Unsealed Documents Provide More Details On Federal Investigators’ YouTube Dragnet
from the a-smaller-dragnet-but-a-dragnet-nonetheless dept
Earlier this week, reporting by Thomas Brewster for Forbes uncovered yet another way law enforcement is expecting companies like Google to perform their investigative work for them.
For a few years now, we’ve covered the use of geofence warrants capable of turning multiple people into criminal suspects, as well as the even more dubious “keyword” warrants, which turns anyone Googling certain words into a possible suspect.
The feds are now targeting any viewers of certain YouTube videos, serving up some pretty general-looking warrants that demand Google turn over a wealth of information on anyone who accessed certain YouTube URLs during a certain time period. Technically, they’re not “warrants,” but 2703(d) court orders for customer information, but that hardly makes it any more comforting.
Unfortunately, the reporting at Forbes did not include any of the underlying documents. Fortunately for us, there are plenty of amazing people out there on the internet, including Virgil Abt (who was the subject of broad DOJ subpoena back in 2017, along with crowd favorites like Popehat and Dissent Doe). Virgil hunted down the relevant documents and posted them to BlueSky.
The first thing you’ll notice is that the only reason anyone’s seeing these is because the gag order finally expired. Federal investigators seeking to unmask someone allegedly involved in trading Bitcoin for cash, possibly in violation of money laundering laws, had online conversations with the subject, including one where YouTube URLs were exchanged (in violation of no known laws). The government asked for — and obtained — a one-year sealing of the affidavit, along with a one-year gag order targeting Google.
Here’s what the order [PDF] sought:
The Order applies to certain records and information associated with any Google account(s) or IP addresses accessing the following URLs between 01/01/2023 and 01/08/2023:
https://youtu.be/lRQu71VPl2s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI2Y9pQIqIA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2OE7l4vQqs
As Virgil points out in the BlueSky thread, the videos appear to be completely innocuous recordings dealing with mapping software. All the videos were at least one year old and not exactly popular. Virgil estimates the total amount of views of the URLs to be in the area of 200 per week.
But that’s still a whole lot of people affected. That’s potentially 200 unique users being swept up in the dragnet that pretends it’s just a completely normal to demand all this customer info. And it’s not as though the government was just asking for anonymized data in hopes of narrowing down the haystack into a usable set of suspects.
The order demands any identifying information Google might have obtained on viewers of these videos, including names, addresses, phone records, device information, IP addresses, online payment records, user activity records, and recovery email addresses. It’s a pretty heavy ask, especially when the government had nothing more to work with than the one URL shared by the subject with undercover investigators (the first URL in the request) and the two sent in response by government agents.
The basis for this extremely broad demand for personally identifiable information is based on a single exchange between the suspect and investigators, as detailed in the affidavit [PDF]:
The United States has conducted multiple, undercover transactions with the ELM
moniker, in which the United States provided bitcoin (BTC) to an address specified by ELM, and cash was mailed to a name and address specified by the United States. While arranging one such transaction, the United States told ELM that the BTC originated from the proceeds of drug sales.
While communicating about this transaction, ELM sent a link to a YouTube video, https://youtu.be/lRQu71VPl2s, on January 3, 2023, at approximately 3:22 PM UTC. In response, the United States sent links to two additional YouTube videos, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI2Y9pQIqIA and https://www.youtube.com/watch v=G2OE7l4vQqs, on January 4, 2023, at approximately 2:52 PM UTC and 3:12 PM UTC, respectively.
After providing some more information about YouTube and Google and how people access YouTube URLs to watch YouTube videos, the government sums up its proposed demand for a massive data dump possibly affecting 200 different YouTube users with this conclusory sentence:
There is reason to believe that these records would be relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation, including by providing identification information about the perpetrators.
That was apparently enough for the magistrate, who not only signed off on the order but the one-year gag order as well.
And sure, it’s very possible this led to investigators obtaining identifying information on the subject of their investigation. But there were much better ways to achieve the same thing, like uploading a relevant video, setting it to private, and sending out that link to ensure the only viewer would be the target of the investigation. Or the feds could have limited the request to the URL sent by the suspect, which would have at least minimized the number of people affected. Using publicly accessible content as a honeypot is an extremely careless move, and this request should have been challenged by the magistrate, rather than given judicial blessing and one-year gag order to boot.
As Brewster’s reporting for Forbes notes, there are more cases like this out there. And it’s inevitable more will surface in the future as gag orders expire. But this particular investigative tactic looks like general rummaging in hopes of finding something useful — the very sort of the thing the Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect against. Just because there’s a third party involved doesn’t make it any more acceptable.
Filed Under: 2703(d), court order, gag order, honey pot, surveillance, watching history
Companies: google, youtube
Comments on “Unsealed Documents Provide More Details On Federal Investigators’ YouTube Dragnet”
It would be nice if the magistrates did their jobs and challenged overbroad dragnets like that. Unfortunately, most magistrates don’t challenge the various geofence and other Google related warrants. And, there is really nothing we can do to get the magistrates off their butts.
We can’t let a little thing like imaginary rights stop them from checks notes catching 1 dude who turned imaginary money into real money & not giving the government their cut.
Thank goodness everyone swept up in this most likely lives on the Constitutional free zone that covers 99.9% of citizens who have no expectation that they actually have the rights they think they have.
And of course, the magistrate made his decision ex parte, so Google (or whoever) gets a fait accompli from the court.
They still might be able to frustrate the demand for data by any of various methods up to saying “nuh-huh” and insisting on an adversarial process.
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bomb the feds
the federal agwncies and the judges who approve this will be bombed to death! Their department heads have also had a million dollar bounty placed on their lives
That is titally outrageous that the FBI is so delusional that they believe that they have the luxury of wasting tax ayer money and corporate money on a fraud scheme of entrapment while the nation is spiralibg down a debt vortex and terrorism and organized crime are so ramlant tgat there are 500,000 missing persons reported in America now.
It is clearly dereliction of duty and entrapment. So soneone watches a vodeo, and I do not know what is on the video because i havent seen it, but they send bitcoin and then the fbi tells their victim that it was derrived from drug money. Was it derrived from drug money? If the fbi sent it, it sure as hell would not surprise me to findout that the fbi is a drug cartel. That is why they have not amended the constitution to illegalize drugs too, because they say that it is the responsibility of the fbi to regukate interstate commerce, which narco trafficking falls under.
I am so sick of supporting these evil terrorists nd serial criminal psychopaths!
That is what happens to comoanies that take money from the Pentagon. They are at the beck and call of the federal government, and if you own a business, they will terrorize you unitil you cave into them.
They are violently opposed to independence, liberty, justice, and the constitution. They are a bigger national security threat to America than any country on earthl Same goes for the healthcare sector, which has been corrupt throughout its history preceding biblical times. It is totally corrupt world wide. It is just their culture. The fbi is not controlling the WHO. It s under the economic division of the UN.
Oh, but back to a point that I wanted to make is that they decided to totally destroy hundreds of people’s lives in this youtube bitcoindrug money fraud scheme. What in the hell is the matter with them?! Monsters!
America is an extremely dangerous country infested with serial criminal psychopathic swamp creatures – they are the politicians, deep state, and surveillance state. They are lazy, greedy, perverted, mentally incompetent, sppiled rotten, narcissistic degenerates.
I notice that there was a covert bipartisan “democratic” agreement agreement by the over 50 million swamp creatures to be terrororists, an organized crime ring, and to secretly and illegally give themselves more rights than Richard Nixon had, but i dont have to go along with it, and i wont, and i refuse to pretend that you are respectsble civilized human beings, because you are not.
One of me is worth more to America and the world than fifty million of you. Who needs fifty million serial criminal psychopathic terrorists destroying the country and world? I dont.
It took me over half a century, but i finally realized what you hoped i would die before i found out. Im not the problem, you are!
The hood mentality lifestyles that the swamp creatures have of community organized stalking aka gang banging, organized crime, terrorism, and narco trafficking just isn’t working out.
Who let the dogs out?
Somebody doesn’t know how to moderate his intake, it would appear.
It is just the quintessential nature of the swamp creatures to be sadistic, evil, predatory serial criminal psychopathic monsters, like it was for Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer.
The swamp creatures have been desperately and feverently trying to redirect the narrative to take the heat off of themselves like they did in the Vietnam War era to switch the narrative over to race rioting and this time added other minority groups to the mix. If people focus on race, religion, sexual orientation, they are not focussing on the systemic corruption that the swamp creatures have as prefered lifestyles.
Prior to BLM, the swamp creatures resorted to high speed car chases that went on for hours to switch the narrative at their convenience, then during the 2016 election, I noticed that they started using BLM protests to switch the narrative. MSNBC was showing Sanders acceptance speech and he spoke for a few minutes, then they said, oh, we are going to be moving over to cover a BLM protest and interrupted Sanders acceptance soeech to cover it, so i disconnected my tv shortly after that. Not because they were covering BLM protests, but because they were using them to manipulate viewers and change the subject when they didn’t like the subject.
I mean Sanders announcing his 2016 candidacy, not acceptance speech.
The God damn fucking swap creatures looting spree has resulted in over $30 trillion in Pentagon accounting errors and a national debt of over $34 trillion, with an enormous chunk of it sent to foreign countries at American tax payers expense, and the body bags that we have over it! You are not helping th situation swamp creatures!
When the swamp creatures rrealize that the white majority is mad as hell about them, and fail to convince them that they all need to unite with the swamp creatures to defeat a foreign enemy like they failed to do during the Viet Nam War, they resort to trying to shift the focus to race, religion, sexual orientaion, culture wars.
Just go to hell. It is so over for you swamp creatures! Useless degenerates!
Biden declaring March 31st on Friday to be Transgender Visibility Day is an example of this culture war baiting, particularly since it is Easter Sunday this year!
Re: fyi
“International Transgender Day of Visibility (often referred to as TDOV or Trans Day of Visibility) is an annual event occurring every March 31 since 2009”
“The event was created by transgender activist[3] Rachel Crandall of Michigan in 2009”
“In 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden proclaimed March 31 as a Transgender Day of Visibility,”
In addition, Easter is not the same date every year.
Just because congress signs onto certain bills, it does not in any way indicate that they are laws, because all laws must be legal, and in order for any bill to actually be legal it must not violate the constituion in any way at all. Courts have frequently struck down various bills, because the bills were/are unconstitutional and illegal.
Re:
” all laws must be legal,”
Yo dog .. you funny!
“in order for any bill to actually be legal it must not violate the constituion ”
Yer on a roll .. keep em comin – laugh track enabled.
“Courts have frequently struck down various bills”
omg .. too funny!
Are you here all week??
I notice that swamp creatures, particularly in healthcare/mental healthcare are insisting that they have legal right to be predatory serial criminal psychopaths that are above the law and accountable to nobody. You are not fooling anyone but yourselves.
The swamp creatures are in fact serail criminal psychopaths that throw tyrannical fits of narcissistic rage when they are expected to be held legally accountable for their sadistic, premeditated, cold-blooded organized crime sprees. They are totally devoid of any remorse and will not even stop terrorizing and committing organized crime. They expect everyone to believe that they are entitled to do whatever they want to whomever or whatever they want, regardless of clear violations of the constitution and many other laws in most countries including ours like breaking and entering, stealing, medical and financial fraud, treachery, espionage, ( that Richard Nixon was impeached for) , deceptive practices, and so on, and expect people to believe that their status permits them to do things that people are thrown in federal pennitentiaries for. They do not have any right to be committing these crimes and terrorism at all.
When in the hell did they decide to rename spying and 4th amendment rights violations as researching and advertising?
Like every American that went to school, and is interested in various topics, I have done a tremenous amount of researching, and I worked at an ad agency, and in both researching, and advertising, I never had to spy on anyone or violate anyone’s 4th amendment rights to perform either task. Ford advertises in various publications, tv, and radio, despite the fact that they know that most Americans are not in the market for a new car or truck since they are high end durable goods, but they advertise to everyone in those particular markets, and no teacher ever said, go and spy on your neighbor to do your research on such and such a topic.
How a Bill Becomes a Confession of High Crimes and Treason
Legislators do not write or read legislation that they sign onto. Legislators are puppets, and nothing more than ambassadors representing powerful lobbyists in various powrrful special interest groups that are the ones that actually write the legislation that politicians sign onto.
Since they are shysters, they write confessions of hogh crimes and treason that are in total violation of the US Constitution for their lobby groups, like the powerful WHO that is more powerful and richer than most nation states, then the WHO members try to claim that the government made them do it, but it was they that twisted the governments hand using strong arm tactics, intimidation, presenting fraudulent evidence as the basis for the necessity and “societal benefit” or “health benefit” of the legislation that they write for
congress to sign.