Supreme Court Agrees To Hear Case Involving US Demands For Emails Stored Overseas

from the spending-locally,-thinking-globally dept

The Supreme Court has granted the government's request for review of Second Circuit Appeals Court's decision finding Microsoft did not have to turn over communications stored overseas in response to US-issued warrants.

This is a pretty quick turnaround as far as tech issues go. The Supreme Court is finally willing to take a look at the privacy expectation of third party phone records (specifically: historical cell site location info), following years of courtroom discussion... which follow years of Third Party Doctrine expansion.

That being said, a resolving of sorts is needed to clarify the reach of US law enforcement going forward. The Second Circuit twice shut down the DOJ's requests to extend its reach to offshore servers. Even as the Microsoft case was still being litigated, other courts were coming to contrary decisions about data stored overseas.

The target in these cases was Google. Google's data-handling processes contributed to the adverse rulings. Unlike Microsoft -- which clearly delineated foreign data storage -- data and communications handled by Google flow through its servers constantly. Nothing truly resides anywhere, a fact the DOJ pressed in its arguments and the one two judges seized on while denying Google's warrant challenges.

The Supreme Court's ruling will be needed to tie these disparate decisions up into a cohesive whole.

Or not. Rule 41 changes that went into effect at the beginning of this year remove a lot of jurisdictional limitations on search warrants. On top of that, the DOJ has been angling for expanded overseas powers, pushing Congress towards amending the Stored Communications Act.

This, of course, is what the Second Circuit Appeals Court told the government to do: take it up with legislators. But if litigation is a slow process, legislation can be just as time-consuming. The DOJ wants permission now and the Supreme Court gives it the best chance of being allowed to grab communications stored outside of the United States using a warrant signed by a magistrate judge anywhere in the US.

In the meantime, the DOJ will continue to pursue amendments to the Stored Communications Act -- a law it's already taken advantage of, thanks to it being outdated almost as soon as it was implemented. Further rewriting of the law in the DOJ's favor would allow US law enforcement to become the world's police, serving warrants in the US to gather documents stored around the globe.

While this may seem like a boon to law enforcement, it should be approached with extreme caution. If this becomes law (rather than just a precedential court decision) the US government should expect plenty of reciprocal demands from other countries. This would include countries with far worse human rights records and long lists of criminal acts not recognized in the US (insulting the king, anyone?). The US won't be able to take a moral or statutory stand against demands for US-stored communications that may be wielded as weapons of censorship or persecution against citizens in foreign countries. Whoever ends up handing down the final answer -- the Supreme Court or Congress -- should keep these implications in mind.

Filed Under: domestic, ecpa, emails, foreign, sca, scotus, stored communications act, subpoena, supreme court, warrants
Companies: microsoft

Appeals Court Affirms NSA Surveillance Can Be Used To Investigate Domestic Criminal Suspects

from the spooks-in-the-federal-cop-shop dept

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals confirms what's already known about the NSA's domestic surveillance: it's not just for terrorism.

The NSA collections -- done in the FBI's name -- are supposed to only gather info related to international terrorism. But that requirement has been phased out. The NSA "tips" a certain amount of data to the FBI for its own use and it has been shown in the past to do the same for the DEA, which it then instructs to obscure the origin of its info.

An opinion [PDF] just released by the Appeals Court, says basically the same thing: although the NSA's surveillance is supposed to be used to sniff out terrorists, there's nothing in the law that prevents it from using its collections to go after criminals.

Gregory Turner was convicted of conspiring with Prince Asiel Ben Israel (both US persons) to provide aid to Zimbabwean "Specially Designated Nationals" -- in this case a group working to block the institution of more democratic processes and procedures in that country.

Turner moved to suppress the evidence, claiming that the government's use of a FISA order to obtain information on his activities violated the NSAs foreign intelligence directives. But the court finds the directive does not limit FISA warrants to terrorism only. The government only needs to "reasonably believe" a target is an "agent of a foreign power."

The government informed Turner it had gathered evidence using FISA-authorized surveillance. Then it refused to turn over information to him with regards to its activities. From the redacted, terribly-reproduced decision:

On February 27, 2014, Turner filed a motion for disclosure of FISA materials and motion to suppress evidence obtained or derived from FISA. The government responded to these motions with a classified brief and a sealed appendix submitted ex parte to the district court and redacted, unclassified version served to Turner. Additionally, the government filed a "Declaration and Claim of Privilege" by the Attorney General that declared, "it would harm the national security of the United States to disclose or hold an adversarial hearing with regards to the FISA materials…"

Both motions by Turner were denied. These denials have been upheld by the Appeals Court. Turner claimed the government failed to meet its probable cause requirements for the FISA warrant and also violated his First Amendment rights with its surveillance.

Much of the court's reasoning is redacted but it does have this to say about Turner's assertions.

Turner contends that "FISA appears to require the communications subject to surveillance of a United States person must related directly to activities involving international terrorism as defined in FISA." Turner misstates the law. FISA is not limited to activities involving international terrorism. FISA authorizes surveillance and searches based on probable cause that the target is an "agent of foreign power," which relates to "any person" engaged in certain activities… on behalf of a foreign power, including "clandestine intelligence gathering activities" and "enter[ing] the United States under a false or fraudulent identity… or while in the United States… assum[ing] a false or fraudulent identity." These activities are listed in addition to "international terrorism."

Not only that, but the laws governing FISA-ordered activities were loosened in 2008 to encompass all sorts of criminal activity not related to foreign powers or international terrorism.

FISA, as amended in 2008, "eliminated any justification for the FISA court to balance the relative weight the government places on criminal prosecution as compared to other counterintelligence responses." [...] [T]he amended FISA statute "does not oblige the government to demonstrate to the FISA court that its primary purpose in conducting electronic surveillance is not criminal prosecution."

As for Turner's First Amendment claims, the court finds the activities he engaged in were not covered under the First Amendment, no matter how "right" Turner may have believed undermining the installation of a democratic government was. As the court sees it, the government established Turner was an "agent of a foreign power," something that strips away protections normally afforded to political activity. Or maybe just political activity the US government doesn't approve of.

Either way, it's very clear FISA court orders can be used to engage in domestic surveillance purely to investigate criminal activity, something the NSA hasn't exactly been forthcoming about. As long as a foreign power is somehow involved, the NSA and the FBI are interchangeable surveillance pieces, even though one of them is assumed to be mostly uninvolved in domestic surveillance of US persons.

Filed Under: 7th circuit, crime, domestic, fisa, gregory turner, nsa, surveillance, terrorism