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Secret FBI Subpoenas Scoop Up Personal Data from Scores of Companies

nytimes.com

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Re: Secret FBI Subpoenas Scoop Up Personal Data from Scores of Companies

#81

Post by kerkeslager »

GhettoMaestro wrote: post #58
cameldrv wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, a gag order can be reasonable. Wiretaps with warrants usually have them. IMO, there should be no gag order, and the subject of the subpoena should be required to be notified and allowed to challenge the subpoena if it is issued without a judge. Gag orders should be allowed, but only if signed off on by a judge, and only for a reasonable amount of time to complete an investigation. If the government gets your inf…

> If the government gets your information, and decides not to bring charges, you should have the right to know about that at some point. Disagree. There are numerous cases where it takes multiple investigations to "get" a career criminal (think organized crime). If each batch of subpoenas or sealed warrants were exposed even when there is no charge this time, that gives said suspect a very nice opportunity to clean u…

> Disagree. There are numerous cases where it takes multiple investigations to "get" a career criminal (think organized crime). If each batch of subpoenas or sealed warrants were exposed even when there is no charge this time, that gives said suspect a very nice opportunity to clean up loose ends.

Subpoenas are only supposed to be issued if there's a reasonable belief that the subpoena will find evidence of criminal activity. In theory, subpoenas should find evidence most of the time--if subpoenas frequently don't turn up evidence, then subpoenas are being issued without the proper burden of proof being met.

For this reason I strongly disagree that we should build any policy around the idea that subpoenas won't turn up evidence of wrongdoing on a regular basis. This just encourages law enforcement to go on fishing expeditions, instead of doing proper, evidence-based police work. If law enforcement know the person will be notified of the subpoena after some time, then they'll be incentivized to only apply for subpoenas that are sensible and strategic, rather than applying for frivolous subpoenas that don't turn up anything.

Re: Secret FBI Subpoenas Scoop Up Personal Data from Scores of Companies

#82

Post by clubm8 »

jenvalentino wrote: post #15

Hi. I'm the reporter on this story. Thanks for discussing it! I thought it might be helpful for me to make a couple points. First, national security letters have been around, AND controversial, for years now. A number of tech companies have fought the gag orders. The news here is really that we are seeing for the first time which other specific companies get a lot of these — especially banks, credit agencies and so f…

Hi reporter on this story:

Are we aware if these are targeted (~60 orders = ~60 targets) or requests for large swathes of information?

Re: Secret FBI Subpoenas Scoop Up Personal Data from Scores of Companies

#83

Post by cwkoss »

jenvalentino wrote: post #15

Hi. I'm the reporter on this story. Thanks for discussing it! I thought it might be helpful for me to make a couple points. First, national security letters have been around, AND controversial, for years now. A number of tech companies have fought the gag orders. The news here is really that we are seeing for the first time which other specific companies get a lot of these — especially banks, credit agencies and so f…

Do you know if anyone has ever responded to one of these letters with "If you want to access our data we need a signed order from a judge" and how that played out?

Re: Secret FBI Subpoenas Scoop Up Personal Data from Scores of Companies

#84

Post by cwkoss »

mirimir wrote: post #61
jenvalentino wrote: post #15

Hi. I'm the reporter on this story. Thanks for discussing it! I thought it might be helpful for me to make a couple points. First, national security letters have been around, AND controversial, for years now. A number of tech companies have fought the gag orders. The news here is really that we are seeing for the first time which other specific companies get a lot of these — especially banks, credit agencies and so f…

Thanks for writing it. This is certainly disturbing news. And it's great to know about it. But I'm left feeling hopeless. Because we've been fighting this bullshit for decades, with little to show for it. And personally, there's nothing actionable. So it goes.

Minor method of resistance: whenever you get a resume that lists work with the FBI, put it directly into the circular file.

Re: Secret FBI Subpoenas Scoop Up Personal Data from Scores of Companies

#85

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

drewmol wrote: post #69
jenvalentino wrote: post #15

Hi. I'm the reporter on this story. Thanks for discussing it! I thought it might be helpful for me to make a couple points. First, national security letters have been around, AND controversial, for years now. A number of tech companies have fought the gag orders. The news here is really that we are seeing for the first time which other specific companies get a lot of these — especially banks, credit agencies and so f…

Fwiw, it was the PATRIOT Act, passed shortly after the events of 9/11/2001, that allows for these administrative subpoenas and gag orders and removed any effective judicial oversight. Many of those provisions in the act were set to expire and those expirations were extended by both president Bush and Obama. IIRC the AG or their subordinates have to notify the judiciary of these subpoenas but can issue a gag order alo…

Didn’t Biden take credit for writing the patriot act? Seems like a strange thing to congratulate yourself for.

Re: Secret FBI Subpoenas Scoop Up Personal Data from Scores of Companies

#86

Post by cwkoss »

whatshisface wrote: post #23
catacombs wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can't keep pretending this is still a Democracy when we have a completely unaccountable NSA/CIA/FBI that seems to repeatedly hide their mistakes and the dubious legality of their sources & methods behind the classification and national security walls. And people still call Snowden a traitor for revealing this kind of practice in 2013.

The claim that Snowden is a traitor is inseparable from the idea that the government and the people are separate entities, so that it's possible to betray one in service of the other. In that world Snowden would be a traitor to the US and everybody else at the NSA would be a traitor to the people. Obviously such a thing is only possible if democracy breaks down to the point where the government no longer expresses th…

>In that world Snowden would be a traitor to the US and everybody else at the NSA would be a traitor to the people.

I think the dissonance in your argument is that the US is the people.

Snowden betrayed the intelligence community who is betraying the US.

Re: Secret FBI Subpoenas Scoop Up Personal Data from Scores of Companies

#87

Post by jenvalentino »

clubm8 wrote: post #82
jenvalentino wrote: post #15

Hi. I'm the reporter on this story. Thanks for discussing it! I thought it might be helpful for me to make a couple points. First, national security letters have been around, AND controversial, for years now. A number of tech companies have fought the gag orders. The news here is really that we are seeing for the first time which other specific companies get a lot of these — especially banks, credit agencies and so f…

Hi reporter on this story: Are we aware if these are targeted (~60 orders = ~60 targets) or requests for large swathes of information?

Hi. We don't know for sure how many targets are involved in these letters. However, the USA Freedom Act prohibited bulk collection of information here.

The government now releases basic statistics on NSLs, for example here: https://www.dni.gov/files/CLPT/documents/2019_ASTR_for_CY201....

In 2018, there were 10,235 NSLs, with 38,872 "requests for information" (ie targets) within those NSLs. So you can make some general inferences.

Re: Secret FBI Subpoenas Scoop Up Personal Data from Scores of Companies

#88

Post by cwkoss »

kazagistar wrote: post #42
whatshisface wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim that Snowden is a traitor is inseparable from the idea that the government and the people are separate entities, so that it's possible to betray one in service of the other. In that world Snowden would be a traitor to the US and everybody else at the NSA would be a traitor to the people. Obviously such a thing is only possible if democracy breaks down to the point where the government no longer expresses th…

While I think Snowden is a hero and whatnot, I think a black and white reasoning about being a traitor isn't particularly helpful. If anything, the concept of a traitor is a weak one, and shouldn't matter in discourse... it's not a harm or benefit in and of itself, and any celebration or punishment should rest on the extent of those harms and benefits themselves rather then some abstract and largely tribal concept li…

Kennedy wanted "to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds." Some suspect this was the true cause of his assassination.

It's plausible, but any government evidence to disprove it would be suspect so it's kind of stuck as permanently-epistemologically-ambiguous.

Re: Secret FBI Subpoenas Scoop Up Personal Data from Scores of Companies

#89

Post by cwkoss »

president wrote: post #66
situational87 wrote: post #2

We can't keep pretending this is still a Democracy when we have a completely unaccountable NSA/CIA/FBI that seems to repeatedly hide their mistakes and the dubious legality of their sources & methods behind the classification and national security walls.

What would be the alternative? For a functional national security program, some aspects need to be secret from the general public in order to protect against compromise.

Judges should have to sign off on warrants to access data, and there must be a process to (at least retroactively) sue if the basis of the warrant was fraudulent or fabricated.

Further, the 'gag order' component should be temporary and of minimum necessary duration. The arrest of a target should automatically invalidate the gag order because keeping this information from the defendant is a violation of due process.

Re: Secret FBI Subpoenas Scoop Up Personal Data from Scores of Companies

#90

Post by cwkoss »

cwkoss wrote: post #89
president wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be the alternative? For a functional national security program, some aspects need to be secret from the general public in order to protect against compromise.

Judges should have to sign off on warrants to access data, and there must be a process to (at least retroactively) sue if the basis of the warrant was fraudulent or fabricated. Further, the 'gag order' component should be temporary and of minimum necessary duration. The arrest of a target should automatically invalidate the gag order because keeping this information from the defendant is a violation of due process.

If anyone really wants to poke the tiger, they could get a bunch of cheap data by sending out fake National Security Letters.

Good way to go to prison for a long time, but one person's success could force the system to overhaul.

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