Comment by credit_guy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by credit_guy | Hacker News Reader

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The title is much stronger than the content.

You'd think that in an article about someone "breaking the law" you'd learn about a court of law determining that fact. Otherwise, at least in this country, "innocent until proven guilty". It's part of the journalistic unwritten rules to add "allegedly" in such a title.

What we learn instead is that an internal audit found that the Secret Service and ICE broke some internal DHS policy and generally internal policies are stricter than laws (otherwise they wouldn't be needed).

The actual law appears to be complex, as the article itself states later:

  Legislators recently have tried to make CSS usage clearer. In 2021, US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and a bipartisan group of other lawmakers introduced a bill, the Cell-Site Simulator Warrant Act, requiring the government to obtain a warrant to deploy a CSS device. 
  "Current federal, state, and local policies regulating Stingrays are confusing and inconsistent, opening the door to abuse and unconstrained, invasive surveillance by law enforcement," the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) said in support of the bill.
  The bill never made it out of committee.

As I understand it, the allegation here is that only by following the internal policies would their activities be allowed under the Fourth Amendment, and by breaching these policies their actions are illegal under the Fourth Amendment, not under any more specific law. Of course, as you say, this all depends on the nature of how the internal policies were breached, so it's far from a given.

>> Guariglia argues the OIG should release the statistical data so that the public can better understand how often CSS devices play a role in investigations.

While the innocence until proven guilty policy does indeed apply to individuals, it is not applicable to government agencies as a whole. Until they release statistical data or provide some level of transparency, citizens have a right to assume their rights are being violated.

The Fourth Amendment is pretty friggin clear. Are you claiming their internal policies are stricter than the Fourth Amendment or are stricter than some lower statute that is superseded by the Fourth Amendment?

The security services here in the UK do what they like, you only have to look at some of the stuff coming out of the troubles in Northern Island for example, or things like the Hillsborough disaster.

The UK is terrible for this abuse of human rights and following their own interpretation of law, and it starts in childhood, usually under the pretence of teaching people/kids a law whilst they get abused.

The British culture is toxic, it needed to be in order to force itself on the rest of the world as a criminal empire.

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