Entries Tagged "police"

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Third Party Consent and Computer Searches

U.S. courts are weighing in with opinions:

When Ray Andrus’ 91-year-old father gave federal agents permission to search his son’s password-protected computer files and they found child pornography, the case turned a spotlight on how appellate courts grapple with third-party consents to search computers.

[…]

The case was a first for the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and only two other circuits have touched on the issue, the 4th and 6th circuits. The 10th Circuit held that although password-protected computers command a high level of privacy, the legitimacy of a search turns on an officer’s belief that the third party had authority to consent.

The 10th Circuit’s recent 2-1 decision in U.S. v. Andrus, No. 06-3094 (April 25, 2007), recognized for the first time that a password-protected computer is like a locked suitcase or a padlocked footlocker in a bedroom. The digital locks raise the expectation of privacy by the owner. The majority nonetheless refused to suppress the evidence.

Excellent commentary from Jennifer Granick:

The Fourth Amendment generally prohibits warrantless searches of an individual’s home or possessions. There is an exception to the warrant requirement when someone consents to the search. Consent can be given by the person under investigation, or by a third party with control over or mutual access to the property being searched. Because the Fourth Amendment only prohibits “unreasonable searches and seizures,” permission given by a third party who lacks the authority to consent will nevertheless legitimize a warrantless search if the consenter has “apparent authority,” meaning that the police reasonably believed that the person had actual authority to control or use the property.

Under existing case law, only people with a key to a locked closet have apparent authority to consent to a search of that closet. Similarly, only people with the password to a locked computer have apparent authority to consent to a search of that device. In Andrus, the father did not have the password (or know how to use the computer) but the police say they did not have any reason to suspect this because they did not ask and did not turn the computer on. Then, they used forensic software that automatically bypassed any installed password.

The majority held that the police officers not only weren’t obliged to ask whether the father used the computer, they had no obligation to check for a password before performing their forensic search. In dissent, Judge Monroe G. McKay criticized the agents’ intentional blindness to the existence of password protection, when physical or digital locks are such a fundamental part of ascertaining whether a consenting person has actual or apparent authority to permit a police search. “(T)he unconstrained ability of law enforcement to use forensic software such at the EnCase program to bypass password protection without first determining whether such passwords have been enabled … dangerously sidestep(s) the Fourth Amendment.”

[…]

If courts are going to treat computers as containers, and if owners must lock containers in order to keep them private from warrantless searches, then police should be required to look for those locks. Password protected computers and locked containers are an inexact analogy, but if that is how courts are going to do it, then its inappropriate to diminish protections for computers simply because law enforcement chooses to use software that turns a blind eye to owners’ passwords.

Posted on June 5, 2007 at 6:43 AM • View Comments

Recognizing "Hinky" vs. Citizen Informants

On the subject of people noticing and reporting suspicious actions, I have been espousing two views that some find contradictory. One, we are all safer if police, guards, security screeners, and the like ignore traditional profiling and instead pay attention to people acting hinky: not right. And two, if we encourage people to contact the authorities every time they see something suspicious, we’re going to waste our time chasing false alarms: foreigners whose customs are different, people who are disliked by someone, and so on.

The key difference is expertise. People trained to be alert for something hinky will do much better than any profiler, but people who have no idea what to look for will do no better than random.

Here’s a story that illustrates this: Last week, a student at the Rochester Institute of Technology was arrested with two illegal assault weapons and 320 rounds of ammunition in his dorm room and car:

The discovery of the weapons was made only by chance. A conference center worker who served in the military was walking past Hackenburg’s dorm room. The door was shut, but the worker heard the all-too-familiar racking sound of a weapon, said the center’s director Bill Gunther.

Notice how expertise made the difference. The “conference center worker” had the right knowledge to recognize the sound and to understand that it was out of place in the environment he heard it. He wasn’t primed to be on the lookout for suspicious people and things; his trained awareness kicked in automatically. He recognized hinky, and he acted on that recognition. A random person simply can’t do that; he won’t recognize hinky when he sees it. He’ll report imams for praying, a neighbor he’s pissed at, or people at random. He’ll see an English professor recycling paper, and report a Middle-Eastern-looking man leaving a box on sidewalk.

We all have some experience with this. Each of us has some expertise in some topic, and will occasionally recognize that something is wrong even though we can’t fully explain what or why. An architect might feel that way about a particular structure; an artist might feel that way about a particular painting. I might look at a cryptographic system and intuitively know something is wrong with it, well before I figure out exactly what. Those are all examples of a subliminal recognition that something is hinky—in our particular domain of expertise.

Good security people have the knowledge, skill, and experience to do that in security situations. It’s the difference between a good security person and an amateur.

This is why behavioral assessment profiling is a good idea, while the Terrorist Information and Prevention System (TIPS) isn’t. This is why training truckers to look out for suspicious things on the highways is a good idea, while a vague list of things to watch out for isn’t. It’s why this Israeli driver recognized a passenger as a suicide bomber, while an American driver probably wouldn’t.

This kind of thing isn’t easy to train. (Much has been written about it, though; Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink discusses this in detail.) You can’t learn it from watching a seven-minute video. But the more we focus on this—the more we stop wasting our airport security resources on screeners who confiscate rocks and snow globes, and instead focus them on well-trained screeners walking through the airport looking for hinky—the more secure we will be.

EDITED TO ADD (4/26): Jim Harper makes an important clarification.

Posted on April 26, 2007 at 5:43 AM • View Comments

A Rant from a Cop

People use policemen as props in their personal disputes:

Noon, its 59 degrees and I get a call from a guy whose neighbor’s dog has been left in a car. I get there, the windows are cracked, and the dog has only been in there 20 minutes. It’s 59 Degrees! It’s not summer and if it were the dead of winter I’d say the car is a $20,000 dog house. But it turns out this guy has a running dispute with his neighbor so guess who he calls to irritate the guy a little more? Me. When I go to leave, the asshole that called this in yells, “hey, aren’t you gonna do anything?” I explain why I am not and he says “great, I’m writing a letter to the paper” Holy shit. Now I’m the bad guy because I didn’t embarrass your target enough for you? Grow the hell up.

When the police implement programs to let ordinary citizens report suspected terrorists, this is the kind of thing that will result.

Posted on April 25, 2007 at 1:08 PM • View Comments

Arresting Children

A disturbing trend.

These are not the sorts of matters the police should be getting involved in. The police aren’t trained to handle children this age, and children this age don’t benefit by being fingerprinted and thrown in jail.

EDITED TO ADD (4/18): Another example:

Unfortunately, the school forgot that the clocks had switched to Daylight Saving Time that morning. The time stamps left on the hotline were adjusted by an hour after Day Light Savings causing Webb’s call to logged as the same time the bomb threat was placed. Webb, who’s never even had a detention in his life, had actually made his call an hour before the bomb threat was placed.

Despite the fact that the recording of the call featured a voice that sounded nothing like Webb’s, the police arrested Webb and he spent 12 days in a juvenile detention facility before the school eventually realised their mistake.

Posted on April 18, 2007 at 12:02 PM • View Comments

Citizen Counter-Terrorists

The greater Manchester police want everyone to help them find terrorists:

In a new anti-terror drive, a tip-off hotline is being relaunched and an advertising campaign will urge people to report any suspicious behaviour. It asks:

* Do you know anyone who travels but is vague on where they’re going?

* Do you know someone with documents in different names for no obvious reason?

* Do you know someone buying large or unusual quantities of chemicals for no obvious reason?

* Handling chemicals is dangerous, maybe you’ve seen goggles or masks dumped somewhere?

* If you work in commercial vehicle hire or sales, has a sale or rental made you suspicious?

* Have you seen someone with large quantities of mobiles?

* Have you seen anyone taking pictures of security arrangements?

* Do you know someone who visits terrorist-related websites?

* Have you seen any suspicious cheque or credit card transactions?

* Is someone is asking for a short-term let on a house or flat on a cash basis for no apparent reason?

This reminds me of TIPS, the ill-conceived U.S. program to have meter readers and the like—people who regularly enter people’s homes—report suspicious activity to the police. It’s just dumb; people will report each other because their food smells wrong, or they talk in a funny language. The system will be swamped with false alarms, which police will have to waste their time following up on. This sort of state-sponsored snitchery is something you’d expect out of the former East Germany, or the Soviet Union—not the U.K.

For comparison’s sake, here’s a similar program that I actually liked.

Posted on March 20, 2007 at 12:26 PM • View Comments

The Difficulty of Profiling Terrorists

Interesting article:

A recently completed Dutch study of 242 Islamic radicals convicted or accused of planning terrorist attacks in Europe from 2001 to 2006 found that most were men of Arab descent who had been born and raised in Europe and came from lower or middle-class backgrounds. They ranged in age from 16 to 59 at the time of their arrests; the average was 27. About one in four had a criminal record.

The author of the study, Edwin Bakker, a researcher at the Clingendael Institute in The Hague, tried to examine almost 20 variables concerning the suspects’ social and economic backgrounds. In general, he determined that no reliable profile existed—their traits were merely an accurate reflection of the overall Muslim immigrant population in Europe. “There is no standard jihadi terrorist in Europe,” the study concluded.

In an interview, Bakker said that many local police agencies have been slow to abandon profiling, but that most European intelligence agencies have concluded it is an unreliable tool for spotting potential terrorists. “How can you single them out? You can’t,” he said. “For the secret services, it doesn’t give them a clue. We should focus more on suspicious behavior and not profiling.”

Posted on March 13, 2007 at 5:42 PM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.