When the FBI Seizes Your Messages from Big Tech, You May Not Know for Years (msn.com) 91
When America's law enforcement investigators serve tech companies with subpoenas or search warrants,"the target of the investigation has no idea their data is being seized," the Washington Post pointed out this weekend.
It's becoming surprisingly common in the U.S. "And if investigators obtain a gag order, the records must be handed over without the person's knowledge or consent — depriving the person of an opportunity to challenge the seizure in court." Every year, Facebook, Google and other technology companies receive hundreds of thousands of orders from law enforcement agencies seeking data people stash online: private messages, photos, search histories, calendar items — a potentially rich trove for criminal investigators. Often, those requests are accompanied by secrecy orders, also known as nondisclosure or gag orders, that require the tech companies to keep their customers in the dark, potentially for years...
In the last six months of 2020, Facebook received 61,262 government requests for user data in the United States, said spokesman Andy Stone. Most — 69 percent — came with secrecy orders. Meanwhile, Microsoft has received between 2,400 and 3,500 secrecy orders from federal law enforcement each year since 2016 — or seven to 10 per day — according to congressional testimony by vice president of customer security and trust Tom Burt. Google and Apple declined to disclose the number of gag orders they've received. But in the first half of 2020, Google said U.S. law enforcement made 39,536 requests for information about 84,662 accounts — with many of the requests targeting multiple accounts. Apple said it received 11,363 requests...
Under the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, federal prosecutors are required to seek digital information from tech companies, not their customers. Since then, prosecutors have routinely used gag orders to prevent the companies from spilling the beans to suspects who might destroy evidence, go into hiding or threaten someone's life. But the practice has mushroomed over the past two decades, part of a broader surveillance ramp-up following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, lawyers said. As the orders have proliferated, privacy advocates and the tech companies themselves have become increasingly concerned. Some tech company officials have accused prosecutors of reflexively requesting gag orders for routine investigations, regardless of whether the cases actually require such secrecy. And an array of company officials and legal experts argue that the practice robs tech company customers of their constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure.
"Across all the rest of society, it's understood that government doesn't get to take your stuff, doesn't get to come in and into your house, doesn't get to break into your file folders or your lock box at the bank without a warrant. And you get to know about that warrant and you get to exercise your legal rights," Microsoft's Burt said in an interview. "Someone cannot exercise their Fourth Amendment rights when their data has been taken in secret."
U.S. lawmakers are considering changes, the article points out. One idea? Require tech companies "to preserve digital files that are the subject of court orders and permit customers to challenge the orders in court before the information is turned over to prosecutors."
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon points out that's how wiretaps currently work — and is also drafting a measure that would finally require federal courts to publish statistics on the number of surveillance and secrecy orders they've issued.
It's becoming surprisingly common in the U.S. "And if investigators obtain a gag order, the records must be handed over without the person's knowledge or consent — depriving the person of an opportunity to challenge the seizure in court." Every year, Facebook, Google and other technology companies receive hundreds of thousands of orders from law enforcement agencies seeking data people stash online: private messages, photos, search histories, calendar items — a potentially rich trove for criminal investigators. Often, those requests are accompanied by secrecy orders, also known as nondisclosure or gag orders, that require the tech companies to keep their customers in the dark, potentially for years...
In the last six months of 2020, Facebook received 61,262 government requests for user data in the United States, said spokesman Andy Stone. Most — 69 percent — came with secrecy orders. Meanwhile, Microsoft has received between 2,400 and 3,500 secrecy orders from federal law enforcement each year since 2016 — or seven to 10 per day — according to congressional testimony by vice president of customer security and trust Tom Burt. Google and Apple declined to disclose the number of gag orders they've received. But in the first half of 2020, Google said U.S. law enforcement made 39,536 requests for information about 84,662 accounts — with many of the requests targeting multiple accounts. Apple said it received 11,363 requests...
Under the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, federal prosecutors are required to seek digital information from tech companies, not their customers. Since then, prosecutors have routinely used gag orders to prevent the companies from spilling the beans to suspects who might destroy evidence, go into hiding or threaten someone's life. But the practice has mushroomed over the past two decades, part of a broader surveillance ramp-up following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, lawyers said. As the orders have proliferated, privacy advocates and the tech companies themselves have become increasingly concerned. Some tech company officials have accused prosecutors of reflexively requesting gag orders for routine investigations, regardless of whether the cases actually require such secrecy. And an array of company officials and legal experts argue that the practice robs tech company customers of their constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure.
"Across all the rest of society, it's understood that government doesn't get to take your stuff, doesn't get to come in and into your house, doesn't get to break into your file folders or your lock box at the bank without a warrant. And you get to know about that warrant and you get to exercise your legal rights," Microsoft's Burt said in an interview. "Someone cannot exercise their Fourth Amendment rights when their data has been taken in secret."
U.S. lawmakers are considering changes, the article points out. One idea? Require tech companies "to preserve digital files that are the subject of court orders and permit customers to challenge the orders in court before the information is turned over to prosecutors."
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon points out that's how wiretaps currently work — and is also drafting a measure that would finally require federal courts to publish statistics on the number of surveillance and secrecy orders they've issued.
That's ok. I've always suspected it for years... (Score:2)
There's no use thinking about it. They have everything. And we are not going to stop them any time soon
Re:That's ok. I've always suspected it for years.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Under the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, federal prosecutors are required to seek digital information from tech companies, not their customers.
This seems like should be almost exactly reversed. Digital information from tech companies should be completely off-limits to the various governments, and they should be forced to get it from the customer. Every time.
Then you end up with UK laws (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:That's ok. I've always suspected it for years.. (Score:4, Interesting)
So are votes.
Are they? Seems to me the entire story of the 20th and 21st centuries so far has been the dramatic expansion of both government surveillance, police, and asset seizure prior to conviction powers right along the side the expansion of voting rights/access.
I think its long past time to question the assumption that small (d) democracy is a good model of protecting individual liberty and private property. Tyranny of the mob is still tyranny. Voters keep electing the very same legislators who put these laws into effect and they very same people to vote to renew those same authorizations over and over again. They vote for the same people who refuse to even question seriously what the NSA/FBI etc are up too despite the nearly unending stream of abuses that come to light etc.
I don't think its at all clear that 20th C social experiments like directly electing senators and dropping of franchise tests has has served the goals of preserving individual liberties, or property rights.
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the only problem is recovery becomes more of a pain... file the FOIA request, get the 5 reams of printed out binary, type it back in...
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"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw
Your comment is reasonable. If we all agreed with it our species would be doomed.
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If we all agreed with it our species would be doomed.
The day is young
How is that a surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's been well known for decades, even before the internet was a thing, that anything you send online is as good as public (and yes kids, you could be online before the internet).
It's also been known for decades that the USA isn't exactly a safe place for your data, and that when giant big data companies or advertisers didn't monetize your data, or well-meaning agencies didn't accidentally lose to hackers, nefarious three-letter ones grabbed it on very thin constitutional grounds.
So what's new there?
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This has been the case since... forever. If it is sent via mail, one should assume that it can wind up anywhere, be it a LEO, a hostile ex, insurance company, etc. One should also assume this applies in every country in the globe, because one never knows who might have access to a mailbox, and the parties that they sell the contents.
I personally don't care about LEOs, but $DEITY knows who else has access to this info, be it criminals with local gang connections or whatnot, so it isn't unwise to consider e
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What's "new" here is that it gets some new media attention. I guess we should be grateful for that. Many people out there don't know this or are too ignorant. The more often they're confronted with potential horror stories, the more chance we have that someone will start to ask the right questions at the right time and at the right place.
Also, it remains people of the fact that anything you store "in the cloud" isn't really yours and the government or anybody who's affiliated with them has pretty easy acces
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What's "new" here is that it gets some new media attention.
That is not new, stories like this come out occasionally, the trouble is that most people forget which is why they are thought "new". What this does show is that most people do not seem to care, again this is not new.
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There are a few Guantanamo inmates who would argue that this really isn't new.
Re:How is that a surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's new is not being able to know the charges against you is one of the reasons we rebelled against the tyrannous British Empire.
That's why you were told you should rebel. The actual reason you rebelled was that your leaders wanted the tax to go to them instead of George III.
The people in charge are always the people in charge.
Re: How is that a surprise? (Score:3)
Best comment of the century, likely missed by the vast majority of casual readers, trolls and philosophers. Money and power flock together.
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The sad truth. The whole American mythos has been developed to keep the rich and powerful on top by selling a dream.
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"Said online" is not the same as them having full access to your search history, maybe even your browser history. Also your private emails, documents (many people use online word processors and spreadsheets now), photos (backed up to the cloud) and more.
It's important that people are notified when this data is accessed, and given a chance to challenge it.
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"Said online" is not the same as them having full access to your search history, maybe even your browser history.
It is though. if you sent "https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=rock%20and%20roll%20music", that's equivalent to shouting "Google, give me Rock And Roll Music!"
If you don't trust google (and every middle man between you and google) not to repeat the thing you said to them, then you need to go to a lot of effort to anonymize your internet activities, and probably avoid using services like google search.
If they get an order for a wiretap (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't get a warning.
I'm not too sure how this might be different.
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Well, yes and know. It's like they asked for your call records... No, they don't get the content of the calls, but they know who called you and who you called.
For all legal purposes "scooping up your old info" and getting a wiretap with call records IS the same.
No warrant needed for the last 6 months of mail (Score:3)
Applications such as QNAP's Boxafe [qnap.com] can archive mail from Gmail and MS Office accounts, so it makes little sense to me anyway, to keep mail at-rest (just to be searchable, etc.) on cloud servers for more than a few days. Using Boxafe is pretty much like using gmail internally. My 5 year old TS-563 [tomshardware.com] still runs like a clock and gets all the updates btw. (It also manages virtual server disks over iSCSI).
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How do they plan to access my server holding my mails? That would certainly be a trick I'd like to know, because that means that there's a security problem with my server farm.
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Read everything going to your server, read everything coming from your server? Not like what's on your server is terribly useful unless someone (yourself, the sender, the recipient) can read it.
Or is your server only for storing messages from you to yourself?
Or perhaps your server is not connected to the internet? Which would mean anyone using it has to go to your house and sit in your chair to do it?
Thought not.
That said, the Feds have had this c
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Most of my email correspondence is encrypted now. Except spam and the like, which is ok if anyone wants to read it, at least then it is not totally pointless to send that junk mail to me, because I don't read it.
So if they can intercept an encrypted message and decrypt it, ok. Otherwise it could be nontrivial to actually read it.
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One thing I do is use Thunderbird's archive function, and have a local IMAP box. It can be a PITA to get it set up at first, but once IMAPS is up and running, you can scoot all your read mail with a button click to that IMAP server for long term storage, and get it off the main email servers. It doesn't take much -- I personally use a Raspberry Pi 4 with all the stuff stored on an external SSD, and synced offsite using rclone, as this isn't a super heavyweight task, although if you do use Maildir for a fo
The FBI has been corrupted. (Score:1, Interesting)
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As Richilieu said, "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
We're there again. Even if you can't hang someone for something they said, with our sensitivities so easily shaken, anything anyone ever said, even in private, even joking, can cause an outrage and make you a pariah in the court of public opinion.
There's plenty of blackmail material there. About you, about me, about every single person.
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Let me guess, you think January 6th was a bunch of tourists?
Re:The FBI has been corrupted. (Score:4, Informative)
Bullshit. You're just making excuses. There is documented evidence people such as the terrorists in Proud Boys had inside knowledge of the layout of the House and Senate. So much so that they bypassed the well known offices of some specific elected officials and instead found the second, hidden office no normal outsider would even know existed. Others were specificaly looking for Mike Pence to hang him [news.com.au] as well as run over Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. These are documented not only by eyewitnesses, but by video and audio captured inside the capital on the cell phones of the terrorists themselves.
Than there is the fact that the media and big tech deliberately buried the Hunter Biden laptop
But HILLARY! But HUNTER! Jesus Christ. You people are the biggest whiners on the planet. When you're called out for your crimes the first thing you do is lie about someone else and use whataboutism. There is no "fact" of a story being buried because there is no story. None. Here's why [nbcnews.com]. Note that even the Fox tabloid didn't touch the story because there was nothing to find.
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This picture never stops making me giggle. https://img.ifunny.co/images/6... [ifunny.co]
See Andrew Clyde there at the bottom? He looks like he's shitting himself when the "tourists" came knocking that day.
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Yes, most of them were tourists. Those who weren't caused the trouble.
I already knew... (Score:4, Informative)
I'll at least know if they intercept my porn stash (Score:2, Funny)
All I have to do is watch the availability of bleach.
We have a file on you (Score:2)
It's become very standard to amass copious amounts of data on everyone the systems can hold the data for. It leaves people very vulnerable to accusations or misdeeds which may be insinuated, but are far too long ago to collect information to disprove. And the information turned over by prosecutors or defendants is only the information which the prosecutors judge to be relevant to the case. And there is only a legal assurance that the data will not be used for political or personal whims of the ruling party
How is this different to a wiretap? (Score:2)
Law enforcement has been able to get a warrant to record people's phone lines (both who they call and what they say) for decades now. And they don't have to tell any of the people they are monitoring that they are being monitored.
Why should it be different just because the same communications are being sent as digital 1s and 0s (be they video, voice, text or otherwise) instead of old-fashioned analog voice?
I have a problem with the way law enforcement and intelligence agencies are allowed to do wholesale an
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Why should it be different just because the same communications are being sent as digital 1s and 0s (be they video, voice, text or otherwise) instead of old-fashioned analog voice?
The specific difference is between being able to record the phone calls you have ongoing now - the communication you are making with other people and being able to view the emails and other communication you sent months ago. This "communication" will also include things like documents you wrote and is much more private. Included in communication are things that you send to Google, Apple or Microsoft. Ever done a roleplaying session as terrorist and written a plan for attacking a nuclear power plant? That
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In my country the person whose phone has been wiretapped gets to know about it after the wiretapping is over. Of course they don't get to know about it when they are monitored, as it defeats the purpose. Not all people agree on whether it's acceptable at all, but that's not the argument here. When you're actively monitoring someone's calls, mail, text messages or emails, social media and messengers you obviously don't want the "monitoree" to know about being monitored. However once you're done, the person s
The problem is a lack of oversight (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not going to be popular, but wiretapping is a powerful tool to fight crime. Quite frankly, if you first have to tell someone that you're going to listen to his conversation, the whole tool becomes pointless.
But as anything that has a great potential of power, it entails a great responsibility to use it sparingly, carefully and only where appropriate. This is the part that is missing. It used to be rather cumbersome to employ this tool. It took a lot of effort and it was expensive to use. So when it was used, it was used with good reason and because you pretty much knew already that someone is a crook and you needed enough evidence to catch him.
Today, though, the amount of effort to do it is trivial. It's basically "throw out the net and let's see who gets caught". And if we don't catch anyone, hey, maybe we at least get to see, read or hear a few good, juicy stories. And this is the part that is problematic.
What is needed, and what some countries already apply, is a form of oversight that not only checks but approves this kind of action. And I don't mean a rubber stamp comitee to provide some lazy bums with cushy jobs. I mean real oversight, an independent body that can and does question surveillance and that can enact consequences.
Surveillance is the last tool you use to create an airtight case. Not the first tool to find a case.
More Than That (Score:5, Insightful)
Let’s take IMSI capture devices - the so-called stingray towers used to intercept mobile phone calls - as an example. Just for a moment let’s ignore the fact that the network protocols used by mobile phones do not provide for end-to-end encryption, when it would have been so easy to do that. Look at the way that the stingray devices are designed to work.
If you are a federal law enforcement agent, tasked with investigating a crime and given a warrant to intercept and monitor communications to a specific mobile handset, you get permission to deploy a stingray device. So today, you retrieve your stingray tech, or the van in which it is integrated, and commence your stake-out. Any and all mobile phones within range of your base station will now be “snooped” as the device itself is designed to act as a widespread dragnet.
But surely the stingray could have been designed such that when you switch it on [as the lawfully appointed operator] you are required to enter the cell number of the device or devices that you are attempting to intercept, such that your stingray device only intercepts the target[s] of your search.
The key point here being that even when law enforcement has the ability to thoughtfully employ new technology to protect the privacy of the innocent, they have chosen to ignore that option and instead deploy solutions with the maximum possible amount of over-reach.
Note that I am not suggesting that use of stingray should be outlawed: I am sure that it is a useful tool for law enforcement. But I do believe that the tools and methods by which law enforcement work need much more scrutiny and much more oversight.
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That it's by design is a given. But mostly because we let those that benefit from total surveillance design it.
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Just for a moment let’s ignore the fact that the network protocols used by mobile phones do not provide for end-to-end encryption, when it would have been so easy to do that.
I don't think it would have been easy. End-to-end encryption on connections managed by an intermediate third party is actually quite hard to make secure. How do you negotiate the encryption keys between two mutually-unknown parties? The obvious solution -- have the intermediate facilitate the exchange of public keys -- isn't secure because the intermediate is who we're trying to protect against, and it could trivially MITM the connection.
The solution we use on the web (TLS) relies on a set of trusted thi
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My employer uses TLS interceptors combined with our white-listing proxy servers, with the expressed purpose of s
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We're not talking about abolishing rights. Wiretapping has its place in crime fighting. I guess you won't demand that the police abandons their guns because they have been used to kill innocents, too, so it's better to disarm the police and make them toothless against actually armed criminals...
In my country, policemen are armed. And they have to write lengthy reports about every single bullet they fired and they have to justify each and every single one of them. Between 2012 and 2018, 36 times people were
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>
In my country, policemen are armed. And they have to write lengthy reports about every single bullet they fired and they have to justify each and every single one of them. Between 2012 and 2018, 36 times people were shot at by the police, 6 of them fatally. In other words, one person killed by police per year.
The average US town has that in what? Less than a day?
Where did your perception of average American life as filled with violence and daily shootouts come from? Your guess is nowhere close to accurate.
There are ~350 million people in the USA. There are thousands of "average US towns" (20,000-40,000 people) scattered across an entire continent. If thousands of people were being shot by police 365 times a year, we would have wiped out a noticeable percentage of the population of those average towns by now. The houses would be empty and the orphanages would be ful
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I'm a little surprised that wiretaps are effective these days, when everyone knows that everything is being recorded and added to an NSA database. If I need to say anything I might not want some spook or cop to hear I make sure I encrypt it and use secure apps, or just do it offline.
Apparently though most criminals are not that smart.
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Criminals are people. There are smart ones, there are stupid ones. Guess which ones you can catch easily and are thus paraded out as the great success of whatever surveillance technology gets pushed.
The problem is that all you really do that way is to get a false sense of security. Because what you get are the ones that copy what the smart ones do, just poorly. You don't catch the well organized criminals who have access to sophisticated technology and/or people who work for them to thwart such efforts. Wha
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There was some discussion after the Snowden leaks of the security services drowning in data. That seems to have been borne out over the years, we keep seeing terror attacks where the criminal was known but not given enough attention, or in the days afterwards old posts come to light that should have flagged them up.
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You're not saying that conservatives... misled Ame
That's supposed to be the law (Score:2)
Require tech companies "to preserve digital files that are the subject of court orders and permit customers to challenge the orders in court before the information is turned over to prosecutors."
One might have thought that's how the law was supposed to work. Because "on a computer" shouldn't change your basic rights.
Of course, the US has long since joined the ranks of countries with secret courts and secret court order. You've got to keep the peons in their place, after all.
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Require tech companies "to preserve digital files that are the subject of court orders and permit customers to challenge the orders in court before the information is turned over to prosecutors."
One might have thought that's how the law was supposed to work. Because "on a computer" shouldn't change your basic rights.
If you want to have basic rights on a computer, keep it away from public places/venues.
Expecting the intertoobz to be private is like expecting privacy on a stage, or in a newspaper. You might not like that, but actual privacy takes more effort than sending an email or posting on sketchy websites.
Securing a computer has several escalating steps, and if you are really concerned that someone might see something you don't want them to see, you should take steps that will work to secure whatever that i
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You're right: using Internet services is fundamentally not secure. *However*. Lots of your daily activities are not fundamentally secure. You're talking to your friend on the street. Sure, someone could overhear you - that's obvious. But having the police put a wire on you and record all of your conversations? That's supposed to take a court order, for which the police are supposed to present substantial evidence that this is necessary. This due process is an essential part of the justice system.
So, sure,
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You're right: using Internet services is fundamentally not secure. *However*. Lots of your daily activities are not fundamentally secure. You're talking to your friend on the street. Sure, someone could overhear you - that's obvious. But having the police put a wire on you and record all of your conversations? That's supposed to take a court order, for which the police are supposed to present substantial evidence that this is necessary. This due process is an essential part of the justice system.
So, sure, any individual email you send could be read by whoever. However, the feds telling Gmail "give us all the emails" (or all the search requests, or whatever) is a completely different prospect. Something for which due process should (must!) be required. Otherwise, you just as well delete the justice system and move straight to a police state, where the government can do whatever it pleases.
I should know better than to get into these arguments. Apparently everything leads to a police state.
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So... that makes it... ok?
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So... that makes it... ok?
It makes it what it is. I can't run around naked down the street. So I don't.
I believe the human body is beautiful, and don't have a personal issue with nudity, but knowing that society frowns on public display of wangers, bobs, and vagene, most people understand that. and don't. Unfortunately (or fortunately) people committing crimes or just doing stupid things like sending dick pics or the feminine version of genitals, seem to think that it is, then take a fit when they find out it isn't.
And certain
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If you think of Internet just as any other place, places are kind of public from the public, but then people build walls around things and create private spaces and secure places for our "stuff". They can always be compromised. So how is it any different in the interwebz? Well, it kinda isn't.
Of course you're right about these things - you can't connect to cellular network without giving away your position. But we have ways to circumvent these problems, you're phone's location can be tracked, but the phone
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And yet, if I'm in, say California, and get a phone call from home in PA, the system knows where I am, because I get the call. If I want to be invisible to the system yet still retain a phone, I have a steel case I put the phone in after turning it off - make sure you turn it off or it will drain the battery, because ET like to phone home, and the thing increases to maximum power in the attempt.
I have the case more based on my previous work, and the desire to be left TF alone at times.
and you can anonymize your internet connection and prevent your position being tracked online. It's all similar to things we build IRL to create privacy and security. Of course one needs to have knowledge, and preventing your location being known is not realistic option for most people, but it's not so much because of internet itself being a public place.
You aren't kidding
Duh (Score:2)
You know what else?
When the FBI seizes your message from small tech or from the UPS store you may not know for years! If ever!
You know what else? The people they seized it from knew before it was even seized, and could have fought them in court if they didn't have the right paperwork.
Old news (Score:2)
Everybody that has followed this has known for decades that they will have all mail, legally or illegally. These people cannot control their urge to do surveillance on everybody because they are deeply afraid of people talking to each other. Just like all totalitarians ever. Be wary who you put in power. Although basically _every_ population on this planet has screwed up in this regard for the last few decades, the snooping scum is part of practically every government on this planet.
If you do not want them
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Everybody that has followed this has known for decades that they will have all mail, legally or illegally.
Or they should have. Some times I think these articles are more a reminder to people than to get them outraged about muh freedumz.
There are public venues, there are private venues, and there are a mixture of the two. The internet has never been private, and it never will be. If we are using it for anything illegal or embarrassing, we need to expect to get caught or embarrassed.
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You're being a useful idiot for the NSA etc. They would like people to *think* all encryption is broken so they won't even bother to use it.
There have been attempts by the NSA to weaken certain encryption algorithms, in maybe one case with temporary success; that does not mean they can crack all or most encryption. There are a lot of very smart and independent people across the world trying to find weaknesses in encryption algorithms and publishing the results freely. AES in particular has been and is being
why would they know ? (Score:2)
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I can't speak for all cases, but usually if they ask your phone company to get a list of person you called (i am not even speaking about hearing call - just a list of call number), the phone company does not tell you - it is solved legally between law enforcement and the phone company. So why would you be told in this case?
Because you should be told in that case as well. In my country you are told when you're not under surveillance any more.
Well, actually... some exceptions may apply. (Score:1)
When the supposedly secret FBI investigation gets ever so predictably leaked to organized crime through the shady contractors they use to do their dirty work, you find out even if they don't.
Intertoobz 101 (Score:2)
People not knowing for years? They should have known from the first time they decided to get onto the internet.
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Can anyone confirm or debunk this claim? That sounds insane.
FBI agents are not rocket scientists (Score:1)
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Intelligent people can see they coming from miles away.
Don't bet on it. While FBI agents may not be rocket scientists, they can hire rocket scientist-type people. They can also enlist the help of companies like google and microsoft. They've been known to hire hackers to break into people's machines.
I'd make a joke about them needing to keep their porn collection current. However, I'm sure it's more complete than anything we would have.
$5 Wrench (Score:2)
If they have to intimidate you with a $5 wrench to crack your encryption scheme, you'll know.
(So remember that, the next time some fuckwit posts the $5 wrench xkcd comic as though it were a thoughtful reply in an encryption thread.)
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Thanks three letter agencies (Score:2)
Also need a time limit (Score:2)
All gag orders - whether for criminal warrants or national secrets, should come with a time limit. After that time limit, the government should be allowed to request an extension, but they must prove it has some use.
That is, if they take your emails and get a gag order, they should have for example 2 years to make a case against you. After that, the courts should automatically contact you and inform you of the privacy invasion unless the cops come and say "we only need another 2 months before we begin tr
Re: (Score:1)
This is basically correct (Score:2)
Look, so long as any of the people in a warranted search are still in an active investigation or are agents, we still won't release it.
It could be 50 years, and until grandma the code breaker passes away, we're not going to admit she was a code breaker or that we investigated you as a mole for the Russians, even though you actually worked for China.
It is not *your* data (Score:2)
It is not your data, and it is not you who they are serving the warrant. From the twisted mind of the legal system, even if the data was in a far away place for an account in Dublin, Ireland, a US company has to hand over them when requested: https://www.computerweekly.com... [computerweekly.com]
In order to "fix" this, Microsoft decided to disown all EU datacenters.
What a crazy time...