Court Documents Show The FBI Used A Whole Lot Of Geofence Warrants To Track Down January 6th Insurrectionists

from the easier-to-do-when-most-people-are-in-an-area-illegally dept

The new hotness for law enforcement isn't all that new. But it is still very hot, a better way to amass a list of suspects when you don't have any particular suspect in mind. Aiding and abetting in the new bulk collection is Google, which has a collection of location info plenty of law enforcement agencies find useful.

There's very little governing this collection or its access by government agencies. Most seem to be relying on the Third Party Doctrine to save their searches, which may use warrants but do not use probable cause beyond the probability that Google houses the location data they're seeking.

Law enforcement agencies at both the local and federal levels have availed themselves of this data, using "geofences" to contain the location data sought by so-called "reverse warrants." Once they have the data points, investigators try to determine who the most likely suspect(s) is. That becomes a bigger problem when the area contained in the geofence contains hundreds or thousands of people who did not commit the crime being investigated.

These warrants have been used to seek suspects in incidents ranging from arson to... um... protesting police violence. They've also been used to track down suspects alleged to have raided the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021 -- the day some Trump supporters decided (with the support of several prominent Republicans, including the recently de-elected president) that they could change the outcome of a national election if they committed a bunch of federal crimes.

Plenty of those suspects outed themselves on social media. For everyone else, there's reverse warrants, as reported by Wired. (h/t Michael Vario)

Court documents suggest the FBI has been using controversial geofence search warrants at a scale not publicly seen before, collecting account information and location data on hundreds of devices inside the US Capitol during a deadly invasion by a right-wing mob on January 6.

While Google receives over 10,000 geofence warrants for location data in the US a year, those covering the Capitol breach appear to have been particularly productive, apparently enabling the FBI to build a large, searchable database in its hunt for the rioters.

Well, the documents do more than "suggest." The underlying warrants are likely still sealed, so some conjecture is involved. But other stuff has leaked out around the redactions and the sealing, showing the FBI was issuing warrants even while the attempted insurrection was still underway. The feds can move fast when needed, apparently. This is from a criminal complaint related to Mitchell Vukich -- one Capitol raider who not only tweeted he was inside the Capitol while still apparently in the Capitol ("I was one of the first 15 people in the #Capitol. Wild stuff. Be safe out there."), but was caught on several security cameras as he made his way through the building and seemingly ran off with some government documents.

According to records obtained through a search warrant which was served on Google, on January 6, 2021, in and around the time of the incident, a mobile device associated with mitchellvukich66@gmail.com was present at and in the interior of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

However you may feel about the Asshat Revolution of January 6th, this isn't an ideal -- or even an acceptable -- way to conduct an investigation. Reverse warrants make everyone in the area a criminal suspect. Probable cause doesn't exist. It does in terms of Google: there's a highly probable chance the company has location data captured in areas under investigation. But law enforcement asks for all of it and works backwards to find suspects. Once it does that, it has probable cause to seek identifying information. But this method inverts the accepted (under the Fourth Amendment) formula for performing searches.

And, since the search warrant (as well as the results of the search) are still secret, we can only assume the FBI acted in good faith. It may not have.

“What might have happened is that the FBI got the anonymized data and just got straight back in touch with Google and said we suspect 90 percent of these people, so give us their IDs,” says Matthew Tokson, a law professor and Fourth Amendment expert at the University of Utah. “Or it may have been an atypical warrant where they said to Google: Give us not only the numbers but the account names, because we think we have probable cause on the bulk of them.”

And that's the concern law enforcement can keep from being addressed by asking for (and receiving) permission to seal warrant affidavits and discussions of this investigative technique, even though the technique is known and understood and already widely discussed in the public arena.

Suspects who think they can beat these warrants actually can't. A lot of that can be traced back to Google, which has never been completely honest about its location data harvesting. Some of that can be pinned on the suspects, who fail to understand that a factory reset only affects data stored on that device.

[C]ourt documents say that Jeffrey Register deleted photographs of his time in the Capitol and even claimed to have factory-reset his phone in the days after the breach to obscure his tracks. It was already too late; the FBI appears to have identified him from the Google geofence data in January…

That's the kind of thing that happens when you're cosplaying insurrection, OPSEC is an afterthought. For the people hunting you down, however, finding and acquiring reams of culpatory data is the thing they get paid to do. Getting high on your own supply of confirmation bias can have consequences, especially when it involves the impromptu violation of federal laws.

But at the end of all this is the skyrocketing use of reverse warrants to identify criminal suspects. That it has only resulted in a few false arrests is a miracle, not an endorsement of the investigative technique. While there has been occasional pushback against inverting the constitutional status quo, the large number of geofence warrants served to Google every year suggest law enforcement isn't too worried about losing access to a powerful tool that takes full advantage of private companies' apparently unslakable thirst for personal data.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, doj, fbi, geofence warrants, january 6th

GOP Hollowly Threatens To 'Shut Down' Telecom Companies For Cooperating With Legal January 6 Inquiries

from the good-luck-with-that dept

If you've spent any real time digging into Trump GOP era tech policies, you've probably noticed they're a jumbled mess of contradictions and inconsistencies, cloaked in a lot of performative propaganda. The same party that thought net neutrality (the FCC holding telecom giants vaguely accountable) was a government hellscape, pivoted on a dime to try and force the FCC into regulating social media companies. The same GOP that whines incessantly about "big tech" via performative populism, routinely runs for the hills any time somebody actually tries to rein in corporate power or implement genuine antitrust reform.

Of course in the mainstream press (in this context usually The New York Times, Axios, The Washington Post, Politico, and friends), the inconsistency of the GOP's policy platforms is never really explained. It's part of the "view from nowhere" disease that has infected mainstream U.S. political coverage, where everything is portrayed in a "he said, she said" frame of perfect symmetry, leaving your readers completely uncertain where the truth actually lies. It's driven by a fear of upsetting sources and advertisers, and results in a media that simply refuses to call a duck a duck (or bullshit bullshit) when urgently required.

That bubbled up again this week as the GOP bristled at the fact the committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob has been asking telecom and tech companies to retain relevant communications between lawmakers and organizers. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Signal, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile have all received requests. As Mike has noted there are concerns that the requests are worryingly broad, including troves of internal communications at the companies' themselves.

At the same time, many of the requests (especially those looking at the text message and call logs from telecom companies) are perfectly legitimate, and if investigators can find text messages showing coordination between the violent Capitol-assaulting mob, its organizers, and the GOP, that kind of seems arguably important in terms of a functioning democracy and avoiding even worse scenarios down the road. After all, guys like Jim Jordan are nervously babbling in interviews like this one for a reason:

Several GOP members seem particularly nervous about text messages and phone logs, and are now taking to television threatening to "shut down" telecom companies if they cooperate with the probe in any way whatsoever:

This is, of course, utterly nonsensical, zero calorie, idiot theater. Congress as a whole worships the ground companies like AT&T walk on, and the GOP in particular has never stood up to AT&T on any issue of substance. Ever. Why? Because AT&T's extremely politically powerful (thanks in large part to its cozy relationship with the NSA), and a major GOP campaign contributor. There's legitimately a 0.0% chance that AT&T or Verizon see any meaningful penalties for cooperating with legal requests, especially from a party with a thirty year track record of mindlessly kissing telecom's ass.

The GOP for years has opposed privacy protections and embraced expansive government surveillance. And its entire brand has been built on the worship of purportedly "free markets" without the imposition of government intervention. And the entire Trump GOP has been to take "political norms" in the alleyway and beat the ever loving piss out of them, repeatedly. Yet this morning we saw the Rupert Murdoch editorial pages pretending to care about both telecom privacy and (gasp!) "political norms":

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy also took to Twitter to threaten to shut down private companies for complying with legal information requests (you know, "free markets!" and all that):

Nobody's violating federal law. It's a valid inquiry into an extremely dangerous, precedent setting event. And "federal law" on privacy is weak in the first place largely courtesy of forty years of DC policy choices. There's just layers of gibberish here, particularly the pretense that the GOP gives two flying shits about rampant government surveillance or "political norms." If Congress is doing something illegal that violates privacy, anyone can sue to stop them. Instead, the GOP is having yet another toddler moment, engaging in hollow bullying to shut down private businesses they know they'll never actually follow through on.

As Ken White notes, one could argue that this kind of behavior, while likely not prosecutable, qualifies as corruption and obstruction of justice:

Granted, this most likely ends (like the mythical GOP support for "antitrust reform") with zero penalties for telecom companies, because there's nothing to penalize. Still, letting a bunch of mindlessly ambitious authoritarians try to overthrow elections with zero meaningful penalty sets a clearly dangerous precedent. As does threatening companies for complying with perfectly valid legal requests.

Shutting down AT&T is a non-starter, so what is the GOP going to do to "punish" telecom companies? Re-establish the FCC's ability to hold telecom monopolies accountable? Stop blocking efforts to impose broadband privacy rules? Finally start holding them accountable for fraud? Rein in their overly enthusiastic participation in our domestic surveillance program? Force AT&T and Verizon to close up shop and go home? Give me a break.

It's just empty-headed bullying by GOP lawmakers clearly nervous about what these requests could reveal about one of the dumbest yet most dangerous days in recent U.S. history. And yet courtesy of DC beltway press' "he said, she said" framing of the situation, a reader walks away from most terrible coverage of this dispute with the impression that the GOP's position here could be perfectly reasonable. ("Bob the authoritarian says a valid investigation into him is illegal, but his colleague Jane says that's not true. Who's right? Who knows?" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).

U.S. press outlets need to dramatically improve their ability to call out bullshit or this stuff is all going to get significantly worse. Bad faith bullshit only works when you refuse to identify it as clearly bad faith bullshit. Corruption thrives when your press is too timid to clearly call it corruption when required. And by and large the nation's biggest media outlets continue to fail painfully at the task of highlighting the GOP's hard right authoritarian swerve, or the bullshit faux-populist propaganda they're using to make it happen.

Filed Under: due process, empty threats, evidence, gop, investigation, january 6th, jawboning, kevin mccarthy, marjorie taylor greene, obstruction of justice, subpoena, telcos
Companies: at&t, verizon

FBI Cites Guidelines That Don't Actually Forbid Social Media Monitoring As The Reason It Was Blindsided By The January 6 Attack

from the some-monitoring-is-more-equal-than-others dept

The FBI has spent thousands on social media monitoring software. These contracts are public, making it literally unbelievable the agency has managed to stave off FOIA requests by handing out "neither confirm nor deny" non-answers. A court didn't buy the FBI's excuse for its Glomar, pointing out that confirming public information would not give criminals a heads-up on surveillance software the FBI is currently using.

The FBI's inability to honestly discuss its social media monitoring programs continues. The January 6th raid on the US Capitol building has resulted in hundreds of arrests. A lot of the evidence for these prosecutions has come from social media posts by members of the ad hoc raiding party.

The FBI continues to provide contradictory responses when questioned about its social media monitoring programs. Its Congressional testimony has kind of eluded direct questions about the FBI's incursions into First Amendment territory -- something the FBI is now using to explain why it wasn't more aware of the impending threat prior to January 6th.

Quinta Jurecic's post for Lawfare points out the FBI lack of awareness was somewhat stunning, given the vast amount of publicly available information circulating social media prior to the Capitol raid.

The only document the FBI produced warning about Jan. 6 was a single bulletin issued by the bureau’s Norfolk, Virginia, field office. This absence of warning is particularly striking given that a significant amount of the planning for the Jan. 6 riot took place in public on social media platforms like Facebook, Gab and Parler. Anyone with a Twitter account and an hour of time to kill could have warned about the potential for violence on Jan. 6—and many did.

FBI Director Chris Wray has been questioned about the FBI's lack of preparedness. And his responses haven't cleared much up. According to Wray, FBI guidelines forbid agents from camping out on social media and searching for evidence of potential criminal activity.

“We’re not allowed to ... just sit and monitor social media and look at one person’s posts … just in case,” Wray told the House Judiciary Committee recently.

But that's not strictly true. The agency's guidelines do not strictly forbid this activity. The FBI can monitor social media platforms. It just usually doesn't. Wray says guidelines prevent agents from "collecting First Amendment activities," but there's nothing in the rules that says the FBI can't monitor open-source information like public posts.

This has been Wray's line through several hearings this year. But the guidelines say something completely different.

[A]ssessments may be undertaken proactively with such objectives as detecting criminal activities; obtaining information on individuals, groups, or organizations of possible investigative interest, either because they may be involved in criminal or national security-threatening activities or because they may be targeted for attack or victimization by such activities; and identifying and assessing individuals who may have value as human sources. For example, assessment activities may involve proactively surfing the Internet to find publicly accessible websites and services through which recruitment by terrorist organizations and promotion of terrorist crimes is openly taking place…

So, perhaps the problem was the January 6th raid was carried out by the wrong kind of terrorists. The FBI is certainly proactive when it comes to monitoring the Muslim community "just in case." When it comes to white insurrectionists, the agency apparently just hangs back and lets things take their course until it becomes imperative for the FBI to get involved.

Wray, at best, is only partly right.

In other words, Wray is correct that the bureau needs an authorized purpose to review social media, and that First Amendment considerations are involved. But his testimony leaves out the fact that the DIOG specifically authorizes FBI employees to review social media posts potentially protected by the First Amendment under certain circumstances—circumstances that could well have been met in the case of the soon-to-be Capitol rioters. After all, wouldn’t Facebook posts announcing plans to invade a government building raise criminal or national security concerns under the FBI’s definition of “authorized purpose”?

It's not that we should be encouraging the FBI to engage in more proactive monitoring of social media -- something that's sure to raise some First Amendment issues. It's that the FBI has never been shy about focusing this attention on certain kinds of people while appearing to ignore others who haven't historically been considered a threat to national security by the agency.

Perhaps this take isn't accurate and the FBI takes a similar hands-off approach when keeping an eye on other potential threats involving less-white people. But given the FBI's long history of utilizing social media to radicalize local adherents of Islam into attempting to commit criminal acts, it hardly seems likely the FBI follows these guidelines (the ones that don't say what the FBI Director says they do) consistently. It has experienced this sort of colorblindness in the past. And the conclusion one can easily draw -- especially when the FBI hasn't offered up a better explanation for why it missed the warning signs for the January 6th attack -- is that the agency largely feels white people are nothing to worry about.

Filed Under: chris wray, fbi, insurrection, january 6th, public information, social media, social media monitoring

Facebook Is Banning Anyone Charged With Participating In Capitol Hill Insurrection

from the really? dept

Mark Gray spotted an interesting tidbit buried in a Washington Post story about online activism among Trumpist supporters. Most of the story is the usual stuff about how propagandists are finding each other and organizing movements online. There is some of the usual hand-wringing that is standard in these stories about how social media is "enabling" this kind of activity, though it also notes that users very quickly migrated to other welcoming sites (and, also, how they've figured out ways to sneak back onto the bigger platforms):

The mainstream tech companies‘ crackdown on Trump and his followers helped splinter that vast network, researchers have found, without fundamentally weakening it. Influencers kicked off Facebook or Instagram ported followers to the lightly-policed app Telegram or right-wing YouTube rival Rumble, but they’ve also found ways to get back on the mainstream platforms by creating new accounts or using alternate language to avoid detection.

But later, the article claims that Facebook has a policy to shut down any account of anyone charged in the January 6th insurrection:

Alan Hostetter, a former local police chief and yoga teacher as well as a speaker at the June rally attended by The Post, was indicted on a charge of his alleged role in the insurrection June 10. Shortly after, he went back on Facebook Live, YouTube, Spotify, Rumble and several other services, filming himself walking on the beach in San Clemente in a “Free Man" baseball cap. He decried the Jan. 6 riot as a “false flag staged event” and a “fakesurrection” because he believed infiltrators were in the crowd.

[....]

Within hours, his accounts were banned on Facebook and Instagram. Facebook says that it does not allow people charged in the insurrection on the platform and that it may fact-check claims that the riot was staged. Spotify and YouTube removed the videos a week later.

That part I've bolded is news to me -- and quite interesting. We've talked somewhat about how off-platform activities are increasingly coming under scrutiny by platforms in their content moderation/trust and safety efforts, but this is the first I've heard of any platform (let alone Facebook) having a blanket policy of refusing to allow those charged in the January 6th attack from using their platform.

At the very least, this does raise some questions. Since it's just based on charging, and not on conviction, what happens if the charges are dropped or the person is acquitted? That may be unlikely with many (if not all) of the January 6th folks, but it does raise some questions. And is the ban permanent? So far, the initial January 6th cases, against those who didn't seem to do that much once in the Capitol, have involved relatively mild sanctions. Will that also include a lifetime ban from Facebook? Should it?

Obviously, Facebook is free to moderate how it wants, and I think this will be interesting to follow over time. Will there be other situations in which being charged with a crime leads to your removal from Facebook? The Supreme Court weighed in on this issue in the Packingham case, that you can't have a law that requires the loss of internet service in response to a crime, but that only applies to laws. Facebook still has the freedom to refuse service to anyone it chooses.

At the very least, it will be interesting to watch how this kind of policy -- regarding off platform activities -- evolves on Facebook and other social networks.

Filed Under: banning, charges, content moderation, insurrection, january 6th
Companies: facebook

Disproving The Nonsense About The FBI & Jan. 6th Would Be Easier If The FBI Didn't Have A History Of Entrapping People In Made Up Plots

from the you-guys-made-this-worse dept

There's a very, very dumb conspiracy theory making the rounds -- and I want to be very clear on this -- that has zero evidence to support it, that the FBI was actually behind the January 6th invasion of the Capitol. It was originally reported by a wacky extremist news organization that I won't even bother naming here, and then got a lot more attention when Fox News made it a story via Tucker Carlson's show. The underlying confusion is that a (former Trump admin official who was let go after attending a conference with white nationalists but then later appointed to a new job within the Trump White House) reporter completely misunderstood what "unindicted co-conspirator" means in various charging documents.

What it generally means are people the government has not yet charged, and who they don't want to name so they don't tip them off (or where they don't yet know who they are, or don't have enough evidence to charge, or for a variety of other reasons). What it absolutely never means, is an undercover FBI agent or informant. Those people are not ever described as unindicted co-conspirator. But the reporter somehow got it into his head that this meant they were FBI agents, and then went to town with a conspiracy theory blaming the FBI for the insurrection, claiming that it was designed to "frame the entire MAGA movement."

As noted, this is false, and there is no evidence to support this. At all. It's a fiction of imagination from someone who has no idea what he's talking about, and of course Tucker Carlson ran with it, because that's what Tucker Carlson does.

But... here's the thing: it would be a hell of a lot easier to debunk this nonsense if the FBI (especially since 9/11) didn't have a depressingly long history of... setting up fake terrorist plots in order to entrap people to get big headlines around an arrest of someone who never had any means to actually carry out the attack. We've covered examples of these kinds of FBI activities for years. We've written about examples of this over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

No doubt, what the FBI does in those cases is disgusting and highly questionable. It often involves them searching out people who are either mentally troubled or really desperate, and then proposing they get involved in a completely fictional terrorist plot -- a plot that the individuals would have no possible chance of actually carrying out on their own. The undercover FBI agents (or the confidential informant working for the FBI) then proceed to do all the actual "planning" including buying any of the necessary materials and getting all the details in order. Then, after the planning has reached a certain point and the sucker is bought in on the plan, they're arrested, and the FBI claims it "stopped" a terrorist attack -- which usually gives the FBI lots of glowing press attention.

Of course, the reality is that there was no threat. There was no actual plot. There is never any ability to actually carry anything out. The weapons or bombs or whatever are all faked or never actually in existence. It's all a shadow play so the FBI can try to get some headlines and pretend they're doing something.

But that's clearly not what happened with January 6th. For one thing, the events of January 6th actually happened. The Capitol was actually invaded. Damage was actually done. If the FBI was planning it as per their usual homegrown plots, no actual attack would have happened. Also, if you look at the pattern of who the FBI has gone after with these plots... it's not really been the Trump supporting MAGA militia type.

Either way, though, people wouldn't have to be doing this big silly debunking of this kind of nonsense conspiracy theory if the FBI didn't actually have a track record of doing this kind of thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

So, you know, perhaps they should stop doing that.

Filed Under: conspiracy theory, doj, entrapment, fbi, january 6th, own plot, tucker carlson, undercover

DOJ Asks DC Court To Compel Decryption Of Device Seized In A Capitol Raid Case

from the be-careful-what-you-ask-for dept

The DOJ is testing some waters it may not want to be troubling, not with hundreds of prosecutions stemming from the January 6 Capitol raid on the docket. It has asked the DC court to compel a defendant to decrypt his laptop so the FBI can search it for evidence. (h/t Marcy Wheeler)

The government is seeking an All Writs Act order [PDF] forcing the alleged device owner to unlock the device using either his face or his passcode.

The government respectfully moves for an order compelling the defendant to produce a critical piece of evidence – his Microsoft Surface Pro laptop computer – in an unencrypted state. The government proposes a two-step process: First, the defendant should be ordered to place his face in front of the computer’s camera, so that the computer can be biometrically unlocked. Second, if the biometric attempt does not unlock the computer, the defendant should be ordered to type his passcode or PIN into the computer.

Having failed to obtain consent, the government is now hoping to achieve this by force. This isn't a particularly wise idea considering how many cases it's currently juggling in this circuit. If the court decides this violates the Fifth Amendment, it may negatively affect other prosecutions involving secured devices.

The government argues there's no Fifth Amendment issue here.

The requested relief would not violate the defendant’s Fourth or Fifth Amendment rights. With respect to the Fourth Amendment, there is only minimal intrusion on the defendant’s privacy, and there is probable cause that the defendant’s face can unlock the Subject Device (and lead to the recovery of relevant evidence). With respect to the Fifth Amendment, Reffitt’s entering his password into the Subject Device does not violate his privilege against self-incrimination, because his act of production would not be testimonial, since the only potentially testimonial component implicit in his act of producing the unlocked/unencrypted device is a foregone conclusion.

This will come down to what the court feels the phrase "foregone conclusion" actually means. While the act itself (either presenting biometrics or providing a passcode) isn't necessarily testimonial, it does give the government access to evidence that might be used against the person being compelled to grant access to this information. At least one court has found that entering passwords and providing evidence are basically the same thing, since the first naturally leads to the latter. The government has no interest in the password, even though that's what it is seeking to compel. It's interested in what having that password entered will provide.

If the only foregone conclusion the government needs to have in its possession is who owns the computer, obviously compelled decryption will help establish ownership. The government appears to know whose computer it is. The Surface Pro targeted by the proposed order displays the name of the defendant (Guy Reffitt) on the screen when opened. And, despite Reffitt (initially) telling investigators otherwise, one of Reffitt's family members confirmed it belonged to the defendant.

Having that much information on hand might be enough to compel decryption if the court decides the only foregone conclusion the government needs to reach is the most likely owner of the device it's seeking to unlock. But if the foregone conclusion bar is set higher -- a likely source of criminal evidence -- things will get much more difficult for the government.

The government is basing this request on the theory that recordings captured at the Capitol by the suspect's helmet-mounted camera were moved to the laptop for storage prior to their deletion from the camera. However, the government seized multiple devices from the defendant's home, including three phones, two other laptops, and one desktop computer. Most of those have been searched already and determined they don't hold any relevant data.

The government is assuming -- based on statements by family members who viewed recordings on that device -- that's where the recordings it is seeking are now located. But it won't know this until after it performs a search. And it can't perform a search until the device is unlocked. This assumption is credible, but the files could have been uploaded to the cloud and viewed on the device, which means the files the government concludes (in a foregone way) must reside on the laptop possibly aren't actually there.

If the court decides the government doesn't have more than a hunch at this point, it may deny this order. And it may decide to lay down some Fifth Amendment ground rules that eliminate compelled production as an option. This is a roll of the Constitutional dice the government may later regret -- a rerun of its failure to compel decryption assistance in the San Bernardino case. But if it goes the other way, it will become that much easier for the government to pursue prosecutions in a district that handles an outsized portion of the DOJ's cases.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, 5th amendment, all writs act, decryption, doj, encryption, facial recognition, january 6th, unlocking

DC Court Says Recordings Of Capitol Rioters Must Be Made Public, But Only On A Case-By-Case Basis

from the getting-prejudiced-by-your-own-livestream dept

Here's a small victory for the First Amendment and presumption of openness that's supposed to apply to court proceedings. A recent opinion [PDF] by the DC Circuit Court will give everyone more access to recordings covering the dozens of prosecutions of insurrectionist cosplayers who raided the Capitol on January 6th. The court comes down firmly on the side of openness and transparency, but has hung a rather large asterisk on that statement.

ProPublica is the entity that made the request for an administrative order, but it's the in-court figurehead for a group of fourteen journalistic concerns. The US Attorney's Office hasn't exactly been proactive when releasing recordings entered as evidence in the Capitol raid cases. It has even (temporarily) withheld recordings that were pulled from social media services and YouTube -- something that indicates these recordings were public before the government made them private.

While these recordings are viewable during court proceedings, limited access has prevented some journalists from accessing them. And once the proceedings are over, they're no longer viewable. The DC Circuit Court has made some permanently accessible but only on a case-by-case basis. Considering the volume of criminal cases being handled by the court -- combined with limited access prompted in part by the COVID pandemic -- this no longer appears to be acceptable.

In the pending petition, the group of fourteen media organizations express frustration with the case-by-case approach to providing media access to video exhibits, explaining that petitioning for the release of video exhibits in individual cases has led to delayed release of those exhibits, and objecting to the absence of a platform to provide broad and convenient public access to video exhibits in the numerous Capitol Cases in which such exhibits have been presented to the court but are not available to the public. Consequently, they seek a standing order directing the government to contemporaneously release copies of video exhibits admitted in pretrial proceedings in the Capitol Cases to a designated press representative, ProPublica, for further distribution to news organizations and to the public at large.

The government doesn't necessarily disagree. It would prefer to handle things its way -- giving press members access through a shared "drop box." Recordings would be placed there after being reviewed for any necessary redactions. But that would mean a 72-hour delay between their presentation in court and their accessibility by outsiders.

On the other side, the defendants' legal reps are arguing that releasing recordings during the pre-trial phase would potentially prejudice their clients, decreasing their chances of receiving a fair trial. This includes possibly tainting jury pools or giving the government the upper hand with edited footage that might mislead members of the public.

Given these three conflicting interests, the court decides the records are definitely public. But how public and how quickly can't necessarily be resolved with a broad order. It's not that anyone isn't aware of the January 6th Capitol raid or the arrests stemming from this. But there's still a small chance defendants might lose access to a fair trial if selectively edited recordings are released.

Certainly, the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, generally, and the Capitol Cases in particular, have already been the subject of extraordinary attention both nationally and even globally. Given this context, disclosure of video exhibits in individual Capitol Cases may not generate any more prejudicial attention than already attaches to this event. Nevertheless, disclosure of particularly egregious or inflammatory conduct associated with an individual defendant or a particular video clip that “does not contain the whole event but rather a deliberately chosen or edited clip to support a certain argument or narrative,” FPD Resp. at 3, may present sufficient unfair prejudice at this stage that the presiding judge may decide to delay or limit access in some way. Evaluation of such risks must be carried out on a case-by case basis.

For the first time in a long time, the government agrees with the press. It argues the risk of prejudice is so low as to be speculative and supports ProPublica's request for a blanket order affecting all recordings entered as evidence. Of course, this has nothing to do with supporting free speech protections and everything to do with getting as much damaging info about the Capitol raid suspects out there as possible, even if it means utilizing the Fourth Estate.

In the end, the press (and its new buddy, the government) wins. But only barely. And with a handful of stipulations.

For these reasons, petitioners’ request for issuance of a standing order to provide a streamlined means in this Court for making video exhibits in Capitol Cases accessible to the media will be granted but, in accordance with applicable law and rules, access to these video exhibits may be authorized after the presiding judge has the opportunity to consider the positions of the parties.

Yes, with a but. That's probably all we can expect at this point in the judicial process. But it's good to see the DC Circuit reiterate its belief in the presumption of openness. This is the circuit that hosts the highest percentage of sealed cases and dockets -- something that has earned it a lot of justified criticism over the years. Hopefully it will maintain its support of this presumption when it's the government arguing that filings and evidence should be withheld from the public.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, insurrection, january 6th, journalism, transparency