CNet: FBI wants records kept of Web sites visited

[Stugein]

So in your opinion, if people carry a cell phone, then it's OK for the government to track their movements, 24x7, going back for as long as they've owned a cell phone? Any person who doesn't run his life using cash only has consented to the government knowing how much toothpaste he buys? Don't want the government to know how much electricity you use, don't use electricity?

Most employers keep track of when their employees show up for work. Does every citizen who has a job authorize the government to maintain a database showing down to the minute exactly what time he showed up at what place?

Are citizens rights to privacy limited only by those things which technology does not yet exist?

If you are asking if I have a problem with people being actively tracked with no evidence of wrong-doing then yeah. Thats not acceptable. What I am OK with is records being kept should the need arise in the future. I guess where we differ is that you assume malice where I'm assuming security. Your concerned with Big Brother watching everyone and knowing every time someone takes a leak. I'm concerned with making sure that the data is both available for the real Good Guys, and secured against misuse.

If a person subscribes to some tracking service on their phone or something and logs of that data already exist somewhere, I don't have a problem with the holder of those logs being asked not to destroy them for a reasonable amount of time. In my mind no privacy has been breached until that data is accessed in an inappropriate manner.

The reason for the time limit is that the time limit limits the type of things that can be done with the information.

Keeping data for something like 24 hours allows the cops to check out things like "The bank was robbed at 9:17 AM. In the getaway vehicle went north, then it should have passed this checkpoint between 9:20 and 9:25."

Demanding that the data be kept for two years indicates that the government's intention to answer questions like "I suspect that this person is a criminal. I wonder if he's committed any other crimes, in the last few years". Or "Get me the names of every person that this guy has spoken to for the last few years, and check them out, too".

A camera with a 48 hour tape in it permits the investigation of a crime which you're investigating.

The only reason for demanding records going back for years, is to support fishing expeditions, looking for crimes that you don't even know were committed.

I snipped out the middle section of your post as I honestly don't know enough about regulations governing corporate acquisition and use of customer data to comment intelligently. On your last point though; no offense but you are absolutely wrong. Not every crime is an "action happens -> police are called -> investigation happens -> case closed" kind of thing. I've seen too many case where a person of interest, a new evidence thread, leads, etc. don't present themselves for months or years. Organized crime investigations, major drug trafficking operations, and yes illegal child pornography rings often have situations where things like accomplices, buyers, client lists, etc. aren't discovered for many months or more into the investigation and case building. Absolutely there are legitimate reasons to request a record that is 2 years old. Not just for "fishing expeditions".

Data being available doesn't automatically indicate an intention of misuse. Yeah, it happens and it sucks. I hope that everyone involved with such breaches of privacy are punished as harshly as is allowed by law. But assuming the data can be secured against abuse by both the authorities and the record holders themselves, I have no problem with the data being stored so it can be available for lawful purposes. I've seen too many lives saved by the justified use of stored data to think that the information being available is, at the core, a bad thing. I'd rather have the data available and need to overcome the challenge of securing it against abuse, than to not have it at all and be unable to help the police who need it for legitimate, live-saving purposes.

[HighOnHendrix]

or unless a girl flashes her breasts at the camera.......which happened at a job of mine

That's a coincidence, sounds just like the internet to me!

[techboy]

I don't think so.. it's been a long time since high school civics, but I believe they are under the judicial branch alone

~Bang

No, they are a part of the Department of Justice, which is part of the Executive Branch. They help enforce the laws. The president is their ultimate boss.

[Fergasun]

So here's a question.

Let's say someone became active in some political activist movement... depending on your stripes we can say "Suppose there was some strong leader who gave ACORN political strength..." or "Suppose there was some strong leader who gave the tea-party political strength...".

As a result of his prominence, the FBI or whomever makes some trumped up claims, and gets a warrant to look at his ISP data going 2 or 5 years back. And they find some minor illegal infraction, something like copyright infringement, or something similar... like buying a mod-chip for his Xbox (illegal as in "speeding" versus illegal as in "murder"). So they take the guy down, for a valid legal issue but based on a spurious political willpower.

Would everyone be cool with this?

[Stugein]

So here's a question.

Let's say someone became active in some political activist movement... depending on your stripes we can say "Suppose there was some strong leader who gave ACORN political strength..." or "Suppose there was some strong leader who gave the tea-party political strength...".

As a result of his prominence, the FBI or whomever makes some trumped up claims, and gets a warrant to look at his ISP data going 2 or 5 years back. And they find some minor illegal infraction, something like copyright infringement, or something similar... like buying a mod-chip for his Xbox (illegal as in "speeding" versus illegal as in "murder"). So they take the guy down, for a valid legal issue but based on a spurious political willpower.

Would everyone be cool with this?

I wouldn't be cool with that. Making up false charges to get a warrant is reprehensible. The hypothetical that you are talking about though would require the corruption of several agents working on concert, getting buy-off from their field office directors, and getting those parties to work together to convince a court judge that their claim is both tenable and robust enough to meet the requirements to get a warrant. If you are dealing with that depth of abuse, the fact that the data exists at the ISP to be subpoenaed is the least of your worry.

I still wouldn't want that data to not be available for legitimate purposes though. The opposing case hypothetical; say a man is arrested for possession of child pornography. A search of his home and forensics on his computers reveal that a year ago he coordinated online to purchase a recently made video of a young child being abused. They have an IP address and a date. Shouldn't law enforcement be able to subpoena the ISP for the information belonging to the party that produced and sold that video? Should the kid be left in that environment because the records are thrown away after a day or two since we're more worried about potential abuse than potential good?

The data needs to be secure. It needs to be controlled strictly and protected from abuse by both law enforcement and the companies who store it. But it should still be available.

[Larry]

I wouldn't be cool with that. Making up false charges to get a warrant is reprehensible. The hypothetical that you are talking about though would require the corruption of several agents working on concert, getting buy-off from their field office directors, and getting those parties to work together to convince a court judge that their claim is both tenable and robust enough to meet the requirements to get a warrant. If you are dealing with that depth of abuse, the fact that the data exists at the ISP to be subpoenaed is the least of your worry.

Absolutely untrue.

If the data doesn't exist, then a crooked or abusive government cannot possibly obtain it.

I've indicated to you multiple, recent, publicly known cases of the government using unconstitutional means to obtain information which they had no right to obtain, from private entities who collected it. (And I will point out to you that not one of these well known abuses resulted in any punishment whatsoever for any of the parties involved. In fact, in the case of the Telco records, Congress specifically wrote and passed legislation rendering them immune from punishment for the federal laws which they broke when they handed over the information.)

(I'll also point out to you that when these abuses became public knowledge, the public itself did not cry out for punishment, either. There wasn't even any political punishment. Most of the posters on here endorsed it.)

I guarantee you that you cannot give me a single instance in which the government obtained information which did not exist.

Counting on the government to not obtain this information unless they have a good reason is like trusting the same condom you were using when you got your girlfriend pregnant the last three times. Destroying the information is like trusting abstinence. It's guaranteed 100% effective.

[DjTj]

They keep it for a while, and they keep it for their own purposes.

A bit different when the federal government is mandating that they keep it for years, just in case the government decides that they want it.

Actually, the phone companies keep the data for 18 months following FCC Regulations.

47 C.F.R. § 42.6 Retention of telephone toll records.

Each carrier that offers or bills toll telephone service shall retain for a period of 18 months such records as are necessary to provide the following billing information about telephone toll calls: the name, address, and telephone number of the caller, telephone number called, date, time and length of the call. Each carrier shall retain this information for toll calls that it bills whether it is billing its own toll service customers for toll calls or billing customers for another carrier.

(51 FR 39536, Oct. 29, 1986)

http://law.justia.com/us/cfr/title47/47-3.0.1.1.1.html#47:3.0.1.1.1.0.2.7

I can understand arguments about the amount of data to keep, the length of time it should be kept, and the security of the information, but I really don't think it is so different from what the government has been doing since at least the 80's regarding phone records.

[Stugein]

I wouldn't be cool with that. Making up false charges to get a warrant is reprehensible. The hypothetical that you are talking about though would require the corruption of several agents working on concert, getting buy-off from their field office directors, and getting those parties to work together to convince a court judge that their claim is both tenable and robust enough to meet the requirements to get a warrant. If you are dealing with that depth of abuse, the fact that the data exists at the ISP to be subpoenaed is the least of your worry.

Absolutely untrue.

If the data doesn't exist, then a crooked or abusive government cannot possibly obtain it.

I've indicated to you multiple, recent, publicly known cases of the government using unconstitutional means to obtain information which they had no right to obtain, from private entities who collected it. (And I will point out to you that not one of these well known abuses resulted in any punishment whatsoever for any of the parties involved. In fact, in the case of the Telco records, Congress specifically wrote and passed legislation rendering them immune from punishment for the federal laws which they broke when they handed over the information.)

(I'll also point out to you that when these abuses became public knowledge, the public itself did not cry out for punishment, either. There wasn't even any political punishment. Most of the posters on here endorsed it.)

I guarantee you that you cannot give me a single instance in which the government obtained information which did not exist.

Counting on the government to not obtain this information unless they have a good reason is like trusting the same condom you were using when you got your girlfriend pregnant the last three times. Destroying the information is like trusting abstinence. It's guaranteed 100% effective.

Ok, I'm confused now..I think we've had a misunderstanding. Of course nobody can access data that doesn't exist.. I'm not sure where you got that. What I meant to get across with that post with regards to the hypothetical that was presented was:

- You would need multiple people working together, knowingly abusing the process.

- They would need buy-in from the head of a field office.

- They would have to convince a judge that the false claims they made up were tenable and met the requirements needed for the court to issue the warrant or subpoena (as the case may be).

- If you are dealing with abuse on that level, the fact that the data is there to be released per a court order should be a secondary concern to the problem of a corrupt group of law enforcement personnel.

Did that work better? I tend to ramble sometimes and my point gets lost or mangled. I'm not sure where you got that I thought they could get data that didn't exist.

Basically my whole view on the matter boils down to this: Yes - there is abuse of the system. We can all point to examples. Rather though, than take the data away from or impair the usefulness of it to those who actually do use it lawfully for thousands of live-saving and crime fighting instances every day, I'd rather tackle the challenge of figuring out how we can secure the data against abuse going forward.

[Fergasun]

It is my understanding that judges rarely block search warrants. Maybe that's just on the FISA court, but I saw the FISA stats and was shocked. Law enforcement knows the requirements and what will get a judge to sign off on it. And once they get the search warrants, they can do *whatever* they want; its not strictly limited to the premise of the search warrant.

[ACW]

Useless without pics.

(Hey. I had to.)

We have that now

[Fergasun]

And all anyone needs to do is plant 2 false flag informants to give up spurious information...

[Larry]

It is my understanding that judges rarely block search warrants. Maybe that's just on the FISA court, but I saw the FISA stats and was shocked. Law enforcement knows the requirements and what will get a judge to sign off on it. And once they get the search warrants, they can do *whatever* they want; its not strictly limited to the premise of the search warrant.

Actually, I've heard the same statistics. (For example, I've heard that the FBI has never been turned down when they request a wiretap.)

But that isn't necessarily proof that judges are rubber stamps.

The FBI has a vested interest in never being turned down for a warrant. (And even more so, in never having warrant-obtained evidence being thrown out.) Because if that ever happens then it's a precedent. It the court rules, say, that you can never wiretap a gangster's mistress's phone, then that sets a precident which not only hamstrings the FBI in the future, but which the Gangsters can then exploit.

The explanation I've heard for why the FBI has never been turned down, is because the FBI doesn't allow agents to ask for a warrant, unless their supervisors approve the request. And the FBI's standards of what's good enough to get a warrant is tougher than the court's standard. (Intentionally so.)

And I do understand that no, a search warrant is not blanket permission to do anything, either. There are rules.

If the warrant allows them to search for drugs, and they find a corpse, then yeah, it's admissible. But if the warrant allows them to search for a stolen car, then they aren't allowed to open the subject's desk drawer and see what's in it, because it's obvious that there wasn't a car in the desk drawer.

[Fergasun]

I was just reading a news story about Sacramento FBI getting a warrant related to a murder case and making some drug-related parole violation arrests; I guess they found drugs. It was unrelated to the original murder charges. But I suppose if the folks just had the drugs laying there... it's fair game. It was just in a news article so I'm not exactly sure, nor do I believe the suspects elicit much sympathy... but I wonder if they can challenge the search based on the warrant?

[Bang]

I was just reading a news story about Sacramento FBI getting a warrant related to a murder case and making some drug-related parole violation arrests; I guess they found drugs. It was unrelated to the original murder charges. But I suppose if the folks just had the drugs laying there... it's fair game. It was just in a news article so I'm not exactly sure, nor do I believe the suspects elicit much sympathy... but I wonder if they can challenge the search based on the warrant?

A parole violation can be a bunch of things. They could simply be observed in the company of known felons, among other things.

Parole is granted under many conditions. And if those conditions are violated, they deserve what they get.

~Bang

[ABQCOWBOY]

How do you pay for it?