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All I can say is GOOD. If a person is suspected of committing a crime, and police obtain a specific, pointed, warrant for information pertaining to an individu

All I can say is GOOD. If a person is suspected of committing a crime, and police obtain a specific, pointed, warrant for information pertaining to an individual, tech companies have a moral obligation to comply, in the best interests of humanity. If law enforcement or spy agency asked for a dragnet warrant like "find me all of the people that might be guilty of XYZ" or "find me something this individual might be guilty of"; tech companies have a moral obligation to resist, in the best interest of humanity. The first is an example of the justice system working correctly in a free society; the second is an example of totalitarian government seeking to frame individuals.

jonny_eh 1y ago
> the Justice Department’s allegations against Rinderknecht are supported by evidence found on his phone Sounds like they got the info from his phone, not taken from any servers, so this is likely not an example of a tech company "complying".
bitpush 1y ago
How do you square this with Apple's pushback few years back against FBI who asked for a specific individual's details. I'm not taking sides, but it sounds like if ChatGPT cooperating with LE is a Good Thing (TM), then Apple making a public spectacle of how they are not going to cooperate is .. bad? I'm fully aware that Apple might not even be able to provide them the information, which is a separate conversation.
- closetohome 1y ago
  The difference is that in this case OpenAI was able to produce the requested information without compromising security for their other customers.
  - SilasX 1y ago
    Right, for the OpenAI case to be analogous, they would have to switch to a system where your chats are homomorphically encrypted -- i.e. OpenAI does all its operations without knowing either the input or output plaintext. In that case, they'd only have encrypted chats to begin with, and would have to somehow get your key to comply with a warrant for the plaintext. And note: the above scenario is not likely anywhere in the near future, because homomorphic encryption has something like a million times overhead, and requires you to hit the entire database on every request, when state-of-the-art LLM systems are already pushing the limits of computation.
- exabrial 1y ago
  With my current knowledge of the case, I'd say Apple was clearly in the moral wrong and it's a pretty dark mark in their past. My understanding is the suspect was detained and law enforcement was not asking for a dragnet (at least thats what they stated publicly), and they were asking for a tool for a specific phone. Apple stated the FBI was asking them to backdoor in all iPhones, then the FBI countered and said thats not what they were asking for. Apple then marched triumphantly into the moral sunset over the innocent victims'; meanwhile the FBI then send funds to a dubious group with questionable ethics and ties to authoritarian regimes. In my opinion, Apple should have expediently helped here, if for no other reason than to prevent the funding of groups that support dragnets, but also out of moral obligation to the victims.
  - JKCalhoun 1y ago
    Are you certain Apple could unlock this phone (short of making a software change that compromised all iPhones)?
    - exabrial 1y ago
      I make no claim either way nor do I have insider knowledge of what they could and could not do.
      - JKCalhoun 1y ago
        Neither do I have inside knowledge. Instead I am only aware from what has been published that there is the so-called "Secure Enclave" chip in the iPhone hardware manifest that will only give up its secrets to a biometric match, or a user password. That would seem to leave Apple's hands tied?
    - ribosometronome 1y ago
      And why would it matter? Even if the capability to create a magic key that unlocked a specific phone remained entirely within a company's hands for future use, why wouldn't the courts just continue to ask them to use it? It's not like the victims of all sorts of other crimes don't have similar don't similarly deserve justice. Law enforcement at the time was even admitting (which we'd later find out to be correct) that there likely was nothing of value on the phone. It seems fairly obvious that the FBI was trying to use a high profile case to force a paradigm shift. Perhaps we can argue it'd be a good and just one, but arguing that they weren't seems not right.
- gruez 1y ago
  >How do you square this with Apple's pushback few years back against FBI who asked for a specific individual's details. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_d... >Most of these seek to compel Apple "to use its existing capabilities to extract data like contacts, photos and calls from locked iPhones running on operating systems iOS 7 and older" in order to assist in criminal investigations and prosecutions. A few requests, however, involve phones with more extensive security protections, which Apple has no current ability to break. These orders would compel Apple to write new software that would let the government bypass these devices' security and unlock the phones.[3] That's much more different than OpenAI dumping some rows from their database. If chatgpt was end-to-end encrypted and they wanted OpenAI to backdoor their app I would be equally opposed.
  - giancarlostoro 1y ago
    Interesting that it wound up not being Cellebrite, I thought for years it was, I wonder if Cellebrite had people lie to the press that it was them. Really effective marketing. I agree, the line is at messing with End to End Encryption. If your E2EE has a backdoor ITS NOT END TO END ENCRYPTION. Thanks.
    - morshu9001 1y ago
      It's not exactly E2EE. iPhone storage is locked with a 6-digit numeric passcode in most cases, which is basically no entropy. The whole thing relies on hardware security (the enclave). At least in older phones, that just meant security through obscurity since Apple's trade secrets were enough to unlock it, but maybe newer ones can't be unlocked even by Apple.
  - heavyset_go 1y ago
    With CALEA and related laws, companies that don't keep logs can be compelled to surveil certain users from that point forward, even if that means installing hardware/software that keeps logs on them.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- morshu9001 1y ago
  Yes. I'm glad the FBI was able to crack the phone without Apple's help in that San Bernardino case, which humiliated Apple as a little bonus. Apple also tried to freak the public out saying the FBI wanted a backdoor added, which was inaccurate. You can't retroactively add a backdoor, that's the whole point of it. FBI wanted Apple to unlock a specific phone, which Apple said they were capable of doing already.
tshaddox 1y ago
Does this imply that the tech company has the moral obligation to evaluate the merits of each warrant on a case-by-case basis?
- exabrial 1y ago
  They should resist fishing expeditions. I don't think thats that hard.
  - tshaddox 1y ago
    Is that only a function of the number of individuals targeted by a group of warrants? What determines "group membership" of a warrant? It seems like it actually is hard to determine, both for the legal system (there are many controversies in the U.S. about whether dragnet warrants are constitutional and what constitutes a dragnet warrant) and for a company receiving these warrants.
matthewdgreen 1y ago
Not good. These tools (from search engines to AI) are increasingly part of our brains, and we should have confidentiality in using them. I already think too much about everything I put into ChatGPT, since my default assumption is it will all be made public. Now I also have to consider the possibility that random discussions will be used against me and taken out of context if I'm ever accused of committing a crime. (Like all the weird questions I ask about anonymous communications and encryption!) So everything I do with these tools will be with an eye towards the fact that it's all preserved and I'll have to explain it, which has a huge chilling effect on using the system. Just make it easy for me not to log history.
- hdseggbj 1y ago
  Just give the ai to user relationship a protection like attorney client privilege. Edit: ai has already passed the bar exam.
  - wizzwizz4 1y ago
    It only "passes the bar exam" when AI, or some other flawed process, is the examiner. See e.g. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-024-09396-9 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-024-09396-9 for a debunk.
    - hdseggbj 1y ago
      That's not a debunk. "Calls into question" does not equal "in truth, it failed the exam. "
      - hluska 1y ago
        No, it’s a debunk. ChatGPT-4 scored in the 48th percentile (15th percentile in essays) amongst individuals that passed the bar exam. That’s very poor performance.
        hdseggbj 1y ago
stuffn 1y ago
> If law enforcement or spy agency asked for a dragnet warrant like "find me all of the people that might be guilty of XYZ" or "find me something this individual might be guilty of"; tech companies have a moral obligation to resist, in the best interest of humanity. There is more evidence they will do this rather than that they won't. ChatGPT is a giant dragnet and 15 years ago I would've argued it's probably entirely operated and funded by the NSA. The police already can obtain a "geofenced warrant" today. We're not more than one senator up for re-election from having a new law forced down our throat "for the children" that enables them to mine OpenAI data. That is, if they don't already have a Room 641A located in their HQ. People pour their live out into these fuzzy word predictors. OpenAI is holding a treasure trove of personal data, personality data, and other data that could be used for all kinds of intelligence work. This is objectively bad regardless of how bad the criminal is. The last near 40 years of history, and especially the post 9/11 world, shows that if we don't stand up for these people the government will tread all over our most fundamental rights in the name of children/security/etc. Basic rights aren't determined by how "good people" use them. They are entirely determined by how we treat "bad people" under them.
- tenthirtyam 1y ago
  Just wait until AI is advanced enough that you can buy an AI best friend who will be with you all your life. I'm reminded of Decker's AI hologram friend in Blade Runner 2049. The only thing they got wrong was she was not collecting data for the megacorp. Thinking again, the AI will certainly be "free".
heavyset_go 1y ago
I don't think anyone has a moral obligation to do the state's bidding, and if you think these tools will only be used morally against "bad guys", you have not been paying attention to recent events. I also don't think the interests of the state are "in the best interests of humanity". Sometimes the price of having nice things and them remaining nice means that people you don't like can use them, too.
HardCodedBias 1y ago
There are many routes that the government has to court order/warrant/subpoena information from tech companies. The tech companies have just about zero ability to resist. There should likely be legislation enacted that raises chat logs to the level of psychotherapist-patient privilege.
- heavyset_go 1y ago
  > There should likely be legislation enacted that raises chat logs to the level of psychotherapist-patient privilege. Medical records are up for grabs when it comes to investigations/discovery/subpoenas/warrants/etc, it's one of the privacy exceptions in HIPAA. They can also be used to try to identify alleged criminals, missing people, fugitives, etc. For example, if they have DNA samples, bite impressions (even though it's BS), law enforcement can even demand matching medical records without warrants.
kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
Administrative or judicial warrant? What if they deceived the judge?
codedokode 1y ago
Not fair. It means idiots who type "how do I hide a body" get caught, but smart types from HN can hide their traces. In a fair society, both dumb and smart criminals should have equal chance of getting caught. Imagine, for example, if you could use Internet only after identification. And maybe there should be reduced punishment for dumb types for humanity reasons.
- fn-mote 1y ago
  Absurd. Unrealistic. Does everyone have the same earnings potential risk regardless of their skill? Same with stealing potential. Edit: on the flip side, white collar crimes leave a paper trail that traditional smash and grab crimes do not, so more white collar criminals should be getting caught and convicted now.
AfterHIA 1y ago
The issue is that law enforcement personnel are going to do combinations of both. Corruption is real and companies are just made of people. Things can be done in relative secret without arousing controversy. This is the same logic libertarian shitheads use for why we shouldn't provide kids a school lunch. Human nature doesn't follow your shitfuck ideal driven rules friend. I guarantee some day you'll find that out the hard way.
wiredpancake 1y ago
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jonny_eh 1y ago

> the Justice Department’s allegations against Rinderknecht are supported by evidence found on his phone Sounds like they got the info from his phone, not taken from any servers, so this is likely not an example of a tech company "complying".

bitpush 1y ago

How do you square this with Apple's pushback few years back against FBI who asked for a specific individual's details. I'm not taking sides, but it sounds like if ChatGPT cooperating with LE is a Good Thing (TM), then Apple making a public spectacle of how they are not going to cooperate is .. bad? I'm fully aware that Apple might not even be able to provide them the information, which is a separate conversation.

closetohome 1y ago
The difference is that in this case OpenAI was able to produce the requested information without compromising security for their other customers.
- SilasX 1y ago
  Right, for the OpenAI case to be analogous, they would have to switch to a system where your chats are homomorphically encrypted -- i.e. OpenAI does all its operations without knowing either the input or output plaintext. In that case, they'd only have encrypted chats to begin with, and would have to somehow get your key to comply with a warrant for the plaintext. And note: the above scenario is not likely anywhere in the near future, because homomorphic encryption has something like a million times overhead, and requires you to hit the entire database on every request, when state-of-the-art LLM systems are already pushing the limits of computation.
exabrial 1y ago
With my current knowledge of the case, I'd say Apple was clearly in the moral wrong and it's a pretty dark mark in their past. My understanding is the suspect was detained and law enforcement was not asking for a dragnet (at least thats what they stated publicly), and they were asking for a tool for a specific phone. Apple stated the FBI was asking them to backdoor in all iPhones, then the FBI countered and said thats not what they were asking for. Apple then marched triumphantly into the moral sunset over the innocent victims'; meanwhile the FBI then send funds to a dubious group with questionable ethics and ties to authoritarian regimes. In my opinion, Apple should have expediently helped here, if for no other reason than to prevent the funding of groups that support dragnets, but also out of moral obligation to the victims.
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  Are you certain Apple could unlock this phone (short of making a software change that compromised all iPhones)?
  - exabrial 1y ago
    I make no claim either way nor do I have insider knowledge of what they could and could not do.
    - JKCalhoun 1y ago
      Neither do I have inside knowledge. Instead I am only aware from what has been published that there is the so-called "Secure Enclave" chip in the iPhone hardware manifest that will only give up its secrets to a biometric match, or a user password. That would seem to leave Apple's hands tied?
  - ribosometronome 1y ago
    And why would it matter? Even if the capability to create a magic key that unlocked a specific phone remained entirely within a company's hands for future use, why wouldn't the courts just continue to ask them to use it? It's not like the victims of all sorts of other crimes don't have similar don't similarly deserve justice. Law enforcement at the time was even admitting (which we'd later find out to be correct) that there likely was nothing of value on the phone. It seems fairly obvious that the FBI was trying to use a high profile case to force a paradigm shift. Perhaps we can argue it'd be a good and just one, but arguing that they weren't seems not right.
gruez 1y ago
>How do you square this with Apple's pushback few years back against FBI who asked for a specific individual's details. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_d... >Most of these seek to compel Apple "to use its existing capabilities to extract data like contacts, photos and calls from locked iPhones running on operating systems iOS 7 and older" in order to assist in criminal investigations and prosecutions. A few requests, however, involve phones with more extensive security protections, which Apple has no current ability to break. These orders would compel Apple to write new software that would let the government bypass these devices' security and unlock the phones.[3] That's much more different than OpenAI dumping some rows from their database. If chatgpt was end-to-end encrypted and they wanted OpenAI to backdoor their app I would be equally opposed.
- giancarlostoro 1y ago
  Interesting that it wound up not being Cellebrite, I thought for years it was, I wonder if Cellebrite had people lie to the press that it was them. Really effective marketing. I agree, the line is at messing with End to End Encryption. If your E2EE has a backdoor ITS NOT END TO END ENCRYPTION. Thanks.
  - morshu9001 1y ago
    It's not exactly E2EE. iPhone storage is locked with a 6-digit numeric passcode in most cases, which is basically no entropy. The whole thing relies on hardware security (the enclave). At least in older phones, that just meant security through obscurity since Apple's trade secrets were enough to unlock it, but maybe newer ones can't be unlocked even by Apple.
- heavyset_go 1y ago
  With CALEA and related laws, companies that don't keep logs can be compelled to surveil certain users from that point forward, even if that means installing hardware/software that keeps logs on them.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
morshu9001 1y ago
Yes. I'm glad the FBI was able to crack the phone without Apple's help in that San Bernardino case, which humiliated Apple as a little bonus. Apple also tried to freak the public out saying the FBI wanted a backdoor added, which was inaccurate. You can't retroactively add a backdoor, that's the whole point of it. FBI wanted Apple to unlock a specific phone, which Apple said they were capable of doing already.

tshaddox 1y ago

Does this imply that the tech company has the moral obligation to evaluate the merits of each warrant on a case-by-case basis?

exabrial 1y ago
They should resist fishing expeditions. I don't think thats that hard.
- tshaddox 1y ago
  Is that only a function of the number of individuals targeted by a group of warrants? What determines "group membership" of a warrant? It seems like it actually is hard to determine, both for the legal system (there are many controversies in the U.S. about whether dragnet warrants are constitutional and what constitutes a dragnet warrant) and for a company receiving these warrants.

matthewdgreen 1y ago

Not good. These tools (from search engines to AI) are increasingly part of our brains, and we should have confidentiality in using them. I already think too much about everything I put into ChatGPT, since my default assumption is it will all be made public. Now I also have to consider the possibility that random discussions will be used against me and taken out of context if I'm ever accused of committing a crime. (Like all the weird questions I ask about anonymous communications and encryption!) So everything I do with these tools will be with an eye towards the fact that it's all preserved and I'll have to explain it, which has a huge chilling effect on using the system. Just make it easy for me not to log history.

hdseggbj 1y ago
Just give the ai to user relationship a protection like attorney client privilege. Edit: ai has already passed the bar exam.
- wizzwizz4 1y ago
  It only "passes the bar exam" when AI, or some other flawed process, is the examiner. See e.g. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-024-09396-9 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-024-09396-9 for a debunk.
  - hdseggbj 1y ago
    That's not a debunk. "Calls into question" does not equal "in truth, it failed the exam. "
    - hluska 1y ago
      No, it’s a debunk. ChatGPT-4 scored in the 48th percentile (15th percentile in essays) amongst individuals that passed the bar exam. That’s very poor performance.
      - hdseggbj 1y ago

stuffn 1y ago

> If law enforcement or spy agency asked for a dragnet warrant like "find me all of the people that might be guilty of XYZ" or "find me something this individual might be guilty of"; tech companies have a moral obligation to resist, in the best interest of humanity. There is more evidence they will do this rather than that they won't. ChatGPT is a giant dragnet and 15 years ago I would've argued it's probably entirely operated and funded by the NSA. The police already can obtain a "geofenced warrant" today. We're not more than one senator up for re-election from having a new law forced down our throat "for the children" that enables them to mine OpenAI data. That is, if they don't already have a Room 641A located in their HQ. People pour their live out into these fuzzy word predictors. OpenAI is holding a treasure trove of personal data, personality data, and other data that could be used for all kinds of intelligence work. This is objectively bad regardless of how bad the criminal is. The last near 40 years of history, and especially the post 9/11 world, shows that if we don't stand up for these people the government will tread all over our most fundamental rights in the name of children/security/etc. Basic rights aren't determined by how "good people" use them. They are entirely determined by how we treat "bad people" under them.

tenthirtyam 1y ago
Just wait until AI is advanced enough that you can buy an AI best friend who will be with you all your life. I'm reminded of Decker's AI hologram friend in Blade Runner 2049. The only thing they got wrong was she was not collecting data for the megacorp. Thinking again, the AI will certainly be "free".

heavyset_go 1y ago

I don't think anyone has a moral obligation to do the state's bidding, and if you think these tools will only be used morally against "bad guys", you have not been paying attention to recent events. I also don't think the interests of the state are "in the best interests of humanity". Sometimes the price of having nice things and them remaining nice means that people you don't like can use them, too.

HardCodedBias 1y ago

There are many routes that the government has to court order/warrant/subpoena information from tech companies. The tech companies have just about zero ability to resist. There should likely be legislation enacted that raises chat logs to the level of psychotherapist-patient privilege.

heavyset_go 1y ago
> There should likely be legislation enacted that raises chat logs to the level of psychotherapist-patient privilege. Medical records are up for grabs when it comes to investigations/discovery/subpoenas/warrants/etc, it's one of the privacy exceptions in HIPAA. They can also be used to try to identify alleged criminals, missing people, fugitives, etc. For example, if they have DNA samples, bite impressions (even though it's BS), law enforcement can even demand matching medical records without warrants.

kevin_thibedeau 1y ago

Administrative or judicial warrant? What if they deceived the judge?

codedokode 1y ago

Not fair. It means idiots who type "how do I hide a body" get caught, but smart types from HN can hide their traces. In a fair society, both dumb and smart criminals should have equal chance of getting caught. Imagine, for example, if you could use Internet only after identification. And maybe there should be reduced punishment for dumb types for humanity reasons.

fn-mote 1y ago
Absurd. Unrealistic. Does everyone have the same earnings potential risk regardless of their skill? Same with stealing potential. Edit: on the flip side, white collar crimes leave a paper trail that traditional smash and grab crimes do not, so more white collar criminals should be getting caught and convicted now.

AfterHIA 1y ago

The issue is that law enforcement personnel are going to do combinations of both. Corruption is real and companies are just made of people. Things can be done in relative secret without arousing controversy. This is the same logic libertarian shitheads use for why we shouldn't provide kids a school lunch. Human nature doesn't follow your shitfuck ideal driven rules friend. I guarantee some day you'll find that out the hard way.

wiredpancake 1y ago

[dead]