The Fourth Amendment Does Not Protect Your Home Computer

MacLeod said:
Is that what happened? Did the FBI hack some guy's computer for no reason then watch him jerk off to midget porn thru his webcam? Or did they set up malware on a child pornography website that tracked people that visited the site so they could find them and prosecute them? From the article, it seems this is what they were doing.



The feds aren't sitting around hacking into random people's home computers fishing for something they can arrest somebody for. That would be totally illegal and a violation of your 4th ammendment rights. They're tracking people that visit a child porn site. I have zero problem with this. This would be no different than staking out a child pornography bookstore, running the license plates of the people that go there and then use that information to find them for prosecution.
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What you are basically advocating for is that if the reasons for disregarding our governing laws meet a personal threshold then so be it because they were catching bad guys. This is why we have a constitution. It's not optional otherwise why have it if it only applies to certain people in certain circumstances?
 
You guys missed a major point in the article. The FBI was hosting child pornography.
 
kac77 said:
What you are basically advocating for is that if the reasons for disregarding our governing laws meet a personal threshold then so be it because they were catching bad guys. This is why we have a constitution. It's not optional otherwise why have it if it only applies to certain people in certain
circumstances?
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No, not even close. What I'm saying is what they did was not illegal. They're not searching your computer for personal information that you have an expectation of privacy for. They're tracking you after you illegally visit a child porn site and finding out where you're at, at least as far as the article states. The 4th ammendment covered what you have a reasonable expectation of privacy for.

Do you really think I have a reasonable expectation of privacy visiting this site? Could any admin not easily find out my IP address and where I'm located?

sadsteve said:
In either case, they should still need a warrant.
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Nope. Cops do not need a warrant to run your license plate. They don't even have to have probable cause. The courts have ruled on this, you have no expectation of privacy in your license tag and as long as I'm running it for a law enforcement purpose (ie not finding out who's driving the car at my ex-girlfriend's house) I'm good. If I see you buying child porn I can run your tag and use it to find you in order to prosecute you.
 
Scizyr said:
You guys missed a major point in the article. The FBI was hosting child pornography.
Click to expand...

I wonder when they set these kinds of stings up, how many get away with the porn material and don't get caught only to distribute it to others, thus while catching people also causing a problem?
 
MacLeod said:
No, not even close. What I'm saying is what they did was not illegal. They're not searching your computer for personal information that you have an expectation of privacy for. They're tracking you after you illegally visit a child porn site and finding out where you're at, at least as far as the article states. The 4th ammendment covered what you have a reasonable expectation of privacy for.

Do you really think I have a reasonable expectation of privacy visiting this site? Could any admin not easily find out my IP address and where I'm located?



Nope. Cops do not need a warrant to run your license plate. They don't even have to have probable cause. The courts have ruled on this, you have no expectation of privacy in your license tag and as long as I'm running it for a law enforcement purpose (ie not finding out who's driving the car at my ex-girlfriend's house) I'm good. If I see you buying child porn I can run your tag and use it to find you in order to prosecute you.
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They run my license plate, but they can't search the contents of my car without a warrant if it was not during a traffic stop and they don't see anything suspicious in plain sight. Same should apply to personal data on a computer IMO. You can search where a computer is, but a warrant should be necessary for obtaining what data is on that computer that is protected by any layer of security, no matter how weak. Bypassing the warrant is a major blow to due process.
 
You aren't gonna convince MacLeod, man. He's a cop through and through.
 
Tsumi said:
They run my license plate, but they can't search the contents of my car without a warrant if it was not during a traffic stop and they don't see anything suspicious in plain sight. Same should apply to personal data on a computer IMO. You can search where a computer is, but a warrant should be necessary for obtaining what data is on that computer that is protected by any layer of security, no matter how weak. Bypassing the warrant is a major blow to due process.
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Totally agree! As I read that article, that's what the Feds are doing. They're not searching for personal data you'd expect to be private. That would require a warrant and rightly so. They're getting your location, IP and MAC address and the like which is not personal information you would expect to be private.

If the Feds are finding your computer's location after you visit a child porn site without a warrant for law enforcement purposes, I have no problem with that and maintain none of your rights are being violated in the least. If they're searching your computer looking for child porn without a warrant or other lawful justification that would rightly be illegal, inadmissible and a blatant violation of your 4th ammendment rights. That's not what's happening in this case and the "Feds hacking your PC without warrant" headline is total bullshit and click bait.
 
Woah, woah, woah. The story seems pretty clear.

Some dude was running a tor/dark web kiddie porn site. He got nabbed. The FBI took it over and in the sections that a user had to actually click into to view child porn they added this 'NIT'. It wasn't like they were pointing fingers and having ZeroCool actively break into someone's machine. The kiddie porn viewer had to, under their own volitional, log in and view child porn.

OnFebruary 20, 2015, an experienced and neutral federal magistrate judge authorized the
FBI to deploy a network investigative technique ("NIT") on Playpen's server to obtain
identifying information from activating computers, which the warrant defines as computers "of
any user or administrator who logs into [Playpen] by entering a username and password."
[...]
The NIT is a set of computer code that in this case
instructed an activating computer to send certain information to the FBI. This information
included:
1. the activating computer's IP address, and the date and time that the NIT
determines what that IP address is;
2. a unique identifier generated by the NIT (e.g., a series of numbers, letters,
and/or special characters) to distinguish data from that of other activating
computers, thatwill be sentwith and collected by theNIT;
3. the type of operating system running on the computer, including type (e.g.,
Windows), version (e.g., Windows 7),and architecture (e.g., x 86);
4. information about whether the NIT has already been delivered to the
activating computer;
5. the activating computer's Host Name;
6. the activating computer's active operating system username; and
7. the activating computer's media access control ("MAC") address.
[...]
Even though the warrant authorized the FBI to deploy the NIT as soon as a user logged
into Playpen, SA Alfin testified that the Government did not deploy the NIT against Mr. Matish
in this particular case until after someone with the username of "Broden" logged into Playpen,
arrived at the index site, went to the bestiality section - which advertised prepubescent children
engaged in sexual activities with animals - and clicked on the post titled "Girl 11YO, with dog."
In other words, the agents took the extra precaution of not deploying the NIT until the user first
logged into Playpen and second entered into a section of Playpen which actually displayed child
pornography. At this point, testified SA Alfin, the user apparently downloaded child
pornography as well as the NIT to his computer. Thus, the FBI deployed the NIT in a much
narrower fashion than what the warrant authorized.
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https://www.eff.org/files/2016/06/23/matish_suppression_edva.pdf
 
MacLeod said:
Is that what happened? Did the FBI hack some guy's computer for no reason then watch him jerk off to midget porn thru his webcam? Or did they set up malware on a child pornography website that tracked people that visited the site so they could find them and prosecute them? From the article, it seems this is what they were doing.



The feds aren't sitting around hacking into random people's home computers fishing for something they can arrest somebody for. That would be totally illegal and a violation of your 4th ammendment rights. They're tracking people that visit a child porn site. I have zero problem with this. This would be no different than staking out a child pornography bookstore, running the license plates of the people that go there and then use that information to find them for prosecution.
Click to expand...

What is to stop the FBI from taking over other sites, running them, and injecting malware into peoples machines? They don't even have to take over the site, they just need access to the servers and then serve malware to the users.
 
Zepher said:
What is to stop the FBI from taking over other sites, running them, and injecting malware into peoples machines? They don't even have to take over the site, they just need access to the servers and then serve malware to the users.
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The law would be stopping them. How could the FBI take over HomeDepot.com and why would they want to? They didn't "take over" this site anyway, they seized a child pornography website after busting the owner and then they tracked the people that were coming to the site to view, download and support child porn. They got their location, IP and MAC address and used that to help prosecute them. Nobody's rights were violated. Again, this is just an electronic version of staking out a child porn book store then running tags of the people that go in to buy it.
 
MacLeod said:
The law would be stopping them. How could the FBI take over HomeDepot.com and why would they want to? They didn't "take over" this site anyway, they seized a child pornography website after busting the owner and then they tracked the people that were coming to the site to view, download and support child porn. They got their location, IP and MAC address and used that to help prosecute them. Nobody's rights were violated. Again, this is just an electronic version of staking out a child porn book store then running tags of the people that go in to buy it.
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That's not quite right. They found the physical location of the server, took it over, started to inject malware to users that visited the site while the Feds were operating the site, and then tracked them using the malware they infected the visitors with.
 
Zepher said:
That's not quite right. They found the physical location of the server, took it over, started to inject malware to users that visited the site while the Feds were operating the site, and then tracked them using the malware they infected the visitors with.
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It seems to me the closest analogy to that would be placing a GPS tracker on the car, in which case a warrant is required to do so. However, getting a computer's location/owner can't easily be done by just IP and MAC addresses, as spoofs and VPNs make it more difficult, if not impossible. Not to mention the shear number of people that can visit a site at a time, would a warrant be necessary for each unique visitor?

It's a definite gray area IMO. Maybe a warrant should be necessary, but a new kind of warrant that would blanket target all visitors to the site.
 
Zepher said:
Ya, but you won't know they are hacking the machine, so are you just going to start blasting all of your PC's with bullets just in case?

In the article, it says that the FBI served malware to users that transmitted back the PC's info.
What that means is that they will be allowed to put this malware on pretty much any site, get PC's infected and start hacking any machine they like.
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Except that is not actually what happened, and it's the facts of this case and decisions in many others that led this judge to come to this decision.

In this case, the FBI didn't deploy the NIT, (infect with malware), the defendants computer to "search it for identifying info, IP, MAX, hostname, etc", until the defendant went to the Playpen server, logged in with his account, and accessed an area specific and obviously containing child porn, and clicked to download a file titled something like "11 YO girl with dog". At that point it's rather reasonable that the FBI had a reason to deploy their software which they actually had a warrant to do.

So this article is written a little loosely but it get's a lot narrower when you look at the actual details of the case.

Just the other week a different Judge ruled the warrant was invalid, a jurisdiction issue. This judge has a different spin on it. Since there were a few hundred of these cases filed, I think we will see several Judges go back and forth before this issue is settled.
 
Zepher said:
That's not quite right. They found the physical location of the server, took it over, started to inject malware to users that visited the site while the Feds were operating the site, and then tracked them using the malware they infected the visitors with.
Click to expand...

You guys are saying the same thing even if you want to argue it's different.


Time to take the smell test guys.

When you think about how the FBI caught this guy and how he is being prosecuted, does it smell bad. Forget about the far reaching ramifications that the EFF and the lawyers want to sell you on. In this case does it look like a decent guy is getting railroaded?

Does the guy smell like a decent guy?

You know, they waste our tax dollars on plenty enough but I think our tax dollars are being spent OK on this one. 11 year old and a dog. You couldn't do anything to this asshole that he doesn't deserve.
 
Scizyr said:
You guys missed a major point in the article. The FBI was hosting child pornography.
Click to expand...

Nope, I didn't miss anything at all. The FBI took an already established and operating site that was hosting child porn to thousands of users, and ran it for like a week, shut it down and had hundreds of arrests lined up.

This doesn't bother me one bit.

In fact, I take greater note that it bothers you.
 
kac77 said:
What you are basically advocating for is that if the reasons for disregarding our governing laws meet a personal threshold then so be it because they were catching bad guys. This is why we have a constitution. It's not optional otherwise why have it if it only applies to certain people in certain circumstances?
Click to expand...

The problem here is that you are operating under the assumption that our governing laws and the constitution was set aside. I'm siding with the Judge on this one because frankly, I don't see anything that was done that looks unreasonable. I do not see an issue in this regarding the man's rights or the constitution.

The law doesn't say "protected against searches", the word unreasonable is in there. So explain how this FBI action was unreasonable, don't point to what the lawyers are saying is unreasonable.

This case was "sealed" to protect the defendant until his own lawyers decided they were going to loose and filed to make it public hoping they could gather public support to sway the judge.

You know, lawyers ....
 
lcpiper said:
Nope, I didn't miss anything at all. The FBI took an already established and operating site that was hosting child porn to thousands of users, and ran it for like a week, shut it down and had hundreds of arrests lined up.

This doesn't bother me one bit.

In fact, I take greater note that it bothers you.
Click to expand...
You heard it here first guys, Icpiper isn't bothered by child pornography sites. Why do you let sickos like him stay around on these forums?
 
Scizyr said:
You heard it here first guys, Icpiper isn't bothered by child pornography sites. Why do you let sickos like him stay around on these forums?
Click to expand...

Keep trying, I'm sure you'll get a laugh or two.
 
You said you are bothered by the fact someone is bothered by this. I am bothered by this. And that was the reason, one of them anyway.
 
Let's be clear, the meaning I intended was that It bother me that Scizyr seemingly hates the FBI so much that he demonize them for doing their jobs. The FBI seized that kiddie-porn site and ran it for one week and in that week got over a 1,000 users, then they shut it down. The FBI did it but it had to have had a senior supervisor's approval, it had a Judge's approval who issued the NIT warrant, and although it doesn't count for much, it has my approval. I call it good work. They ran that site only long enough to grab a number or accounts, yet not so long that they would have grabbed many new users. That translates to already active and known criminals and it does not translate into drumming up new business. If they had run it longer, say 6 months, then I would worry that they could have actually been promoting criminal activity, one week, no way. And they didn't stand up a new site, they co-opted one that was already up and running with thousands of users. That's all reasonable to me.

And these comments were directly related to this post by Scizyr;
The Fourth Amendment Does Not Protect Your Home Computer

And that is me trying to be clear about my comments.
 
Unfortunately, there's a lot more truth to the new TV show "BrainDead" than you would think! :eek: :(
 
lcpiper said:
Let's be clear, the meaning I intended was that It bother me that Scizyr seemingly hates the FBI so much that he demonize them for doing their jobs. The FBI seized that kiddie-porn site and ran it for one week and in that week got over a 1,000 users, then they shut it down. The FBI did it but it had to have had a senior supervisor's approval, it had a Judge's approval who issued the NIT warrant, and although it doesn't count for much, it has my approval. I call it good work. They ran that site only long enough to grab a number or accounts, yet not so long that they would have grabbed many new users. That translates to already active and known criminals and it does not translate into drumming up new business. If they had run it longer, say 6 months, then I would worry that they could have actually been promoting criminal activity, one week, no way. And they didn't stand up a new site, they co-opted one that was already up and running with thousands of users. That's all reasonable to me.

And these comments were directly related to this post by Scizyr;
The Fourth Amendment Does Not Protect Your Home Computer

And that is me trying to be clear about my comments.
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I demonize the FBI for hosting child porn, that's one of the worst crimes anyone can commit and they committed it to catch other criminals. What you're saying is it's ok for the FBI to commit felonies as long as it helps them arrest people. Killing, raping, genocide, child molestation, human trafficking, robbery, all ok as long as it leads to some arrests.

FBI needs to be abolished, they're monsters.
 
I don't know if it needs to be abolished, but it's weird how people it's okay for the one in power to do wrong things as long as the claim it's for our protection.
 
Scizyr said:
I demonize the FBI for hosting child porn, that's one of the worst crimes anyone can commit and they committed it to catch other criminals. What you're saying is it's ok for the FBI to commit felonies as long as it helps them arrest people. Killing, raping, genocide, child molestation, human trafficking, robbery, all ok as long as it leads to some arrests.

FBI needs to be abolished, they're monsters.
Click to expand...

pothb said:
I don't know if it needs to be abolished, but it's weird how people it's okay for the one in power to do wrong things as long as the claim it's for our protection.
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leowtf.gif


You guys are being sarcastic, right? You know it's not illegal for the FBI to have child porn pictures on a website if it's purpose is to catch and prosecute people coming to download said child porn? Kinda hard to convict somebody of downloading child porn if there's no, ya know, child porn. It's no different than undercover cops bringing a bunch of drugs to a buyer/dealer in order to prosecute him for buying drugs. Haven't you guys ever seen Miami Vice? When the drug lord scoops up some heroin with his pinky and tastes it? If it's not real drugs then he's going to know it's a setup and is going to kill Don Johnson. I don't want to live in a world without Don Johnson!
 
MacLeod said:
You guys are being sarcastic, right? You know it's not illegal for the FBI to have child porn pictures on a website if it's purpose is to catch and prosecute people coming to download said child porn? Kinda hard to convict somebody of downloading child porn if there's no, ya know, child porn. It's no different than undercover cops bringing a bunch of drugs to a buyer/dealer in order to prosecute him for buying drugs. Haven't you guys ever seen Miami Vice? When the drug lord scoops up some heroin with his pinky and tastes it? If it's not real drugs then he's going to know it's a setup and is going to kill Don Johnson. I don't want to live in a world without Don Johnson!
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It's wrong every time it's done. They do it because they aren't smart enough to catch criminals any other way. They can't attract the talent needed to execute lawfully good arrests because the leadership of the FBI is corrupt. It has been since its inception.
 
Scizyr said:
I demonize the FBI for hosting child porn, that's one of the worst crimes anyone can commit and they committed it to catch other criminals. What you're saying is it's ok for the FBI to commit felonies as long as it helps them arrest people. Killing, raping, genocide, child molestation, human trafficking, robbery, all ok as long as it leads to some arrests.

FBI needs to be abolished, they're monsters.
Click to expand...

Let's be real. Child Porn is not a crime because of the filthy images of children being abused. Child Porn is a crime because in order to produce it you have to do filthy things to children and the product encourages the acts. The felonies you hold over the FBI's head were already being committed. Many times in Law Enforcement the officers must allow crimes to be committed and persist sometimes for year in order to identify and gather evidence that will support a conviction. That is the harsh reality of Law Enforcement in a society that holds freedoms and individual rights in high regard. We could take a trip back to the days in China where they just catch a bad guy, put a bullet in the back of his head after they have tortured his accomplices out of him, send the bill for the bullet to his family. But that is not supposed to be where we are headed. So as long as we are going to uphold legal standards for prosecution to such high degree that we are shooting for 0% in the wrongly convicted bracket, we will have to live with playing the devil to catch the organized criminals particularly the bosses, but in this case, the consumers. They are trying to put a dent in the demand which by the details of this case, is substantial.

Myself, I will not demonize the FBI for using an already established illegal enterprise as a honeypot to catch other criminals. You can if you want. I think you are unreasonable, you think I am. Thankfully for both of us we can afford to voice those opinions without hearing the jackboots approach the door.

What you're saying is it's ok for the FBI to commit felonies as long as it helps them arrest people.
Click to expand...
As for this statement. I said what I said and I have restated it for clarity. If you want to do it again that's fine. Just remember, those are your words, not mine. That is not what I am saying, it's how you are interpreting what I am saying and it's simplified so that it leaves out an important distinction. The FBI didn't create and was not the author of the illegal activity, that already existed and was operated by another. They allowed it to continue so they could identify other criminals who had already committed crimes validated by the existing user accounts and their activity on the website. They knew these people had committed crimes, now they needed to identify them. What I hope most of all, is that they caught the guys involved with providing the materials to the site, those who were uploading the files and perhaps creating them. Given this possibility I do completely support the actions of the FBI in this case.

You seem committed to the idea that the FBI should have simply arrested the operator and killed the website because what the website itself was doing is the actually terrible part. But it isn't, the real terrible part is what is being done to other people in order to supply the site with content and if allowing the site to function helps catch those real monsters, I am good with it. If it means they find and stop a few of them and save some victims, I'm good with it. I don't really give a damn that someone is watching this garbage, I care what is being done to other people in order to make them. The stuff had to come from somewhere and I hope they were successful in getting a handle on who is doing the real crime.

Your opinion remains your own to have and hold.
 
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Scizyr said:
It's wrong every time it's done. They do it because they aren't smart enough to catch criminals any other way. They can't attract the talent needed to execute lawfully good arrests because the leadership of the FBI is corrupt. It has been since its inception.
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Yea, this just took a left turn into the twilight zone.

So by your thinking Scizyr, corrupt organizations can't attract talented capable employees?

(The trap is laid) :sneaky:



No, I'd rather not play games and just get this over with.

Scizyr, I admire your morals. I even admire your fortitude to stand up for them. I have no doubt that you would put your real name, yourself, on the line for your beliefs though I have no intention to ask you too or even would I desire it.

But I find your application of said morals, unrealistic. And I find where and how you assign blame problematic.

Just as a guess, I would say that you find murder a terrible crime. I won't try and figure out where murder rates on the scales of least to worst, but I'll settle for a generic "terrible".

And murder is homicide by definition. The killing of another human in it's most basic form. By US law and most western laws, homicide falls into only four categories;

Self
Accidental / Unintentional
Criminal
Justifiable

I will take a leap here to save time and say I think you agree that there are cases where homicide is justifiable.

The same is true for almost every negative act man can commit. But in this case, you don't seem to allow a category for justifiable even if it is to prevent criminal.
 
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lcpiper said:
We could take a trip back to the days in China where they just catch a bad guy, put a bullet in the back of his head after they have tortured his accomplices out of him, send the bill for the bullet to his family. But that is not supposed to be where we are headed. So as long as we are going to uphold legal standards for prosecution to such high degree that we are shooting for 0% in the wrongly convicted bracket, we will have to live with playing the devil to catch the organized criminals particularly the bosses, but in this case, the consumers. They are trying to put a dent in the demand which by the details of this case, is substantial.
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You have a very black and white perspective when it comes to law enforcement, only its very skewed towards black. Here you're saying the only other solution aside from allowing the FBI to commit felonies is to murder and torture, which I guess in your mind is different from a felony. Playing the devil is monstrous, I'm glad you agree with me that the FBI are monsters.

lcpiper said:
The FBI didn't create and was not the author of the illegal activity, that already existed and was operated by another. They allowed it to continue so they could identify other criminals who had already committed crimes validated by the existing user accounts and their activity on the website. They knew these people had committed crimes, now they needed to identify them. What I hope most of all, is that they caught the guys involved with providing the materials to the site, those who were uploading the files and perhaps creating them. Given this possibility I do completely support the actions of the FBI in this case.
Click to expand...
The moment the website was operated by the FBI they became the owners of the illegal activity, that is no different from authoring it themselves. They facilitated and allowed the dissemination of contraband. Further perpetuating the availability of said contraband. I'm sure as soon as the operator disappeared others began a mass data exodus in order to spawn even more sources. This is the way the internet works, which the FBI still can't comprehend.

lcpiper said:
You seem committed to the idea that the FBI should have simply arrested the operator and killed the website because what the website itself was doing is the actually terrible part. But it isn't, the real terrible part is what is being done to other people in order to supply the site with content and if allowing the site to function helps catch those real monsters, I am good with it.
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You just said child porn itself isn't terrible. Jesus fucking christ man, you should really rethink your position on this. You think their reasoning for hosting a child porn site was to catch people that create child porn? You're delusional.


lcpiper said:
Yea, this just took a left turn into the twilight zone.

So by your thinking Scizyr, corrupt organizations can't attract talented capable employees?

(The trap is laid) :sneaky:
Click to expand...
No, read what I said again. The FBI can't attract talented people because they are corrupt. There's a significant distinction when an organization is formed to execute law enforcement. Any corruption that infects law enforcement will drive away the good and the talented, I don't count committing felonies with a judge's approval as a talent. The FBI was created around the methods of law enforcement you seem to be at peace with, it's not something a normal citizen of a free society would say is right or just. Psychopathic practices can sometimes look clever, but outside that perspective people see it as a sickness.
 
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