
The ACLU wants to know why Facebook beat a 2018 wiretap case - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-28/facebook-beat-a-2018-wiretap-case-the-aclu-wants-to-know-why
======
xxpor
Why can't these news articles link to the briefs or provide a case number or
anything? They didn't even say what freakin' court they were in directly! I
know it's the 9th circuit based on the description, but where was the original
case heard? Arg!

Edit: Fortunatly the 9th circuit is actually pretty good with youtube, which
made this easy to find:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6SeGJQjqyA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6SeGJQjqyA)

19-15472 ACLU Foundation v. USDOJ

~~~
giancarlostoro
It doesnt seize to amaze me why news orgs dont provide sources in addition to
claiming another org claimed it first. In the hype about trying to be real
news maybe you should take it much more seriously. I can prolly find
independent researchers who arent part of huge news orgs who do link to
sources.

~~~
drak0n1c
It's surprising that partisan tabloids (Breitbart, Daily Beast, etc) provide
clickable hyperlinks to the original reporting and source documents more often
than major media outlets do.

Maybe it's due to their reblog origins, they're less afraid of losing traffic
to competitors? Or because of their reputation they have more to prove?
Regardless, it should be done by everyone.

~~~
linuxftw
> partisan tabloids ... major media outlets

Don't buy into the propaganda. Most major media outlets are partisan as well.

Sometimes the party is simply the 'increase state authority and support war'
party, they simply color it red or blue for your personal preferences.

~~~
giancarlostoro
Not sure why people are downvoting you as if you're attacking their news
source, at least here in America I can name two news orgs for which people
would easily agree lean on opposite ends: Fox and CNN. The difference in their
focus is night and day when you think of how they report on the President. It
is astounding. Then there's the lack of following up on sources like the MAGA
high schoolers media fiasco.

~~~
drak0n1c
Regardless of how right or wrong he is, it's a digression into partisan-ness
unrelated to the topic of hyperlinking practices. HN tends to downvote when
that happens.

------
warent
I don't understand how it's possible that the _public_ government can make
precedent-setting judgements like this and classify the rationale from the
public. Like, I'm not asking for Facebook's trade secrets or classified info.
Redact that, and then share the entire case that we funded with our tax
dollars.

~~~
WaitWaitWha
We do not know who asked for this to be sealed yet. It is possible FB asked
because it had to make presentations that included IP.

~~~
bluejekyll
> I'm not asking for Facebook's trade secrets or classified info. Redact
> that...

------
dec0dedab0de
My conspiracy theory hat comes out every time a large US company seems to
stand up against the government for the privacy of their users and wins. I
always assume the company secretly gave the government what they asked for,
and the government agreed to play along for marketing purposes.

I suppose that the boring truth is that Facebook just used it's vast financial
resources to protect itself in a way that lavabit never could

~~~
seph-reed
The former seems so much more likely to me. Probably because my German teacher
had us watch ["The Lives of
Others"]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others))
and at this point it would be absolutely insane to imagine that the obsession
with power that exists in the government would fail to find a way to read data
that's literally stored on someone else's computer where you could never tell
if it's been read. Seems like a no brainer, but without proof most people
would rather just call it a grey area. Which is a fine enough narrative.
Doesn't change much either way.

~~~
duncan_bayne
Except that we have proof, at least as far as the US Government is concerned.
Snowden provided us with proof _in abundance_ that they will "find a way". How
anyone can consider this a gray area in 2020 is beyond me.

~~~
ggggtez
This comment thread really is nonsense. So Facebook and the government are
secretly working together in a conspiracy to falsify court records while
secretly they cooporate the whole time and the case was never actually tried?
What planet are you on?

And the proof is Snowden, because... ???

Or are you all just agreeing you have your own conspiracy theories, and aren't
directly commenting on what each other are saying?

~~~
dexen
_> secretly working together in a conspiracy to falsify court records_

A simple & plausible scenario: a governmental agency requests Facebook
conducts a broad surveillance sweep. Facebook resists for obvious reasons,
goes to court. Somebody at the middle level of one talks to somebody at the
middle level of the other, figure out what the agency really wants - a small,
well specified chunk of data - which gets requested separately & promptly
delivered. Having gotten enough data now, the agency lets the original, big
case falter simply by limiting the efforts and expenditures.

That's not even conspiracy, that's just a bunch of people figuring out how to
quickly get done with their mundane responsibilities. #BanalityOfEvil

~~~
ycombi3
And this is how it's done unfortunately.

------
WaitWaitWha
Conjectures: The method required to MitM the MS-13 gang Messenger would
require writing a special set of code (a la Apple iPhone incident), which
fails the burden test. Some legal justification why Facebook is not a carrier,
in case of voice com.

------
Communitivity
It's possible the answer is more prosaic than conspiracy, and technical in
nature. If FB Messenger uses a central server for discovery only and
communication is strictly Peer to Peer, as is the case in a number of
messenging apps, then there is nothing to wiretap without altering the FB
Messenger client to copy received texts and phone them home. And that would
add a backdoor that would make it less secure for everyone. I found a link
from 2019 that indicated FB Messenger uses the Signal protocol
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Protocol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Protocol))
for their encrypted chats using the mobile client, so that makes the P2P
theory more plausible.

An interesting experiment: set up daily FB messenger chat with a buddy and
discuss in depth some product of narrow class of products you don't usually
search or discuss (Nike shoes for example). Do this for a couple a weeks and
keep track of the ads online that you and your buddy see. Did the number of
adds for shoes or Nike shoes go up?

------
bbsanon
Do Facebook and others use pre-quantum encryption? Is it reasonable to say
that if and when the NSA (presumably doing full take of these comms) has a
quantum computer capable of performing Shor’s algorithm, that they will be
able to decrypt all of these comms?

When would FB and others move to quantum-resistant encryption if they aren’t
already?

What is the possibility that radically advanced tech including quantum
computers well beyond what’s currently available already exists in secret?

Anyone a fan of Dave Brubeck/take five?

~~~
qvrjuec
Addressing your second to last question, I don't think it's out of the realm
of possibility, though the more likely solution for the government is throwing
money at compute power to break encryption which is reasonably secure if
millions of dollars isn't thrown at it.

I love Dave Brubeck/Take Five, check this out:
[https://soundcloud.com/juanchov182/radiohead-
fivestep](https://soundcloud.com/juanchov182/radiohead-fivestep)

~~~
bbsanon
The Dave Brubeck comment was tongue in cheek, referencing recent quantum
computing developments (not classified)

~~~
qvrjuec
You're losing me - what developments?

~~~
bbsanon
[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/chance-discovery-
bri...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/chance-discovery-brings-
quantum-computing-using-standard-microchips-step-closer)

Andrea Morello was on the team. Joe Morello was the t5 drummer. Just a play on
last names.

What if the NSA has not only known about this phenomenon but has already built
a large scale qubit quantum computer? Could be.

------
neonate
[https://archive.md/eT2bg](https://archive.md/eT2bg)

------
unhomedcoder
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/california/stor...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-07-17/ms-13-used-
gruesome-tactics-fake-facebook-profile-in-reign-of-terror-prosecutors-
say%3f_amp=true)

FBI/DOJ wiretapped the Facebook comms of 19 illegal aliens who were MS-13
gangsters in North Hollywood. the wiretaps spanned 2017-2019. the gang
murdered 6 people. the last murder was a random killing of a homeless guy as
an initiation ritual to get into the gang.

i happened to be 50 yards away from that murder when it happened. i didnt hear
a thing because i was sleeping and it was rarely raining in LA that night.
those gangsters could have randomly picked me to kill instead of the other
homeless guy. i was woken up by a cop politely asking me to move. i looked
over and there was a tarp tent over the body of the victim with a dozen cops
standing guard.

i may have even helped to open the case because 1 year prior, i emailed the
Chief of the NoHo LAPD to tell him i was seeing MS-13 graffiti all over that
park where the murder occured. he replied back within an hour thanking me for
the tip and the graffito was removed the next day. so MS-13 activity in that
area was certainly on LE's radar.

i am an obsessive reader of Snowden leaks and am pretty anti-NSA, but i thank
god the FBI was able to order Facebook to hand over the comms of that MS-13
gang. those gang bangers were so stupid that they were literally coordinating
murders over Facebook Messenger and boasting about their 100's of crimes
spanning years on Facebook.

ACLU is in the wrong here and i support not unsealing the wiretap documents.
because think of how many other idiot MS-13 gangsters across America will also
broadcast their murders and crimes on Facebook? if they all know for a fact
that yes, the FBI is using Facebook to track them, then they will all go dark.
that means the next time MS-13 attempts to ramdomly murder a guy like me, then
FBI won't be able to so easily convict them.

i have read every page of every Snowden leak. my views on mass surveillance
have evolved since 2013. at first i was horrified because of the shock that it
was happening. but over time i have come to realize there is no closing
Pandora's box. every year the CPUs get faster, storage doubles, bandwidth
triples and the software gets smarter. there is no way to freeze computing
progress in time. which means every year, mass surveillance gets cheaper like
Moore's Law. i now see it is entirely naive and unrealistic to stop mass
surveillance. there is no technical solution to a political problem. you can't
un-invent the machine gun.

all we can do is demand our Intel Overlords only apply mass surveillance to
legit protection of our society, like for busting murderers and rapists and
MS-13 and cartels. and we must force FBI/DOJ to stay the fuck out of abusing
mass surveillance for corrupt political purposes, like spying on Presidents,
or wiretapping 37 Congressmen, or bugging SCOTUS for 12 years, or blackmailing
Presidents and Congress with sex tapes, or harassing antiwar activists, or
persecuting whistleblowers and legitimate joirnalists who publish leaked top
secrets.

this FBI operation to crush a murderous MS-13 cell hit pretty close to home
for me--it was terrifying to realize i only got lucky that night being in the
right place and right time to avoid being the sacrificial victim. this
experience definitely changed my perspective on FBI surveilling Facebook.
everyone is opposed to FBI surveillance until they almost get murdered. then
it's "great job FBI, do more gumshoe police work and less political meddling!"

~~~
zenhack
> thank god the FBI was able to order Facebook to hand over the comms of that
> MS-13 gang.

I think you may have misunderstood the article? It says Facebook _won_ the
case, and _did not_ have to wiretap the app.

I don't see what is to be gained by the public not knowing why.

------
som33
Because you live in a lawless oligarchy that has been rubber stamping the
rich's laws for 2 straight centuries. See the endless extension of copyright.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#/...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#/media/File:Tom_Bell's_graph_showing_extension_of_U.S._copyright_term_over_time.svg)

~~~
topkai22
Interesting choice since the extension of copyright ended in 2019 and works
have started entering the public domain again.

~~~
thatguy0900
I'll believe that if mickey mouse becomes public domain. Currently slated for
2024, apparently.

------
lobbyingWins
I hope in time people who think the government can be used for Good will see
how it's merely a tool for the rich.

Although maybe you need a government to take 30% of everyone's income to fund
a military or someone else will.

------
downerending
Rant time: Is it really impossible to write a literate, coherent headline?
_No_ , the ACLU does _not_ want to know _why_. They want to know _how_. It's
_literally_ the second sentence of the article. FFS.

> Now the American Civil Liberties Union is seeking to find out how.

