Security researcher: I keep getting detained by feds
news.cnet.com
news.cnet.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist
"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men...
"We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home."
--Edward R. Murrow, See It Now, commenting on the McCarthy Witchhunts
I respect people's opinions regarding the ethics of Wikileaks, but any US citizen who abetted the disclosure of classified military documents is prima facie involved in a serious criminal incident. I don't think the ethics behind the documents leaked justify that crime. Others do. That's fine. But it's probably not reasonable to suggest that the government shouldn't investigate that crime aggressively.
I'm not in love with the doctrine that says you give up the 4th Amendment at the US Border (I buy the motivation behind it, but we appear to overtly abuse that motivation to conduct searches that have nothing to do with securing our borders or stopping contraband). So I wouldn't want to suggest that Moxie has no reason to be upset. Sure, he does. I feel bad for him.
But the abuse of the border search doctrine is not some new encroachment of the US shadow secret police. It's been a fact of life for many decades. Drive to Canada and back sometime to see how bad it gets just for normal people.
It's also probably not fair to invoke "guilt by association" to a criminal investigation. There is a difference between investigating them and convicting them, or even indicting them, and a sliding scale of burdens the government needs to meet to do each thing in between. Is there any evidence anywhere that Moxie has been charged with any crime?
I feel bad for Moxie. But he's 1 degree of seperation for Wikileaks. I know Wikileaks seems relatively harmless in Internetland, but it's a Very Big Deal in the real world.
Edit: OK, I misunderstood tptacek's point.
If it's your impression that I'm saying there was anything reasonable about prosecuting people for passing industrial, commercial, or military secrets to the Soviet Union: of course there was.
Were people unfairly prosecuted? Yes. Was the discretion to investigate people abused for political purposes? Yes. But don't be naive. There was actual, serious espionage. The Soviet Union was basically our sworn enemy for many decades. I know Internetland is one big happy family, but the real world isn't.
Pretty much everyone in the security community is probably only 1-2 degrees of separation away from wikileaks. On the basis that his name was in someone's phonebook, you could probably subject pretty much everyone at defcon to investigation.
Should the country be abusing border integrity for domestic law enforcement? No, I don't think so, but, as a pragmatist, I recognize that this ship has thoroughly sailed, it is long past the horizon, and the very fastest cigarette boat of an argument I can devise has no hope of catching up to it.
Is it "unconstitutional" for someone with a demonstrable connection to someone else who is the focus of a major criminal investigation to be questioned? I can't see how anyone could defend that argument. I feel bad for Moxie, and I wish it took a warrant to search people at the border, but I simply don't think this is harassment.
Likewise, if the police wish to search his laptop or phone, there are again a nice series of procedures in place that Americans have already agreed are in society's best interests to enforce.
I would never suggest that the police do not do their job according to the rules in place. I am suggesting that using the border search rules to perform an investigation of an associate of a suspect gives the appearance that the police are avoiding the proper procedures because they don't have the evidence and cause to question him or search his laptop and phone.
This, I argue, undermines the credibility of the investigation, which is of great harm to society as a whole.
But: there is a pair of subtexts in the gestalt of the discussion about his border drama that I have a hard time accepting.
The first subtext is the notion that the US government is now harassing security researchers. That notion attaches itself to the headlines being written: "security researcher stopped at border". No. "Security researcher" wasn't stopped. "Affiliate of Wikileaks volunteer" was stopped.
The second subtext is that questioning an affiliate of a Wikileaks volunteer would constitute harassment. Words mean things. Harassment describes government interventions whose sole purpose is to cause discomfort to targets. But an actual crime took place. It wasn't a small crime; it was a criminal event of fairly epic proportions. It may well be mitigated by the ethics of whistleblowing (I don't think so, but respect people who do, and count many of them as friends). Aggressive investigation of epic criminal events is not harassment; it's a central part of the government's charter.
(Did you make any of these claims? I don't care to find out. My issue is with the subtexts, not with any particular person's argument.)
The rest of this discussion, about the justice/injustice of border searches and whatnot... I have less strong opinions about. I've been searched aggressively at US borders. I didn't like it. I thought it was wrong. I researched it, read a bunch of court opinions on it, and came to the conclusion that much like the interpretation of our Second Amendment that guns should be minimally regulated, this is a settled bit of American law that I'm going to have to learn to dislike passively.
Given your feelings about the subtexts, I think I understand your comments.
So we all accept that the TSA has absolutely nothing to do with transport security - it's just a way of intimidating citizens we don't like ?
When you do face a real terrorist threat it's going to be a little tricky to deal with when all your citizens regard 'anti-terrorism units' as a euphemism for secret police.
The Customs interrogation was not punitive. Customs agents themselves may not be the sharpest tools in the shed, but part of their charter is to assist in domestic law enforcement. There is a clear law enforcement objective involved in Wikileaks.
Whats next the local fire service sent out to do safety checks on anyone that opposes the government? I think the last two administrations already got caught ordering tax audits of groups that opposed them.
Customs did not abuse their power. What happened to Moxie is exactly what Customs does (badly). You can end up tussling with Customs for any of a zillion other reasons, too. It's not harassment. Words mean things.
Also, you seem to be under the misapprehension that the only options criminal investigators have is "arrest" (or even "subpoena" or "get a warrant"). That's simply not true.
Jacob has a lot of telephone numbers, perhaps hundreds, including mine. He's a hyper-social guy who knows everybody.
If merely appearing in Jacob's address book was enough to cause serious suspicion the DHS would have confiscated all of our laptops by now.
Since I'm pretty sure that Moxie has nothing to do with Wikileaks, it's a bit of a mystery what this is really about.
1. Investigating associates of a suspect for no reason other than that they are associates, and 2. Performing searches whenever you can without warrants or any kind of direction. These appear to be fishing expeditions, quite possibly the authorities are hoping to catch an associate with evidence of some other crime that they can use to blackmail them into cooperation.
Does this appear to be wild conspiracy mutterings? Too bad the authorities aren't following any kind of process where such accusations can be aired and refuted. Perhaps there's more to it than mere association. If a warrant had been obtained for a search, we could have some confidence that the police explained the justification in a credible manner. Without a warrant, the credibility of the investigation is undermined.
The seriousness of the crime is a red herring. If it's really serious, then there ought to be even greater motivation to ensure that justice is done publicly and fairly. The argument that serious crimes justify skipping all the annoying business of rights and liberties is broken, and I call on you to clarify that you are not arguing that there are some investigations where the ends justify the means.
Finally, the fact that there have been abuses of the border search doctrine for decades is either irrelevant or even greater motivation to fix the problem. By 1969, police agression against people of colour had been a fact of life for at least a century. Was that any argument to shrug our shoulders at the assassination of Fred Hampton?
If Wikileaks got an truly anonymous donation of classified military documents copy write law might be the strongest limitation on what they can do with it. That is not to say you can simply publish any classified document. However, it comes down to a question of actual harm. Keeping the F-22’s top speed a secret has value, but the top speed of an F-86 Sabre is “687 mph at sea level at 14,212 lb (6,447 kg) combat weight” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_F-86_Sabre
PS: I am not a lawyer, but plenty of US newspapers have published classified documents.
the ongoing investigation of a spectacular crime
But what hasn't been discussed as throughly as international relations is that countries in which the law is regarded cynically as an instrument of the rulers are mostly very poor. I think the reason is that enforcing the law against that kind of broad based cynicism is incredibly expensive and ineffective. It's a disincentive to investment and risk taking.
(for some values of always)
The US are pissed off by WikiLeaks, they treat it like a terrorist organization, so they have their right to act like they do, but not all people have to be damaged. As I see it this guy is pinned down because of something the other guy has done, maybe he doesn't even know what that is...
Or would putting your files on a secured server somewhere actually leave them more open to snooping?
Crypto for the win! I wish we'd hear about more cases of this happening.
EDIT: Marlinspike's web-page ( http://www.thoughtcrime.org/ ), for those interested in making non-smart-ass comments. :)