151–160 of 236 posts
Or, stated another way- "I'm not qualified to do my job, so I just rubber-stamp it"
Now imagine somebody saying that about a code review.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or when a judge is given a request with missing information and he can't ask an expert, do research, or say, "Wait, what is a Tor Exit Node and why did you mention it in your report?" The point of this article is given the fact that they left that off then he can't reasonably ask for more information.
Right. This is somewhat the point of the oppositional trial system; we can't expect a biased party to bring up all facts relevant to the case, so we bring in someone else with the opposite bias to give the judge the rest of the facts. In these expedited judicial-request hearings, there isn't an explicit defendant, so there's no oppositional counsel to bring in. Maybe we need to bring back the concept of a "devil's ad…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He is willing to admit that it goes over his head, which presumably also means that he'd be willing to read up on it or seek advice if necessary. The biggest problem isn't judges who doesn't know everything - they have to deal with cases covering every possible discipline and can't possibly know everything about everything put before them. The problem is when they believe they do, or don't care, or don't want to admi…
If I were in the position of that judge I would like to be able to bring experts on my own. Is that possible? (I wouldn't trust either the defense nor the prosecution to provide me with neutral information via their selected experts.)
Money quote in the last paragraph: "When we get into things like this," [Judge William Downing] said, "anonymizing stuff, that’s well over my head technologically, then it becomes very murky and hazy." That sounds to me like the judge likely wouldn't have known what a TOR node was if the police had told him these guys were running one. Technology isn't slowing down, so how can we make sure the law keeps up?
The judge wouldn't have known what a Tor node is—but that's not a bad thing. What he's saying here is that the facts as originally presented to him translated into a well-known "cached" judgement; but the facts as they actually were would require original thought and research on his part (and/or those of analysts working for the judge) to come to a decision. "Guy has child porn on his computer" has a clear-cut answer…
The real problem is that we can't ever fire them, no matter how bad they are (see FISC)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I were in the position of that judge I would like to be able to bring experts on my own. Is that possible? (I wouldn't trust either the defense nor the prosecution to provide me with neutral information via their selected experts.)
But would you have suspected the existence of a tor node if nothing in the warrant suggested it? Would you have stopped the investigation to call some experts?
Only half joking.
I have a question for any Legal Professionals here. Reading these news stories it sounds like warrants can be very invasive but that there is no advocate for the target of the warrant involved in the process. What protections for the target are there in the process of obtaining a warrant, given the serving of one can be so invasive and damaging?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given that most of the content on Tor is illegal,[1] I'm not sure the mail is really the appropriate analogy. [1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/02/survey_of_the...
Most email is spam. Most cash contains traces of drugs. Most BitTorrent content infringes copyright. Is that supposed to justify a raid of anyone who runs a mail server or pays in cash or torrents a Debian ISO? For that matter, given the whole Three Felonies a Day thing, most postal mail is in fact sent by criminals too. There is a reason we have a law against theft and not a law against crowbars.
> Most email is spam. ... runs a mail server
If your mail server is an open relay and sends a lot of spam, you might expect it to get blocked at a minimum, and possibly to see some legal problems.
> Most cash contains traces of drugs. ... pays in cash
If you run an ATM and the money you put out has a higher proportion of drugs on it than the average currency, you might expect some inquiries.
> Most BitTorrent content infringes copyright. ... torrents a Debian ISO
This isn't even hard to disambiguate like the others. Is the torrent being downloaded/served infringing in some manner? If it's not, you're fine, if it is, you might have a problem. BitTorrent isn't a single system, it's bunch of loose networks.
There's a useful discussion to be had over whether someone running a Tor exit node should expect some increased risk of inconvenience and/or exposure to mistaken legal action, but I don't think these really advance that conversation at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its more like getting a warrant to search his house because they found drugs in his car, but not bothering to mention to the judge that "his" car was a rental car he took out from the airport Hertz a month ago.
Except in this case Bultmann and Robinson are Hertz, not the customer. They also knowingly rented to a drug dealer. Another analogy may be running a Hertz in Saudi Arabia and renting to women without male guardians present. The computer is not rented, they were in control of a device that may have been used to distribute child pornography. They themselves claim to know and understand this but feel that the risk of en…
How did you establish intent there?
I know as a fact that by depositing money in the bank, some of that money will be lent out by the bank. I also know that some people who lend money from banks will be criminals. I thus know that by depositing money in the bank, criminal behavior will be enabled.
I do not know however if my money specifically will be use for criminal behavior, nor do I know whom the criminals are or what the crime will be. In order to "knowingly" participate in a crime, the will, whom, and what is kind of important.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Suppose I'm AT&T ISPs have a specific set of statutes that grant them immunity as long as they comply with certain requirements [1]. Individual users do not. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2258B
In practice some individuals do have immunity. If this case led the detectives to a local coffee shop do you really think they would have raided the owner's house at 6am and ransacked his home and business searching for something that they knew they were unlikely to find? It's not really that different from running a Tor exit node. The police knew that the traffic was likely coming from another source and that the mo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's actually really sad because I was wanting to see if I could implement an exit node all by myself as a side proejct, but then I realized the potential danger I'd be putting myself in. Naturally, I'd have to host it to test it, so I had to throw this one to the way-side
You still can but, make sure you don't do it in your house. Even one of the operators said, I guess I should have rented a server for this. Not that I agree with the warrant however, I'm not putting my dog's and children's lives in danger.