The (IMHO) really interesting discussions start about 30 paragraphs down:
- "The EFF sees the tremendous scope and power of geofence warrants as a bug, not a feature. “We believe that geofence warrants are unconstitutional because they don’t start with a suspect,” says Lynch. “They don’t rely on individualized suspicion, which is what’s required under the Fourth Amendment [to the U.S. Constitution]."
> They don’t rely on individualized suspicion, which is what’s required under the Fourth Amendment [to the U.S. Constitution]
That's definitely a "citation needed" statement.
In Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives’ Ass’n, 489 U.S. 602 (1989) the Court upheld mandatory drug testing for railway employees involved in accidents or safety violations despite no probable cause or individualized suspicion.
In Michigan Dep’t of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444 (1990) the Court upheld sobriety check points in which all cars are briefly stopped for questioning and observation. There's no individualized suspicion there. See also the cases involving border patrol checkpoints. A checkpoint 50 miles from the border doesn't involve any individualized suspicion.
Individualized suspicion is required I believe to target an individual, but hasn't targeting a place where a crime has been committed to get more information to try to figure what individuals might be involved been standard, uncontroversial, police procedure in the United States for hundreds of years?
E.g., if a clearly murdered body is found in a maid's closet at a hotel when the maids go to start their shift in the morning police are going to get a warrant to get the list of all staff and guests that were known to be in the hotel between the time the closet was last known to be dead body free and the time the body was discovered.
That seems at least somewhat similar to a geofence warrant and has been pretty normal since basically forever.
I’m torn between the argument about individualized suspicion, which I find really compelling, and the fact that extreme circumstances demand some extreme measures.
Leading with the capitol attack doesn’t highlight to me why wide scope of these powers is a problem. Tell me more about the civil rights campaigns that are being disrupted with these technologies and powers.
It’s not helpful to highlight how it was used to arrest violent separatists. Tell me how it’s being used to punch down!
Without an example like that, I’m inclined to say this is a time where the federal government’s reliance on norms is working. As in, they have the power to do these kinds of things, but they choose to apply that power pretty selectively.
Another issue here is there is a problem with laws which are broad enough that it requires selective enforcements for them to be available. Because then you can get a problematic force which then uses them selectively for political purposes. This indeed is how the Soviet state worked and indeed current Russian state works to quash dissent.
That's aspirational rather than reality. The Supreme Court had no problem with the Patriot Act, which introduced extremely broad electronic searches. You could say the 4th Amendment should restrict searches to specific individuals, that might be a good idea, but for now the Supreme Court sees no need for that interpretation.
This argument doesn't make sense. That's like saying you cant review a security camera overlooking a carpark to see who was illegally using your carpark.
If surveillance capitalism continues, we'll need to rehash past legal compromises like probable cause, presumed innocence, and refusing to testify against oneself.
With panopticon and big data, investigators can rule out everyone with an alibi, sifting thru mountains of data to reveal who must have committed a crime.
I'm not arguing right or wrong, morally. Just what is.
Looks like the US state power is now making an obvious push to follow the CCPs footsteps after quietly eroding people's rights for years.
Hopefully the people will push back on it, can't say I have much hope since the political system is purposely broken.
Feels like we are already living in a world where both superpowers nations are in agreement that surveillance capitalism and disinformation is the best way to control their local population.
It appears reasonable at first glance, but upon further reflection it seems unlikely that the internet was the only factor influencing the riots. If the internet wasn't available, it's likely that some other means of communication would have been used to spread the news that sparked the unrest. There have been MANY instances of people trying to take over a government building before the age of the internet.
This is true but I’m not sure you’d have had the critical mass of people primed to respond to those messages. Fox News heavily pushed lies about the election but the people who responded were part of a world which grew a lot in the later 2000s as blogs, Facebook, etc. opened up new audiences for ideas which would have been too extreme even for cable news.
There'd be metadata of you moving with it. So you'd have touch points in other places through other systems. IF you have a phone, and you're tracked by it, then even if the identity of the sim points elsewhere there's the possibility you leave traces of yourself on CCTV as you're handling the device.
Also you're enemy would be busy in this day and age, quickly getting a new phone and trying to contact people with it, thus creating a competing alibi.
I think geofencing should only be allowed to establish/check connection to a very specific crime. I.e. in this specific case of capitol riot, it was a clear one. What I don't think should be allowed is a geofence & open-ended fishing for more crimes.
Obviously I am not lawyer, but I would think it could be codified somehow.
The police want all data, then they'll find the crimes. This goes against our country's presumption of innocence. Look at the recent case of the facial recognition and the Rockettes. A lady was trying to go to a holiday show as a private individual but was digitally black listed and kicked out as soon as she entered because she is employed by a law firm engaged in a lawsuit against MSG (who owns RCMH).
I understand this is a private venue and not police but the principle is the same. She wasn't caught hacking anything or breaking in to anything she just wanted to see the dancers. The big problem with geo fence warrants is that they lead to a 1984 style big brother surveillance state. For example: should the police constantly get everyone's cell phone tower ping data and automatically issue speeding tickets for every 5 minute window someone was speeding?
It doesn't go against presumption of innocence because the police don't determine legal innocence or guilt. If we get to the point where that becomes the case, where for instance anyone caught up in a geofence warrant is automatically convicted of a crime in absentia and without any other evidence, then that's obviously a problem.
Per the story the use of geofencing is of great concern as essentially it amounts to a grant of authority to the State to undertake a search simply based on geography and not reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. This is a significant departure from past standards for undertaking a search. See article excerpt below.
'The EFF sees the tremendous scope and power of geofence warrants as a bug, not a feature. “We believe that geofence warrants are unconstitutional because they don’t start with a suspect,” says Lynch. “They don’t rely on individualized suspicion, which is what’s required under the Fourth Amendment [to the U.S. Constitution]. In the January 6th context, it’s likely that there were many journalists whose data was provided to the police.”'
But "geofencing"; ie. in the form of the police asking for a list of phones which have been connected to a particular telecommunications tower has been around for decades. This is hardly news anymore.
"Be careful, they have spooky powers" seems to be the message. As well as "there are digital fingerprints everywhere", as they also talk about ProPublica doing their own investigation.
It's deeply regrettable that both sides of the political spectrum are so caught up in their particular narratives that they can't see potential erosion of civil rights that these law enforcement techniques bring about. On parts of the left, segments are grateful for these technologies because they allow for the arrest of individuals who they perceive as having attempted to overthrow democracy. Segments of the right are blinded and can't focus on the means and methods undertaken by law enforcement because they can't overcome their rage at what they perceive as an overblown and partisan response to the events of the riot.
It's a question whether standard police work should be reformed since despite all classical attempts at hiding, they were found.
It questions: are the trade offs worth it?
I suppose the corrolary being: what if this protest was more legitimate but the police was corrupt?
I live in China myself so I find it interesting to ask this question before it's fully done and lost, even if I feel I know the answer: yes, it is worth it, and you'll never shock people with stories of criminals being founds thanks to general surveillance as much as they're shocked by unsolved horrendous crimes, so the abuses will be tolerated (or hidden thanks to the new structure of standard police work) as price to pay, when a critical mass of crimes that could have been solved will be reached.
And I am sad to tell you, that trading freedom for safety is paradise, and when I left the scary city I lived in before to Hong Kong where I live now, I felt such a surprised relief at the total absence of small crimes (all citizens prints are stored on a central database for instance, all 7M of us can be found in an instant). I'm never going back, they can read my emails and track my phone.
> It's a question whether standard police work should be reformed since despite all classical attempts at hiding, they were found.
They discussed their plans openly on social media then streamed evidence of it after the fact.
Ignoring the question of whether the ability to hide from law enforcement is a necessary component of liberty even when one has committed a crime, these guys weren't even trying very hard to cover their tracks.
Readit News
- "The EFF sees the tremendous scope and power of geofence warrants as a bug, not a feature. “We believe that geofence warrants are unconstitutional because they don’t start with a suspect,” says Lynch. “They don’t rely on individualized suspicion, which is what’s required under the Fourth Amendment [to the U.S. Constitution]."
That's definitely a "citation needed" statement.
In Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives’ Ass’n, 489 U.S. 602 (1989) the Court upheld mandatory drug testing for railway employees involved in accidents or safety violations despite no probable cause or individualized suspicion.
In Michigan Dep’t of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444 (1990) the Court upheld sobriety check points in which all cars are briefly stopped for questioning and observation. There's no individualized suspicion there. See also the cases involving border patrol checkpoints. A checkpoint 50 miles from the border doesn't involve any individualized suspicion.
Individualized suspicion is required I believe to target an individual, but hasn't targeting a place where a crime has been committed to get more information to try to figure what individuals might be involved been standard, uncontroversial, police procedure in the United States for hundreds of years?
E.g., if a clearly murdered body is found in a maid's closet at a hotel when the maids go to start their shift in the morning police are going to get a warrant to get the list of all staff and guests that were known to be in the hotel between the time the closet was last known to be dead body free and the time the body was discovered.
That seems at least somewhat similar to a geofence warrant and has been pretty normal since basically forever.
Leading with the capitol attack doesn’t highlight to me why wide scope of these powers is a problem. Tell me more about the civil rights campaigns that are being disrupted with these technologies and powers.
It’s not helpful to highlight how it was used to arrest violent separatists. Tell me how it’s being used to punch down!
Without an example like that, I’m inclined to say this is a time where the federal government’s reliance on norms is working. As in, they have the power to do these kinds of things, but they choose to apply that power pretty selectively.
With panopticon and big data, investigators can rule out everyone with an alibi, sifting thru mountains of data to reveal who must have committed a crime.
I'm not arguing right or wrong, morally. Just what is.
Hopefully the people will push back on it, can't say I have much hope since the political system is purposely broken.
Feels like we are already living in a world where both superpowers nations are in agreement that surveillance capitalism and disinformation is the best way to control their local population.
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The biggest difference I see "time". Mostly that it can be done retroactively.
Would a geofence be allowed while the event is occurring?
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Just don't riot.
Obviously I am not lawyer, but I would think it could be codified somehow.
I understand this is a private venue and not police but the principle is the same. She wasn't caught hacking anything or breaking in to anything she just wanted to see the dancers. The big problem with geo fence warrants is that they lead to a 1984 style big brother surveillance state. For example: should the police constantly get everyone's cell phone tower ping data and automatically issue speeding tickets for every 5 minute window someone was speeding?
'The EFF sees the tremendous scope and power of geofence warrants as a bug, not a feature. “We believe that geofence warrants are unconstitutional because they don’t start with a suspect,” says Lynch. “They don’t rely on individualized suspicion, which is what’s required under the Fourth Amendment [to the U.S. Constitution]. In the January 6th context, it’s likely that there were many journalists whose data was provided to the police.”'
It questions: are the trade offs worth it?
I suppose the corrolary being: what if this protest was more legitimate but the police was corrupt?
I live in China myself so I find it interesting to ask this question before it's fully done and lost, even if I feel I know the answer: yes, it is worth it, and you'll never shock people with stories of criminals being founds thanks to general surveillance as much as they're shocked by unsolved horrendous crimes, so the abuses will be tolerated (or hidden thanks to the new structure of standard police work) as price to pay, when a critical mass of crimes that could have been solved will be reached.
And I am sad to tell you, that trading freedom for safety is paradise, and when I left the scary city I lived in before to Hong Kong where I live now, I felt such a surprised relief at the total absence of small crimes (all citizens prints are stored on a central database for instance, all 7M of us can be found in an instant). I'm never going back, they can read my emails and track my phone.
They discussed their plans openly on social media then streamed evidence of it after the fact.
Ignoring the question of whether the ability to hide from law enforcement is a necessary component of liberty even when one has committed a crime, these guys weren't even trying very hard to cover their tracks.
So gross, sorry couldn’t continue after that.
What was so offensive about it?
I interpreted it as "does not fit the overweight, bearded, too-old-for-military-service mountain-man militia stereotype."
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