Nearly 13 years after the FBI managed to turn a California cherry picker into a international terrorist, one of its self-created terrorists is about to be turned back into regular California resident, albeit one missing more than a decade from his life.

Hayat went to Pakistan in 2003 to visit his mother and get married. The FBI and prosecutors insisted he went there to train to be a terrorist. When he returned to the US, he was arrested and indicted. Prosecutors tacked on some lying to federal agents charges because of course they did, pushing Hayat's sentence to 24 years.

This conviction was upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals but Hayat's motion to vacate his sentence has found some sympathy from a federal magistrate judge.

A federal magistrate on Friday recommended overturning the controversial 2006 conviction of a California man accused of attending a terrorist training camp in Pakistan and plotting an attack in the United States.

Hamid Hayat, now 36, who was then a young cherry-picker from Lodi, has served about half his 24-year sentence.

But U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah Barnes said he likely never would have been convicted were it not for the inexperience of his defense attorney, who failed to call alibi witnesses.

Hayat's lawyer was clearly inexperienced, having never defended a client during a criminal trial before. The results speak for themselves. Judge Barnes' examination of the case shows Hayat was possibly coerced into a false confession and had a decent alibi for his visit to Pakistan that -- if explored more fully -- would likely have shown the FBI's speculations about his reason for returning to Pakistan were wrong.

His attorneys argue that much of the evidence used against him was faulty, including prosecution claims that Hayat attended a terror training camp in Balakot, Pakistan, in 2003 and 2004 – a facility they say had been shut down before Hayat even got to Pakistan.

Hayat's confession was obtained during a "marathon" questioning session by FBI agents. This apparently included a special agent lying about the evidence the FBI had on Hayat's supposed terrorist training.

According to court testimony, the Hayats were interviewed twice by the FBI. The first time, they both denied they knew anything about terrorism. But during a second interview at Sacramento FBI headquarters, after many hours of grilling without a lawyer, Hamid Hayat changed his story and confessed he attended a terrorist training camp for about three months. The jury asked for a read-back of FBI Special Agent Harry Sweeney’s trial testimony.

Sweeney testified that Hamid Hayat admitted to going to the camp after Sweeney asked him, “Would there be any reason why we would have a satellite image of you at a camp in 2003?”

Under cross-examination, Sweeney acknowledged there was no such photo.

Unfortunately, there's nothing illegal about federal agents lying to suspects during questioning. But there's certainly a law against lying to federal agents. The background of the case suggests the FBI may have been looking for something -- anything -- to justify its infiltration of a local mosque by one its surprisingly-expensive informants.

Naseem Khan claimed to have seen four of the world's most-wanted terrorists in Lodi, California. Over the course of three years, the FBI paid Khan $230,000 to infiltrate a local mosque, despite discovering his claims of seeing top world terrorists were completely false. It was Khan who suggested Hayat visit a terrorist training camp while visiting Pakistan. The government apparently had no evidence Hayat ever visited a training camp, relying almost solely on a confession that appears to have been coerced.

The court says there's not much here that makes the FBI look like a competent anti-terrorism force. There's a questionable confession, an even more questionable informant telling people to engage in terrorist activities, and a bunch of speculation about Hayat's activities while not under direct surveillance. As the judge points out, citizens shouldn't be locked up for things the FBI THINKS they may have done. More evidence is needed and a more competent attorney might have been able to stop this farce before it took more than a decade away from Hamid Hayat.

So last week yet another location data scandal emerged for the wireless industry, highlighting once again how carriers are collecting your location data, then selling it to a universe of sometimes shady partners with little to no oversight or accountability. Like the Securus and LocationSmart scandals before it, last week's Motherboard report highlighted how all manner of dubious dudebros (and law enforcement officers) have been abusing this data for years, and the Ajit Pai FCC has yet to so much as mention the problem, much less spend a single calorie addressing it in any meaningful way.

Shortly after the scandal broke last week, Frank Pallone, the Chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, asked Pai (pdf) to brief Congress on the steps the agency was taking to address the wireless sector's long-standing failure to adequately address location data abuse. Pai's response? Yeah, no thanks.

In a statement issued by Pallone, he says Pai's office claimed that since the location data scandal wasn't putting lives at risk, Pai could not attend such a briefing during the government shutdown:

"Today, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai refused to brief Energy and Commerce Committee staff on the real-time tracking of cell phone location, as reported by Motherboard last week. In a phone conversation today, his staff asserted that these egregious actions are not a threat to the safety of human life or property that the FCC will address during the Trump shutdown.

While the FCC's working on a skeleton crew right now due to the shut down, there's nothing actually stopping Pai from wandering down the road to answer a few questions, something Pallone was quick to highlight in his statement:

"There’s nothing in the law that should stop the Chairman personally from meeting about this serious threat that could allow criminals to track the location of police officers on patrol, victims of domestic abuse, or foreign adversaries to track military personnel on American soil. The Committee will continue to press the FCC to prioritize public safety, national security, and protecting consumers."

Granted Pai wasn't doing much about this problem when the government was open, either.

Academics and other privacy experts have told me this could easily be addressed using the FCC and FTC authority we already have (read: we don't even need a new privacy law), we've just chosen to kowtow to telecom lobbyists instead. In fact the FCC's privacy rules would have addressed the issue by giving consumers more control of how their location data is shared and sold, but sector lobbyists made quick work of those rules back in 2017. Even having Pai publicly state that this behavior is unacceptable might go a long way toward addressing the issue, though he's yet to do even that.

Pai has made it fairly clear by now that he sees government consumer protection oversight as largely unnecessary, and all criticism of his unpopular policies as entirely political in nature, therefore making it OK to ignore (the myopia of that belief system most obviously exemplified by his attacks on net neutrality). As a result, you should expect the FCC to continue to do little to nothing about location data scandals. At least until there's enough scandals of this type to push public outrage past the breaking point, finally making it clear that doing absolutely nothing is no longer an option. So, 2025 or so?

You can count me among those who don't see the value in those Amazon Dash buttons that got plenty of attention a few years back, allowing those who had the little single-button devices to re-order some consumable product with the push of a single button. Even if lots of people made fun of them at launch, Amazon has expanded them to many more brands. So, even if I don't see the value, it appears plenty of people do. Except, in Germany, they're now illegal, because apparently some people are upset that they make things too easy to order.

The ruling came after a regional consumer protection watchdog brought a case against Amazon, arguing that the Dash buttons violate laws that say shoppers should know what they are paying at the time of any transaction.

“We are always open to innovation. But if innovation means that the consumer is put at a disadvantage and price comparisons are made difficult then we fight that,” Wolfgang Schuldzinski, head of the consumer body, said in a statement.

Huh? If users decide to buy a button that lets them reorder, then... what's the problem here. Yes, they may end up paying more than other retailers, but it's the consumers who are making that decision, suggesting that they value the convenience more than the ability to hunt for the best deal.

This fits with other European legal trends, in which courts and regulators really don't seem to think the public ought to be able to make any decisions themselves about what they prefer online, and must be "protected" from their own decisions. What, exactly, is the benefit here? How are consumers better off if the solution they appear to want, which they had to pay for, is no longer considered legal?

I could (maybe?) understand if the argument was that Amazon was somehow leveraging its market position to push people into using these things, but I've seen no evidence that that's true at all. Indeed, I basically forgot these little buttons existed after hearing about them at launch. I get that European courts (and German ones, in particular) like to think they're protecting consumers more than the US, but in this case it makes no sense. If consumers feel ripped off by the buttons, they won't buy them (or they'll stop using them). Why do we need a court to make them illegal?

Take 2 Interactive is no stranger to fighting bogus complaints about "infringement" concerning how it represents characters in its various games. Most of these fights have been over its flagship franchise, the Grand Theft Auto series, where the developer often enjoys poking fun at pop culture and society through settings and characters that are an amalgam of several stereotyped individuals. This has resulted in entitled celebrities and property owners attempting to sue over trademark and publicity rights in the past, with Take 2 typically coming out victorious by pointing out that its work is that of parody and covered by fair use.

This is now happening with a different game but the basic story remains the same. In this case we have the added insanity of a rather infamous company trying to profit off of its infamous history. Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations sent a cease and desist notice to Take 2 after Red Dead Redemption 2 was released due to the game including characters who were a part of the company during ye olde olden times. In response, Take 2 filed suit.

Pinkerton sent Take-Two Interactive a cease-and-desist letter over the characters of Andrew Milton and Edgar Ross, a pair of Pinkerton agents and major antagonists in the game. Now, Take-Two is suing to have the characters declared fair use, arguing that they’re part of Red Dead Redemption 2’s detailed historical setting.

Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations (now a subsidiary of security firm Securitas AB) delivered its cease-and-desist order in December, roughly two months after Red Dead Redemption 2’s release. It commended game development studio Rockstar’s “clear affection” for Pinkerton, but claimed it was trading on the “goodwill” associated with the company’s trademarks, creating a false impression that the game was made by or connected with Pinkerton. The order demands that Take-Two pay either a lump sum or ongoing royalties. But Take-Two contends that Red Dead Redemption 2 — which the lawsuit describes as a “gripping Wild West adventure” and “essentially an interactive film” — is protected by the First Amendment.

Okay, so a lot to get into here. First and foremost, including Pinkerton in a story about the old west absolutely is an obvious aim at being historically accurate. I didn't realize it until reading this story, but the Pinkerton operation around today is the same Pinkerton organization that has a sordid history working with both government and industry specifically to infiltrate, investigate, and ultimately stop the spread of labor unions, while encouraging strikebreaking. The infamous Pinkerton agency goes all the way back to the 1800s and was somewhat notorious for its tactics. The company also was very much involved in investigating and tracking down notorious outlaws such as Jesse James, Butch Cassidy, and the Sundance Kid. All of this, of course, makes their appearance in an old west outlaw game perfectly reasonable fodder.

Take 2 notes all of this in its declaratory judgment suit, along with mentioning all of the other cultural media that includes references to Pinkerton in stories about the old west.

Take-Two notes that the Pinkerton National Detective Agency is referenced in plenty of other Western fiction, and that the agency played a major role in real 19th- and early 20th-century American history. (It was not, however, the inspiration for the Weezer album Pinkerton.) Among other places, Pinkerton agents appear in the 2000s-era TV series Deadwood; the 1980 film The Long Riders; and the 2010 game BioShock Infinite, where the protagonist is a former Pinkerton agent.

Yet, when it comes to the wildly successful game Take 2 released, Pinkerton suddenly wants to lean on trademark law as a way to profit over a historical reality. This is absurd on many levels, including that the use by Take 2 -- much like with its GTA series -- is obviously fair use. On top of that, Pinkerton's claim in its C&D that the public is going to somehow be confused into thinking that Red Dead is the product of, affiliated with, or approved by Pinkerton is laughable at best. I would posit that most people playing the game likely won't know that Pinkerton is a real company, whereas those that do will see it as the inclusion of historical characters that are prevalent throughout the game.

In response to the lawsuit, the Pinkerton folks claim that part of their complaint is that this is a historically inaccurate picture of the Pinkertons, and that it's harming their good will. Given the existing reputation of the Pinkertons from back in the day, it's difficult to see how there is much good will to harm here in the first place, and litigating the reputation of the Pinkertons from the 1800s in the old west doesn't seem like a productive use of anyone's time.

We'll see how the court decides this, but it's quite difficult to imagine works of art having to license history in the way Pinkerton has suggested Take 2 should.

Craig Brittain's $1 billion lawsuit against Twitter is still rolling slowly towards its inevitable dismissal. Bringing with him his usual legal expertise -- which includes badly misreading the Knight Institute v. Trump decision and asking for some weird hybrid judgment/injunction/perma-unbanning -- Brittain has so far forced Twitter to… move his case to another venue. (via Eric Goldman)

Twitter invoked the forum selection clause of its terms of service -- terms Brittain agreed to time and time again as he created new accounts only to have them permanently suspended later. The terms say Twitter can move your lawsuit to its preferred venue (California federal court) and if you don't like it, well… you can just not use Twitter and/or sue Twitter.

Brittain's attempt to avoid having his Arizona lawsuit moved to California contains some rather novel legal arguments. First, he claimed Twitter's terms of service were invalid because [checks filing] it doesn't contain the mandatory "option" of arbitration. Here's the court's take [PDF]:

Brittain asserts that the Terms are unconscionable because they contain no arbitration clause and “have changed over time without arbitration.” Doc. 27 at 4. But Brittain cites no legal authority suggesting that Twitter is required to include an arbitration clause in its Terms. Nor has he otherwise shown that the Terms are unconscionable or illusory.

Second, he claimed it would be impossible for him to continue his doomed lawsuit in another state because he has no way of getting to California. It may be true -- and forum selection does tend to create unnecessary expenses for plaintiffs/defendants -- but in this case it isn't because the federal courts are accessible by those with limited travel options.

Brittain asserts that his status makes it “gravely difficult” for him to participate in the litigation. Doc. 27 at 2, 5. He notes that he “is traveling primarily by bicycle and/or public transportation to file, upwards of 40 miles per trip[.]” Id. at 2. But the Northern District of California permits filing by mail, eliminating the need for Brittain to bicycle or use public transportation to file court documents.3 The fact that Brittain is a self-represented, indigent litigant is no basis for not enforcing the forum selection clauses. As noted, the private interests of the parties must be weighed in favor of the preselected forum. See Yei, 901 F.3d at 1087. Brittain has not shown that litigating in California “will be so gravely difficult and inconvenient that he will for all practical purposes be deprived of his day in court.” M/S Bremen, 407 U.S. at 18.

Brittain also claims millions of social media users would cry out at once and be silenced if Twitter was allowed to take Craig's unwinnable lawsuit to California. Brittain asserts… reasons.

Brittain further asserts that enforcement of the forum selection clauses would “contravene a strong public policy of the venue in which the suit was brought,” and “the public policy of . . . the District of Arizona is superior to that of the requested forum.” Doc. 27 at 5. He cites the purported “public interest of over one billion total users,” including “tens of millions who have been censored, deverified, or suspended by Twitter,” but draws no connection between the interests of those alleged users and Arizona public policy.

The court is not swayed.

Twitter notes, correctly, that Arizona public policy favors enforcing forum selection clauses. Doc. 30 at 8. “Enforcement of a forum selection clause such as the one[s] at issue does not contravene any strong Arizona public policy as Arizona courts routinely hold that forum selection clauses are presumptively valid and that the party claiming the oppressiveness or unreasonableness needed to invalidate such a clause must meet a heavy burden of proof.”

Brittain's lawsuit is still alive for the time being. He'll just have to lose it in California, rather than in front of the home crowd.

The latest in the EU's string of internet regulatory efforts has a new target: terrorist propaganda. Just as with past regulations, the proposed rules seem onerous and insane, creating huge liability for internet platforms that fail to do the impossible. This week, we're joined by returning guests Daphne Keller from Stanford's Center For Internet And Society and Emma Llansó from the Center for Democracy and Technology to discuss this most recent danger to online free speech in the EU.

Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via iTunes or Google Play, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

If you've shopped for a TV recently, you may have noticed that it's largely impossible to just buy a "dumb" TV set without all of the "smart" internals. More specifically, most TV vendors don't want to sell you a bare-bones set because they want you to use their streaming services. Even more specifically, they want you to buy their sets with their specific streaming functionality because they want to spy on you. Poorly.

That's always been fairly obvious to most folks, but it was nice to see Vizio CTO Bill Baxter acknowledge that the reason you pay a discount is because your viewing habits are being collected and sold to the highest bidder:

"Q. One sort of Verge-nerd meme that I hear in our comments or on Twitter is “I just want a dumb TV. I just want a panel with no smarts and I’ll figure it out on my own.” But it sounds like that lifetime monetization problem would prevent you from just making a dumb panel that you can sell to somebody.

A. Well, it wouldn’t prevent us, to be honest with you. What it would do is, we’d collect a little bit more margin at retail to offset it. Again, it may be an aspirational goal to not have high margins on our TV business because I can make it up downstream. On the other hand, I’m actually aggregating that monetization across a large number of users, some of which opt out.

It’s a blended revenue model where, in the end, Vizio succeeds, but you know, it’s not wholly dependent on things like data collection.

The problem is that this trade off isn't really providing value to the end user, in large part thanks to the TV sector's terrible security and privacy practices. For one, navigating the TV sector's historically terrible GUIs to actually find and opt out of this data collection is often a nightmare. Usually opting out is first intentionally named something nebulous, then buried deep in a sea of terribly-designed menus. And even then, opting out can often result in you losing access to some core set features you might actually use. That's only a good deal if you enjoy annoyance.

Then there's the fact that the TV sector routinely does an absolutely terrible job at the security and privacy practices needed to protect this data. We've seen vendors like Samsung get busted hoovering up and collecting living room conversations, then shoveling this data off to a nebulous assortment of third-party clients. Numerous set vendors have similarly been busted collecting this data then transmitting it to the cloud without adequate encryption. Vizio itself just struck a $2.2 million settlement with the FTC for secretly tracking and selling the usage habits of around sixteen million Vizio owners for around three years.

So yes you're maybe paying a bit less up front for a cheaper set, but you're paying for the deal out the other side of the equation in a way that's not even entirely calculable. Even then, higher-end TV set vendors do this same thing, kind of deflating the claim that this is only being done by necessity among lower-end vendors trapped by tight margins. In reality, the same disregard for privacy and security that has infected the internet of broken things space is on proud display in the TV business, resulting in hardware that's easily exploitable by everyone from run of the mill hackers to intelligence services. Is that a bargain, really?

With so many streaming hardware platforms to choose from (game consoles, your phone, home-built PCs, Roku, Apple TV, etc.), many users just want a dumb TV with ample HDMI ports that simply does one job, really well. Instead, like so many sectors (telecom comes quickly to mind) the priority appears to be focused on treating user data like a harvestable resource, with security, privacy, and transparency a very distant afterthought.

Earlier today, we had a post detailing the completely ridiculous "defense" of Articles 11 and 13 in the EU Copyright Directive that the EU Parliament's JURI Committee released. It was so full of misleading statements, outright lies, and contradictory arguments that it would have been hilarious, if it wasn't trying to justify changing the entire internet for the worse. However, those of us who think that the EU should drop Article 13 (and Article 11) entirely now have a very unlikely ally: the legacy entertainment industries, who were the ones lobbying heavily for Article 13 in the first place.

Really.

As we had noted last month, as the negotiations moved forward on Article 13, the TV, sports and film industries -- calling themselves the "creative sectors" -- have been suddenly freaking out and asking the negotiators to hit the brakes, or at least carve them out of Article 13. They were doing this for all the wrong reasons of course. Specifically, negotiators had begun to consider a very, very limited (and ridiculously weak) safe harbor for internet platforms, that if they followed a few key steps, they'd be able to avoid having massive liability foist upon them if they let any users sneak through an upload of infringing content (they'd still have to pull it down quickly after it was uploaded, but they wouldn't be facing billions in fines).

And, now with Article 13 just about finalized and it looking absolutely terrible in almost every single way... Hollywood is going for broke and now calling for negotiations on Article 13 to be suspended entirely. Again, they're doing this for totally the wrong reasons, but considering that absolutely no one wants Article 13 at this point, shouldn't EU negotiators just drop it?

We understand the eagerness to bring the negotiations to a close within the current mandate. However, rather than rushing the highly controversial Art. 13 and seeking conclusion of this provision, no matter the jeopardy to the European copyright framework and no matter the prejudice and damage to the creative sectors before the end of this legislative period, we urge EU co-legislators to suspend negotiations with respect to this article.

We agree. Negotiators should drop Article 13 entirely (Article 11 as well, but we'll discuss that another time).

This letter is signed by a bunch of legacy copyright interests, with the main one being the MPA (the MPAA's international arm). And their reasoning, as before, is that they actually think that they're going to get a better deal (i.e., no safe harbors for internet services at all) in the EU Courts:

One of the main justifications for Article 13 articulated in the Commission’s original impact assessment back in 2016 was the absence of a CJEU referral that could bring clarity to the question of whether an uploaded content service is responsible for acts of communication to the public and/or can benefit from the hosting provider status under the E-Commerce Directive. Since that assessment the situation has now fundamentally changed. In the meantime, such a referral has been launched by a recent decision of 13 September 2018. The German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) referred a case to the CJEU involving YouTube/Google and certain rightholders, for clarification of this very issue (case C-682/18 Google e.a.).

Basically, Hollywood and its friends pushed for Article 13 when they thought that courts had read the law (correctly) to mean that the safe harbors already existing in the E-Commerce Directive applied to internet platforms hosting user generated uploads of content. However, at least one German court has mucked that up, and that case is being reviewed by the EU Court of Justice... and Hollywood is hoping that the CJEU will just declare that these safe harbors don't apply for platforms hosting content. Basically, Hollywood is going for broke. It truly wants to make the internet change massively, such that there is no more "user generated content" platforms unless those platforms first agree to throw money at Hollywood not to sue them. It's pretty close to an outright extortion scam.

Either way, we're happy that Hollywood has now properly recognized that EU negotiators have no business moving forward with Article 13, and we're happy to agree that it should be dropped.

Bring your precious files back from oblivion with DoYourData for Windows or Mac. Whether your computer just crashed or caught a virus, DoYourData is the data recovery solution that lets you quickly and thoroughly retrieve deleted, formatted or inaccessible data from your computer or phone. Just fire up the app, scan your hard drive or device, and recover lost files immediately. DoYourData works with all files, and it uses a 100% safe, read-only recovery process for greater peace of mind. It's on sale for $19.

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.

The advent of biometric "passcodes" -- fingerprints and facial recognition -- appear to be leaving those who choose these methods with fewer Fifth Amendment protections. A handful of courts have ruled fingerprints and faces aren't "testimony." Much as officers can collect fingerprints and mugshots without a warrant following an arrest, they can also apply fingers and faces to locked phones to get to the data inside.

But it's not as simple as some court decisions make it appear. Even passwords can be considered testimonial, as they may indicate ownership of a locked device or compel production of evidence to be used against the device's owner. The passcode argument has gone both ways in court, which usually comes down to the individual judge's definition of "foregone conclusion." Does the foregone conclusion refer to the device's ownership or the evidence contained in it? The latter is harder to prove, and raising the burden of proof to this level tends to result in courts finding the compelled production of passwords to be a Fifth Amendment violation.

Via Thomas Brewster at Forbes, there's finally some good news on the biometric security front. A federal judge in California has ruled forcing people to unlock phones using biometric measures is a Fifth Amendment violation.

[I]n a more significant part of the ruling, Judge Westmore declared that the government did not have the right, even with a warrant, to force suspects to incriminate themselves by unlocking their devices with their biological features.

As the court points out [PDF], when the fingerprint IS the password, the Fifth Amendment is implicated despite these features normally being considered non-testimonial.

The Court finds that utilizing a biometric feature to unlock an electronic device is not akin to submitting to fingerprinting or a DNA swab, because it differs in two fundamental ways. First, the Government concedes that a finger, thumb, or other biometric feature may be used to unlock a device in lieu of a passcode. In this context, biometric features serve the same purpose of a passcode, which is to secure the owner's content, pragmatically rendering them functionally equivalent.

The court notes law enforcement is well aware of jurisprudence surrounding device security. In this case, the more time that passed between the seizure of the devices and their compelled unlocking, the less likely law enforcement would be able to evade the Fifth Amendment. Judge Westmore doesn't find this reasoning acceptable.

[A] passcode is generally required "when a device has been restarted, inactive, or has not been unlocked for a certain period of time." This is, no doubt, a security feature to ensure that someone without the passcode cannot readily access the contents of the phone. Indeed, the Government expresses some urgency with the need to compel the use of the biometric features to bypass the need to enter a passcode. This urgency appears to be rooted in the Government's inability to compel the production of the passcode under the current jurisprudence. It follows, however, that if a person cannot be compelled to provide a passcode because it is a testimonial communication, a person cannot be compelled to provide one's finger, thumb, iris, face, or other biometric feature to unlock that same device.

The court goes on to say the government had other options to access messages -- like approaching Facebook with a warrant -- rather than intrude on the Fifth Amendment (and the Fourth Amendment -- more on that in a moment), but it chose to do it this way. Just because it's easier and faster to do it via compelled production doesn't make it right. In fact, in the court's eyes, all this effort did was violate the Constitution in multiple ways.

An attempted assault on the Fourth Amendment also occurred in this case. Investigators looking for evidence of extortion via Facebook sought to have every device and person at a residence seized and searched, with every resident compelled to unlock devices found during the search. As the judge points out in the rejection of the search warrant application, the Fourth Amendment requires far more specificity.

This request is overbroad. There are two suspects identified in the affidavit, but the request is neither limited to a particular person nor a particular device.

Thus, the Court finds that the Application does not establish sufficient probable cause to compel any person who happens to be at the Subject Premises at the time of the search to provide a finger, thumb or other biometric feature to potentially unlock any unspecified digital device that may be seized during the otherwise lawful search.

This is a far better answer to this sort of request than others we've seen. Searching someone's home and digging through their electronics is one of the scariest powers the government has. The Fourth Amendment is in place to limit these exercises of immense government power to those that are justifiable and necessary. When judges grant overbroad orders, they're doing more than failing to act as a check against government abuse. They're normalizing abuse of citizens' rights via judicial precedent.