49 ms·

I wrote this comment elsewhere below but it still applies The State has always been able to look up phone records, bank records, land records, criminal records

I wrote this comment elsewhere below but it still applies The State has always been able to look up phone records, bank records, land records, criminal records, medical records etc etc as in order to pursue justice and prosecute. How is this any different?

analog31 7y ago
In my view, the state has to ask a court to approve the purpose of each request, based on a reasonable hypothesis about what might be found. How this seems different is the lack of any limitation on the kind of content that can be turned over. And in my view, that was a mistake on the judge's part for approving such a sweeping request. For instance if I were accused of committing a crime against X, then I suppose that Google could be asked to turn over e-mails that I wrote about X, but not e-mails about my bicycle. This is how the system prevents the state from going on a hunting and fishing expedition.
- drevil-v2 7y ago
  How do you propose that works? Someone at Google searches for the information? An algorithm or an actual Google employee? If it is a human being then what about your privacy then? What if the Jussie and his manager were using codewords to disguise intent? A search algorithm would not be able to recognise that but a human being can easily infer meaning and intent from the context. What then? There are no easy answers.
  - ethbro 7y ago
    Warrants shouldn't be intended to discover evidence, they should be intended to secure evidence that is expected to exist in a particular location. This distinction wasn't a major concern when the former was impractical. Because of digital records and search agents, suddenly either is practical. The intent of privacy law has always been to raise the cost of targeted prosecution. E.g. "We want to charge this person with a crime, let's find a crime." The state absolutely has a duty to prosecute and hold individuals accountable. And in extraordinary circumstances, may even need to target prosecution. What is unacceptable in a free society is that the state should have the ability to target anyone for prosecution with no effective bounds in the number of simultaneous times it does so (aka everyone). The difference between Orwell and a safe democracy is scale.
    - stickfigure 7y ago
      I'm missing something. In this case, the state is expecting evidence to exist in the form of incriminating email communication between Smollett and his manager, and possibly additional people. From the public evidence so far, it sure seems like a reasonable expectation! I'm a pretty hardcore civil libertarian, and I'm having a hard time faulting the judge here. What else do you expect?
      - tremon 7y ago
        I would expect a warrant for just the e-mail exchanges between Smollet and his manager (and perhaps other digital communication methods), not for his entire life.
        stickfigure 7y ago
        I hear you, but that doesn't seem like how anything works in our legal system. When warrants are issued for cellphone records, text messages, financial records, etc, they don't have so narrow a scope. The state has probable cause to believe there is evidence of criminal behavior in your <insert anything here>. Therefore the warrant gives them access to it in order to look for that (previously specified) criminal behavior. In this case everyone expects to find a smoking gun in his email - either talking to his manager or talking to someone else. That seems like probable cause to me.
      - shakna 7y ago
        > In this case, the state is expecting evidence to exist in the form of incriminating email communication between Smollett and his manager, and possibly additional people. Then why is the warrant not for _that_? Instead, we have a broad-reaching data pull that will be filled with a ton of information is irrelevant.
  - anigbrowl 7y ago
    If you don't have enough evidence to specify the particular thing you are searching for, too bad. That limitation is written into the Constitution.
    - smolder 7y ago
      It is, though that limitation is essentially ignored by the NSA.
roenxi 7y ago
If you add all those records together you get a fraction of the information you get from someone's Google history. We're talking records like search history, live GPS data and emails. That is a completely different level of scrutiny. So the difference is seeing something through a window with curtains vs. having a camera installed in the room. In principle, not so different. In practice there really is no comparison. It is basically a warrant to ruffle through someone's life.
- ip26 7y ago
  It is basically a warrant to ruffle through someone's life Which, for what it's worth, is a warrant that is perfectly within the powers of a judge to grant.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    It needs to be phrased more specifically, or it will violate the prohibition on general warrants.
  - kempbellt 7y ago
    "You went 61 in a 60. Here's a ticket. Also, because you broke the law once and I'm in a pedantic mood, I'm issuing a warrant to go through all of your GPS history for the past two years. Oh look, 1 year ago you went 36 in a 35. Another ticket for you. 2 years ago you jaywalked. Another ticket." At what point do we want the legal system to no longer have the power to scrutinize an individual's history? I don't believe that a warrant to "ruffle through someone's life" without limits is within the powers of a judge. A warrant to procure relevant evidence to a case being investigated, legally, certainly. Issuing an order for someone's entire Google history for a year is bordering "an unreasonable search and seizure", by my understanding. Do they have legitimate reason to believe that there is an email containing evidence? Or a document in Google drive? Location data for an entire year - how is this relevant to the case?
    - partisan 7y ago
      It’s not the same thing. He is suing the city of Chicago for “malicious prosecution”. As part of that lawsuit, the city must attempt to show that the prosecution was not malicious. That’s different than stating that you would like to browse through someone’s history for the purpose of finding crimes where they may not exist.
lmkg 7y ago
The State has not always been able to do that. The idea that a search can be executed merely for the purpose of collecting evidence is a relatively recent development. Records, papers, etc. used to be protected under the Fourth Amendment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_evidence_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_evidence_rule In broad strokes: Originally, the Fourth Amendment only allowed for the seizure of stolen and counterfeit goods, the "fruits of a crime." This was slowly expanded to include the "instrumentalities" of a crime, i.e. the things used in the commission of a crime. The difference between the instrumentalities and mere evidence was always shaky, and eventually crumbled.
AlexandrB 7y ago
It’s different because tech companies have inserted themselves as intermediaries into aspects of our lives that used to be essentially private. Activities such as: reading, dating, talking to friends, exercising, driving, reading a map, cooking, checking the weather, listening to music, watching movies, viewing pornography, getting medical advice, breaking and forming habits, menstruating, learning, sleeping, and many others are now frequently monitored and analyzed “in order to provide and improve the service”. All of this is subject to subpoena. Edit: A few more: reading a newspaper, turning on a light, making a grocery list, setting the thermostat, going for a walk in the park.
cookiecaper 7y ago
It's way different because big tech cos acquire and retain far more data about individuals than anyone ever expected to be available. 10-ish years ago, it wasn't possible to retroactively subpoena a year of minute-by-minute location history, because unless you had an ankle monitor, that data didn't exist. You couldn't get a letter-by-letter log of every term typed into a search engine or a log of the amount of time spent looking at pages of reference material. You couldn't get a record of every keystroke ever typed into a mail client or word processor. You couldn't get every photograph ever taken by the individual, because cameras didn't automatically send a copy to the mothership. This is way above and beyond standard paper seizure or record demands. "Write angry letters, but don't send them" used to be good advice, but now that the government can just casually dash off a search warrant to produce every keystroke and every location ping within a year of a suspected crime, we all have good reason to be scared. Why'd you search "marijuana" that day last October? You expect me to believe you were just researching a ballot measure? Pfft. This makes Big Brother a tangible reality. It certainly feels big to me.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ekianjo 7y ago
  Well you can also view things a different way. It will be a lot harder for real criminals to get away with anything in the future. Now it becomes scary only if the authorities decide to go amok and make criminals of us all, but assuming it goes this way without anyone pushing back is not too realistic.
  - nounaut 7y ago
    Many of the things we consider just and right today were illegal at one point in time but change was eventually made because of people who would have been considered criminals.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
dredmorbius 7y ago
Scale. 40, or even 20 years ago, the State might have been able to note a record of phone calls, postal correspondence (look up "postal covers"), some financial purchases, periodicals subscriptions, and with a great deal of effort, some of my travels and movements, mostly limited to specific port entries and exits, and air travel. But unavailable would have been: dictionary queries, encyclopedia queries, books read, specific magazine articles read, the contents of virtually all conversations, detailed movement and location history, social associations, detailed purchase history, and more. Today, mobile devices report location to a precision of inches at a frequency of minutes. Any random query of momentary interest can create a permanent record. As a HN submission earlier today notes, simply casually perusing a document -- clicking a link -- can result in having your home raided and all electronic devices confiscated and held for a year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21992491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21992491 The scope and scale of intrusiveness is absolutely unprecedented. Yes, the State has some rights and powers. It also has a tremendous responsibility, which it increasingly seems to fail to excercise appropriately. And I say this regardless of specific country or jurisdiction -- the story linked above comes from Germany, and instances readily come to mind from the UK, US, Japan, China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere. The corruption of absolute power is not bounded by culture, constitution, or ideology.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Sorry to go off on one irrelevant point but I feel it is highly important to say this at every opportunity: states don't have rights. It is an absurdity and a mockery of human rights to claim such a concept and legitimize fiefdoms over real people. So called rights in their case would be entitlement to powers for power's sake. Anyway to get to your main body I agree and note what makes the scale bad ultimately is abuse potential for it. For a fantastic example being able to look up details of everyone but only 500 years or more ago wouldn't be abusable for instance because everyone is long dead and it wouldn't be viable to try to change ownership based on it because it already diverged for several generations. Even if you could backtrace they couldn't be reconciled very effectively.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
amelius 7y ago
Also don't forget the search warrant. I think this is what most closely matches the digital variant.
caspper69 7y ago
Google records include every place you've ever been (if you use an Android device), every wifi hotspot you've ever connected to, every website visited, every app executed, every message (text or email) you've sent. It's like having a voice recorder permanently on your shoulder and then having to turn that over to law enforcement. It's very bad. Text and email should be private, unless it is in the context of the action being pursued. This is just too much data to just turn over willy nilly. Very slippery slope.
justaman 7y ago
I don't believe it is different. Rather our trust in government has degraded in the last 100 years.
callmeal 7y ago
>The State has always been able to look up phone records, bank records, land records, criminal records, medical records etc etc as in order to pursue justice and prosecute. >How is this any different? The cost of doing those lookups. Both in money and time. Looking up an entire life's history would have taken months if not more, and would involve a lot of legwork, from picking up the phone and making calls, to traveling around neighborhoods or farther. That cost limited the charging/prosecution only to people suspected of, or implicated in crimes. Today you can do that on a whim because you don't like a person or because they are your political/business opponents.
buboard 7y ago
Our internet communications are way more intimate than physical or telephone or bank record searches of the past (which was the scope of the law when these things were legislated). These search and seizure laws have been grandfathered in unreasonably imho. A person's google searches are literally his thoughtstream, they are private expression that doesn't incite anything, and there is no reason why anyone would judge people by their thoughs. Police used to need torture to get this kind of data, it shouldn't be handed to them on a platter. imho it's very different

analog31 7y ago

In my view, the state has to ask a court to approve the purpose of each request, based on a reasonable hypothesis about what might be found. How this seems different is the lack of any limitation on the kind of content that can be turned over. And in my view, that was a mistake on the judge's part for approving such a sweeping request. For instance if I were accused of committing a crime against X, then I suppose that Google could be asked to turn over e-mails that I wrote about X, but not e-mails about my bicycle. This is how the system prevents the state from going on a hunting and fishing expedition.

drevil-v2 7y ago
How do you propose that works? Someone at Google searches for the information? An algorithm or an actual Google employee? If it is a human being then what about your privacy then? What if the Jussie and his manager were using codewords to disguise intent? A search algorithm would not be able to recognise that but a human being can easily infer meaning and intent from the context. What then? There are no easy answers.
- ethbro 7y ago
  Warrants shouldn't be intended to discover evidence, they should be intended to secure evidence that is expected to exist in a particular location. This distinction wasn't a major concern when the former was impractical. Because of digital records and search agents, suddenly either is practical. The intent of privacy law has always been to raise the cost of targeted prosecution. E.g. "We want to charge this person with a crime, let's find a crime." The state absolutely has a duty to prosecute and hold individuals accountable. And in extraordinary circumstances, may even need to target prosecution. What is unacceptable in a free society is that the state should have the ability to target anyone for prosecution with no effective bounds in the number of simultaneous times it does so (aka everyone). The difference between Orwell and a safe democracy is scale.
  - stickfigure 7y ago
    I'm missing something. In this case, the state is expecting evidence to exist in the form of incriminating email communication between Smollett and his manager, and possibly additional people. From the public evidence so far, it sure seems like a reasonable expectation! I'm a pretty hardcore civil libertarian, and I'm having a hard time faulting the judge here. What else do you expect?
    - tremon 7y ago
      I would expect a warrant for just the e-mail exchanges between Smollet and his manager (and perhaps other digital communication methods), not for his entire life.
      - stickfigure 7y ago
        I hear you, but that doesn't seem like how anything works in our legal system. When warrants are issued for cellphone records, text messages, financial records, etc, they don't have so narrow a scope. The state has probable cause to believe there is evidence of criminal behavior in your <insert anything here>. Therefore the warrant gives them access to it in order to look for that (previously specified) criminal behavior. In this case everyone expects to find a smoking gun in his email - either talking to his manager or talking to someone else. That seems like probable cause to me.
    - shakna 7y ago
      > In this case, the state is expecting evidence to exist in the form of incriminating email communication between Smollett and his manager, and possibly additional people. Then why is the warrant not for _that_? Instead, we have a broad-reaching data pull that will be filled with a ton of information is irrelevant.
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  If you don't have enough evidence to specify the particular thing you are searching for, too bad. That limitation is written into the Constitution.
  - smolder 7y ago
    It is, though that limitation is essentially ignored by the NSA.

roenxi 7y ago

If you add all those records together you get a fraction of the information you get from someone's Google history. We're talking records like search history, live GPS data and emails. That is a completely different level of scrutiny. So the difference is seeing something through a window with curtains vs. having a camera installed in the room. In principle, not so different. In practice there really is no comparison. It is basically a warrant to ruffle through someone's life.

ip26 7y ago
It is basically a warrant to ruffle through someone's life Which, for what it's worth, is a warrant that is perfectly within the powers of a judge to grant.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  It needs to be phrased more specifically, or it will violate the prohibition on general warrants.
- kempbellt 7y ago
  "You went 61 in a 60. Here's a ticket. Also, because you broke the law once and I'm in a pedantic mood, I'm issuing a warrant to go through all of your GPS history for the past two years. Oh look, 1 year ago you went 36 in a 35. Another ticket for you. 2 years ago you jaywalked. Another ticket." At what point do we want the legal system to no longer have the power to scrutinize an individual's history? I don't believe that a warrant to "ruffle through someone's life" without limits is within the powers of a judge. A warrant to procure relevant evidence to a case being investigated, legally, certainly. Issuing an order for someone's entire Google history for a year is bordering "an unreasonable search and seizure", by my understanding. Do they have legitimate reason to believe that there is an email containing evidence? Or a document in Google drive? Location data for an entire year - how is this relevant to the case?
  - partisan 7y ago
    It’s not the same thing. He is suing the city of Chicago for “malicious prosecution”. As part of that lawsuit, the city must attempt to show that the prosecution was not malicious. That’s different than stating that you would like to browse through someone’s history for the purpose of finding crimes where they may not exist.

lmkg 7y ago

The State has not always been able to do that. The idea that a search can be executed merely for the purpose of collecting evidence is a relatively recent development. Records, papers, etc. used to be protected under the Fourth Amendment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_evidence_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_evidence_rule In broad strokes: Originally, the Fourth Amendment only allowed for the seizure of stolen and counterfeit goods, the "fruits of a crime." This was slowly expanded to include the "instrumentalities" of a crime, i.e. the things used in the commission of a crime. The difference between the instrumentalities and mere evidence was always shaky, and eventually crumbled.

AlexandrB 7y ago

It’s different because tech companies have inserted themselves as intermediaries into aspects of our lives that used to be essentially private. Activities such as: reading, dating, talking to friends, exercising, driving, reading a map, cooking, checking the weather, listening to music, watching movies, viewing pornography, getting medical advice, breaking and forming habits, menstruating, learning, sleeping, and many others are now frequently monitored and analyzed “in order to provide and improve the service”. All of this is subject to subpoena. Edit: A few more: reading a newspaper, turning on a light, making a grocery list, setting the thermostat, going for a walk in the park.

cookiecaper 7y ago

It's way different because big tech cos acquire and retain far more data about individuals than anyone ever expected to be available. 10-ish years ago, it wasn't possible to retroactively subpoena a year of minute-by-minute location history, because unless you had an ankle monitor, that data didn't exist. You couldn't get a letter-by-letter log of every term typed into a search engine or a log of the amount of time spent looking at pages of reference material. You couldn't get a record of every keystroke ever typed into a mail client or word processor. You couldn't get every photograph ever taken by the individual, because cameras didn't automatically send a copy to the mothership. This is way above and beyond standard paper seizure or record demands. "Write angry letters, but don't send them" used to be good advice, but now that the government can just casually dash off a search warrant to produce every keystroke and every location ping within a year of a suspected crime, we all have good reason to be scared. Why'd you search "marijuana" that day last October? You expect me to believe you were just researching a ballot measure? Pfft. This makes Big Brother a tangible reality. It certainly feels big to me.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ekianjo 7y ago
Well you can also view things a different way. It will be a lot harder for real criminals to get away with anything in the future. Now it becomes scary only if the authorities decide to go amok and make criminals of us all, but assuming it goes this way without anyone pushing back is not too realistic.
- nounaut 7y ago
  Many of the things we consider just and right today were illegal at one point in time but change was eventually made because of people who would have been considered criminals.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

dredmorbius 7y ago

Scale. 40, or even 20 years ago, the State might have been able to note a record of phone calls, postal correspondence (look up "postal covers"), some financial purchases, periodicals subscriptions, and with a great deal of effort, some of my travels and movements, mostly limited to specific port entries and exits, and air travel. But unavailable would have been: dictionary queries, encyclopedia queries, books read, specific magazine articles read, the contents of virtually all conversations, detailed movement and location history, social associations, detailed purchase history, and more. Today, mobile devices report location to a precision of inches at a frequency of minutes. Any random query of momentary interest can create a permanent record. As a HN submission earlier today notes, simply casually perusing a document -- clicking a link -- can result in having your home raided and all electronic devices confiscated and held for a year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21992491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21992491 The scope and scale of intrusiveness is absolutely unprecedented. Yes, the State has some rights and powers. It also has a tremendous responsibility, which it increasingly seems to fail to excercise appropriately. And I say this regardless of specific country or jurisdiction -- the story linked above comes from Germany, and instances readily come to mind from the UK, US, Japan, China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere. The corruption of absolute power is not bounded by culture, constitution, or ideology.

Nasrudith 7y ago
Sorry to go off on one irrelevant point but I feel it is highly important to say this at every opportunity: states don't have rights. It is an absurdity and a mockery of human rights to claim such a concept and legitimize fiefdoms over real people. So called rights in their case would be entitlement to powers for power's sake. Anyway to get to your main body I agree and note what makes the scale bad ultimately is abuse potential for it. For a fantastic example being able to look up details of everyone but only 500 years or more ago wouldn't be abusable for instance because everyone is long dead and it wouldn't be viable to try to change ownership based on it because it already diverged for several generations. Even if you could backtrace they couldn't be reconciled very effectively.
- dredmorbius 7y ago

amelius 7y ago

Also don't forget the search warrant. I think this is what most closely matches the digital variant.

caspper69 7y ago

Google records include every place you've ever been (if you use an Android device), every wifi hotspot you've ever connected to, every website visited, every app executed, every message (text or email) you've sent. It's like having a voice recorder permanently on your shoulder and then having to turn that over to law enforcement. It's very bad. Text and email should be private, unless it is in the context of the action being pursued. This is just too much data to just turn over willy nilly. Very slippery slope.

justaman 7y ago

I don't believe it is different. Rather our trust in government has degraded in the last 100 years.

callmeal 7y ago

>The State has always been able to look up phone records, bank records, land records, criminal records, medical records etc etc as in order to pursue justice and prosecute. >How is this any different? The cost of doing those lookups. Both in money and time. Looking up an entire life's history would have taken months if not more, and would involve a lot of legwork, from picking up the phone and making calls, to traveling around neighborhoods or farther. That cost limited the charging/prosecution only to people suspected of, or implicated in crimes. Today you can do that on a whim because you don't like a person or because they are your political/business opponents.

buboard 7y ago

Our internet communications are way more intimate than physical or telephone or bank record searches of the past (which was the scope of the law when these things were legislated). These search and seizure laws have been grandfathered in unreasonably imho. A person's google searches are literally his thoughtstream, they are private expression that doesn't incite anything, and there is no reason why anyone would judge people by their thoughs. Police used to need torture to get this kind of data, it shouldn't be handed to them on a platter. imho it's very different