
How a Radio Shack Robbery Could Spur a New Era in Digital Privacy - petethomas
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/27/us/politics/supreme-court-fourth-amendment-privacy-cellphones.html
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c3534l
> Mr. Wessler said prosecutors should be required to obtain a warrant when
> they seek more than 24 hours’ worth of location data.

When even the defense is saying that you don't actually need a warrant to
search phone GPS records, only to conduct long-term nonspecific espionage then
the goal-posts have moved so far beyond anything recognizable as rights and
into a land of bizarre technicalities with arbitrary bright-lines in the sand
completely devoid of the intented meaning of the bill of rights. Here's the
only question they should be asking: did you get a warrant? No? Then fuck off.

If you want to submit evidence to convict someone in a court of law, you have
to first demonstrate to an unbiased third party that you have the right to
gather that evidence. The meaning of that amendment was plain to common people
in 1791 and it means the same thing in 2017. _Warrant first_ then you can use
it as evidence.

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coding123
So if I was unlucky enough to be near a couple of the robbery locations, I
might be swept up in the dragnet based on my phone location. Even if 6 of 8
robbery locations my phone was clearly elsewhere the police may still try to
make a case that I only participated in two of the robberies.

That's some scary excrement right there. There needs to be a much larger
burden or proof than location info. Even if a suspected phone is at 8/8
locations (like the robbers have a way of steeling an someone's phone and
putting it back before/after a robbery just to help incriminate someone else).
(See the movie Rampage)

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pm90
> So if I was unlucky enough to be near a couple of the robbery locations, I
> might be swept up in the dragnet based on my phone location. Even if 6 of 8
> robbery locations my phone was clearly elsewhere the police may still try to
> make a case that I only participated in two of the robberies.

I don't think you are reading this right. This wasn't some random person who
happened to be in the same place as the robberies. I believe one of the
robbers testified that he was their ringleader.

I feel like the cellphone data needlessly jeopardized the whole operation. A
judge would probably have given an actual warrant to search online data for 12
people on the contact list of the robber. But this is the thing: the police in
this case were used to getting by without a warrant and so probably didn't
think twice about getting all that data (which they should). The question
being considered is whether that warrant less search is illegal.

If SCOTUS does overturn this decision, the guy's conviction would be thrown
out causing much outrage. I hope they do: the privacy laws are clearly not
strong enough.

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drakenot
A former lawyer on Planet Money discussed this case and said that it may not
throw out the conviction. That the "Good Faith" exception may allow the
conviction to stand.

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username223
It's a start, but the real problem is that the data exists in the first place.
Modern "surveillance capitalism" is the underlying cancer, and warrantless
government snooping and targeted ads are just symptoms.

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Aloha
Is it?

There are valid reasons why cellular provider would create that information in
the first place - largely to do with automated network repair stuff (you can
find malconfigured neighbor lists in CDMA systems for example), or automated
network metrics.

The issue isn't creating this kind of data, its excessive retention,
warrantless government use of it, and using it as another revenue stream to
tell it to third parties - but the generation itself on the surface seems
perfectly valid.

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digi_owl
As a foreigner i have found it highly annoying how US companies, particular
Amazon, simply store my credit card data without any clear prompting or
similar.

If i want to trade there, i am perfectly capable of inputting the various
digits and such each time, thank you very much.

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craftyguy
It's harder for folks to make impulse purchases if they have to take time to
locate their credit card and enter the digits every time. This behavior you
have observed is by design.

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digi_owl
In other words, the US consumer economy is a massive hamster wheel...

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CamTin
That may be true, but I'm not sure how you glean it just from the observation
that smart companies try to make it as easy as possible for customers to spend
money with them. Every smart businessman since the stone age has tried to do
the same thing.

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tjoff
Making something easy is one thing. Forcing users to use the "easy" thing
while risking customer funds, security and privacy is maleficent.

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CamTin
Sure, it's business pocketing benefits and shirking costs. I'm not saying it's
not bad, just that I'm not sure how this relates to "the US consumer economy
[being] a massive hamster wheel". It was either a non-sequitor or I don't see
the logical connection, if there is one.

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gr3yh47
It's unfortunate that so often the constitution is defended in cases where
there's clear wrongdoing, but I sure hope the fourth is upheld, and law
enforcement learns to - and is forced to by court rulings - knock it off with
massive orwellian surveillance

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mitchdoogle
How else could it be defended? Considering that someone has to show injury
before courts will take up a case, it's usually going to be someone that's
been charged with a crime whose privacy has been invaded.

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khedoros1
I think they're saying that people would be more sympathetic and supportive of
the amendment if it turned out that the accused was innocent.

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bsder
The FBI/NSA/Police won't let those cases get to this point.

Every time a case with an innocent starts winding through, the government
drops the case, after having caused much grief to the innocent in question,
rather than risk having their surveillance powers curtailed.

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KeepTalking
Planet money did a take on this robbery and its digital privacy implications.
Worth a
listen.[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/11/08/562888974/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/11/08/562888974/episode-804-your-
cell-phones-a-snitch)

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ust
There was an interesting discussion about 4A implications between Orin Kerr
(who thinks, that according to 3rd party doctrine, there was no need for a
warrant, and therefore no 4A protections of cell-cite data) and Alex Abdo (of
ACLU, who argues that, since the collection was too excessive, it does trigger
4A protections).

Link:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW32k7x7zE0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW32k7x7zE0)

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giarc
My question to any lawyers or legal experts in the room.

Would the opposite be true? If my phone isn't at the location of the crime,
can I argue that I also wasn't there?

Therefore a criminal just needs to leave his/her cell phone at home and
present the location data as evidence.

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pm90
No. Because your cellphone may not have been on your person.

If it isn't clear yet: the cellphone records were used to find the suspected
ringleader (the appealing person in the case). They weren't the sole evidence
for his conviction by lower courts.

~~~
giarc
I see, so even if the SCOTUS finds the police over reached with the data they
gathered, Tiny Tim could still have his sentence upheld.

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vaadu
Hopefully the ruling encompasses other modern technologies and methods for
location tracking such as smart tag data, facial recognition and license plate
readers. All of them result in data similar to person X was at location Y at
time Z.

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Mankhool
>urging the Supreme Court to continue to bring Fourth Amendment law into the
modern era.

If the Supreme Court can do this, then perhaps it could bring the Second
Amendment law into the modern era.

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Washuu
Trying to compare the Second and Fourth for reworking does not work well since
they are fundamentally different concepts.

In the case of both amendments the laws enacted surrounding them are the
issues. In the case of the fourth amendment there are problematic laws such as
civil asset forfeiture that are overreaching and result in the lost of
property loss with little to no resource. In the case of the second amendment
the laws are usually created by people who don't even know how guns work at a
fundamental level.

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krapp
>In the case of the second amendment the laws are usually created by people
who don't even know how guns work at a fundamental level.

Fair enough, then, what fundamental knowledge about guns do you feel would be
necessary to enable a lawmaker to enact more reasonable gun legislation?

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Washuu
Taking a gun safety course that teaches the basics of firearms and how they
work. Just spending some time talking to a firing range safety officer to help
clear up misconceptions.

Off on a tangent the best two examples of bad/attempt legislation I can think
of at the moment:

1.) Bans on "silencers". They're actually called suppressors and they don't
silence anything. Suppressed weapons typically still have a noise level over
100 decibels and hearing protection still must be worn.

2.) Bans on "scary weapons". The color or stylistic choices of a weapon does
not change how deadly a bullet is when it hits a fleshy target. In general
bans on characteristics of firearms that do not change how deadly they are.

Best two examples of loop holes that got around poorly written legislation
that resulted in wonky interpretation by the ATF:

1.) Bump stocks and hand cranks to get around automatic weapon bans. No one
needs automatic weapons for sport shooting or hunting. While I don't speak for
everyone I would never want an automatic weapon for either of those since it
is useless for them and just wastes ammunition. Current ATF rules require
every shot be accompanied by an user initiated action such as a finger
movement. So technically those two devices create an user initiated action for
every shot per the ATF's interpretation of the written laws. For example a
manual hand crank is allowed since the user has to continually perform the
action, but the same crank operated by a powered motor and switch would not be
allowed since a single user action would result in more than one shot fired.

2.) Being able to shoulder a pistol with a stock that was not intended to be a
stock.(Arm brace) This is a weird area of the law. AR-15 pistols(barrel length
under 16") are not allowed by shouldered since they are pistols, but you can
attach an arm brace and shoulder it anyway. The ATF recently more or less gave
up enforcing it since firearms evolved and changed so much since it was
original written.

There is a lot more in depth in the world of firearms I could into and how
easy it is for a gun owner to accidentally commit a felony due to bad
legislation.

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krapp
What would good legislation look like, then, given that more practical
understanding?

I believe you're correct that a lot of gun legislation is driven by an
unreasonable fear of guns, and that those laws simply aren't effective as a
result. However, I also believe there is also an unreasonable fear among a lot
of gun owners regarding the motives behind gun control as well.

