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Comment by dbot | Hacker News Reader

There is a reason that safeguards like attorney-client, priest-penitent, and spousal privilege exist. For most of civilization, these are the people with whom we entrust our deepest secrets. Society doesn't work if these relationships aren't respected.

Today, our deepest secrets are usually stored somewhere on a hard drive. When we turn them over to the "priests" of PC repair, there is no real protection beyond the terms of a one-sided, clickwrap contract. I've never used a repair service for this reason - I'll either fix the problem myself or throw the device away. It sucks, but articles like this suggest it's not a bad idea...

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> safeguards like attorney-client, priest-penitent, and spousal privilege

Let's add the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, protecting your "papers, and effects" though it's not currently respected. It seems obvious to me that your modern "papers" are what is on your hard drive.

> It seems obvious to me that your modern "papers" are what is on your hard drive.

And they are protected in your possession. If you turn over all your papers to a third-party, though, that changes things.

eta We may need more privileged communications, but they are very rare. Creating one is probably a good idea, but this will have to happen legislatively. Geek Squad finding child porn isn't much different from the photo processors of old finding it.

> they are protected in your possession. If you turn over all your papers to a third-party, though, that changes things

I believe that interpretation is standard for U.S. courts. However, it's not in the wording itself.

(Courts of course, must interpret the law beyond the wording; I fully support that. The law is not an algorithm, and also someone must apply the law to individual situations. Otherwise the First Amendment, for example, would protect slander, threats, shouting fire in a crowded theater, etc.)

I don't like that particular interpretation. It implies the 4th Amendment applies only in your windowless basement, with no communication in or out. That isn't realistic, and is especially unrealistic in the age of the Internet.

>Otherwise the First Amendment, for example, would protect ... shouting fire in a crowded theater,

But that is protected speech, and the SCOTUS case it refers to was overturned long ago because it set a terrible precedent. Holmes used that analogy to support the prosecution and conviction of Charles Schenck under the Espionage Act for writing and distributing a pamphlet that expressed his opposition to the draft during World War I.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/foreign-policy-exception-first-ame...

I don't know about that case, but if you falsely shout "fire" in a crowded, dark theater, I'm pretty sure you will be breaking the law. It probably would be breaking the law if you did it in a well-lit conference hall. (Whether you are arrested or just thrown out probably depends on if anyone gets hurt, physically or financially.)

[Brandenberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio) is the case you want to look at. The court held that, to be unprotected “incitement,” speech must meet three requirements. The speaker must intend to cause violence. The violence must be the likely result of the speech. And the violence must be imminent. So, if equivalent circumstances are established, yes, the shouter might well be in trouble.

Before you quote the "fire in a theater" precedent again, please go and look up [Schenck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States) as well, since that's the origin of the quote, and because it's apparent that there is very little distance between "speech that will cause immediate harm to people isn't protected" and "speech criticizing wars isn't protected when we're at war" when you're a SCOTUS chief justice.

If the container for those papers (computer net of storage and access systems) fails, what recourse does the individual have?

Best Buy here are pretty much shooting their own trusted basis straight through the heart here.

Paper records don't have a strong tendency to suddenly become unreadable, requiring expert technical assistance. Computerised record storage systems somewhat moreso.

> isn't much different from the photo processors of old finding it

You hand your photos over to be processed, but unless you had some photo specific issues, a computer tech has no business accessing photographs on your computer. It is an unexpected invasion of your privacy for them to do so, even if though they have the access to do so.

It's like hiring someone to fix your kitchen sink and then stepping out for a bit and finding them going through your bedroom drawers.

The government sees the Fourth Amendment as a bug, and they have come up with various ad-hoc patches for it. The applicable "bug fix" here is that you give up your Fourth Amendment rights when you turn your property over to a third party for repair, storage, or safekeeping.

This is a great example of why these issues are complex.

There's some argument that when you store things in a cloud provider or mailbox that the service is an extension of you.

But if you hand over a file cabinet full of papers to someone and give them the key so they can fix the drawers, that's a different situation. The PC in a repair shop in analogous.

The opposite safeguards exist in some states. In at least CA and SC, computer technicians are mandatory reporters.

I don't think the analogy between lawyers and computer techs really works. I could make another analogy here--it's like taking your car to a mechanic and there's a bunch of blood in the trunk, so the mechanic calls the cops, and it turns out you murdered someone. My analogy doesn't completely work, and I think there are other grounds why the FBI's actions here might not be legal, but computer techs are not sacred.

The analogy is fatally flawed because, as GP points out, it's trivial to copy illicit material onto the medium in question. You can't copy blood, and I don't see how you can find and plant blood of a known murder victim.

I don't think that's really a fatal flaw. I mean, the mechanic could have killed someone, put the body in the trunk of your car while it was in the shop, and then disposed of the body elsewhere. The legal system is designed to handle cases that aren't exactly "open and shut" and there's a balance to be had between protecting against possibly tainted evidence and being able to bring criminals to justice.

Just copying child porn onto somebody's computer shouldn't be enough to convict them, and if its is, then the problem is with the legal system elsewhere, not with the system of mandatory reporters.

Argument by analogy is a worthless pursuit every time you think of doing it please take a deep breath and think of a more honest useful argument.

Your car doesn't contain a full copy of most of the pertinent private information about your life and a copy of every private conversation for the last decade. Everything from your taxes to what kind of sex you enjoy.

Furthermore the blood would be evident just by casual examination whereas this suggests a fishing expedition.

Furthermore the mechanic would just be a good Samaritan rather than a paid agent of the government.

The relationship herein creates legal issues and a perverse incentive. Your repair tech shouldn't be acting as a government agent, shouldn't be paid for finding dirt on you, shouldn't be fishing, and shouldn't be the judge of what constitutes illegality especially when guessing wrong ruins someone's life.

I think this might be a response to some other comment, or perhaps a straw version of my comment, since I agree with basically everything you've written, especially the part about analogies.

Market opportunity: private-label cloud document sharing with attorneys to get the presumption of privilege.

double win: it could put to "work" the hoards of unemployed, recent JD grads. Nice try border-guard, but I can't unlock this smartphone because my attorney is "reviewing" my European vacation photos.

Well this actually is interesting. Is a third party expected to respect atty client privilege if that third party is used for storage? Surely not. Also, could a law be passed that states some storage (like phones) is from the factory not protected by atty client privilege, like a usb drive? Could an atty be made aware of the contents of storage even though the storage is not in attys possession? What if atty just has cred access to the storage? That enough? Man, if any of that could be enforced, it would cause all kinds of chaos for LE.

The authorities aren't allowed to get the information from your attorney, that has nothing at all to do with asking you to give that information yourself.

Judges are people. The intent of attorney-client privilege is clear. The intent of such a service would be similarly apparent.

I have always had the habit of taking out hard drives of computers before handing them over to Apple's Genius Bar. I don't know what I'll do when the next generation of laptops has the hard drives soldered in.

You say "next", but this has already been the case for many of Apple's laptops for many years now, and as of last year they now only sell one laptop which doesn't have the SSD soldered on (that's being he 13" MacBook Pro without TouchBar).

I meant next for me, but yea, you're right.

"Do you take this ssd to be your lawfully wedded wife?"

"I do"

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