DEA impersonates real person on Facebook | Hacker News Reader

DEA impersonates real person on Facebook

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90 pointsk4jh39 comments

Well, anyone would agree that this is a severe violation of this woman's private life, that it is a crime for most intents and purposes, and a twisted thing to do for a government agency. But she was a "criminal" so the DEA thinks it can do whatever it wants with her.

What do you want to do in these cases? It would be surprising if this were an isolated incident- it seems quite likely that similar things are happening right now and will never see the light of day.

For every step forward we take in trying to make the US government agencies ethical, responsible, and fair, we hear tens of stories of corruption, police violence and rights abuse. I am not looking forward to seeing where this whole mess is headed. Life in the US right now if you're not part of the upper middle class or higher is not too far off from what's described in dystopian novels from the last century.

What I find most ironic in all this is when I hear gun rights advocates saying they need their guns to defend themselves if the government ever tries to fuck them over, just like the founding fathers prescribed. Well, look around you- the government is fucking people over by the thousands every day, and I don't see any signs of a revolution.

> But she was a "criminal"

I work for a company that provide Electronic Monitoring (EM) services to jurisdictions. This system is used to track participants and make sure they go where they are supposed to go and stay out of where they aren't supposed to go. Recently my company has been in talks to expand our surveillance of participants to monitor/record all their calls (we give them a phone), record their SMS's, record their web and app history, etc.

I am strongly opposed to this as I see it as a huge privacy violation but management sees it as "They are criminals", "The alternative is prison", and "It's our phone, we will do what we want". One senior member even went as far to say (when I brought up my opposition) "Don't worry about the ethics/morality, just do it" which really pisses me off.

I really hate this attitude of anyone convicted of crime being sub-human and not deserving of privacy. This cuts me especially deep because I was told when I signed on that one of the reasons we give them a semi-new android phone is so they can use it for web browsing and apps to help them get back on their feet (find a job/house) and that we want to treat people with dignity. Monitoring everything they do makes that statement a complete lie in my book and I really want nothing to do with it. I will continue to push back but does anyone have any good arguments to the points they are making? I have obtained a copy of the contract participants sign and as it stands right now this extended monitoring is NOT something they consent to (mind you they could just update the contract and get them to sign the updated version).

Human psychology still has a strong component of tribal culture in it. That's why "us vs them" works so well in politics, even though you'd think in our civilized society it'd be a completely ineffective argument.

Right now, you're against the tribe. Not only that, but the tribe's position is cemented by financial interests and people at the top whose job is to make sure that things stay the way they are.

When I've been in situations like that before, it always ended up in the "dissident" employees being dismissed, shut up, or fired.

I'd tell you to speak your mind about this issue during an all hands meeting, and conclude your tirade by "I quit this company", but not everyone can afford to pull off a stunt like this.

> I'd tell you to speak your mind about this issue during an all hands meeting, and conclude your tirade by "I quit this company", but not everyone can afford to pull off a stunt like this.

Another guy who spoke up and went as far as to create a 1984 + our company name mashup poster got a talking to from the president. I have spoken up and will continue to, however, as much as I hate to admit it I need this job. I am passively looking elsewhere but part of me wants to stay and try to change it for the better. I joined in the first place because I believed in their mission to help re-integrate people into society, I thought I was joining the "good guys". I don't want to be responsible for writing code that prys into these people's lives and I really don't want to be a part of a company that does it at all. I understand we need to track these participants but location tracking is about as far as I feel comfortable with, anything more just feels wrong.

I can only empathize. Good luck.

Actually, the various government levels of the United States have done bad things to the citizenry from almost day one. Looking through history you can see several small "revolutions" that only affected the level of government that was involved with the injustice. It's just that not much happens on a federal level that would be involve the nation as a whole, using the Civil War as an example.

I would say it seems that most of these small revolutions I speak of happened in the days that the local populace could possibly be armed with the weapons of their choice. It would be interesting to do some type of comparison of the behavior of local governments that led to such incidents to today in areas where gun control is heavy.

Plus, I guess it depends on how you define revolution. Some might say what's been happening in Ferguson or Hong Kong is a form of revolution, just mostly peaceful in nature. Maybe it's just that as society progresses the level of the boiling point for violent revolt increases over time. But that also suggests the consequences of the outcome may be greater as well.

Slavery

There's another huge problem, Facebook currently gives you legitimacy -- people will believe it's you. However, does little to nothing in terms of verifying your identity.

I think the DEA could have faked it, even if there were strict measures.

But think of what average people are doing right now using similar techniques... The public is blind to this but the technology (GPG) exists to authenticate people's identities.

GPG authenticates that a particular key was used to sign a message. Key signing authenticates that a particular person claimed control of that key at some point.

It does not prevent (although it does make it much harder) impersonation through key theft.

No security measure can completely prevent anything.

That's why I think it's really cool that there are a couple people working on https://keybase.io/ to try and get public keys main stream without the need for unrealistic keysigning parties and web of trust.

If this idea of identity was integrated with FB I think that would be a huge win and a ton of different programs could hook into the keybase API for automatic behind the scenes encryption that would prevent a lot of issues surrounding dragnet surveillance.

> The public is blind to this but the technology (GPG) exists to authenticate people's identities.

There's also the technology to make it far simpler, in the form of Namecoin. I've registered a NameID (in the id/ namespace), and I can tell anyone in the world that my NameID is vshell. They can look me up, find my GPG key, my website, and whatever other information I want to put in there. Nobody can fake it.

The main issue is going to be revocation - if someone manages to take control of my NameID, I can't get it back. I can use multi-factor authentication like BitGo provide for Bitcoin, but that's not a 100% guarantee. I could sign "I am no longer this person" with my NameID key and my GPG key and distribute that, but there'd be no safe way to say "I am now this other person", because they might've taken my GPG key as well and they could say that. You're essentially going to have to build up your web of trust from near-scratch, starting with physical trust (i.e. people who can verify who you are physically).

I reported two fake profiles* a few weeks ago, but Facebook did nothing to remove them. I guess fake profiles boost the "user" count for FB :)

*: profiles adding 100 "friends" the first day, using pictures from obscure russian models (which can be found using Google image search)...

It's endemic of our anemic conceptualization of privacy that the DEA conflates "privacy" with the construction of a false identity.

I may give up my privacy, and let everyone have all my nude photos of me, but that doesn't mean others can create fake profiles of me online - with or without the nude photos.

We need a better, more structured definition of "privacy" and "identity," especially in the online sphere. If we don't define it, federal agencies are simply going to define it and normalize it for us.

We don't need better definitions. What we need is for the public to rise up against the tyrants who trample our rights.

"The photographs used by Sinnigen included revealing and/or suggestive photographs of Plaintiff, including photographs of the Plaintiff in her bra and panties." There is NO WAY to justify this.

So, assuming they ever catch the person behind the fappening, they'll be let go, right? Because it's totally legal to take someone's private photo's and post them online for the world to see.

Wow, I sure hate to be providing a bit of data to support the government's actions, which I find abhorrent, but here goes.

For a long time, if cops have you in custody or were at your house and your phone rang? They'd pick it up and say "hello" You can find out all kinds of incriminating stuff like that.

Of course, that's not actively impersonating somebody, like this case. If I had to guess, I'd say that this was the result of 1) an atmosphere of "we're the government, so we'll do damn well what we please", combined with 2) poor oversight, and 3) similarity to something else that was approved and had worked for years.

Hell of a thing, taking somebody's online identity. You take away all they've got, and all they're ever going to have [1]

[1] Apologies to Clint Eastwood, but it seemed appropriate. We have yet to really figure out the kind of damage things like this can have. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lYVggyHRkY

Identity theft, and placing minors in danger.

That's illegal, right?

Right?

Not to mention, if you go by what other prosecutors have argued in past hacking cases, violating a terms of use constitutes felony computer fraud.

Sigh... Why is this a thing? There's a whole host of things that are illegal for YOU to do but that the government CAN do. Like kill people for instance or print money. This is as it should be. A government must be granted powers individuals are not in order to rule. The concern is oversight and justification of those powers through our political system.

Edit: There's a lot of vitriol on this and it's because of my poor wording of the initial statement. It isn't OK if the Government "breaks the law". If they do they should be held accountable. However, under certain circumstances, the government can break laws that pertain to ordinary citizens and do things like hack computers/kill people/sell contraband, etc... this action itself is prescribed by laws and regulations and is legal government action. My beef was with the knee jerk reaction to undercover work like this or a police shooting, when people are screaming about how thats murder. My point was, yeah it might be, but it also might the government doing their job by doing things (legally) that a normal citizen might now do.

There's a slight difference between a government entity performing its unique duties as described by law and a government entity breaking the law to perform its unique duties.

It is legal for a police officer to kill in the line of duty under certain circumstances. It is illegal for the same police officer to commit a murder outside his duties even while on the job.

That's exactly my point. It's a nuanced situation. But I always see the same, "government officers broke the law!" argument. That doesn't matter, what matters is the context. "The Government" breaks laws citizens are held to all the time.

Is your point that because "The Government" breaks the law all the time that people have no right to be upset when an officer of the law steals your identity and puts your family's life at risk...?

The parent poster is lamenting all of the "hey! If I did that I would go to jail!" comments. There are many things that the government can do that you can't by law.

I don't think that these statements in anyway state that it's ok for the government to overstep the restrictions put on the extra powers that it has.

That's not what he's saying. To put wmeredith's point another way:

The government and the people aren't governed by the exact same laws. The government can tax people, while you can't, for instance. He isn't saying that what's happening isn't wrong or horrible, he's just saying that "I can't do it so the government can't either" is not a valid argument, because there are TONS of things the government can do that you can't. What they did is wrong, but a3n's standard isn't one that's applicable here.

I hope that made sense.

I totally disagree. The government does not, and should not, break the law that citizens are held to all the time. If a government agency has the ability to perform an action that is otherwise illegal for a person who is not a member of said agency it is outlined in the law. If it is not outlined in the law then they are in fact committing a crime and may be criminally liable for it.

That is why whenever there is a police-involved shooting there is supposed to be a review of the incident to see if the officer in question followed the guidelines as outlined in the law. If it is determined that the officer did not follow policy then he can be subject to criminal prosecution.

I'm not making this up, it happened recently. In South Carolina a state trooper shoots an unarmed man for reaching into his vehicle after being asked to show ID. The dashcam clearly shows the shooting was entirely unjustified. That trooper was fired and charged with assault and battery, facing a potential 20 years in prison. That is what should happen when a government agent breaks the law.

So, unless the agent from the original article had permission under the law to falsely pose as a real person without that person's permission then they likely broke the law and may face criminal and/or civil action.

We're in agreement, it's just semantics :)

Yeah, that officer in South Carolina did that break the law (shoot someone without cause). I'm just saying that a DEA agent posing as someone else on Facebook may not actually be illegal.

Ok, after that last post and re-reading your original, I can now see we're on the same track.

I think what you're failing to understand is that, when the government does something that is legal for them to do but illegal for a citizen to do, by definition it isn't breaking the law, because the law allows for it. The problem is when the law says the government can't do it, but they do it anyway. That's when the government is breaking the law, and there's nothing right or good about it. They should be held accountable for such illegal acts.

She has a better case on:

* Is "you can use these in on-going investigations" really consent to create fake social network profiles?

* Is it ok for the DEA to (e.g.) post photos of her in her "bra and panties"? What if they had posted nude photos of her?

* Is it ok for the DEA to post photos of minors and put them in the middle of this?

The woman should demand from Facebook that the account be turned over to her. And then pull them into the lawsuit when they refuse.

"Jury Nullification".

You can fight back by refusing to convict defendants who were prosecuted using immoral or illegal methods. And remember, a juror has no way of knowing if the police/FBI/DEA lied to the court throughout the process, behavior which has been heavily documented in general.

What jury?

Sinnigen took a plea deal; there was no jury involved. If somebody said something incriminating via Facebook, the trial against that person wouldn't be allowed to mention prosecutorial malfeasance in an unrelated case.

Juries have been eliminated in the US justice system. 94% of all criminal cases at the federal level are settled by a plea (as of 2001).

So when will you jury nullify? Most defendants won't stand before their peers, won't face a judge beyond cursory rubber stamping, and won't get good representation (public defender funding is cut year upon year, some public defenders take on over 500 cases a year now).

The US justice system is utterly broken, beyond repair. It is a revenge system (not rehabilitation), with little justice to be had except of the wealthy (who will get off scott free), overly politicized, overly money orientated (e.g. spend a year in jail unless you have $100K), and has purposely high maximum sentences to force even innocent people to take a plea (which they often do [0]).

I can think of few other countries which has a criminal justice system as bad as the US, and unfortunately when I start naming them they're not really the type of states the US wants to be associated with.

[0] http://www.fhsulaw.com/Legal-Articles/Plea-Bargain-Sentences...

Even if I take the DEA's arguments as true, isn't this STILL a copyright violation? She may have allowed the information on her phone to be "used in the process of the investigation" however that is a HUGE jump to publishing that copyrighted information.

The DEA and DoJ are all about stretching the meanings of phrases to the point where all phrases translate to:

  All your powers are belong to us. We can do whatever we 
  want make your time.

DEA might have better luck use snapchat for this kind of work. Impersonate, posting suggested photo on FB is too easy for other friends to find out, ask and tell off line.

This is fucked up, right here.

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