CIA Helps National Archive Out By Offering To Trash Its Stash Of Leak-Related Documents

from the I'M-HELPING dept

The National Archives obviously can't be expected to store every piece of paper generated by the federal government. But it does have an obligation to preserve copies of historically-significant documents. Unfortunately, it's allowing agencies to make these decisions. While it's true some agencies may have a better grasp on a document's significance, other agencies aren't as interested in archiving historically significant documents -- especially ones that might make them look bad.

Enter the CIA, which already has a significant history of burying documents it would rather not reveal.

The CIA is scheduled to begin destroying old records related to leaks of classified information in August unless critics convince the National Archives to scuttle the plan.

The National Archives and Records Administration tentatively approved a CIA proposal to get rid of several types of records after 30 years. Along with leak-tied files, the record types include medical records, behavioral conduct files, security clearance information, personality files with counterintelligence interests, workers-compensation reports for employees posted overseas, and declassification and referral files.

Leak-related files currently have to be saved permanently, but under this proposal they can be destroyed 30 years after a case is closed.

This is the CIA's response to the Archives' question: what documents should we not worry about keeping? This is the CIA stating none of the documents listed above have historical value. Nate Jones of the nonprofit National Security Archive points out why the CIA shouldn't be allowed to make this determination.

Jones warns that NARA and the CIA should err on the side of preservation, even if they believe the files at issue are backed up elsewhere. “History has shown that they are too eager to destroy their records,” he said of CIA officials. “The CIA does not have a lot of good will for preserving historically relevant documents.”

There's history the CIA likes -- the sort of thing that's enshrined in its public areas and featured prominently on its website. Then there's everything else. The CIA tends to move forward with document destruction without bothering to confirm backups still exist just in case.

[J]ust last month, it came to light that the spy agency chucked records about this country's secret role in the 1953 Iran coup during an office move, when it believed copies existed someplace else.

An avoidable accident, but nothing about it suggests it was an accident or that the CIA had any interest in avoiding it. History may be written by the winners, but history can be erased by even the clumsiest losers. Not only are those files gone but any record of their destruction is missing as well.

“There is no written record confirming the destruction of the 1953 microfilmed cables” because “records of such routine destruction were themselves temporary and scheduled to be destroyed.”

The CIA, meanwhile, is complaining its ample budget simply can't cover the cost of digitizing everything related to leaks or personnel issues. If this is even remotely true, it exposes a serious flaw in agency priorities. The government apparently has plenty of money available for watching others, but very little set aside for being watched by the public.

Matthew Aid, an ex-intelligence officer and historian, puzzled over the rationale behind the National Security Agency storing "several hundred times the volume of the Library of Congress every single day as part of its global eavesdropping operations," while "the CIA can't afford to scan its records."

Regrettably, the NARA is pretty much powerless. It can make recommendations and ask for proposals, but it's all held together by toothless laws which have zero deterrent effect on agencies hoping to carve holes in their sketchy history with scheduled document destruction.

Filed Under: cia, deleting, leaks, national archives, records, records retention

Montana Newspaper Decides To Just Delete Old Comments After People Get Upset About Plans To Reveal Their Names

from the well,-that's-one-solution dept

A few weeks ago, we wrote about a plan by the Montana Standard newspaper to change its commenting policy, publishing the "real names" of any commenters. While we generally think that's a silly policy for a variety of reasons, the real problem was that it was retroactively applying it to all old comments, despite clearly telling earlier commenters that their names would not be revealed (and potentially violate the newspaper's own privacy policy). In its defense, the newspaper insisted that (1) anyone who wanted otherwise could contact the paper and have their comments deleted and (2) that while it might have liked to have only applied the policy to new comments after January 1, its content management system wouldn't allow that. Of course, while that seems like something that, perhaps, should be fixed by the newspaper, I can understand that it might not have the resources to do so.

Now, after there was a public outcry over all of this, the newspaper has come up with what it considers to be a compromise: It will just delete all its old comments, rather than reveal who posted them (thanks to Paul Levy for making me aware of this). Then, going forward, comments will be under the new rules.

Because of certain limitations in our web site’s content management system, The Standard initially announced that unless we received requests from individual commenters for previous comments to be removed, earlier comments would as of Jan. 1 be displayed with real names.

We are concerned that such a change would not be fair to those who are either unaware of the pending change or have not contacted us.

So instead, all comments in the system as of Dec. 31 will be removed, and going forward, on Jan. 1, all new comments will be posted with real names in accordance with the Standard’s new policy.

I like how they claim that they are concerned about it, when the truth is that they seemed ready to push forward with those changes until they suddenly started getting called out for them. Either way, this response seems better than revealing everyone's names, but still seems fairly ridiculous. It also means that a whole bunch of old comments -- some of which may have been valuable -- will now disappear from the newspaper's site. Would it really have been that hard to fix their content management system instead?

Filed Under: comments, deleting, privacy, real names
Companies: montana standard

NYPD Officials Apparently Deleting Incriminating Communications Related To Alleged Illegal Summons Quotas

from the cross-cut-filing-system dept

The NYPD doesn't care for transparency. Its relationship with open records requesters ranges from "frosty" to "antagonistic." It even employs its own in-house, completely arbitrary classification system in order to prevent even more of its documents from making their way into the hands of the public.

And, despite policies specifically mandating the preservation of records, NYPD officials are apparently preemptively deleting certain communications to ensure they'll never be made public.

Attorneys for the city have failed to turn over even one email from the files of former Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly or former Chief of Department Joseph Esposito regarding summons activity over the last eight years, attorney Elinor Sutton writes in new filings in Manhattan Federal Court seeking sanctions against the city.

“It is simply not tenable that Commissioner Kelly and Chief Esposito did not — in the entire period of 2007 through the present — write or receive emails using terms” related to the word “summons,” Sutton writes.

Seven years of discussing police business and not once did Kelly or Esposito use the word "summons," one of the most common terms used when discussing police business. How can this possibly be? Well, when you're looking for evidence that NYPD bosses and supervisors instituted illegal quotas, the word "summons" would figure prominently in responsive documents... if said documents hadn't been memory-holed for the preservation of the greater good their positions.

And it's not just the top two men in the NYPD that have a "summons" hole in their communications. Searches for responsive emails/texts from three other high-ranking NYPD officials came up empty as well.

What Sutton has obtained that points to an unofficial quota system has come from whistleblowers and "other means." Sutton has copies of emails and texts -- sent using NYPD phones/email accounts -- that discuss quota-like "expectations" for officers and reprisals for failing to hit these numbers. But the NYPD's own search for these same documents has found nothing. This either means the NYPD isn't performing thorough searches or it has been destroying incriminating documents. Either way, the NYPD's lack of responsive documents looks very suspicious.

And the city itself is complicit in the "vanishing" of possibly culpatory evidence.

[C]ity lawyers didn’t advise the NYPD to preserve communications related to summonses until 2013 — three years after the suit was filed, Sutton says.

The city won't say much about the lawsuit or its police department's actions, but this contradictory set of sentences says a lot more than the city rep probably intended it to.

In a response filed last week, city attorney Qiana Smith-Williams said the alleged evidence destruction was “short on meritorious claims” and that the sides had not yet “exhausted the possibility of a settlement.”

If you believe the opposition's case is lacking in merit -- and you have an inexhaustible amount of (public) funds to fight it -- why would you be entertaining a settlement? The obvious answer is this: a settlement would allow the city to end the discovery process, maintain its secrecy, allow those involved in the quota scheme to avoid further examination/punishment. Handing out (public) money to the plaintiffs in settlement form also allows the city/NYPD to move on without having to admit wrongdoing. A payout means nothing changes. Quotas will still remain, but steps will be taken to ensure it's better hidden.

Filed Under: deleting, evidence, nypd, transparency

When Facebook Decides To Silently Delete Journalism

from the down-the-memory-hole dept

There's been an awful lot of discussion about the role of Facebook on journalism these days. I'm actually a lot less concerned than many who have been complaining that Facebook's growing importance is somehow "dangerous" for the future of news. The simple fact is that a huge percentage of people (especially young people) currently get their news via Facebook. But, at the very least, we should be concerned when Facebook starts to play the role of the arbitrary editor, simply deleting stories it doesn't like.

Jim MacMillan, a photojournalist who is currently the Assistant Director for the Center for Public Interest Journalism at Temple University happened upon a somewhat tragic scene last month, of a 68-year-old woman struck and killed by one of those "Duck Boats" (the rickety half bus/half boat things that are -- for reasons I still don't get -- popular with tourists). The story made headlines in part because of claims that the woman was too focused on her mobile device to notice that she was walking in the road against the traffic light.

MacMillan just happened to be there, and while he notes that he's been out of the "breaking news" photojournalism business for years, he recognized an opportunity and snapped a few photographs and posted them to Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter:

Police hang a tarp after a person was caught under #RideTheDucks boat at 11th and Arch just now. Looks very serious: pic.twitter.com/FOvgs3PuMY

— Jim MacMillan (@JimMacMillan) May 8, 2015

The reason that I only linked to the Twitter version is because the other ones are gone. According to MacMillan, Facebook silently deleted the other two with no explanation:

I posted the photo to my Instagram account and clicked the button to share to Facebook. But while discussing the incident with a colleague last night, I scrolled back and discovered that both posts had been deleted.

MacMillan notes that he was careful to post a photo that did not show the actual body, but rather the police putting up the tarp:

In the most recent incident, I saw the victim’s body between the right, rear wheels and it was clear that she was dead, but I posted a more sensitive picture of police on the other side of the vehicle and captioned it only to say: “Police hang a tarp after a person was caught under ‪#‎RideTheDucks‬ boat at 11th and Arch just now. Looks very serious.”

We do things like this to eliminate the possibility that loved ones will learn of the death from anyone but official sources and to spare viewers the traumatic effects of graphic imagery whenever possible. In other words, I was operating conservatively within standard practices of photojournalism.

That was my best effort to be sensitive to the victim while responsible to the public's right to know that there had been another fatal accident involving a Ride the Ducks boat.

As MacMillan notes, it's particularly ridiculous that Facebook didn't even inform him of this or give him any chance to respond or protest the silent deletion of his journalistic work:

But why would Facebook take down this image? Who might have complained? And shouldn’t I have been offered the opportunity to respond?

In an update, MacMillan notes that people from Facebook are claiming they have no record of a takedown at all -- leading MacMillan to wonder if he really posted them at all if some sort of technical glitch may be to blame. Yet, he also notes that the way it got onto Twitter was because he has an IFTTT recipe that reposts all his Instagram/Facebook posts to Twitter. The fact that the image is on Twitter certainly suggests he did, in fact, post them to Facebook. Either way, there are legitimate concerns about how Facebook's policy works in terms of taking down stories. The company has certainly had problems in the past, and this is going to be a concern going forward. You're relying on someone else's platform, and they can do what they want with it.

While I'm less worried than many others about Facebook's impact on journalism, it does seem like the company really ought to very, very clear and transparenty how it handles taking down content. Many other sites make sure that they, at the very least, inform users of any takedowns and even provide clear processes for challenging the decision. Here, assuming MacMillan is correct, the content was just removed. If the content really was just removed, it should call into question the credibility of journalism found on Facebook.

Filed Under: deleting, editors, jim macmillan, journalism, takedowns
Companies: facebook

Man Who Deactivated Facebook Account To Dodge Discovery Request Smacked Around By Disgruntled Court

from the I-fought-the-law,-but-swung-and-missed-badly,-and-it-was-over-before-it-began dept

Social media. So popular. And so very, very incriminating. The less-than-illustrious history of many a criminal who felt obliged to generate inculpatory evidence via social media postings has been well-detailed here. But what if you want to hide your indiscretions and malfeasance? If you've posted something on any major social network, chances are it will be found and used against you.

On May 19, 2014, Brannon Crowe sued his employer, Marquette Transportation. Crowe claimed that, in April 2014, he had an accident at work that “resulted in serious painful injuries to his knee and other parts of his body.” Crowe sued for pain and suffering, medical expenses, lost wages, past and future disability, and other special damages.

But Crowe may have unwittingly shot himself in the foot (or maybe the knee). The reason? Facebook.
Around the time Crowe suffered his injuries, he sent a Facebook message to a friend saying that he had actually hurt himself while on a fishing trip. How Marquette Transportation got its hands on the message is unclear.

Nonetheless, the message led Marquette Transportation to seek other Facebook information from Crowe in discovery. On October 17, 2014, Marquette Transportation specifically requested “the Facebook history of any account(s) that [Crowe] had or has for the period commencing two (2) weeks prior to the incident in question to the present date.”

Crowe presented a variety of novel defenses in hopes of escaping Marquette Transporation's examination of his Facebook account -- one of which was that he had no Facebook account.

Plaintiff objects to this Request as vague, over broad and unduly burdensome. Plaintiff further objects to the extent this Request seeks information that is irrelevant and not reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence. Notwithstanding said objections and in the spirit of cooperation, plaintiff does not presently have a Facebook account.

Note the qualifier "presently."

Crowe later testified in his deposition that he stopped having a Facebook account “around October” of 2014.

Oddly coincidental.

Marquette served its written discovery upon Crowe’s counsel on October 17, 2014. (Rec. doc. 16-1 at p. 1). Crowe’s Facebook records from the “Brannon CroWe” account indicate that account was deactivated on October 21, 2014. Counsel for Marquette is entitled to explore the timing of this deactivation.

"Stopped having" actually meant "deactivated his account." Crowe didn't go so far as to delete the account, which might have made the damning post a bit more difficult to recover. But he wanted to keep his account alive for use at a later date. This didn't escape the court's notice.

The same Facebook records indicate that the account was accessed routinely by an iPhone with an IP address of 108.215.99.63 beginning well before the alleged accident up to and including on the date of deactivation. On January 7, 2015, the account was reactivated by the same iPhone with the same IP address. Counsel for Marquette is entitled to explore these matters, particularly given the current dispute over the status of Crowe’s iPhone service and whether he was able to and did send “text messages” to others at points in time when he claimed to be unable to do so.

Crowe's shovel-wielding skills far outpace his ability to hide incriminating information. But as is the case with shovel wielders, even the most efficient can do little more than dig holes of increasing depth. When this foolproof plan to thwart Marquette Transportation's discovery request failed, Crowe deployed Plans B, C and D, with similar results.

Similarly, counsel for Marquette is entitled to analyze the thousands of pages of Facebook messages Crowe exchanged with others, including his co-worker, Robert Falslev, particularly given his testimony that his account: (1) did not use a capital “W” in its name, (2) that it was hacked, and (3) that he did not send one particular Facebook message to Falslev stating he was injured fishing, rather than on the Marquette vessel.

Crowe's counsel, now presumably righteously pissed, produced the records sought by Marquette -- in bulk.

Pursuant to the Court’s Order quoted above, Crowe, through counsel, has now submitted to the Court for in camera review an astonishing 4,000-plus pages of Facebook history from the account “Brannon CroWe.” While the Court has made a preliminary review of certain of these materials, it is not about to waste its time reviewing 4,000 pages of documents in camera when it is patently clear from even a cursory review that this information should have been produced as part of Crowe’s original response. This production makes it plain that Crowe’s testimony, at least in part, was inaccurate. That alone makes this information discoverable.

The court may not be interested in looking through Crowe's obviously very active (before it suddenly, suspiciously wasn't) Facebook account, but I would imagine Marquette's lawyers will find the time to do so. But even in Crowe's self-inflicted dark cloud, there's a silver lining -- albeit one brought about by his desire to save his (supposedly hacked-with-a-capital-W) Facebook account, rather than see it (and the incriminating post) vanish into the ether.

Crowe may have inadvertently saved himself at least some trouble with the Court by deactivating his account rather than deleting it. This duty to preserve evidence in litigation extends to social media information and is triggered when a party reasonably foresees that evidence may be relevant to issues in litigation. As soon as he placed the source of his injuries at issue, Crowe triggered the duty to preserve. Deleting relevant social media data can result in sanctions against the deleting party because the information is not recoverable, which implicates spoliation of evidence issues. In contrast, Crowe’s Facebook data was still accessible upon a simple re-login.

The court won't offer Crowe much sympathy in the future, but it's not likely to pursue sanctions. That's about all there is in terms of good news. The effort made to hide the evidence doesn't make Crowe look any less guilty. Social media platforms are bad places to do bad things. Even swift deletions can be recovered with timely court orders and an internet's worth of cached pages and third-party content aggregators often assures that deleted postings will live on in one form or another.

Filed Under: brannon crowe, deleting, destroying evidence, discovery, social media, spoliation
Companies: facebook

Apple Finally Allows iPhone-Ers To Nix That U2 Album They Never Wanted From Their Phones

from the me-three dept

In the wake of the somewhat confusing move by mega-band U2 to release their latest album for free on iTunes, we noted the comments from frontman Bono, who rushed to decry the concept of free for music and who insisted that because he was paid it didn't really count as free. These comments must have been especially confusing for those that suddenly found the band's album in their iTunes cloud account, despite never having requested or wanted it there. Indeed, given some of the comments reacting to the promotional move, it seems the problem with free might not be on the content producer's side, but on the consumer's instead.

If you’re trying to convince me that the stuff I store in my cloud is safe, don’t open up my cloud without permission. It’s easy to imagine Apple’s thinking here: What’s better than a free gift? A free gift that you don’t have to go get! But a gift on my doorstep is one thing. A gift that you left in my house, after letting yourself in, is something different.

Indeed, and it's not difficult to understand why some reacted less than favorably to the free album. First, despite Bono's insistence to the contrary, this was indeed the use of the concept of free as a promotional tool. Perhaps not for U2 as much as Apple, but that's what it was nevertheless. The problem wasn't that the album was free, but that the album appeared unbidden in the repository for a service that feels quite personal to the consumer. These were our cloud accounts that Apple invaded to leave their free stuff. You know what it's called when someone leaves you something you didn't want for free in your domain? It's called litter. And, in this case, it was litter that you couldn't even clean up. Just browse through a few of the reactions on the site WhoIsU2.com to get a sense:















And, just like that, Apple is walking back the "gift" by actually writing some code to delete the "gift," which, until that happened, was unremovable (though you could hide it).

It should take a couple steps, but it shouldn’t be that difficult. Head over to this page, which Apple put up this morning. Now you can make your collection Bono-free, or just “Songs of Innocence”-free, or whatever. The only catch appears to be that if you decide you do want your new free U2 album, you’ve only got a month to change your mind: After October 13, the only way to get it from iTunes will be by actually spending money.

Think about this for a second. For the first time in history, it seems, someone had to write some code to deliberately remove free music that was forced upon people. Like it was malware. How many people expected the digital music revolution to end up here?

Look, it's a great thing to see musicians and distributors continue to experiment with this sort of thing, but it's also important that lessons be learned as they do so. Today's lesson is that the internet is a back-and-forth, not simply a distribution channel that can be used to force products into the consumer's space. Perhaps next time they'll get this a bit more right.

Filed Under: deleting, free, free music, music, u2
Companies: apple

Yes, MySpace Is Allowed To Delete MySpace Page That Tries To Show Fake And Real MySpace Celebs

from the nice-try dept

Last year, we wrote about a case brought by a woman named Julie Riggs against MySpace. The complaint itself is somewhat of an amusing read ("At this point Plaintiff was literally seething with anger to the point that she was now consumed by it"). The main issue was that Riggs had created a website that tried to determine which celebrity profiles on MySpace were real and which were fake. She was upset (among other things) because (1) there were fake profiles on MySpace (2) MySpace later did something similar itself and (3) MySpace deleted her profile. After we wrote about the case, we received an angry email from Ms. Riggs telling us we "missed the point" and that MySpace "stole" her idea -- and that we needed to get our story straight. She never explains how coming up with the same idea is illegal, of course. Also, my favorite: "What can you expect from site such as yours though." Indeed.

Unfortunately, it appears that the district court also "missed the point" and did not get the story straight, because as Eric Goldman points out, it has dismissed the lawsuit. However, in this case, it may actually be true that the court missed the point. As Goldman notes in his discussion of the ruling, the court seems a bit confused about how Section 230 of the CDA works, and may have dismissed parts of the case for rather confused reasons. Riggs has appealed, so hopefully the Appeals Court fixes the problems (but still dismisses it). However, again as Goldman notes, this is taking place in the notoriously nutty Ninth Circuit, which often has a problem with reading Section 230 the way everyone else reads Section 230. Hopefully, they get this one right.

Filed Under: deleting, julie riggs, terms of service
Companies: myspace

Good Luck Trying To Delete Stuff Off The Internet

from the yeah,-that'll-work dept

ethorad writes "In the UK, in an attempt to promote the work the police do, some forces name and shame criminals that they catch and prosecute. All good so far as it helps the community see that crimes are being tackled (assuming they are ...)

However the Ministry of Justice has now said that police forces who do that must remove the details from their website after one month. Yeah, good luck with that. Place your bets now on how many third party websites (especially local community ones) will start scraping the details from police websites for long term storage?"

Filed Under: criminals, deleting, internet, uk