FBI Wants To Access Terror Suspect's Skype Records (bostonglobe.com) 93
Milton J. Valencia, reporting for BostonGlobe: The FBI is investigating whether a third, unknown person discussed an alleged terrorism plot with Alexander Ciccolo, the Western Massachusetts man accused of planning to attack a state university with guns and explosives on behalf of the Islamic State terror group. FBI Special Agent Jeffrey J. Lawrence said in an affidavit filed in US District Court in Springfield last week that Ciccolo told a witness who was cooperating with the FBI that he had discussed his terrorism plans with one other person. The affidavit was part of an application for a search warrant authorities filed with the court. Officials are seeking access to Ciccolo's online Skype account as part of their investigation into the alleged terror plot. The search warrant seeks to have Microsoft -- which owns Skype -- provide the government with logs and the content of conversations and written messages made on Ciccolo's account, as well as passwords. Given Microsoft's stance on these matters, the company is likely to hand over the data FBI is looking for.
Skype account? (Score:5, Informative)
Only one?
Since they throw away burner phones after use, I'm sue they create a new Skype account as well each time they use it.
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It's not widely known, nor is it called spyware by anyone except anti-Microsoft parrots. Being a well known Linux zealot, do you even have the credibility to comment on this issue?
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Being a well known Linux zealot, do you even have the credibility to comment on this issue?
And you being A/C: what credibility do you have ?
I would not be surprised if you were a shill employed by the NSA or Microsoft with the specific aim of damaging credibility of things that your employers do not like.
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It's not widely known, nor is it called spyware by anyone except anti-Microsoft parrots. Being a well known Linux zealot, do you even have the credibility to comment on this issue?
I am honored that you call me a "well known" Linux zealot, although I doubt that is accurate. However, my credibility is not an issue here, because I am not asking you to take my word that Microsoft services are spyware. The fact that Windows 10 spies on its users is well publicized, and also that Microsoft's endorsed cryptography solution BitLocker is almost useless because they retain a copy of your key.
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http://arstechnica.com/informa... [arstechnica.com]
https://bgr.com/2016/02/10/win... [bgr.com]
http://www.forbes.com/sites/go... [forbes.com]
https://theintercept.com/2015/... [theintercept.com]
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> However, my credibility is not an issue here, because I am not asking you to take my word that Microsoft services are spyware
That was literally the exact thing you were asking people to do with your assertion.
Actually not, as you might have seen had you read the very next sentence in my post.
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You have the option of not sending the key to MS. Granted, the default is to send it but you do have the choice.
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Actually I can see this as a legitimate request though. The telephone company hands over this type of thing with line tap warrants all the time.
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I don't. A phone tap is something quite different to a pre-recorded conversation, and I disagree with the latter when the telco's do it too.
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That boat sailed long ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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That boat sailed long ago.
And that is a reason for accepting shit conditions?
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You can continue to rail against it, but it was upheld by the DC Circuit Court as constitutional, so the courts say that you are wrong. If you care so much about it, take the case to the supreme court, but for now, it is considered constitutional, since that is how the US system of government works.
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The DC Circuit Court has no jurisdiction outside of the USA.
Incidentally slavery used to be legal too. Accepting that a court once said something as gospel to stop fighting for change makes you ....
A very good citizen. Keep it up.
Sincerely
The Establishment.
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The DC Circuit Court has no jurisdiction outside of the USA.
Moot, who cares, doesn't have any impact on the discussion we are having.
Accepting that a court once said something as gospel to stop fighting for change makes you ....
I'm not the one bitching in an online forum. I see nothing wrong with what the FBI is doing, as it is how things are supposed to work. If you care so much about it, call a constitutional convention and submit an amendment to the fourth amendment. But instead, I think you will just bitch on an online forum about how evil the FBI is for doing what the US citizens pay them to do.
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I'm not the one bitching in an online forum. I see nothing wrong with what the FBI is doing, as it is how things are supposed to work. If you care so much about it, call a constitutional convention and submit an amendment to the fourth amendment. But instead, I think you will just bitch on an online forum about how evil the FBI is for doing what the US citizens pay them to do.
Who cares about the FBI? I have no beef with the FBI that's just your projection on the discussion. This discussion started with Microsoft and telco's recording your personal data. Constitutional arguments don't do anything there.
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Microsoft stores those conversations because that is the way Skype has always worked. It is what allows you to see the history of all your skype calls on any device you install Skype on. Of course the data is there.
The phone companies have to store the metadata in order to be able to bill you. The CALEA thing is about the content of the phone calls, the phone company doesn't store that, and it requires a recording device provided by law enforcement.
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that is the way Skype has always worked.
Errr nope. Not only have any of the things you mentioned not always been features of Skype, but MS is storing far more about your Skype conversation than the date and time of your call. That information has come out over and over again and none of it is necessary for your "call history".
The phone companies have to store the metadata in order to be able to bill you.
Errr double nope. The phone companies were the first people to speak against the legislation that forced them to store a whole world of additional information about the call beyond what was necessary to bill you. You should
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Summary says he was planning to do it, not that he did it.
Ergo, the conspirator(s), while researching and planning, discovered that what they were about to do was prohibited by law. That's probably why it ended up not happening: they didn't want to get into big trouble.
That does raise a question about conspiracies: it's illegal to plan to do a bad thing, but what if during the planning (e.g. after consulting with your lawyer) you back out because you learned you were about to break the law? There should b
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Ignorantia juris non excusat
Ignorance has never been a great defense against breaking the law. This would basically be an extension of that.
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So when does that get applied to judges?
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Not sure what you mean...
Are you talking about a judge who happens to be on trial for a crime? I assume it would apply the same as it would apply to anyone else.
Are you talking about a judge overseeing a trial where they may be ignorant of the relevant laws? Probably depends on where you are, and at what level of government, but I'm sure there are procedures for removing judges who are deemed to be grossly incompetent. If you're talking SCOTUS, then you're SOL.
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it's illegal to plan to do a bad thing
Found the bug.
That's thoughtcrime, something a civilized nation really shouldn't have.
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How should anybody have known that it was against the law to kill people; it's up to the FBI to tell them that.
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2015/07/13/isis-inspired-son-of-boston-police-captain-arrested-as-part-of-counter-terrorism-sweep/ [bostonmagazine.com]
FBI Wants To Access Skype Records **legally** (Score:5, Interesting)
I fail to see the problem here (Score:4, Insightful)
I fail to see the problem here. There's a suspected terrorist. A search warrant has been granted by a court requesting access to data stored on Skype servers controlled by Microsoft. This seems completely reasonable to me. However, this is Slashdot, where law enforcement officers are considered the bad guys and people are hell-bent on protecting the freedoms of terrorists. Even though the FBI is complying with the spirit and letter of the Constitution, Slashdot is still whining about it. Law enforcement is trying to do their job and stop terrorism. I wonder how Slashdot will view it?!
Re:I fail to see the problem here (Score:5, Insightful)
In principle, I agree. Get a warrant. Got warrant? No problem.
Things get muddy when I throw in two items:
1) Define terrorist. That gets pretty broad, especially when you ask the government, because they consider everyone a potential terrorist.
2) It's very easy to get warrants and have them abused. The threshold is quite low. I know because my word alone routinely gets houses raided. Let's just say I do/have done some informant work and we will leave it at that. With one phone call I could have a swat team charging through your front door. I've done it many times. Is that reasonable? I am technically complying with the spirit of the constitution. What if you're a terrorist?
Re:I fail to see the problem here (Score:4, Informative)
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I'll take your word for that.
Also I don't really see too much of a problem here. You make too many mistakes (big raid, nothing there at all) and soon enough your word alone isn't good enough. To get warrants that way, you must have built up a reputation, and I expect you'll want to uphold it, if only to keep your job, your income and your livelihood. That alone is generally enough to prevent serious abuse, as long as the rest of the organisation cares about those things as well of course.
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1) Define terrorist. That gets pretty broad, especially when you ask the government, because they consider everyone a potential terrorist.
Except that the government has a published well defined definition of terrorism.
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/i... [fbi.gov]
18 U.S.C. 2331 defines "international terrorism" and "domestic terrorism" for purposes of Chapter 113B of the Code, entitled "Terrorism”:
"International terrorism" means activities with the following three characteristics:
Involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
Appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
Occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S., or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum.*
"Domestic terrorism" means activities with the following three characteristics:
Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
Appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination. or kidnapping; and
Occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.
18 U.S.C. 2332b defines the term "federal crime of terrorism" as an offense that:
Is calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct; and
Is a violation of one of several listed statutes, including 930(c) (relating to killing or attempted killing during an attack on a federal facility with a dangerous weapon); and 1114 (relating to killing or attempted killing of officers and employees of the U.S.).
* FISA defines "international terrorism" in a nearly identical way, replacing "primarily" outside the U.S. with "totally" outside the U.S. 50 U.S.C. 1801(c).
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Maybe the issue isn't that reasonable procedure was followed, but that Microsoft has chat logs at all? Is it just connection info, or is it what was actually said?
I don't know how much logging they do or don't do. Everything I don't want to leave logs and records seems to, and everything I wish had detailed logging ends up having useless logging.
Re:I fail to see the problem here (Score:5, Informative)
The FBI requested chat logs; that doesn't mean that Microsoft actually has them. Having seen subpoenas and such (guess the "and such") to ISPs/telcos before, they always request everything they can think of, but that's just the request. It is perfectly legal to reply with "the requested data is not available."
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Burdell has pointed out the real story.
"The search warrant seeks to have Microsoft â" which owns Skype â" provide the government with logs and the content of conversations and written messages made on Ciccoloâ(TM)s account, as well as passwords."
If Microsoft is in fact recording the content of Skype conversations, that really is news for nerds.
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How about the "passwords" part? It would be pretty shocking if MS can provide those.
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Log into Skype on a new computer, and you will see that they record your conversations. It is how the service works.
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Maybe the issue isn't that reasonable procedure was followed, but that Microsoft has chat logs at all? Is it just connection info, or is it what was actually said?
At work the company uses Skype. Skype keeps records of conversations. When you move from device to device it shows your conversation history with the person. You can also scroll back quite a long way even if the conversation was on a different machine.
For a business-style conversation where you want to preserve logs and look up what was said in the past, and where people are constantly switching between their desktop computer, conference room computers, and phones, preserving the chat histories is a bull
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The proper way would of course be to store it encrypted on the servers, and exchange it with the clients in encrypted form only. No unencrypted data ever on the server. The encryption key is getting tricky due to the need to exchange with new clients for the same user, though. It would also have to be stored on that server somehow, protected only by the user's password.
Re:I fail to see the problem here (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, not in this case.
In the iPhone case, the FBI was demanding that encryption be weakened *across the board, for everybody* in order to get the contents of one phone.
In this case, they're asking for a warrant (correctly this time), and only want the existing records for one person, without compromising any innocent parties' privacy.
Big diff this time.
Re:I fail to see the problem here (Score:4, Insightful)
For someone with a 6 digit UID you really are thick.
They didn't ask for 'encryption' (actually, the auto device lockout after 10 tries) to be weakened 'across the board for everybody'.
Try again.
No, they were asking that Apple be conscripted into making malware in order to bypass the encryption. The legal precedent thus would have weakened encryption for everybody.
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You know, every time I see this argument, I reply in the exact same way. The FBI asked for nothing of the sort, and it is a lie to say they did. The court order is available to be read online, and it actually says that the exploit was to be keyed to the ID of the specific phone, and signed by Apple's signing key. It therefore would be impossible for the FBI to modify it for another phone, and Apple would be the only ones with the ability to do that.
The court order is available here:
http://www.ndaa.org/pd [ndaa.org]
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However, this is Slashdot, where law enforcement officers that break the law and try to force unconstitutional action on others are considered the bad guys and the law enforcement that go through legal channels to obtain data are the good guys.
FTFY. Thinking is hard, I know.
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Um, lies? The FBI worked within the confines of the constitution in the iPhone case, they had a warrant (though they didn't need one!), and requested Apple unlock the phone, like they have done numerous times:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/a... [thedailybeast.com]
I agree, thinking seems to be quite hard for you, it is much easier to accuse the FBI of subverting the constitution when they are not doing anything of the sort.
Re: I fail to see the problem here (Score:1)
Nobody cares what slashdotters think. Their posts are however being monitored and recorded for future use. One of these days we'll just round you losers up and see how tough you are away from your keyboards. My guess is that you'll start babbling before we can even handcuff you.
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Subject of Comment (Score:2, Interesting)
They are working on a search warrant? That's good. That shouldn't be news.
Now what? Are we supposed to be shocked about the usage of the existence of an account?
Where is the Skype datacenter? The US or Ireland? That might be the more interesting aspect of this.
Counter productive (Score:3)
While I am on Apple's side (creating that software would have proved risky for all iPhone owners, not just suspects - and I believe the outcome - unlocks which don't scale to all owners because you need the hardware in custody) I am also on the side of the FBI of being able to do their job.
All this media coverage about the FBI will just reinforce the message that using any commercial apps will result in your operatives being exposed. It is only a matter of time before they create their own secure P2P messaging application which won't respond to a warrant or any US authority. At which point we are really FBI'd, (Fucked Beyond all Imagination) since unlocking the device is then useless. The FBI might eventually be able to crack it, through vulnerabilities, but over time we can assume these will be patched, then what? It goes dark.
Glad terrorists are stupid... (Score:2)
Because if they simply used H264 video conferencing or SIP voice point to point they would have nothing to subpoena.
Re:Glad terrorists are stupid... (Score:4, Interesting)
They aren't stupid, just normal. Even terrorists don't want to go through the hassle of actually getting SIP to work, nor fiddle with the hodgepodge collection of so-called "telecommunication" packages available via FOSS.
Is this supposed to make us mad? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, hold on a sec. You have summertime actively under investigation. The FBI hours to the court and tries to get a legal subpoena/warrant/whatever to get information from a service provider. That is how the system is supposed to work!
It's when they get the data without going through proper channels that's bad. Holy shit, you do know that allowing the FBI to actually investigate terrorism is a Good Thing, right?
Re: Is this supposed to make us mad? (Score:2)
summertime, suspect . . .
Damn you, autocorrect!
Re:Is this supposed to make us mad? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Holy shit, you do know that allowing the FBI to actually investigate terrorism is a Good Thing, right?
The Three Letter Agencies aren't scorned for doing their jobs under the Constitution. They are scorned for abusing their power both within and without the Constitution. Their abuses of the system are legion. If they operated within the confines of protecting the citizenry they are changed with protecting, everyone would be on their side.
In principle, I agree with you. But in practice, doing so is dangerous to one's health and liberty. The Three Letter Agencies are advocating a position of absolute powe
Records (Score:1)
If you keep records, eventually someone will want to see them, and eventually they will leak. Someone once said something about information wanting to be free or some such.
Ciccolo? (Score:2)
Microsoft says they are against this (Score:2)
Don't get Bill Gates' comments on this mixed up with Microsoft's stance on this. Microsoft has stated they back Apple, and even Gates backpedaled on it, saying he only supports breaking that one phone [usatoday.com] in order to fight terrorism.
The bad news is provisions in the USA FREEDOM Act actually allow the US government to tap digital encrypted communications, They also remove all responsibility from a company complying (so you can only sue the government) and can put a gag order on it, which is why sites like canary [canarywatch.org]
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Which should be limited to empowering, but not to include forcing companies to make the technology or make technology which even they can't crack.
The problem is that what they say will only be used for national security today, will in a short time be used for every form of law enforcement some asshole deems "legitimate" ... because that's exactly what they've been doing already. This we
Sounds serious (Score:3)
I heard there was a case where someone else was suspected of a crime, the cops went crying to a judge, and the judge gave them permission to Break and Enter the suspect's house!
Seriously, if there's a problem here, it's that when you talk directly to another person on the Internet, a layperson wouldn't normally think that this would leave many records on third parties' machines.
#0 BUT: they should be aware that it might leave records, though, even if just dumb (application-unaware) packet logs, maybe. It's a risk, at least.
#1 BUT: this is Skype, not direct communication. I think most people know that Skype is kind of weird/fucked-up/corporate-agenda-oriented.
#2 BUT: so much NAT! Even Skype aside, a lot of people don't directly connect to each other and instead use some kind of intermediate server, e.g. XMPP. If you're using someone else's server instead of your own, you might not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
The FBI wants X (Score:4, Insightful)
Will there be an article every time the FBI issues a warrant now?
The iPhone unlocking case is newsworthy, but here, this is just police doing its job.
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Will there be an article every time the FBI issues a warrant now?
There definitely should be an article every time the FBI issues a warrant. That's not something they are allowed to do.
Request a warrant and have it issued to them, yep I agree with you. Non-news. But issuing one themselves without a judge, that's just a touch news-worthy. </sarcasm>
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Will there be an article every time the FBI issues a warrant now?
Of course, just like every airplane crash gets media attention. Both events are increasingly rare, even though both air traffic and the FBI are growing fast and out of control. That's why it's newsworthy: it's special, it's shocking, it's just not something that happens every day.
This is dumb (Score:1)
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Headline Correction - remove "Terror Suspects" (Score:3)