Techdirt Podcast Episode 236: Talkin' Jomboy, New Media & Copyright

from the three-strikes dept

If you're a baseball fan, you've probably heard of Jomboy (aka Jim O'Brien) by now. And if you're not, you still might have — because he's been getting attention by building a successful new media network online with his baseball explainer videos. And of course, that includes facing some familiar copyright and ContentID obstacles along the way. This week, Jomboy himself joins us on the podcast to discuss the experience, the challenges, and yes, the baseball.

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Filed Under: baseball, copyright, jomboy, new media, podcast, sports
Companies: mlb

Is William Barr's Latest Attack On Section 230 Simply An Effort To Harm Tech Companies For Blocking His Desire To Kill Encryption?

from the this-makes-no-sense dept

Last month, we noted that Attorney General William Barr was making a bizarre attack on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, claiming that the DOJ was "studying Section 230 and its scope" and arguing -- without evidence -- that 230 might be contributing to "unlawful behavior" online. As we noted at the time, Section 230 explicitly exempts federal criminal charges from what it applies to, meaning that it literally cannot interfere with any DOJ prosecution. So it's truly bizarre to see the DOJ concerned about the issue.

But Barr has continued to push forward with this anti-230 kick, and is going to host a "workshop" about 230 in a few weeks.

The U.S. Justice Department is hosting a workshop next month seeking “a wide diversity of viewpoints” on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the federal statute that, with few exceptions, protections major internet companies and private website owners from liability when it comes to the posts and comments generated by users.

While the DOJ claims that this workshop will have that "diversity of viewpoints," as we've seen in other contexts with the DOJ, that this is rarely the actual case. It may offer up a sacrificial lamb in support of 230, but it is likely to stack the deck against 230. This is the same thing that the DOJ has done, repeatedly, with regard to the encryption debate and questions around "going dark." Indeed, we've noted before the similarities between the government's efforts to attack encryption and the playbook that was used to attack Section 230 in 2018. In fact, we've heard that the very same former Hollywood lobbyist is a key player in both efforts.

Given the similarities in the playbook, and the fact that the DOJ is not hindered at all by 230, it makes you wonder if Barr and the DOJ are playing this anti-230 card simply as a method of punishing the internet industry for opposing his desire to gut encryption? The whole thing seems to be little more than an abuse of DOJ power to intimidate and threaten an entire industry for daring to support online security and free speech online against a government which would prefer neither thing be enabled.

Filed Under: cda 230, doj, encryption, section 230, william barr

FISA Court Orders FBI To Start Cleaning Up Its Carter Page Surveillance Mess

from the fool-me-a-dozen-or-more-times,-here's-another-angry-court-order dept

The FBI's abuse of its surveillance powers in the Carter Page investigation -- uncovered by the Inspector General -- is now being addressed by the FISA court. The FISA court is often considered to be a rubber stamp for government applications -- only very rarely rejecting the government's national security advances.

Some of this is due to deference the government very definitely hasn't earned. But some of this is due to the FISA court flying blind. The government still keeps secrets from the nation's most secretive court and judges are forced to accept its assertions because they don't possess the information needed to push back against the government's claims.

The Inspector General's report highlighted more abuses by the FBI during its investigation of former Trump campaign advisor, Carter Page. The IG found the FBI had omitted info that likely would have seen its applications denied, most notably knowledge it had obtained from its sources that Carter Page most likely wasn't acting as an agent of a foreign power.

The first application made to the court in October 2016 was probably legitimate. The other two applications seeking to continue surveillance of Page weren't. Had the FBI been honest in its applications, the two extensions would likely have been rejected by the FISA court.

With this info in hand, the FISA court is moving forward with another attempt to keep the FBI from abusing its national security privileges. We'll see if it works. So far, nothing has permanently prevented any agency with access to the FISA court from abusing its surveillance powers.

The corrective actions began with a December 2019 order that demanded the FBI identify any other matters before the court that involved FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith. Clinesmith altered an email from another US government agency to hide the fact that Page was a government source for this agency. The FBI lawyer has since resigned and been referred to the DOJ for criminal charges.

The latest order [PDF] is another rarity for the FISA court, but sketchy times call for greater transparency. If the FBI doesn't want its dirty laundry aired publicly by the secret court, perhaps it shouldn't create so much of it. Very few orders have been released by the FISA court without a (regular) court battle, so the FISA court's proactiveness is still very much an anomaly.

The order makes more demands of the FBI. The court wants to know how the agency is going to make things right. In reference to the Carter Page surveillance applications, the court demands the FBI to explain how it's going to "sequester" everything the FBI collected on/from Carter Page using its bogus applications.

It also wants a detailed description of what the FBI/DOJ is doing to restrict access to unminimized US person info gathered during the Carter Page investigation, as well any restrictions it has placed on access/dissemination of info on Page it never should have collected, much less distributed in the first place.

The Intelligence Community's string of surveillance abuses remains unbroken. Because the FISA court is only barely adversarial, the government is able to run its bullshit pretty much uncontested. Once again, it took outside help -- namely, the Inspector General's office -- to show the court what the FBI was really doing. The only question is how often the court is willing to get burnt by its untrustworthy patrons.

Filed Under: carter page, doj, fbi, fisa, fisa court, fisc, inspector general, transparency

Daily Deal: The Complete 2020 CompTIA Certification Training Bundle

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

The Complete 2020 CompTIA Certification Training Bundle has 14 courses to teach you IT Fundamentals, Infrastructure, and Cybersecurity. The courses cover what you need to know in order to pass various CompTIA certification exams such as A+, Network+, Server+, Linux+, and more. You'll learn hardware basics, troubleshooting, software installation, security, and networking. It's on sale for $89.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

Stop Blaming Algorithms For Misinformation And Threats To Democracy; The Real Problem Is Societal

from the fixing-the-wrong-thing dept

For quite some time now, we've pointed out that we should stop blaming technology for problems that are actually societal. Indeed, as you look deeper at nearly every "big tech problem," you tend to find the problem has to do with people, not technology. And "fixing" technology isn't really going to fix anything when it's not the real problem. Indeed, many proposals to "fix" the tech industry seem likely to exacerbate the problems we're discussing.

Of course, the "techlash" narrative is incredibly powerful, and the media has really run with it of late (as have politicians). So, it's nice to see at least Wired is starting to push back on the narrative. A new cover story makes it clear that "Bad Algorithms Didn't Break Democracy." It's a great article, by Gideon Lewis-Kraus. It acknowledges the narrative, and even that the techlash narrative is appealing at a surface level:

It’s easy to understand why this narrative is so appealing. The big social media firms enjoy enormous power; their algorithms are inscrutable; they seem to lack a proper understanding of what undergirds the public sphere. Their responses to widespread, serious criticism can be grandiose and smarmy. “I understand the concerns that people have about how tech platforms have centralized power, but I actually believe the much bigger story is how much these platforms have decentralized power by putting it directly into people’s hands,” said Mark Zuckerberg, in an October speech at Georgetown University. “I’m here today because I believe we must continue to stand for free expression.”

If these corporations spoke openly about their own financial interest in contagious memes, they would at least seem honest; when they defend themselves in the language of free expression, they leave themselves open to the charge of bad faith.

But as the piece goes on to highlight, this doesn't really make much sense -- and despite many attempts to support it with actual evidence, the evidence is completely lacking:

Over the past few years, the idea that Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter somehow created the conditions of our rancor—and, by extension, the proposal that new regulations or algorithmic reforms might restore some arcadian era of “evidential argument”—has not stood up well to scrutiny. Immediately after the 2016 election, the phenomenon of “fake news” spread by Macedonian teenagers and Russia’s Internet Research Agency became shorthand for social media’s wholesale perversion of democracy; a year later, researchers at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center concluded that the circulation of abjectly fake news “seems to have played a relatively small role in the overall scheme of things.” A recent study by academics in Canada, France, and the US indicates that online media use actually decreases support for right-wing populism in the US. Another study examined some 330,000 recent YouTube videos, many associated with the far right, and found little evidence for the strong “algorithmic radicalization” theory, which holds YouTube’s recommendation engine responsible for the delivery of increasingly extreme content.

The article has a lot more in it -- and you should read the whole thing -- but it's nice to see it recognizes that the real issue is people. If there's a lot of bad stuff on Facebook, it's because that's what its users want. You have to be incredibly paternalistic to assume that the best way to deal with that is to have Facebook deny users what they want.

In the end, as it becomes increasingly untenable to blame the power of a few suppliers for the unfortunate demands of their users, it falls to tech’s critics to take the fact of demand—that people’s desires are real—even more seriously than the companies themselves do. Those desires require a form of redress that goes well beyond “the algorithm.” To worry about whether a particular statement is true or not, as public fact-checkers and media-literacy projects do, is to miss the point. It makes about as much sense as asking whether somebody’s tattoo is true. A thorough demand-side account would allow that it might in fact be tribalism all the way down: that we have our desires and priorities, and they have theirs, and both camps will look for the supply that meets their respective demands.

Just because you accept that preferences are rooted in group identity, however, doesn’t mean you have to believe that all preferences are equal, morally or otherwise. It just means our burden has little to do with limiting or moderating the supply of political messages or convincing those with false beliefs to replace them with true ones. Rather, the challenge is to persuade the other team to change its demands—to convince them that they’d be better off with different aspirations. This is not a technological project but a political one.

Perhaps it's time for a backlash to the techlash. And, at the very least, it's time that instead of just blaming the technology, we all take a closer look at ourselves. If it's a political or societal problem, we're not going to fix it (at all) by blaming Facebook.

Filed Under: algorithms, blame, disinformation, humans, misinformation, recommendations, societal problems

Oh Look, More Giant ISPs Taking Taxpayer Money For Unfinished Networks

from the round-and-round-we-go dept

For more than a decade we've highlighted how the U.S. simply adores throwing taxpayer money at giant telecom companies in exchange for networks they then only half deploy. Whether it's on the city, state, or federal level, we've thrown untold billions at mono/duopolies which in turn dodge their obligations under these agreements with little to no real penalty. While sometimes this money winds up being used as intended, just as often this money winds up being pocketed by executives and shareholders with little discernible impact on America's broken and uncompetitive broadband markets.

The latest case in point: both Centurylink and Frontier have informed the FCC they've failed to meet FCC required broadband milestones after receiving millions in taxpayer subsidies:

"CenturyLink notified the Federal Communications Commission that it "may not have reached the deployment milestone" in 23 states and that it hit the latest deadline in only 10 states. Frontier similarly notified the FCC that it "may not have met" the requirements in 13 states. Frontier met or exceeded the requirement in 16 other states. Under program rules, the ISPs were required to bring Internet access to 80 percent of funded locations by the end of 2019 and must hit 100 percent by the end of 2020."

Keep in mind, these deployment goals aren't exactly what you'd call difficult. Under the terms of the FCC's 2015 Connect America Fund Auction, the two ISPs agreed to expand access to DSL at speeds of 10 Mbps down and 1 Mbps (1 Mbps!) up in exchange for big taxpayer payouts. In CenturyLink's case, the company is slated to net $505.7 million annually for six years to deploy service to 1,174,142 homes and businesses in 33 states. For Frontier, the company received $283.4 million annually for six years to bring access to 774,000 locations in 29 states.

Keep in mind these customers aren't even really getting broadband, which is defined as at least 25 Mbps by the FCC. What these territories are getting is overpriced, slow DSL, belched up from somewhere around 2003 or so from two companies that have a long, sordid history of atrocious customer service and a failure to upgrade or repair their aging networks. In most markets that's giving giants like Comcast and Spectrum an even bigger monopoly, resulting in higher rates for all broadband users as competition wanes.

Unsurprisingly, throwing billions at companies for antiquated broadband service (that's never fully deployed anyway) doesn't really fix things. In large part because we don't fully understand the problem we're trying to fix. Despite a lot of claims to the contrary, we don't actually know where broadband is deployed. US broadband maps are notorious garbage, and the telecom lobby has fought tooth and nail against efforts to fix them. Why? It's two-pronged: better maps would only highlight a lack of competition (potentially prompting somebody to actually fix it), and it helps them obscure the waste and fraud on the subsidy end.

Ideally, the FCC would step in here and punish both companies for failing to meet arguably modest goals or not being honest about where broadband is available. But there's little real indication that's actually going to happen. Just ask Verizon, which was given billions in subsidies and tax breaks by countless states and cities in exchange for fiber it never fully deployed. Or AT&T, which routinely receives billions in tax breaks, subsidies, and regulatory favors in exchange for jobs and broadband deployment that somehow never fully materialize. The penalties for both companies have been utterly nonexistent.

There's a chorus of telecom sector sycophants and Trump FCC officials that throw face-fanning tantrums every time some podunk town in Nebraska decides to spend a million bucks to build a better alternative to Comcast. But you'll notice those same folks never have a single sour word to say about the multi-decade tendency to throw billions of dollars at unaccountable monopolies in exchange for networks they never fully deploy. These folks are usually pretty easy to spot: like Pai, just look for the folks going comically out of their way to even acknowledge the limited competition and high prices that plague the US broadband sector.

Were you to do a proper audit of the telecom sector over the last 30 years, I'd all but guarantee the amount of money thrown at the sector could have funded a fiber optic line to every home in America several times over. Instead, thanks in large part to revolving door regulators and cronyism, we've built a system that throws unaccountable billions at giants like AT&T and Comcast, in exchange for substandard broadband, terrible customer service, and an eternal fountain of empty promises.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, dsl, failed obligations, fcc, subsidies, taxpayer funds
Companies: centurylink, frontier

UK Says It Won't Implement The EU Copyright Directive, Which Wouldn't Have Passed Without Its Support During A Crucial Vote

from the cunning-plan-or-just-can't-be-bothered? dept

As Techdirt has reported, the EU member states are starting to transpose the EU Copyright Directive into their national laws, and the results are as bad as we feared. France wants to implement the Article 17 upload filters without user protections, while Germany plans to place ludicrous restrictions on the use of press materials as part of its implementation of Article 15. What's particularly frustrating about the whole sorry EU Copyright Directive saga is that the law was very close to being thrown out last April. That was when the final vote by the EU Council (made up of representatives of the EU member states) took place. As Mike wrote at the time, because Sweden changed its original position, and voted against the Directive, it would only have required either Germany or the UK to do the same, and the legislation would have been dropped.

An interesting wrinkle to the story is that Boris Johnson, then still jockeying for leadership of the UK Conservative party, tweeted that the EU Copyright Directive would be "terrible for the Internet", and that the UK "should not apply it." That was easy to say when he had neither power nor responsibility. But now that Johnson has become UK prime minister, and enjoys a massive majority in the House of Commons, which effectively means he can do whatever he wants, will he take the same position? Rather amazingly, it seems he will.

A written question was submitted to the UK government: "To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what plans the Government has to bring forward legislative proposals to implement the EU Copyright Directive in UK law." To which the UK government replied:

The deadline for implementing the EU Copyright Directive is 7 June 2021. The United Kingdom will leave the European Union on 31 January 2020 and the Implementation Period will end on 31 December 2020. The Government has committed not to extend the Implementation Period. Therefore, the United Kingdom will not be required to implement the Directive, and the Government has no plans to do so. Any future changes to the UK copyright framework will be considered as part of the usual domestic policy process.

That is, after providing one of the crucial votes of support that ensured the EU Copyright Directive would become law, the UK is not now going to implement it. A cynic might think that the UK has done this to gain an advantage over the rest of the EU as member states grapple with the serious harm the Copyright Directive will inflict on the region's Internet users and startups. In truth, it is probably more a reflection of the fact that the UK government will be so busy passing legislation to cope with the aftershocks of Brexit, it won't have time to deal with minor issues like copyright.

And for those who will be celebrating this news as a great win, it's worth noting the careful phrasing of the reply: "Any future changes to the UK copyright framework will be considered as part of the usual domestic policy process". Although the UK government won't implement an EU law -- not least for dogmatic reasons -- it hasn't ruled out bringing in its own 100% true-Brit law that does much the same. It's unlikely that the well-connected UK copyright industry is going sit quietly and watch EU rivals gain special privileges online without demanding the same. Expect lots of whining and cries of pain from the recording industry and publishers until the UK government eventually gets around to passing national legislation that is as bad -- or even worse -- than the EU's.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter, Diaspora, or Mastodon.

Filed Under: brexit, copyright, copyright directive, eu, uk

You Don't Own What You Buy: The Tetris Edition

from the blockheads dept

In the convoluted realm that has become copyright, licensing agreements, and SaaS-style everything, we've had something of a running series of posts that focus on the bewildering concept that we no longer own what we buy. Between movies simply being disappeared, features on gaming consoles being obliterated via firmware update, and entire eBook platforms simply ceasing to work, the benefits of handing over very real dollars have never been more fleeting.

This has been ingrained to the point of public reaction to this sort of thing amounting to that of placid cattle being shown the slaughter room. So, when Electronic Arts alerted those that purchased its iOS Tetris game that, surprise, this game is just going to not work any longer soon, public outcry wasn't even on the menu.

Players opening either game on their iOS devices are now greeted with a pop-up message that’s also included in the “What’s New” section of both Tetris Premium and Tetris Blitz’s listings in the iOS App Store warning them that the countdown on each title has officially begun:

Hello Fans,

We have had an amazing journey with you so far but sadly, it is time to say goodbye. As of April 21, 2020, EA’s Tetris® app will be retired, and will no longer be available to play. Kindly note that you will still be able to enjoy the game and use any existing in-game items until April 21, 2020. We hope you have gotten many hours of enjoyment out of this game and we appreciate your ongoing support. Thank you!

Hey, thanks for buying our game and, great news, you'll get to play what you bought just a little while longer, mmkay bye! Gamers, at this point, are quite used to beloved games suddenly being unsupported after a few years, meaning that the game won't be updated, won't work on modern operating systems, and might not have an active online gamer platform when support runs out. What's less common is for the game to have been constructed in a way that is completely unplayable, full stop, when the publisher flicks a switch.

So why is this happening in this case? Well, because EA doesn't actually own Tetris. It just licenses the title to publish games. And, The Tetris Company has entered into a new licensing agreement for exclusive mobile game publishing with a different company.

Last year, The Tetris Company, Inc. and N3TWORK announced a multi-year agreement where N3TWORK will be the exclusive developer and publisher of new Tetris® games for mobile devices worldwide, excluding China. EA’s announcement that it will retire its Tetris®, Tetris® Premium and Tetris® Blitz games as of April 21 is a result of this agreement.

The Tetris brand continuously aims to bring fans game experiences that are fresh, innovative and fun. We are excited about these new changes for Tetris on mobile and plan to share more news with fans very soon.

All of which I imagine is lost on the average person who bought EA's Tetris games, thinking that buying them meant they owned them. Can you imagine asking the average gamer if they would have made that same purchase if they realized that their game might simply disappear and cease to work if the Tetris people decided on a new licensing agreement with a different publisher?

This is a mess and it's probably time for consumer groups to look into some kind of consumer protection rules that would either prevent this sort of thing or, more likely, make notifying buyers that they aren't actually buying the product more prominent than some subsection paragraph buried in a EULA.

Filed Under: copyright, expiring games, games, licenses, tetris
Companies: ea, n3twork, the tetris company

Supreme Court Asked To Tell Cops That Consenting To A Search Is Not Consenting To Having Your Home Destroyed

from the domicile-made-furtive-movements dept

Five years ago, an Idaho police department destroyed a woman's house to end a standoff with her dog. The Caldwell PD -- after having been given permission (along with a house key) to enter the home to see if a suspect was in the home -- decided this meant the Shaniz West had given them permission to fire grenade after tear gas grenade into the house before sending in the SWAT team to confront the family dog.

Exhibit A:

Shaniz West sued, stating that this 10-hour "standoff" that rendered her house uninhabitable for three months was a violation of her Fourth Amendment rights. The district court agreed, finding the officers being sued could be held accountable for destroying her home, rather than just using the house key she had given them.

Unfortunately, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed and granted the officers qualified immunity. According to the Appeals Court [PDF], this was an appropriate use of police force, given the circumstances. Mainly it was that the circumstances were unique enough, the court could find no way to say this was unreasonable. Without controlling precedent, the officers were allowed to escape the consequences of their ridiculous, house-destroying actions.

Here's the Court's summary, which sounds like it was written by a cop PR shop.

The panel held that assuming the consent was voluntary and defendants exceeded the scope of the consent by shooting tear gas into the house, they were still entitled to qualified immunity. The panel held that given that defendants thought they had permission to enter plaintiff’s house to apprehend a dangerous, potentially armed, and suicidal felon barricaded inside, it was not obvious, in the absence of a controlling precedent, that defendants exceeded the scope of plaintiff’s consent by causing the tear gas canisters to enter the house in an attempt to flush the suspect out into the open. Officers Seevers and Winefield were therefore entitled to qualified immunity on this claim.

"Causing tear gas canisters to enter the house." It's like the canisters were just hanging around outside and the SWAT team's reasonable appearance on the lawn gave the canisters permission to hurtle themselves through the nearest windows and doors.

There was no suspect to flush out. The person they were seeking had vacated the residence before officers stopped Shaniz West and threatened her with arrest if she didn't "consent" to a search of her house. What West actually consented to was far different than what the officers ended up doing, as the dissent pointed out.

The majority adopts an entirely implausible contrary reading of West’s consent, one a “typical reasonable person [would not] have understood by the exchange between the officer and the suspect.” Jimeno, 500 U.S. at 251. Because West “never expressed a limitation as to time, place within the house, or manner of entry,” the majority concludes that her consent that officers could “get inside” permitted a violent initial attack on her house with toxic objects. Maj. Op. at 13. In so concluding, the majority supposes that someone who permits law enforcement officers to “get inside [her] house” while handing over a key consents to the officers not entering the house but instead lobbing dangerous objects, such as tear gas canisters—or stones or bombs, for other examples—into the house from the outside. It further presupposes that, in providing consent to entry, a resident must preemptively forbid actions no one would guess are contemplated by the commonsense understanding of the articulated consent. That is not the law.

What this court finds reasonable for officers (destroying a house) does not align with what any "reasonable" non-cop would willingly permit when consenting to a search of their residence.

In concluding that the officers performed a search consistent with West’s consent, the majority does what no court has before—it holds that a “typical reasonable person” consenting to an entry to look for a suspect could be understood by a competent police officer as consenting to damage to his or her home so extreme that renders it uninhabitable for months.

There is still no finding that destroying a house while performing a consensual search is a violation of rights. The Ninth punted on drawing the line following this case, leaving officers free to "cause canisters to enter" houses in the future when performing searches for suspects.

The Institute for Justice wants some precedent set. It's asking the Supreme Court to rule on this issue. The petition [PDF] seeks a ruling that would prevent officers from dodging lawsuits from citizens rendered homeless by consensual searches.

QUESTION PRESENTED

Whether an officer who has consent to “get inside” a house but instead destroys it from the outside is entitled to qualified immunity in the absence of precisely factually on-point caselaw.

It's a valid question. It's far more valid than the Ninth's conclusion: that consent to search is consent to destruction. Even given the circumstances of this case -- a potentially armed felon who was supposedly suicidal -- the officers had options they normally didn't have during warrant service: specifically, permission to enter the home and a key that unlocked the front and back doors.

Instead of using the key to enter the house (or at least attempt to -- the front door also had a chain securing it, but it's not like a bunch of tear gas grenades were going to dislodge the chain), the cops decided to call in the SWAT team. They left the premises, met with the SWAT team, came up with a plan and did a couple of dry runs and three hours later, decided to start the "search."

It wasn't until 4.5 hours later the key was even tried. It unlocked the back door, but redundantly because the glass had already been shattered by tear gas canisters, allowing officers to reach inside and unlock the door.

As the petition points out, there's no reason to find precedent that directly aligns with law enforcement's actions here. It should have been plainly apparent to the officers that their actions were unreasonable.

The dissent did not purport to find a “closely similar case[ ] to guide the clearly established law inquiry[.]” App. 27. Instead, it found no such case was necessary because any competent officer would have understood he could not lawfully destroy a house simply because he had consent to enter it.

This should be obvious. If it were a car being searched, a person's consent to a search would not justify officers towing the vehicle to place away from the public and detonating it just because of the slim possibility something inside it might pose a threat to officers.

Hopefully, the Supreme Court will take a look at this case, rather than decide it's up to the lower court to set a bunch of conflicting precedent -- or far more likely, continue kicking the QI can down the road. Giving officers permission to search your house should never mean giving them permission to leave you with no place to live.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, consent, destruction, idaho, search, shaniz west, supreme court, swat, swat teams

Letter To Judge Details Vault 7 Leaker's Post-Incarceration Leaking

from the sticking-it-to-the-CIA-by-burning-yourself-to-the-ground dept

The accused leaker of CIA phone hacking tools -- the "Vault 7" collection released by Wikileaks in early 2017 -- is still awaiting trial. To pass the time, alleged leaker Joshua Schulte is suing the government for $50 billion and, apparently, generating a whole lot of evidence against himself.

The criminal complaint against Schulte contained far more than accusations of leaking sensitive material. Searches performed on Schulte's devices also turned up 10,000 child porn images and a lot of copyrighted content Schulte was sharing from his own server. Stealing government secrets + child porn + copy infringement: that's the weirdness this case is.

Schulte continues to make the worst case for himself. While some leakers have acted more like whistleblowers, making the public aware of hidden misconduct or civil rights abuses, Schulte has presented himself as a martyr for his own cause. This isn't helping his criminal case (or the civil lawsuit he's filed). After being jailed, Schulte continued to leak classified info from his jail cell, using contraband phones and his access to the evidence the government planned to use against him.

The government pointed this out to the court in November 2018. A recent filing by the government (h/t Emptywheel) details Schulte's post-arrest efforts to continue leaking classified info to journalists -- including the use of his family members to contact journalists and set up new encrypted communications channels for him.

Unfortunately for Schulte, the seizure of contraband from his cell has given the government a lot more evidence to work with, especially when it comes to proving his criminal intent. Schulte really wanted a white knight, but none arrived. Taking matters into his own hands (and ignoring the advice of his lawyer), Schulte appears to have engaged in one-man war against the federal government, armed with nothing but shovels.

The letter [PDF] to the court details the contents of notebooks seized from Schulte's cell, as well as communications made to his family and members of the press. While under a protective order forbidding him from discussing the government's search warrants publicly, Schulte sent the warrant (along with several articles he had written) to a reporter. His desire to wage an "information war" against the government while behind bars was stymied by his inability to draft fellow combatants.

Because he was incarcerated, the defendant enlisted his family to communicate with reporters and to post the defendant’s articles online, including on a public Facebook page (the “John Galt Facebook Page”). While the defendant’s family was able to post a version of the defendant’s articles on the John Galt Facebook Page, the articles apparently did not result in the swell of press attention for which the defendant hoped. Over the summer and into the fall of 2018, the defendant grew angrier at his detention, but also his family’s inability, and eventually unwillingness, to publish all of the defendant’s articles and the media’s apparent lack of interest in the defendant’s case.

From there, Schulte went on to attempt to scrub his Gmail accounts of incriminating communications, and to create a number of new accounts for ProtonMail, Twitter, and Facebook so he could continue distributing classified info he knew or had access to. The letter describes four separate occasions Schulte revealed classified info to family members or the public. In total, the letter describes a pretty comprehensive case Schulte has built against himself, detailing everything from the deletion of evidence to the continuous generation of new evidence via Schulte's handwritten "information war" plans.

There's also stuff in there that undermines the whistleblower narrative Schulte has tried to craft.

On this page in the Red Notebook, the defendant states: “If govt doesnt pay me $50 billion in restitution & prosecute the criminals who lied to the judge and presented this bs case then I will visit every country in the world and bear witness to the treachery that is the USG. I will look to breakup diplomatic relationships, close embassies, and U.S. occupation across the world & finally reverse U.S. jingoism. If this is the way the U.S. govt treats one of their own, how do you think they treat allies?” This statement is obviously Intent Evidence—it shows not only that the defendant is growing increasingly frustrated, but, more importantly, that his frustration has risen to the point that he now—according to his own words—plans to destroy the United States’ relationships with its allies, leading to, for example, the shuttering of U.S. embassies in other nations.

The "intent evidence" here sounds more like a personal vendetta than the dissemination of classified info for the good of the public.

[T]he defendant recommends to U.S. intelligence agency employees to “send all your govt’s secrets here: WikiLeaks” until the U.S. government “honors” their service.

There are also things like this, that show even more hubris than the above examples suggest. Here's Schulte stating he feels his family should be willing to put themselves at legal risk for him.

The defendant states: “I text my dad from whatsapp & signal incessantly & finally got a response @ 1% battery. I said please put articles on drafts in gmail. Response: My lawyer advised me not to. Fucking incredible. Fucking. Incredible.”

And here he is mocking the FBI.

[T]he defendant also goes on to write that he designed his “own crypto – how better to fool bafoons like forensic examiners and the FBI then to have custom software that doesn’t fit into their 2-week class where they become forensic ‘experts.’” The defendant then provides classified details of specifics of his work at the CIA.

The government's letter tells the court there's plenty of evidence it wishes to use against Schulte, a lot of it gleaned from the "information war" he tried to wage from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.

[T]he MCC Notebooks and the Malware Article help to demonstrate a pattern of conduct that is highly probative of Schulte’s guilt of the WikiLeaks charges. In both instances, the defendant (1) grew infuriated with components of the U.S. government; (2) threatened to expose allegedly damaging information about the CIA to coerce the agency into acting as Schulte wished; and (3) used technologically sophisticated means to conceal his actions, using encrypted accounts and cellphones, and IP-masking techniques at the MCC and deleting logs and securely wiping removable media at the CIA.

Not much of this sounds like whistleblowing. If there is something honorable or altruistic in Schulte's actions, it can't be found here. That's not saying it doesn't exist. The government is a notoriously unreliable narrator and this filing only covers the stuff prosecutors think will help prove their case. But Schulte's narration isn't that reliable either. And he still doesn't appear to realize that acting in your own interest isn't always the same thing as acting in your best interest.

Filed Under: cia, copyright, joshua schulte, leaks, vault 7