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> 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

by 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.

by clucas 5y ago

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.