue in the near future. There are simply too many contradictory opinions among the appeals courts to leave this undecided for much longer. Cases challenging the warrantless seizure of cell location data have been plentiful. And the nation's courts seem more aware of law enforcement's manipulation of outdated statutes and court decisions to dodge warrant requirements.

As has been noted by the Supreme Court itself, the Fourth Amendment is purposefully designed to make law enforcement's job more difficult. It's a check against abuse, not an inconvenience to be routed around whenever possible.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, cell site location info, quartavious davis, supreme court, warrant

Bill Adding A Warrant Requirement For Aerial Surveillance Introduced In The House

from the circling-overland dept

Our nation's federal law enforcement agencies may soon be gazing back wistfully at the Golden Age of Warrantless Surveillance and wondering where it all went so very wrong. (Hint: the "warrantless" part had a lot to do with it.)

One place where the lack of warrants hasn't raised much concern is aerial surveillance. While the FBI may send its "secret" planes out to fly spiders-on-ecstasy patterns over US cities, the courts have generally found that this sort of surveillance doesn't violate anyone's expectation of privacy. In fact, cops pretty much have to land a helicopter in someone's backyard while "ground troops" point guns at the homeowner before the Fourth Amendment comes into play.

This "no expectation of privacy if by air" assumption may be on its way out. It won't be the Supreme Court weighing in on the subject though. It will be Congress doing the job the courts often ask it to do: legislating additional, specific protections.

David McCabe at The Hill reports that a bill targeting airborne surveillance has been introduced, looking to bring a warrant requirement to an area where warrants are generally thought to be extraneous.

The measure, dubbed the Protecting Individuals From Mass Aerial Surveillance Act, is sponsored by Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.).

"Just because technological advances have made it easier for the federal government to collect information doesn’t mean that our privacy rights can or should be violated on the ground or in the air,” DelBene said in a statement. “Congress has an obligation to clear the legal fog by passing my bill to require the federal government to obtain a warrant if it wants to conduct aerial surveillance.”

The bill is co-sponsored by Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Ted Poe (R-Texas), Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Don Beyer (D-Va.). A related bill was introduced in the Senate earlier this year.

Similar to the Senate legislation introduced earlier this year, the bill begins by outlawing aerial surveillance.

A Federal entity shall not use a MAVD [mobile area-view device] to surveil property, persons or their effects, or gather evidence or other information pertaining to known or suspected criminal conduct, or conduct that is in violation of a statute or regulation.

That's a ban. It's the exceptions (which include exigent circumstances, patrolling national borders and research) that introduce the warrant requirement.

(5) Warrant

A law enforcement party using a MAVD, pursuant to, and in accordance with, a Rule 41 warrant, to surveil specific property, persons or their effects.

This bill will probably see some significant pushback, considering it's an area that has long been excepted from warrant requirements. If it can be seen from the air, it's technically not "private" -- not even if someone's made an aggressive privacy statement by constructing a 12-foot-high wall around their property.

This additional stipulation may see even greater pushback than the warrant requirement.

(a) No Federal entity actor may make any intentional effort to identify an individual from, or associate an individual with, the information collected by operations authorized by paragraphs (1) through (3) of subsection (a), nor shall the collected information be disclosed to any entity except another Federal entity or State, tribal, or local government agency or department, or political subdivision thereof, that agrees to be bound by the restrictions in this Act.

Considering multiple federal agencies are building biometric databases as quickly as they can, cutting off this supply of new faces won't be well-received. The FBI, et al. would no longer be able to troll for database filler by aimlessly flying above major population centers with its cameras on. Considering this sort of footage is likely automatically uploaded to federal biometric databases, the passage of this law would require the partial dismantling of existing software and processes.

Then again, the exception provided may prove to be capable of swallowing the rule.

(b) The restrictions described in subsection (a) shall not apply if there is probable cause that the information collected is evidence of specific criminal activity.

It doesn't take much finesse to turn untargeted aerial photography into something "relevant" to an ongoing criminal investigation. All someone has to do is fly a plane around a last known address for a few hours before dumping the entire recording into the "unminimized" chute feeding to the biometric database.

While the bill does contain language prohibiting the outsourcing of aerial surveillance to private contractors, it doesn't expressly forbid federal agencies from farming out the job to local law enforcement, which is expressly excepted from this proposed legislation.

Nothing in this Act shall be construed to preempt any State law regarding the use of MAVDs exclusively within the borders of that State.

While there are a few loopholes in the bill, it would be a nearly-complete reversal of the "expectation of privacy" status quo -- going from "nearly nonexistent" to "get a warrant" in a couple dozen tightly-written paragraphs.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, aerial surveillance, law enforcement, privacy, surveillance, warrant

Legislators Introduce Bill That Would Turn DOJ's Stingray Policies Into US Law

from the no-longer-just-suggestions dept

The DOJ issued its formal guidance on Stingray devices and warrants back in September. While it was a nice afterthought, it sported an underdeveloped set of teeth. The biggest problem? It's nothing more than guidance. It's a set of internal policies that the DOJ's underlings are expected to follow. Any misuse will presumably be subject to written reprimands and little else.

As it is only guidance, there's very little accountability added. If an agency violates the new policies during the course of an investigation, the violated person doesn't have the option of seeking redress through the judicial system.

This policy guidance is intended only to improve the internal management of the Department of Justice. It is not intended to and does not create any right, benefit, trust, or responsibility, whether substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or equity by a party against the United States, its departments, agencies, instrumentalities, entities, officers, employees, or agents, or any person, nor does it create any right of review in an administrative, judicial, or any other proceeding.

Whatever restraints the DOJ is applying to itself matter only to the DOJ, which can perform its own internal investigations and mete out whatever disciplinary actions it feels those coloring outside of the lines deserve.

Fortunately, there's an effort being made to open up this Stingray guidance closed-loop and introduce some real accountability. As Eric Geller at the Daily Dot reports, legislators are introducing a bill that would codify the DOJ's Stingray guidance.

Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), John Conyers (D-Mich.), and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) on Monday introduced the Stingray Privacy Act, which would limit the government's use of so-called "stingray" devices— surveillance tools that pretend to be cell towers so they can intercept mobile network traffic.

The bill would only permit a government agency to collect data using a stingray if it obtained a traditional search warrant or if it carried out its investigation under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which does not permit the targeting of Americans.

No evidence collected through a stingray without a warrant or outside the FISA process could be used in a trial, congressional hearing, or other federal, state, or local proceeding.

The DOJ's better-late-than-never guidance could become law, turning violations of the former policies into actionable civil rights complaints. Better yet, the abuse of Stingray devices could lead to the dismissal of improperly-obtained evidence. The codification of the warrant requirement also means agencies will have more trouble obscuring the origin of introduced evidence and will be creating a discoverable, possibly FOIA-able paper trail.

The bill has bipartisan support, which is always helpful. It also has a bit of propulsion thanks to the gradual uncovering of widespread usage for bog-standard criminal investigations and widespread secrecy that has led to bogus FOIA request denials and the dismissal of criminal indictments.

The question now is whether the bill will survive intercessions on behalf of the DOJ, which would like to appear Strong on Stingrays but without actually having to deal with the public's complaints of civil liberties violations. Expect to see child killers, kidnappers and terrorists seated at the stakeholders' table on behalf of the FBI and others if this bill gains momentum.

Filed Under: doj, imsi catcher, jason chaffetz, john conyers, peter welch, spying, stingray, surveillance, warrant