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FBI wants access to browser history without a warrant in terrorism, spy cases
- marze 10y agoYou'd think terrorism/spy cases would be a small minority of overall cases. And not that hard to justify a warrant. Seems odd that they feel it is important to skip the warrant step for such cases. Why not require a warrant? The more checks and balances the better.
- wickedlogic 10y agoBecause it isn't about terrorism/spy cases.
- wrsh07 10y agoIs it a speed thing? Like do you think they're fighting with their own layers of bureaucracy? Is there a way to make obtaining warrants more transparent and straightforward? It honestly seems like they could design a better system that doesn't get rid of the checks, increases citizen trust, and solves their issues.
- mtgx 10y agoIf it was a speed thing, the FBI could show "good faith" [1] and say that a judge should verify the request post-facto and (in)validate it. But of course it doesn't do that, because the FBI doesn't operate in "good faith", and because it would prefer as little oversight as possible - which is what this request is really about anyway: the removal of judicial oversight, even beyond its rapidly growing abuse of NSLs [2]. [1] - https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160605/09111034626/appeals-court-as-long-as-government-has-good-faith-it-can-root-around-your-digital-files-as-much-as-it-wants.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160605/09111034626/appea... [2] - https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2016/04/14/keeping-secrecy-exception-not-rule-issue-consumers-businesses/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2016/04/14/keeping...
- voxic11 10y agoIts not a speed thing. There are already many ways to speed the warrent process. They can be obtained remotely from a judge with an electronic signature. And they can be obtained in good faith with the judge only reviewing the evidence after granting the warrent. Like how much easier does it need to be?
- titzer 10y agoIt's basically testing whether the frog responds to increases in water temperature.
- techthroway443 10y agoWow whoever came up with the whole 'in the name of terrorism' is a goddamn genius. Pretty much a free card to get access to anything and everything for the sake of 'security'.
- Karunamon 10y agoIndeed. Anytime you hear the words "children" or "national security" or "terrorism" being bandied about, you should crank up the sensitivity on your bullshit detector.
- mosdave 10y ago> you should crank up the sensitivity on your bullshit detector. mine has been turned up to 11 for about 15 years now.
- pigpaws 10y agoyeah, it scares the people on the right, while "... for the children." is whats used to scare the left. How ANY of us made it to adulthood is amazing.
- Jemmeh 10y agoEh, I've heard "for the children" on left and right. "Gay parents are bad for the children" "Spanking is bad for the children"
- lostlogin 10y agoUntil a few years ago a disciplinary spanking of a child was allowed in New Zealand and a woman was found not to have broken the law when she used a horse riding crop. TLDR an NZ style spanking is bad for the child.
- Jemmeh 10y agoNot surprising. I'm not sure if it's still the case, but growing up they used leather belts where I'm from. Pretty sure it's legal. To me that's worse than a riding crop.
- AdmiralAsshat 10y agoAnother reason to have an always-running VPN: they can't scrape what they can't see.
- beamatronic 10y agoWhere does your VPN terminate? At some point you are trusting somebody and assuming they can't be co-opted.
- 0xfeba 10y agoHa! It's VPNs all the way down.
- eumoria 10y agothat doesn't really hide you from someone who really wants to find the source. many more steps are required to gain anonymity
- slyrus 10y agoAnd let's not forget whistleblowing, hacking, and piracy!
- nitrogen 10y agoCall to Firefox devs: restore the option to keep history for a specified number of days. Why was this option ever removed? It originated all the way back in Netscape. Also: make a prominent "clear last hour" option for mobile; I hate following a link from someone and finding a ton of tracking cookies have just been added.
- dave2000 10y agoYou're surfing without noscript, ublock origin and self-destructing cookies?
- nitrogen 10y agoI'm using ublock0 of course. I tend not to install lots of other addons because it's difficult to evaluate them without a significant time investment. What is a good self-destructing cookie addon that preserves site logins? Edit: While I'm here, Firefox should also provide an Android URL intent that opens links in a private tab.
- dave2000 10y agoI can't imagine ever surfing the internet without blocking ads, javascript and cookies. There's just nothing to evaluate other than which plugin to perform those tasks. "self-destructing cookies", on the desktop, lets you choose to destroy cookies 1) when you close the tab, 2) when you close the browser or 3) never. On android it's a toggle; presumably 1 and 3. The android version of noscript is inexplicably named "noscript nsa". It has a bunch of options but I never fiddle with them. You can't install it via the usual firefox plugin system for reasons I don't understand, so instead you have to get it here: https://noscript.net/nsa/ https://noscript.net/nsa/ You want the link "Download NSA++ (NoScript 3.5 alpha)". It's been alpha for as long as I've been using it. A recent change to firefox means you probably have to use about:config to temporarily enable the installation of plugins from outside the official firefox plugin store thing. Perhaps the developers are trying to demonstrate that you can't have security AND convenience.
- roywiggins 10y ago
- xviia 10y agoHey that's fine, no need for a warrant. You just have to let the judge know that you think that person is a terrorist. And also what reasons led you to think they're a terrorist. Oh, and also what it is you're looking for, and why you think you'll find it. So... basically a warrant.
- busterarm 10y agoKeep in mind that many judges are elected (even when they run unopposed). I can see the attack ad now: "Judge Soandso thinks that terrorists deserve a greater right to privacy than you do. Judge Soandso protects terrorists. Vote Judge Otherguy." Kinda turns this into a rubber stamp.
- nitrogen 10y agoEventually someone might figure out the right words to use to counteract that strategy. "Judge Otherguy's tough-on-crime strategy led to a $1500 DUI charge for an innocent grandmother on SSI who was poisoned by her doctor. Vote Judge Soandso to protect the elderly."
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- blackbagboys 10y agoFederal judges are not elected
- busterarm 10y agoIs it just me or is the FBI a little out of control lately...
- sosborn 10y ago> lately… Lately?
- busterarm 10y agoWell played, but in the public eye. I think the fact that they completely invented a fictitious science to prosecute cases should have brought serious investigation and televised congressional hearings with daily news coverage... ...but nope. Scrap it and start over.
- Consultant32452 10y agoI'm a little behind, what fictitious science is this?
- RickS 10y agonot the OP, but my guess: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-overstated-forensic-hair-matches-in-nearly-all-criminal-trials-for-decades/2015/04/18/39c8d8c6-e515-11e4-b510-962fcfabc310_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-overstated-fo... >The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.
- B1FF_PSUVM 10y agoMalcontents have been griping for over 50 years now ... e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doorbell_Rang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doorbell_Rang
- sailfast 10y agoEvery few weeks I remind myself that J. Edgar Hoover retired as director of the FBI in 1972 after running the organization for 48 years. Somebody that fundamental to the formation of an organization creates a culture.
- bayofpigs 10y agoWasn't it reported that not a single warrant request was denied in 2015 for terrorism cases, yet even that is too much of a burden?
- patrickg_zill 10y ago"Terrorism/spy cases" is just the camel's nose under the tent. It wasn't even 2 years after the 2001 PATRIOT act that the DOJ was using the provisions for drug cases. A probably non-exhaustive list is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_invocations_of_the_Patriot_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_invocations_of_t...
- droopyEyelids 10y ago"We're only asking to put the sleeve of your shirt in the wood chipper"
- dmix 10y ago> Investigating copyright infringement > Adam McGaughey, the webmaster of a fan site for the television show Stargate SG-1, was charged with copyright infringement and computer fraud. During the investigation, the FBI invoked a provision of the Act to obtain financial records from the site's Internet Service Provider. I never heard this one before. Using terrorism laws to investigate copyright infringment on a scifi TV show fan site. A running theme in these cases: > Millions of phone records were harvested, fed into a database and were searched for patterns of calling to and from numbers of known terrorists. To date, there have been no announced arrests from this program. [..] Furthermore, this information is databased and maintained indefinitely by the FBI.
- Esau 10y agoThey take every tool we give them and abuse it. Fuck the FBI.
- zzz157 10y agoAnd they won't even arrest Hillary Clinton ;(
- astronautjones 10y agoYet
- DoctorBit 10y agoAnd a pony. They want a pony too.
- pvg 10y agoThe title is inadvertently misleading - the records sought under the amendment are transaction records on the remote end (closer to access logs) rather than your actual browser history.
- folksonomy 10y agoLast time I checked the only real need for persistence in a browsing session is to store bookmarks and to store massive ASCII blobs full of jQuery so I can read another bloated NY Times article. Browser vendors really need to start bundling this code into the browser so we don't have to download it every single time we visit a site (We all religiously surf in private browsing mode these days, right?). Because if we aren't surfing with even baseline privacy, then articles like this pale in comparison to Big Brother nosing around in the underpants of your browser history.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- bunkydoo 10y agoWell it honestly depends what classifies a terrorism or spy case as such. I could see how this could be easily abused in many regards, but also how it could help someone do their job. Double edged sword really, but I do wish the people had more of a say in these matters instead of just hearing about more liberty being lost via the news :/
- smnscu 10y agoI read that as "Director Comedy". Probably a more apt title, I imagine. http://i.imgur.com/ty7LY4E.jpg http://i.imgur.com/ty7LY4E.jpg
- csense 10y agoA couple decades ago when the government wanted to get civil forfeiture powers, they said it was only going to be for the worst organized crime bosses and drug lords. Then within the last few years, a black kid who takes his life savings -- $10,000 cash -- and moves across the country to start a new life is (apparently entirely legally) relieved of it by two police officers and has no means to get it back, despite never being arrested nor charged with any crime. History shows that it's impossible to trust the government's promise that they'll restrict any new capabilities to the worst bad guys.
- TallGuyShort 10y agoNon-constitutional exceptions to the constitution are just like Darth Vader: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."
- Aelinsaar 10y agoWhat is to be done, when dicking us over and harshly keeping us in line is profitable, and we keep electing them to do it?!
- Zikes 10y agoThis presumes the election process is fair. Gerrymandering, fraud, bribery, voter suppression, it's a wonder we even call the US a democracy anymore.
- sheepleherd 10y agoany creation of voting districts is a Gerrymander. What method do you favor, and how is yours better?
- Zikes 10y agoWikipedia's definition[1] is "In the process of setting electoral districts, gerrymandering is a practice intended to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries." It can be clearly recognized where it occurs, and there are plenty of examples in the Wikipedia article. I don't have the skills or knowledge to say exactly how it should be done, only that it shouldn't have extreme obvious political bias. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
- labster 10y agoI don't understand why the FBI isn't prepared to just act illegally in terrorism cases. If they're so damn sure that there's going to be an attack, just do the warrantless search and prevent the attack. And just be fine with the fact that they won't get to prosecute the bad guys -- the attack was thwarted, and that's good enough for me. And if they don't find anything? Well, Lucy's got some 'splainin to do!
- nitrogen 10y agoWe don't want them acting illegally just because they feel it's necessary, but if someone really, truly believes they are stopping an attack by doing so, maybe let them do it that way and face the consequences. That's what the real heroes in movies do; they save the day, and then accept the punishment for their misdeeds in the process. A real hero would be willing to spend some time in jail if it was the only way to save thousands of lives (a point I do not concede, but for the sake of argument...).
- ridgeguy 10y agoExactly right. Maybe there's a rare edge case that calls for illegal activity. If so, and if law enforcement does it, they need to explain their actions so we can determine whether they were right and should be excused or wrong, and should be sanctioned. No transparency, no accountability, no progress.
- knieveltech 10y ago"The FBI wants to access N without a warrant." Sane answer: no, for all values of N.
- gherkin0 10y agoIf the FBI asks for the power to access N without a warrant, it should be automatically be required to get two warrants from two separate judges to get access.
- giancarlostoro 10y agoI'm surprised this hasn't become the standard. We would then have more checks and balances in this regard at the very least.
- knieveltech 10y agoI like the way you think.
- omginternets 10y ago>"The FBI wants to access N without a warrant." Sane answer: no, for all values of N. You're repeating a common fallacy, namely that warrants are a sine qua non condition for search and seizure. This is false. In the United States, one enjoys constitutional protection from unreasonable search and seizure. While a warrant goes a very long way towards making a search or seizure reasonable, the two are not to be equated. A few notable exceptions where warrants are not required: - The so-called motor-vehicle exception - The so-called "in hot pursuit" exception I think we share the same feeling towards this particular case, but it's important to understand the legal arguments being made. The FBI is essentially claiming that it is reasonable to search browser history without a warrant.
- knieveltech 10y agoNo, I'm saying warrants should be a required condition for any search or seizure, not that they are currently. Law enforcement's job shouldn't be easy.
- ktRolster 10y agoWarrants are so easy to get, why do they need this? Looking at browser history might not hurt most people, but getting a warrant isn't hard, and it's the proper way to do things.
- awqrre 10y agoGo ahead and let them but only if at the same time, you get rid of the Government's option of using NSLs for all cases, including this one.
- marssaxman 10y agoI'm sure the FBI wants access to browser history without a warrant in any cases where it would be convenient.
- chrismcb 10y agoDon't we already have laws to go after criminals? Calling them a terrorist doesn't make them more or less criminal. And do we have so many of these boogeymen?
- mirimir 10y agoThis isn't about "browser history". It's about traffic logs from ISPs.
- wonkaWonka 10y agoYeah, that seems to be the sound of it. > By Ellen Nakashima Did she make a mistake when reporting? Seems like an editor should have caught the error in the headline. Meanwhile, maybe it's an effort by this media outlet to downplay, and run interference in favor of government entities, so that people roll their eyes at the misinformation and simply presume the government as incompetant.
- nxzero 10y agoIf the FBI is so sure someone is what they say, seems like it'd be easy to get a warrant; otherwise, sounds like BS to me.
- moribondus 10y agoWell, they will further and further encroach until they meet some kind of resistance. Unfortunately, resistance will not easily materialize because people here would be the first ones to utterly condemn respect-instilling reprisals. As far as I am concerned, they can do whatever they want with people who accept that. Concerning myself, I am always on the outlook for some kind of counter-veiling power, the most interesting of which is Islam. It really retaliates. So, I am positive about it.
- Fej 10y agoI'll quote The Who - "Ya caaaan't have it!"