4 ms·

You mean with a warrant right?

pdpi 5y ago
Hopefully yes, but that's a separate matter. The important part is that it's technically feasible and you can then use whatever legal (or otherwise) mechanisms to get the metadata.
sandworm101 5y ago
Warrants have legal meaning but little practical impact. They can be requested and granted very easily. The process offers very little protection. If the cops ask for warrant to request the list of numbers called, they will get it. That said, warrants are not always needed. The logic goes that the phone company already knows who you have called. They needed that information when they connected the calls. They store that information for billing purposes. So connection/metadata isn't private because you have already shared it with the phone company. In many countries that is sufficient to moot the entire warrant debate. (This logic then extends to other data used to make connections and route internet traffic such as IP addresses.) And if the phone company/ISP is a state-owned/backed/licensed enterprise there is little privacy left to argue over.
- clucas 5y ago
  > Warrants have legal meaning but little practical impact. They can be requested and granted very easily. The process offers very little protection. If the cops ask for warrant to request the list of numbers called, they will get it. What are you basing this on? Warrants require probable cause (in the US at least). Are you saying that that the probable cause requirement still allows warrants to be granted very easily? Or that the probable cause requirement is not being followed?
  - vngzs 5y ago
    > Are you saying that that the probable cause requirement still allows warrants to be granted very easily? Or that the probably cause requirement is not being followed? Well, both. Warrants may be granted very easily via the FISA courts [0]. They are unenforced in the warrantless wiretap programs [1]. If your wiretap happened to be illegal, and you want to work around this to win the court case anyway, you use parallel construction to build a case that does not rely on the secret wiretap [2]: > Because the SOD's work is classified, DEA cases that began as NSA leads can't be seen to have originated from a NSA source. > So what does the DEA do? It makes up the story of how the agency really came to the case in a process known as "parallel construction." [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_(2001%E2%80%932007)#Technical_and_operational_details https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_(... [2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/08/05/the-nsa-is-giving-your-phone-records-to-the-dea-and-the-dea-is-covering-it-up/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/08/05...
    - clucas 5y ago
      You are talking about a particular type of warrant. I don't think the average local police force is getting FISA warrants for their day-to-day police work (maybe I'm wrong? I would like to see numbers on that before I change my mind though), and OP did not limit their statment to FISA warrants.
      - vngzs 5y ago
        The news sources I've encountered seem to imply otherwise. The linked Washington Post article was an early hint at this, and built on original material from [0]. Now we have other sources backing this up, such as [1], and detailed breakdowns of this practice with lots of evidence as seen in [2]. Just search for the word "local" or "state" in [2] if you need the details. [0]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod/exclusive-u-s-directs-agents-to-cover-up-program-used-to-investigate-americans-idUSBRE97409R20130805 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod/exclusive-u-s-dir... [1]: https://theintercept.com/2018/01/09/dark-side-fbi-dea-illegal-searches-secret-evidence/ https://theintercept.com/2018/01/09/dark-side-fbi-dea-illega... [2]: https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/01/09/dark-side/secret-origins-evidence-us-criminal-cases https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/01/09/dark-side/secret-origi...
  - oscardssmith 5y ago
    The problem is that no warrant is needed if the phone company complies without asking for one. Basically the government says "hey can we see this users data? (And if you say no, we'll get a warrant that requires you to do extra work)", and then the phone company turns over your data without requiring the warrant because they don't care about you.
    - clucas 5y ago
      I was specifically addressing OP's statement that the warrant requirement does not offer much protection - I'm not talking about situations where a warrant is not required. I think I probably agree with you that over-compliance by phone companies is a problem, but that's not what I was asking about.
  - sandworm101 5y ago
    >> Are you saying that that the probable cause requirement still allows warrants to be granted very easily? Yes. Probable cause is not a significant burden and can be met with "evidence" that would normally never be admitted. Cops regularly rely on unnamed out-of-court CIs. For telephone call records, the simple fact that a phone number appeared during an investigation is likely enough for a warrant to see which other numbers it has connected to.
    - clucas 5y ago
      Interesting, thanks.
sp332 5y ago
In the USA, the Stored Communication Act lets law enforcement pull call records without a warrant, if that's what you were asking?
vel0city 5y ago
Third-party doctrine had eroded the need for warrants for a long time. Luckily there's been progress in slowly clawing back our rights in the last decade or so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine
tinus_hn 5y ago
Yes, a perfectly valid legally issued warrant for any and all details about all messages the officer wants.

pdpi 5y ago

Hopefully yes, but that's a separate matter. The important part is that it's technically feasible and you can then use whatever legal (or otherwise) mechanisms to get the metadata.

sandworm101 5y ago

Warrants have legal meaning but little practical impact. They can be requested and granted very easily. The process offers very little protection. If the cops ask for warrant to request the list of numbers called, they will get it. That said, warrants are not always needed. The logic goes that the phone company already knows who you have called. They needed that information when they connected the calls. They store that information for billing purposes. So connection/metadata isn't private because you have already shared it with the phone company. In many countries that is sufficient to moot the entire warrant debate. (This logic then extends to other data used to make connections and route internet traffic such as IP addresses.) And if the phone company/ISP is a state-owned/backed/licensed enterprise there is little privacy left to argue over.

clucas 5y ago
> Warrants have legal meaning but little practical impact. They can be requested and granted very easily. The process offers very little protection. If the cops ask for warrant to request the list of numbers called, they will get it. What are you basing this on? Warrants require probable cause (in the US at least). Are you saying that that the probable cause requirement still allows warrants to be granted very easily? Or that the probable cause requirement is not being followed?
- vngzs 5y ago
  > Are you saying that that the probable cause requirement still allows warrants to be granted very easily? Or that the probably cause requirement is not being followed? Well, both. Warrants may be granted very easily via the FISA courts [0]. They are unenforced in the warrantless wiretap programs [1]. If your wiretap happened to be illegal, and you want to work around this to win the court case anyway, you use parallel construction to build a case that does not rely on the secret wiretap [2]: > Because the SOD's work is classified, DEA cases that began as NSA leads can't be seen to have originated from a NSA source. > So what does the DEA do? It makes up the story of how the agency really came to the case in a process known as "parallel construction." [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_(2001%E2%80%932007)#Technical_and_operational_details https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_(... [2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/08/05/the-nsa-is-giving-your-phone-records-to-the-dea-and-the-dea-is-covering-it-up/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/08/05...
  - clucas 5y ago
    You are talking about a particular type of warrant. I don't think the average local police force is getting FISA warrants for their day-to-day police work (maybe I'm wrong? I would like to see numbers on that before I change my mind though), and OP did not limit their statment to FISA warrants.
    - vngzs 5y ago
      The news sources I've encountered seem to imply otherwise. The linked Washington Post article was an early hint at this, and built on original material from [0]. Now we have other sources backing this up, such as [1], and detailed breakdowns of this practice with lots of evidence as seen in [2]. Just search for the word "local" or "state" in [2] if you need the details. [0]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod/exclusive-u-s-directs-agents-to-cover-up-program-used-to-investigate-americans-idUSBRE97409R20130805 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod/exclusive-u-s-dir... [1]: https://theintercept.com/2018/01/09/dark-side-fbi-dea-illegal-searches-secret-evidence/ https://theintercept.com/2018/01/09/dark-side-fbi-dea-illega... [2]: https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/01/09/dark-side/secret-origins-evidence-us-criminal-cases https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/01/09/dark-side/secret-origi...
- oscardssmith 5y ago
  The problem is that no warrant is needed if the phone company complies without asking for one. Basically the government says "hey can we see this users data? (And if you say no, we'll get a warrant that requires you to do extra work)", and then the phone company turns over your data without requiring the warrant because they don't care about you.
  - clucas 5y ago
    I was specifically addressing OP's statement that the warrant requirement does not offer much protection - I'm not talking about situations where a warrant is not required. I think I probably agree with you that over-compliance by phone companies is a problem, but that's not what I was asking about.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  >> Are you saying that that the probable cause requirement still allows warrants to be granted very easily? Yes. Probable cause is not a significant burden and can be met with "evidence" that would normally never be admitted. Cops regularly rely on unnamed out-of-court CIs. For telephone call records, the simple fact that a phone number appeared during an investigation is likely enough for a warrant to see which other numbers it has connected to.
  - clucas 5y ago
    Interesting, thanks.

sp332 5y ago

In the USA, the Stored Communication Act lets law enforcement pull call records without a warrant, if that's what you were asking?

vel0city 5y ago

Third-party doctrine had eroded the need for warrants for a long time. Luckily there's been progress in slowly clawing back our rights in the last decade or so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine

tinus_hn 5y ago

Yes, a perfectly valid legally issued warrant for any and all details about all messages the officer wants.