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I’m so torn on this. Your digital life is so much more than a letter. I feel like police need to be very specific with what they are allowed to access.

by pnpnp 3y ago

monero-xmr 3y ago
Fast forward to the 45 second mark https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cnA6XwVQUHY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cnA6XwVQUHY
psunavy03 3y ago
How is this different from the fact that they can toss your house with a court order, if necessary? Yes, search warrants generally limit themselves more than that, but a warrant is a warrant and the authorities can search anything they need to that's reasonably connected to what they have probable cause to suspect. How is your digital life any different from your physical life in that regard? Police and other LE already have to go to a judge and be "very specific" to be able to search anywhere you have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
- hypothesis 3y ago
  This is different because they are physically limited in number of houses they can toss per day, plus said activity is quite more observable to targets.
  - psunavy03 3y ago
    The number of warrants that can be served has nothing to do with the price of beer. Either a judge has approved the warrant based on probable cause presented to him/her by the police, or they haven't. If the police could hypothetically toss every house in the country twice a day and once on Sundays, that has precisely nothing to do with anything. So long as the only houses they DO toss are ones where a judge has reviewed the evidence, and determined that there is probable cause that tossing the house will turn up fruits or instrumentalities of a crime. Capability to do a thing has nothing to do with approval to do a thing under the law or ethics. I'm fully capable of being a (very bad) male prostitute, but I refrain from doing that for many obvious moral and legal reasons.
    - autoexec 3y ago
      > So long as the only houses they DO toss are ones where a judge has reviewed the evidence, and determined that there is probable cause that tossing the house will turn up fruits You have a lot more faith than I do. I'd bet it's a lot more like a rubber stamp with basically zero review, assuming they bother with warrants at all (https://petapixel.com/2022/07/27/googles-nest-will-provide-data-to-police-without-a-warrant/ https://petapixel.com/2022/07/27/googles-nest-will-provide-d... https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/new-records-detail-dhs-purchase-and-use-of-vast-quantities-of-cell-phone-location-data https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/new-records-det... https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2021-03-24/federal-agencies-subpoena-google-personal-information https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2021-03-24... https://experiencedcriminallawyers.com/what-private-information-will-google-give-cops-without-a-warrant https://experiencedcriminallawyers.com/what-private-informat...)
    - watwut 3y ago
      > So long as the only houses they DO toss are ones where a judge has reviewed the evidence, I think that actual process is that judge agrees to anything cops ask for, not evidence review is going on.
      - psunavy03 3y ago
        Is this based on your JD or your personal experience litigating search warrants, or just internet BS?
- dredmorbius 3y ago
  The number of houses that can be searched is limited. Actual police officers or detectives need to visit said house, spend time on-prem, collect, and analyze evidence. A single site can be accessed at a time. Digital media are searched automatically, by hardware and processes, with many potential targets searched simultaneously and at vanishingly small cost. Physical evidence and print media are far slower to access and assess than digital media are. Physical evidence and print media have vastly lower data density than digital media do. Both temporal and spatial data resolution is far lower for the former. At the same time, provenance, integrity, and chain-of-possession over physical evidence media are also generally easier to ensure and assess, and both are generally less susceptible to either fabrication or modification. (The point here isn't that physical media cannot be tampered with. It's that digital media can be tampered with absolutely no evidence of this on the media itself. Typically some external validation or integrity check is necessary. Digital media can be entirely fabricated, all the more so now with AI and generator technologies, or can be entirely destroyed without a trace.) Digital media can be stored at volumes and for durations which would be utterly impossible with physical evidence. A 1 TB storage device, which can fit on your pinkie nail, can hold the equivalent of ~200,000 books, roughly the size of a fairly substantial public library. The entire Library of Congress book collection, 140 million volumes, assuming 5 MB each, would fit in 700 TB of storage. With currently-available 20 TB drives, that's about 35 disks, which would fit within a few standard rack units (mostly depending on the size of disk you'd opted for). The total cost would be a few thousand dollars. Digital media, particularly in the form of SaaS providers and Cloud storage, is an absolute trove of information on hundreds of millions or billions of people.
- pharmakom 3y ago
  I would rather a stranger search my house than my digital accounts and files, honestly.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
  When they "toss your house" you are generally on notice that a warrant has been obtained. When they get data from Google, does Google notify you. (NB. Correct me if I am wrong but in the case of Google, unless it's a search of Google's premises, it's not a warrant, it's a subpoena. Without being notified of a subpoena there's no opportunity for you to challenge it.)
  - chii 3y ago
    I would imagine that if the warrant is like a no-knock warrant, then google doesn't have to notify you. But otherwise, they would need to.
    - dredmorbius 3y ago
      The effects of a no-notice warrant remain profoundly different for a physical location, in which it's obvious that a search has occurred, and a digital search, in which it is not.
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
    Example of warrant issued to Google for information https://ia804707.us.archive.org/10/items/gov.uscourts.cacd.869106/gov.uscourts.cacd.869106.1.0.pdf https://ia804707.us.archive.org/10/items/gov.uscourts.cacd.8...
- pnpnp 3y ago
  My personal biggest fear is that I feel like my search history is full of curious things than can be misconstrued in court. I’ve always been fascinated by red-teaming things, and a very curious person in general. For example, I took some advanced chemistry classes and wanted to look up how hard it would be to synthesize RDX one day. I feel like that could be used against me in the wrong situation. My computer is full of things that only exist in my mind, and I feel like that’s too personal for something like a jury to handle.
quest88 3y ago
The small amount I've seen, they are.
cm2187 3y ago
And to take a measure of the creepiness, you just have to remind yourself what would be the non digital equivalent of what google is doing. You would be followed all day long by a guy who would log in his notebook every move you do, everything you say, who you meet, what they tell you, he would follow you into your doctor's office or at the coffee machine where you are flirting with a colleague. Anyone would go crazy with being spied on like that, it's worse than what the Stasi could ever do. And of course that notebook would be a treasure trove way more sensitive than a letter you would have written.

I’m so torn on this. Your digital life is so much more than a letter. I feel like police need to be very specific with what they are allowed to access.

by pnpnp 3y ago

I’m so torn on this. Your digital life is so much more than a letter. I feel like police need to be very specific with what they are allowed to access.

monero-xmr 3y ago

Fast forward to the 45 second mark https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cnA6XwVQUHY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cnA6XwVQUHY

psunavy03 3y ago

How is this different from the fact that they can toss your house with a court order, if necessary? Yes, search warrants generally limit themselves more than that, but a warrant is a warrant and the authorities can search anything they need to that's reasonably connected to what they have probable cause to suspect. How is your digital life any different from your physical life in that regard? Police and other LE already have to go to a judge and be "very specific" to be able to search anywhere you have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

hypothesis 3y ago
This is different because they are physically limited in number of houses they can toss per day, plus said activity is quite more observable to targets.
- psunavy03 3y ago
  The number of warrants that can be served has nothing to do with the price of beer. Either a judge has approved the warrant based on probable cause presented to him/her by the police, or they haven't. If the police could hypothetically toss every house in the country twice a day and once on Sundays, that has precisely nothing to do with anything. So long as the only houses they DO toss are ones where a judge has reviewed the evidence, and determined that there is probable cause that tossing the house will turn up fruits or instrumentalities of a crime. Capability to do a thing has nothing to do with approval to do a thing under the law or ethics. I'm fully capable of being a (very bad) male prostitute, but I refrain from doing that for many obvious moral and legal reasons.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    > So long as the only houses they DO toss are ones where a judge has reviewed the evidence, and determined that there is probable cause that tossing the house will turn up fruits You have a lot more faith than I do. I'd bet it's a lot more like a rubber stamp with basically zero review, assuming they bother with warrants at all (https://petapixel.com/2022/07/27/googles-nest-will-provide-data-to-police-without-a-warrant/ https://petapixel.com/2022/07/27/googles-nest-will-provide-d... https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/new-records-detail-dhs-purchase-and-use-of-vast-quantities-of-cell-phone-location-data https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/new-records-det... https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2021-03-24/federal-agencies-subpoena-google-personal-information https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2021-03-24... https://experiencedcriminallawyers.com/what-private-information-will-google-give-cops-without-a-warrant https://experiencedcriminallawyers.com/what-private-informat...)
  - watwut 3y ago
    > So long as the only houses they DO toss are ones where a judge has reviewed the evidence, I think that actual process is that judge agrees to anything cops ask for, not evidence review is going on.
    - psunavy03 3y ago
      Is this based on your JD or your personal experience litigating search warrants, or just internet BS?
dredmorbius 3y ago
The number of houses that can be searched is limited. Actual police officers or detectives need to visit said house, spend time on-prem, collect, and analyze evidence. A single site can be accessed at a time. Digital media are searched automatically, by hardware and processes, with many potential targets searched simultaneously and at vanishingly small cost. Physical evidence and print media are far slower to access and assess than digital media are. Physical evidence and print media have vastly lower data density than digital media do. Both temporal and spatial data resolution is far lower for the former. At the same time, provenance, integrity, and chain-of-possession over physical evidence media are also generally easier to ensure and assess, and both are generally less susceptible to either fabrication or modification. (The point here isn't that physical media cannot be tampered with. It's that digital media can be tampered with absolutely no evidence of this on the media itself. Typically some external validation or integrity check is necessary. Digital media can be entirely fabricated, all the more so now with AI and generator technologies, or can be entirely destroyed without a trace.) Digital media can be stored at volumes and for durations which would be utterly impossible with physical evidence. A 1 TB storage device, which can fit on your pinkie nail, can hold the equivalent of ~200,000 books, roughly the size of a fairly substantial public library. The entire Library of Congress book collection, 140 million volumes, assuming 5 MB each, would fit in 700 TB of storage. With currently-available 20 TB drives, that's about 35 disks, which would fit within a few standard rack units (mostly depending on the size of disk you'd opted for). The total cost would be a few thousand dollars. Digital media, particularly in the form of SaaS providers and Cloud storage, is an absolute trove of information on hundreds of millions or billions of people.
pharmakom 3y ago
I would rather a stranger search my house than my digital accounts and files, honestly.
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
When they "toss your house" you are generally on notice that a warrant has been obtained. When they get data from Google, does Google notify you. (NB. Correct me if I am wrong but in the case of Google, unless it's a search of Google's premises, it's not a warrant, it's a subpoena. Without being notified of a subpoena there's no opportunity for you to challenge it.)
- chii 3y ago
  I would imagine that if the warrant is like a no-knock warrant, then google doesn't have to notify you. But otherwise, they would need to.
  - dredmorbius 3y ago
    The effects of a no-notice warrant remain profoundly different for a physical location, in which it's obvious that a search has occurred, and a digital search, in which it is not.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
  Example of warrant issued to Google for information https://ia804707.us.archive.org/10/items/gov.uscourts.cacd.869106/gov.uscourts.cacd.869106.1.0.pdf https://ia804707.us.archive.org/10/items/gov.uscourts.cacd.8...
pnpnp 3y ago
My personal biggest fear is that I feel like my search history is full of curious things than can be misconstrued in court. I’ve always been fascinated by red-teaming things, and a very curious person in general. For example, I took some advanced chemistry classes and wanted to look up how hard it would be to synthesize RDX one day. I feel like that could be used against me in the wrong situation. My computer is full of things that only exist in my mind, and I feel like that’s too personal for something like a jury to handle.

quest88 3y ago

The small amount I've seen, they are.

cm2187 3y ago

And to take a measure of the creepiness, you just have to remind yourself what would be the non digital equivalent of what google is doing. You would be followed all day long by a guy who would log in his notebook every move you do, everything you say, who you meet, what they tell you, he would follow you into your doctor's office or at the coffee machine where you are flirting with a colleague. Anyone would go crazy with being spied on like that, it's worse than what the Stasi could ever do. And of course that notebook would be a treasure trove way more sensitive than a letter you would have written.