4 ms·

If I'm following their logic correctly, you cannot justify looking at someone's Twitter DMs to stop a nuclear attack on a city

TeMPOraL 6y ago
You can - with a targeted warrant. The part where it requires a sign-off from a judge is literally the moment where you justify looking at someone's Twitter DM. (In rare (non-existing?) cases when warrant-based workflow is too slow, when you need access right fucking now, I think it would make sense to have self-issued warrants available as an option to federal officers, on the provision that self-issuing a warrant means you also lose your job by default, and have to apply in front of a court to ever be able to work in public services again; and abuse of that options are punished with jail time.)
- sneak 6y ago
  It seems that a 24/7 set of federal judges with smartphones on them for quickly processing warrant applications is a better fix to “warrants are slow” than giving cops the power to simply skip them when they feel like it. As it stands now, the majority of federal search warrants contain easily falsified perjury, and yet they are still approved by judges almost without exception and the feds that wrote them suffer no consequences whatsoever. I’m not sure why they have an issue with the current system, outside of blatant abuse.
  - emn13 6y ago
    The point of a warrant is the independent audit. As long as that's enforced, it being at least partially in retrospect shouldn't be a problem; the issue being how you would give that teeth in a way that's both not absurdly disproportionate yet still sufficiently discouraging. In any case, you'd at a bare minimum want a one sided notification a priori. I'd be more worried about whether judges really are independent and trying to critically reject warrants, rather than exactly when they do so. And another weakness in our current system: warrants are a pretty voluntary form of oversight. There are no reliable checks against warrant-less actions that should have required a warrant. Unless it's really egregious, police will not be held liable, defense attorneys may not be informed, and they may even be able to use the ill-gotten information for personal/legal gain, because finding a parallel construction once you know what you're looking for is obviously much, much easier. So I'd say that the problems are more one of a too-weak audit, and the moment at which that happens is not critical, even if it is relevant.

TeMPOraL 6y ago

You can - with a targeted warrant. The part where it requires a sign-off from a judge is literally the moment where you justify looking at someone's Twitter DM. (In rare (non-existing?) cases when warrant-based workflow is too slow, when you need access right fucking now, I think it would make sense to have self-issued warrants available as an option to federal officers, on the provision that self-issuing a warrant means you also lose your job by default, and have to apply in front of a court to ever be able to work in public services again; and abuse of that options are punished with jail time.)

sneak 6y ago
It seems that a 24/7 set of federal judges with smartphones on them for quickly processing warrant applications is a better fix to “warrants are slow” than giving cops the power to simply skip them when they feel like it. As it stands now, the majority of federal search warrants contain easily falsified perjury, and yet they are still approved by judges almost without exception and the feds that wrote them suffer no consequences whatsoever. I’m not sure why they have an issue with the current system, outside of blatant abuse.
- emn13 6y ago
  The point of a warrant is the independent audit. As long as that's enforced, it being at least partially in retrospect shouldn't be a problem; the issue being how you would give that teeth in a way that's both not absurdly disproportionate yet still sufficiently discouraging. In any case, you'd at a bare minimum want a one sided notification a priori. I'd be more worried about whether judges really are independent and trying to critically reject warrants, rather than exactly when they do so. And another weakness in our current system: warrants are a pretty voluntary form of oversight. There are no reliable checks against warrant-less actions that should have required a warrant. Unless it's really egregious, police will not be held liable, defense attorneys may not be informed, and they may even be able to use the ill-gotten information for personal/legal gain, because finding a parallel construction once you know what you're looking for is obviously much, much easier. So I'd say that the problems are more one of a too-weak audit, and the moment at which that happens is not critical, even if it is relevant.