City Of Dallas Shuts Down Business Of Man Who Called Cops Over 100 Times In 20 Months To Deal With Criminals Near His Car Wash

Legal Issues

from the damned-if-you-call,-damned-if-you-don't dept

Let’s talk about nuisance abatement laws. These are laws cities can use to shut down businesses that appear to draw more than their fair share of the criminal element.

If you’re a fan of asset forfeiture, you’ll love nuisance laws. By abdicating their law enforcement responsibilities, cities can have their lower cost cake and eat your property too. It’s win-win for cities, who love to use laws like this to effectively seize property from citizens who have the misfortune to operate legitimate businesses in high crime areas.

Here’s how it works in Dallas, Texas. The city says business owners must pay for their own security devices and personnel to keep their businesses free of criminals. No business will be compensated for these additional costs. All cops need to do is throw a couple of placards at the business and the city takes it from there. Criminal activity in the area is now the responsibility of businesses in the area. Can’t get criminals to get off your property? Too bad. It’s the city’s property now.

The Dallas police chief has a new tool in her arsenal to force home and business owners to address crime on or near their properties: shame.

On Wednesday, the Dallas City Council passed a “nuisance abatement” ordinance allowing Police Chief U. Renee Hall to identify properties that tolerate criminal activity and try to get the owners to address it.

The new ordinance allows city officials to slap a sign on properties identified as sites of “habitual criminal activity.”

The first efforts involve shaming the business owners for things they likely cannot control. This isn’t the only step taken, though. The placards are the beginning. If the city feels the business owner isn’t doing enough to control crime in the area (surely that’s a law enforcement job?), it can shut the business down and keep fining it for anything and everything it can think of until the business owner is insolvent and has to sell the property.

A South Dallas car wash owner has been fighting the city on and off for most of three decades over its application of nuisance laws. The city has already shut down Dale Davenport’s car wash. City council members claim Davenport is to blame for the crime that surrounds his business. It also claims he’s done next to nothing to solve a problem he didn’t create.

Davenport fought back. He demanded the city turn over 911 call records linked to his business in order to show the problem isn’t his, but the Dallas Police Department’s. After several months of being stonewalled, he has finally obtained the documents he needs to show the city it’s not doing all it can to combat crime. Jim Schutze of the Dallas Observer has been following this fight for years and has the details.

After a two-year tooth-and-nail battle with the city, Davenport’s lawyer, Warren Norred, recently forced City Hall to cough up the official record of 911 calls Davenport has been making all along, begging police to come to his place of business.

It’s not just a few calls scattered over several months. Davenport called the cops constantly, asking them to come deal with the criminal element that seemed to feel it could just hang out at his place of business. The city says crime is Davenport’s fault. The record(s) [PDF] show this is a failure of city agencies, most notably the Dallas PD.

On and on the 911 reports go for 414 single-spaced pages… And that covers only 20 months from 1/5/18 to 9/25/19. Dale Davenport and his father, Freddy Davenport, have been calling the cops to their property for 27 years.

Davenport is suing the city and the hundreds of pages of 911 calls are vital to his litigation. The city wants to take his property, claiming he hasn’t fulfilled his obligations as a citizen and business owner. 414 pages of 911 calls says otherwise. Davenport (and his father before him) have been pleading for the city to clean up a crime-infested area filled with drug houses and the criminal element drawn to this area by the (apparently) unchecked drug trade.

The PD’s newly-formed Nuisance Abatement Team doesn’t appear to have made any impact here, other than posting placards on businesses it believes aren’t doing enough to fight the crime the Dallas PD should be fighting. Paying taxes should entitle you to city services, but only thing Dallas wants to give Davenport in exchange for his involuntary contributions is all the blame for the crime that surrounds him.

Fourteen years ago, a state committee investigation [PDF] found Dallas’ nuisance laws had been abused severely and regularly.

Sworn testimony before the house committee described specific cases of misuse of the statute by city officials such as:

• Targeting of a few, select businesses in high-crime areas, while ignoring more serious crimes occurring on surrounding properties;
• Directing businesses to hire certain security personnel with the clear suggestion that hiring these select individuals would diminish the city’s threatened enforcement of nuisance abatement;
• Parking a large number of police cars in the parking lot of a business owner as a retaliatory act toward that owner, who had challenged the city’s nuisance action against him and had testified in court on behalf of an individual who was acquitted of charges for resisting arrest while on the business’ property;
• Using calls to police requesting assistance by the business as marks against that business in the city’s criteria for evidence of nuisance abatement violations;
• Directing a hotel property owner to run criminal history checks on all guests, which is a possible violation of the guests’ civil rights and could potentially subject the business to legal liability; and
• Sanctioning a local car wash owner because marihuana was found in the pants pocket of a person working on the property. It was suggested by the city legal department that the owner needed to conduct random pat-down searches of persons working on the property on a regular basis — an act prohibited by law even for law enforcement officers.

To sum up:

[T]he committees are gravely concerned that the problems stemming from Dallas’ use of the nuisance laws are the result of a unique and incorrect interpretation of those laws by city officials — wrongly taking the laws to mean that fighting crime is no longer the city’s responsibility but has instead now become primarily the responsibility of private citizens and businesses; and that private citizens can be held strictly liable for crimes that take place on or near their property even when they are not involved in that crime, have taken affirmative steps to prevent the crime, are themselves victims of that crime, and have reported the crime, requesting the assistance of law enforcement agencies. Furthermore, the body of evidence available to the committees also strongly suggests that the city uses the nuisance laws to intimidate, promote cronyism, and inappropriately use law enforcement personnel, specifically uniformed police and code enforcement officers, to deliver not-too-subtle messages of coercion and retaliation to legitimate businesses and property owners who refuse to submit to such tactics.

It’s 2020. Nothing has changed. The city continues to shrug off its responsibilities and put private business owners in the impossible position of clearing out nearby crime without relying on the law enforcement services the city is supposed to provide to taxpayers. I guess the city believes it’s only obligation to business owners like Davenport is to staff 911 call centers. Other than that, they’re on their own until the city shuts them down.

Filed Under: crime, dale davenport, dallas, law enforcement, nuisance abatement

Judge Says Chicago PD Must Release Nearly 50 Years Of Misconduct Files Before The End Of This Year

Legal Issues

from the maybe-if-you-had-better-cops,-you'd-have-fewer-burdensome-documents dept

The Chicago Police Department is one of the worst in the nation. There’s simply no denying this.

The Chicago PD ran its own black site for years, subjecting to arrestees to interrogations without access to legal counsel or notification of their families. Citizens effectively disappeared until the Chicago PD felt they had something worth booking them for. Only then would the paper trail begin and arrestees given access to their rights.

Police officers spent years screwing with recording equipment to ensure anything they didn’t want recorded wasn’t recorded. This resulted in only a couple of silent films being produced during the controversial shooting of Laquan McDonald. The surviving footage — the stuff that didn’t disappear because of a supposed “disk error” — contradicted the official narrative, even without the mysteriously-missing audio.

There’s more. Documents obtained through records requests shows thousands of misconduct investigations but very few punishments. The department used asset forfeiture funds to buy Stingray devices so it could bypass city government scrutiny of its surveillance tech purchases. Its gang database is a travesty even by gang database standards, filled with inaccuracies, sloppy paperwork, and a wholehearted lack of concern about the collateral damage it causes. And since it’s so great at handling present crime, the PD has decided to take on future crime with its predictive policing program — one that will allow cops to more proactively violate rights.

In the near future, we’ll get to learn even more details about the department’s awfulness. A FOIA lawsuit filed by a former inmate has resulted in a win for the general public.

In 2015, six years after his release, [Charles] Green filed a FOIA request with the city asking for copies of any and all closed complaint register files from 1967 to 2015. The request was made, Green’s attorney said, “in order to help him discover evidence of his innocence and to preserve and disseminate evidence of innocence to others wrongfully convicted.”

Judge Alison Conlon ordered the CPD to produce all files to Green by the end of 2020, noting that the CPD had “willfully and intentionally failed to comply” with the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.

Fifty years of complaints should be pretty enlightening. The document dump will be routed through the Invisible Institute, which has already done some great things with previous FOIA releases from law enforcement agencies.

The rollout probably won’t begin immediately, but the Chicago PD — which has only turned over about 100 files so far — has until the end of the year to fork over the remaining 174,900 responsive documents it says it has on hand. Right now, it seems to be focusing its energy on appealing the decision and complaining about how producing misconduct documents will somehow be unfair to the general public.

The City of Chicago is committed to the highest level of transparency and responds to tens of thousands of Freedom of Information Act requests every year, including requests regarding allegations against Chicago Police officers. This request is different, however, as it seeks every Complaint Register file created since 1967 – approximately 175,000 files, each of which contain dozens to hundreds of pages… Complying with this request would present numerous challenges, including millions of dollars in costs and expended public resources.

I think the city’s taxpayers will be fine with their money being used this way. Seems like exactly the sort of thing the public would benefit from — a welcome change from the terrible policing they’ve been funding for years.

Filed Under: chicago police, foia, misconduct files, transparency

LAPD Officers Faked Reports, Added Innocent People To Its Gang Database

Failures

from the passive-income-is-the-best-income dept

Sure, gang databases seem like a good idea. Intel on known criminals is important and can help law enforcement keep tabs on the most problematic people in their patrol areas.

Like many things that are great in theory, gang databases are awful in practice. The criteria for being “nominated” is vague and the people doing the nominating — police officers — aren’t detail-oriented or too worried about tossing innocent people into the virtual clink.

In Chicago, this has led to 15,000 people being (permanently!) listed in the PD’s gang database despite there being no gang affiliation named and no reason given for the person’s addition to the database. In Boston, wearing certain clothing items (like Nike shoes) or being assaulted by a gang member is enough to get a person added to the PD’s gang database.

The databases are so ridiculously inclusive cops have found themselves listed as gang members. One cop became a “gang member” simply because his family car was spotted on the same street as two motorcyclists wearing supposed gang t-shirts.

Given this history of lousy gang databases run by people who display an almost-sociopathic desire to punish innocent people, it comes as no surprise the database the LAPD uses sucks just as hard.

More than a dozen Los Angeles police officers with the elite Metro Division are being investigated on suspicion of falsifying information they gathered during stops and wrongly portraying people as gang members or associates, according to multiple sources.

The officers, assigned to special patrols in South Los Angeles, are suspected of falsifying field interview cards during stops and inputting incorrect information about those questioned in an effort to boost stop statistics.

Just a little standard police misconduct with bonus lifetime repercussions for those falsely added to CalGang, the LAPD’s gang database.

In these cases, body camera recordings undercut police reports and narratives, resulting in the removal of “some” officers from active duty. This is good news because it means someone’s looking at recordings for something other than footage that might assist prosecutors.

The bad news is everything else. Cops don’t do this sort of thing unless they feel comfortable doing it. The snowball effect of lax oversight and toothless discipline long ago reached terminal velocity. Cops falsifying reports and padding stop stats even though they know their actions are being recorded makes it clear the LAPD’s accountability efforts have had almost no deterrent effect.

Then there’s the database innocent people are being fed into. There are currently 90,000 people in the LAPD’s gang database. The database did not implement removal procedures until 2017, 20 years after its debut. The LAPD, which shares this database with seven other law enforcement agencies, did not remove a single person in 2018.

The LAPD handles its nomination process just as cavalierly as the departments in Chicago and Boston. Cops added Larry Sanders, a gang interventionist, to CalGang after hassling him and few other people in a park, demanding they lift their shirts and show officers their tattoos. (The officers claimed they were answering a call about public drinking, but the people drinking in public were never approached by the officers.) Sanders, who has lived in the area his entire life, has never been arrested or a member of a gang.

Another man, Brian Allen, was added to the database just because he lives in an area where gang activity is prevalent. Allen was told he was added for “associating with gang members,” which is vague enough to encompass simply making small talk with anyone in his neighborhood.

This latest news is more of the same: people being added to the gang database because they’re minorities and because cops can nominate anyone they want to without really having to worry about being held responsible for their actions.

Meanwhile, the “removal from active duty” suggests suspension or desk work, rather than termination, which makes this statement by LAPD Chief Michel Moore especially ridiculous:

“An officer’s integrity must be absolute. There is no place in the Department for any individual who would purposely falsify information on a Department report,” Moore said in a statement.

Great, but these officers are still “in the Department.” Maybe that will change once the investigations have concluded, but termination seems unlikely. There will be a place in the LAPD for these officers once the news cycle ends and their union has applied pressure. And, if the LAPD can actually get rid of them, they’ll just end up violating citizens’ rights at some other law enforcement agency.

Filed Under: faked reports, gang database, lapd

Company Sells Surveillance Cameras Hidden In Tombstones, Threatens Websites For Talking About Its Tombstone Cameras

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the HOT-FIST-ON-TABLE-ACTION dept

Thanks to a FOIA request by Open the Government policy analyst Freddy Martinez, we now know someone’s trying to sell cops cameras they can hide in… gravestones?

A surveillance vendor that works with U.S. government agencies, such as the FBI, DEA, and ICE, is marketing spying capabilities to local police departments, including cameras that are hidden inside a tombstone, a baby car seat, and a vacuum cleaner.

The brochure highlights some of the capabilities on offer to law enforcement agencies, from the novel to the sometimes straight-up bizarre.

As Joseph Cox notes, the offerings from Special Services Group run a bit outside the expected assortment of light pole cams and surveillance-in-a-box kits. Starting after 90+ pages [PDF] of webinar announcements from Vigilant, the surveillance tech provider with a logo lifted from American currency, lists a variety of offerings, including this useful item which puts the “family” back in “crime family.”

If the criminals you’re tracking might find it a bit suspicious to see a child seat in car that never had one before, maybe they can be slyly observed by undercover janitors who follow them from room to room with a vacuum they never actually turn on.

And here’s the tombstone camera system, which suggests grave robbing is far more prevalent than I thought it was.

SSG also offers other surreptitious recording devices, like an alarm clock/radio that can be inserted into suspected perps’ hotel rooms and faux utility boxes that can be placed in non-conspicuous areas (provided no one notices the absence of conduit running to/from the mock box).

There’s also scarier stuff in there as well. In addition to a variety of super-small cameras that can be mounted damn near anywhere, there’s communication interception software that can apparently be implanted on suspects’ phones or used by undercover officers who’d rather carry a phone than wear a wire. For whatever reason, SSG recommends using Samsung phones, but notes helpfully that other Android phones may support the software.

Then there’s this: the most inconspicuous mic system yet, but one that looks uncomfortable, if not dangerous, for the person using it.

There’s also a faux registration tag that can be placed over the real registration tag on a vehicle’s license plate to emit trackable infrared pulses for up to 48 hours. If greater access to the vehicle is possible, the same thing can be accomplished by swapping out tail lamp bulbs for IR-flashing bulbs that allow cops to locate a vehicle using infrared or night-vision gear.

It’s all in there: RFID cloning, covert recovery of suspects’ PINs from alarm panels, etc., silent drills, door cutter kits, covert audio and video installation tools, and surveillance all-in-one solutions that can be moved easily from car to car to lower the risk of surveillance vehicles being burned by sitting in one place for too long.

Apparently, the release of this catalog was approved by the Irvine Police Department and its counsel. Despite that, SSG is handing out legal threats to everyone who’s published the document.

When Motherboard asked Special Services Group for comment, the company did not respond. Shortly later though, a lawyer representing the company wrote a strongly worded legal email, demanding Motherboard not report on the brochure. The lawyer claimed that the brochure was protected under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), a set of rules that regulates the export of munitions, as well as copyright.

It sent a similar legal threat to MuckRock, claiming the publication of the document would put law enforcement at risk and said “recent world events” (Cox speculates this refers to developments in Iran) justified its obviously-baseless legal threats. Anyway, the document is embedded below and will probably bring about World War III if you start at page 93 and continue scrolling. Enjoy!

Filed Under: 1st amendment, export regulations, free speech, hidden cameras, itar, nda, secrecy, surveillance, threats, tombstone cameras, weapons
Companies: special services group, ssg

Malware Marketer NSO Group Looks Like It's Blowing Off Facebook's Lawsuit

Legal Issues

from the why-bother-being-accountable-in-any-minimal-fashion dept

In late October of last year, Facebook and WhatsApp sued Israeli surveillance tech provider NSO Group for using WhatsApp to deliver device-compromising malware. The lawsuit sought to use the CFAA to stop NSO from using WhatsApp as an attack vector.

The lawsuit is dangerous. It asks the court to read the CFAA to cover attacks targeting users’ accounts, rather than attacks on the service provider itself. The CFAA is already problematic enough without this sort of expansion. WhatsApp users certainly appreciate the efforts the developers make to protect them from malware, but asking a court to reinterpret an easily-abused law just so Facebook can go after NSO isn’t an acceptable solution.

NSO has been the target of non-stop criticism due to its willingness to sell malware and surveillance tech to countries with long histories of human rights violations. Its malware has also been observed targeting activists, dissidents, journalists, and critics of the governments that have deployed NSO malware.

Facebook’s lawsuit is going nowhere fast. While it’s not uncommon for there to be a delay between the filing of a complaint and the defendant’s response, NSO hasn’t filed anything — not even a notice of appearance from its corporate counsel — since the filing of the suit.

Facebook wants the court to take notice of this no-show. It’s asking for the upcoming case management to be postponed indefinitely since it has heard nothing at all from NSO. But the administrative motion [PDF] is not just there to deal with a logistical problem. It’s there to let the court know NSO isn’t cooperating with the litigation.

After filing the Complaint, Plaintiffs promptly sought to serve Defendants under the Hague Convention, which was effected on December 17, 2019.Plaintiffs also contacted Defendants via email, physical mail, and hand service, but have not received any response. As of the date of this filing, no counsel has entered an appearance in this matter on Defendants’ behalf, nor have Defendants filed an answer to the Complaint. Thus, Plaintiffs cannot fulfill their obligations under the Court’s initial case management scheduling order (ECF No. 9), including the obligations to meet and confer regarding initial disclosures, early settlement, ADR process selection, and a discovery plan.

The NSO is certainly welcome to sit this one out. It’s not like blowing off the WhatsApp lawsuit will do anything to its reputation that NSO hasn’t already done to it by selling hacking tools to authoritarians. It’s possible Facebook will receive a default judgment if NSO decides this is a waste of its time. Even if it did, what use would it be? NSO isn’t going to stop marketing malware that can be deployed via messaging services and the governments it sells to aren’t going to stop targeting WhatsApp users just because a court in California says it violates the CFAA.

This lawsuit is mostly for show. On the odd chance NSO decides to participate, discovery could expose some of its inner workings and the clients it sells this brand of malware to. NSO isn’t going to risk that. It makes more sense to let Facebook flail away ineffectively with a civil suit that will have absolutely no effect on its business model.

Filed Under: cfaa, default judgment, lawsuits, spyware
Companies: facebook, nso group

NSA Surprises Microsoft With A Vulnerability Disclosure Just In Time For Patch Tuesday

Surprises

from the what-do-you-give-to-a-company-that-has-everything-but-knowledge-of-this-exploit dept

Given the NSA’s track record with vulnerability disclosures, it’s somewhat of an anomaly when it actually decides the security of millions of innocent computer users is more important than its exploitation of a security flaw. Ellen Nakishima has the details for the Washington Post:

The National Security Agency recently discovered a major flaw in Microsoft’s Windows operating system — one that could potentially expose computer users to significant breaches or surveillance — and alerted the firm of the problem rather than turn it into a hacking weapon, according to people familiar with the matter.

The flaw affects Windows 10 users, the largest user base Microsoft currently has. The vulnerability could have been weaponized by the NSA, as so many others have been. The agency has consistently withheld knowledge of vulnerabilities from affected companies until the exploits have outlived their uselessness.

The equity program, meant to ensure companies are notified of serious software flaws, has routinely been ignored by the NSA, leading directly to the EternalBlue cataclysm that saw malicious hackers repurpose the exploit and unleash ransomware attacks on multiple targets around the world.

Microsoft was not happy. It released a long statement decrying the Intelligence Community’s refusal to completely participate in the Vulnerability Equities Process. As ransomware attacks brought multiple critical facilities to their knees, the NSA was justifying its “better way too late than never” approach with statements about the difficulty of developing useful surveillance tools.

It may have been Microsoft’s response to the WannaCry attacks that prompted the NSA’s proactive disclosure of this vulnerability. This security flaw is strikingly similar to the one exploited for years by the NSA — the one that became ransomware once the Shadow Brokers made the vulnerability available to whoever wanted it.

The discovery has been likened to a slightly less severe version of the Microsoft flaw that the NSA once weaponized by creating a hacking tool dubbed EternalBlue, which one former agency hacker said was like “fishing with dynamite.”

Like EternalBlue, the vulnerability disclosed here is “God mode” for malicious hackers and surveillance agencies.

Companies like Microsoft and Adobe use digital signatures to stamp software as authentic. This helps to prevent malware infections that might try to disguise themselves as legitimate. The NSA discovered an error in the Microsoft code that verifies those signatures, potentially enabling a hacker to forge the signature and install spyware or ransomware on a computer.

Microsoft’s patch will have been issued by the time you read this. The good news beyond the NSA’s surprise disclosure is that Microsoft has not seen the flaw exploited. Yet. A patch is only as good as the end users’ application of it. That’s somewhat beyond Microsoft’s control but Windows 10 is pretty aggressive about pushing updates, so it shouldn’t take too long to close this hole.

This likely doesn’t signal a large-scale change in the way the IC handles vulnerability disclosure. Exploits and vulnerabilities will continue to be hoarded, even if the potential collateral damage is billions of dollars. After all, billions will be lost by targets of attacks predicated on hoarded vulnerabilities. The NSA won’t lose anything, not even a little sleep.

Filed Under: nsa, patch tuesdsay, veb, vulnerabilities, vulnerabilities equities program, windows 10
Companies: microsoft

Bill Barr: Apple Is Holding Up This Investigation. Apple: You Waited A Month To Tell Us You Needed More Help

Say That Again

from the STFU-and-GTFO-Bill dept

Last week, the DOJ’s counsel sent a letter to Apple asking for its assistance cracking open two phones recovered from the shooter at the Pensacola Naval Air Base. Apple replied it had already provided assistance by giving the FBI everything it could recover from the shooter’s Apple accounts. The company also made it clear it would not attempt to break the encryption on the phones.

This sounded like a warning shot from the DOJ — one issued before the commencement of litigation. No formal request for assistance has been made in court yet, but the head of the DOJ has decided to apply additional pressure. Attorney General William Barr’s view appears to be that if the FBI has a warrant, Apple has to let it come in. Otherwise, bad things will happen. He also accused Apple of not being helpful enough.

“This situation perfectly illustrates why it is critical that the public be able to get access to digital evidence,” Mr. Barr said, calling on technology companies to find a solution and complaining that Apple had provided no “substantive assistance.”

Going beyond that, Barr said lives are on the line and tech companies unwilling to punch holes in the encryption they use to protect their customers are just adding to the body count.

“We don’t want to get into a world where we have to spend months and even years exhausting efforts when lives are in the balance,” he said. “We should be able to get in when we have a warrant that establishes that criminal activity is underway.”

When time is of the essence, the FBI is only weeks away.

We responded to each request promptly, often within hours, sharing information with FBI offices in Jacksonville, Pensacola and New York. The queries resulted in many gigabytes of information that we turned over to investigators. In every instance, we responded with all of the information that we had.

The FBI only notified us on January 6th that they needed additional assistance — a month after the attack occurred. Only then did we learn about the existence of a second iPhone associated with the investigation and the FBI’s inability to access either iPhone. It was not until January 8th that we received a subpoena for information related to the second iPhone, which we responded to within hours. Early outreach is critical to accessing information and finding additional options.

That’s from Apple’s statement on the matter, as reported by Scott Lucas for Buzzfeed. AG Barr is complaining about months and years, and it’s the FBI that waited until a month after the shooting to even inform Apple there was a second iPhone involved.

It could be the DOJ knew Apple would reject its advances. It could also be the FBI was exploring other options during the last 30 days. Even if this is the case, it’s completely disingenuous for Bill Barr to give the impression Apple has been uncooperative and is holding up this investigation. Apple helped immediately and turned over “many gigabytes” of data and communications to the FBI.

Just because the feds can’t unlock the phones does not mean Apple isn’t helping. It just won’t do the one thing the FBI wants it to do: weaken a security measure that keeps millions of iPhone users, who’ve never committed a crime, safe. Apple’s statement drives this point home.

We have always maintained there is no such thing as a backdoor just for the good guys. Backdoors can also be exploited by those who threaten our national security and the data security of our customers. Today, law enforcement has access to more data than ever before in history, so Americans do not have to choose between weakening encryption and solving investigations. We feel strongly encryption is vital to protecting our country and our users’ data.

If Barr is serious about the safety and security of the nation he’s sworn to protect, he’ll leave encryption the fuck alone. But Barr isn’t serious about this. He wants the DOJ to get what he wants, no matter how much collateral damage it causes. Sacrificing security for minimal gains in law enforcement efficiency is the name of the game. Unfortunately, it’s a game we all lose if the DOJ gets its way.

Filed Under: doj, emergency, encryption, going dark, iphones, terrorism, william barr
Companies: apple

Attorney General William Barr Says Apple Isn't Doing Enough To Let The DOJ Check Out A Dead Man's Phones

Say That Again

from the give-it-a-rest,-Bill dept

The DOJ has asked somewhat politely for Apple to break the encryption on some iPhones. Last time, the request wasn’t so polite. It involved a legal battle that only ended when a third-party cracked the San Bernardino’s iPhone for the FBI. Nothing of interest was recovered from that phone.

Another shooting and another dead shooter has brought Apple and the DOJ together again. The DOJ’s counsel sent a letter to Apple asking it to break into two phones recovered from the shooter. Apple stated it had already given the DOJ all the information it could recover without actually cracking the devices. This isn’t good enough for the DOJ, which believes the possession of a warrant should trump any concerns about creating encryption backdoors.

There’s been no demand made in court… yet. But Attorney General Bill Barr — whose antipathy towards encryption has been stated multiple times — is trying to apply a little more extrajudicial pressure.

Attorney General William P. Barr declared on Monday that a deadly shooting last month at a naval air station in Pensacola, Fla., was an act of terrorism, and he asked Apple in an unusually high-profile request to provide access to two phones used by the gunman.

[…]

“This situation perfectly illustrates why it is critical that the public be able to get access to digital evidence,” Mr. Barr said, calling on technology companies to find a solution and complaining that Apple had provided no “substantive assistance.”

It actually illustrates nothing of the sort. “Substantive evidence” is unlikely to be found on the shooter’s phones. While the DOJ has pointed to evidence the shooter was “radicalized” on social media, it can only speculate about what evidence can be recovered from the phones, one of which partially destroyed by a deputy’s bullet during the shootout with the gunman.

The DOJ’s assertions undercut Bill Barr’s claims that Apple has provided “no substantive assistance.” Barr said that the evidence the DOJ already has shows the “shooter was motivated by jihadist ideology.” This is based on social media messages and other content recovered by the DOJ, some of it likely from Apple itself.

There’s not much of a case to be built against a dead man. And there’s probably some value in mining contacts and text messages, but it’s dubious to claim the evidence that might reside on the locked devices will be a game changer for the FBI or result in new leads that could prevent future shootings.

Nevertheless, the Attorney General insists Apple is preventing law enforcement from doing its job. According to Barr, a warrant is all anyone should need to see to start cracking open cellphones for the FBI.

Mr. Barr indicated that he is ready for a sharp fight. “We don’t want to get into a world where we have to spend months and even years exhausting efforts when lives are in the balance,” he said. “We should be able to get in when we have a warrant that establishes that criminal activity is underway.”

This is the leverage. Any tragedy with an iPhone in the mix is fodder for the DOJ’s anti-encryption efforts. Third-party services can help the FBI achieve what Barr says it wants to achieve: speedy recovery of evidence from locked devices. But Barr and the agencies he represents only want outside help from the courts — precedent that will make all cellphone users less safe in the name of securing the nation.

Filed Under: doj, encryption, fbi, going dark, iphones, terrorism, william barr
Companies: apple

DHS Move Ahead With Plan To Harvest DNA Samples From Nearly Everyone Detained By ICE And CBP

Privacy

from the don't-forget-to-pack-your-saliva dept

Looks like everyone roaming across the board is going to become a source of info for the US government. The DHS has already rolled out facial recognition at international airports and additional biometric collections elsewhere. The Fourth Amendment’s near-nonexistence at the border has led to a steadily-increasing number of invasive device searches. Visa applicants and other long-term visitors are being forced to turn over social media information (including passwords) during the application process.

Now, the DHS is hoping to collect DNA from nearly every immigrant it has in custody. The DHS first pitched this idea back in October, hoping to strike the lone exemption keeping it from collecting samples from the hundreds of thousands of people crossing southern borders every year.

The previous administration said it simply wasn’t feasible to collect DNA from every detainee, especially those rounded up near southern borders. This administration says it’s no longer a logistical problem, so it should be allowed to collect it from everyone detained by ICE or the CBP.

[S]ubsequent developments have resulted in fundamental changes in the cost and ease of DNA-sample collection. DNA-sample collection from persons taken into or held in custody is no longer a novelty. Rather, pursuant to the mandate of § 28.12(b), it is now carried out as a routine booking measure, parallel to fingerprinting, by Federal agencies on a government-wide basis.

The rule change removes the logistics exemption, effectively removing the power to make judgment calls on DNA collection from the DHS and placing it in the hands of the Attorney General. Presumably, Bill Barr will be far less likely to exempt any immigrants from this DNA collection, no matter how much of a burden it places on the agencies performing the collection.

The change is now in effect and the DHS is moving forward with its expanded DNA collection.

The U.S. government on Monday launched a pilot program to collect DNA from people in immigration custody and submit it to the FBI, with plans to expand nationwide.

In Detroit, people as young as 14 will be subject to DNA collection.

The information would go into a massive criminal database run by the FBI, where it would be held indefinitely. A memo outlining the program published Monday by the Department of Homeland Security said U.S. citizens and permanent residents holding a “green card” who are detained could be subject to DNA testing, as well as asylum seekers and people entering the country without authorization. Refusing to submit DNA could lead to a misdemeanor criminal charge, the document said.

It will take more than a detention to collect DNA from US persons and lawful permanent residents, so that’s not an entirely accurate synopsis of the DHS’s memo [PDF]. US persons and lawful residents will have to be under arrest or facing criminal charges to be subjected to the DNA collection.

But it does change the scope of the collection, which will now include as many immigrants as possible, even if they’re crossing at heavily-trafficked areas of the border. It also means the DHS is creating additional logistical challenges under the theory that filling an FBI database with non-criminals will make it easier to apprehend criminals.

The DHS expects this to cost an additional $3-5 million a year, including the $5.38 the FBI spends for each DNA kit. Processing is another matter — the DHS did not address this cost in its proposal other than saying the FBI “won’t charge” the DHS for processing. This is an especially meaningless assurance. Taxpayers will still be paying for the gratis processing the FBI will be performing. There will just be less paperwork involved.

Even if it’s cost-effective, it’s still mostly useless. Most of the DNA collected will be linked to people who did nothing more than attempt to cross a border. It puts more needles in the FBI’s haystack under the theory it might result in the occasional apprehension of a dangerous individual. Even the DHS believes the collection won’t do much to ensure the worst of the worst aren’t returned to general population.

The DHS memo acknowledged that the DNA its agents collect may not be immediately useful. Agents plan to take saliva swabs of detained people, then mail them to the FBI. By the time the results are processed, the memo said, the people in question may have already been released, deported or transferred to another federal agency.

Useful or not, the collected DNA belongs to the US government for life. The government has authorized DNA collection on detainees as young as 14 and can hold onto the info indefinitely. In practical terms, this means CBP and ICE will be taking DNA samples from children because agents generally decide how old immigrant minors are, rather than relying on produced documents or statements from detainees and family members. If they really want the sample, they’ll just declare someone to be 14 years old.

Maybe the ultimate goal is to make coming to America just not worth the hassle. The government’s thirst for data is never quenched. Every so often the public may make it take a step back from the fire hose, but it will always come back for more.

Filed Under: cbp, dhs, dna samples, ice, privacy