FBI conducts search by disrupting Internet service, posing as repairmen [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

FBI conducts search by disrupting Internet service, posing as repairmen [pdf]

ia902603.us.archive.org

109 pointsbenburwell25 comments

It's unfortunate that our law enforcement agents disregard the law. It's good that the judicial branch is enforcing our constitution, but saying the evidence is inadmissible is not good enough. The law enforcement agents should be held punitively accountable. Civil rights are violated, and law enforcement should be penalized for these violations.

Unfortunate? It's a direct attack on the legal system. It's worse than the average person breaking the law. Because that's expected... that's why we have police.

When the police (who should know better) break the law, they should be charged. After all, that's what happens to normal people.

Instead, the people in the legal system too often get a pass. Because they're in the legal system.

It's a kind of inverted thinking I don't understand. Other than an "us" vs "them" mentality. Where "us" are the people in the system who are somehow worth more than "them". The peasants who have the law enforced on them. With often lethal force.

They have the power, thats what it is about.

Agreed. No one has the power to fire a police officer except other police officers or higher ups. The people of the democracy do not decide who is in power when it comes to law enforcement. I would like to see a checks and balances system or the ability to impeach anyone with any sort of legal power.

Even more, it is not uncommon for law enforcement to actually enjoy legal protections from having to answer for any misbehavior or misconduct.

"He interviewed hotel employees who had been inside villa 8888 and had seen a number of computers, monitors, and chairs set up in a configuration that resembled a boiler room bookie operation."

I love how real world legal documents read like old crime novels. The imagery cast upon a villa at Caesar's by being compared to a boiler room is top notch. :)

I read through the entire affidavit when it originally came out as I have an interest in online gambling... but I couldn't figure out what exactly the FBI was after these asian gamblers for... the only thing it said was that they had multiple tvs and internet connections going into one suite and when the FBI saw what they were doing, it looked like they were only betting on World Cup matches over the internet.

There has to be more to it... I know online gambling is illegal in the USA, but why get the FBI involved because some foreigners are betting big online?

Another article here reads like they were taking bets, rather than just making them: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/judge-fbis-ruse-catch-po...

Is it legal for them to intentionally disrupt internet service like that?

It doesn't sound right they can just stop you from getting a service you're paying for whenever they want.

I will never understand how someone can simultaneously break and enforce the law.

Power corrupts.

Most of this would not have happened if the ISP had acted responsibly and required court orders to comply with the FBI requests.

This is lawful and common in law enforcement agencies throughout the world. It's called "pretexting".

Look up the PDF for "Lying and Confessing" by Christopher Slobogin.

TL;DR?

Basically the judge agreed with the defendant that the FBI breaking the internet and then pretending to be repair techs sent in to fix it was an illegal search and thus anything they saw during their visit was in admissible (suppressed).

As there were a couple of instances of that they have to file a few more motions to suppress the rest of the FBI evidence but basically it looks like the judge will come down on their side.

In general I am glad that the judge decided that way, it should never be acceptable for law enforcement to go snooping around without a warrant. However, I've also noted in such cases that when the government loses like this they often put pressure on the property owners to avoid such losses in the future, and so I would not be surprised if Cesar's and other hotel chains will start including in their room contract, language clauses that allow them to grant access to the rooms to third parties with "reasonable need".

> language clauses that allow them to grant access to the rooms to third parties with "reasonable need"

It's already almost certainly there. Its also there in virtually all rental agreements; the existing caselaw (cited in this decision) supports the position that using the managements authority to access for 'need' as a pretext for a search is unlawful.

> Its also there in virtually all rental agreements; the existing caselaw (cited in this decision) supports the position that using the managements authority to access for 'need' as a pretext for a search is unlawful.

Does that same caselaw imply that if police want to search an apartment without a warrant, and a landlord lets them in, but the tenant did not grant permission, the search was illegal? I was under the impression that that was permitted, which is a downside of living in an apartment/rental.

Curious about this as well. I was under the impression that even though you might not own your apartment or house (or in the case of a mortgage wherein the bank really owns it), you still have protections due to it being your home.

There was a case, I can't remember the specifics, of a drug bust where there was more than one person in the house, the person charged did not want the police to come in, but someone else ended up letting them in. The search was contested as unlawful, but I'm not sure how it turned out...

Edit: Here it is, as long as they arrest the disagreeing party and remove them from the home, the Supreme court ruled the arrested party can no longer object to the search, and in that case they don't need a warrant. So I think the racket is they claim exigent circumstances to enter, arrest you, and then perform the search.

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/supreme-court-rules-cops-wa...

Tenant's rights laws usually ban the landlord from entering the apartment without notice (except in the case of an emergency). So they presumably don't have a right to enter that they can extend to the police.

A few searches say that the landlord cannot consent to the search. A sample result:

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/landlord-give-consent...

Was there a countersuit for their illegal entry?

"Here, the government disrupted the internet service to the defendant’s hotel room in order to generate a repair call. Government agents then posed as repairmen to gain access to the defendant’s room and conduct a surreptitious search for evidence of an illegal sports betting operation. By creating the need for a third party to enter defendant’s premises and then posing as repairmen to gain entry, the government violated the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights."

The first nine lines of the first page. Legal documents are good like that. :-)

A bad a precedent (government sidestepping obtaining a warrant by just shutting down utilities and posing as repairmen) was shot down by a district court despite the magistrate judge suggesting that it didn't violate the 4th amendment because the defendant was not coerced/put under duress into consent. The district judge thought otherwise.

"FBI conducts search by disrupting Internet service, posing as repairmen"

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