Supreme Court Justices Struggle With Issue of Cell Phone Searches

I think this US Supreme Court decision could have a huge impact on many aspects of our lives, as well as international relations.

There have been lots of write-ups and articles about it:

• ABC News:  Supreme Court Justices Struggle With Issue of Cell Phone Searches - ABC News:
• National Journal:  Supreme Court is about to decide the future of cell phone privacy
• Reuters: US Justices weigh limits on cell phone searches
• The Wire:  Looks like the Supreme Court Brushed up on Tech Lingo for this Cell Phone Privacy Case
• Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) - Riley v. California

I'm disappointed that my state, California is actually defending themselves in this case.  The state depends upon the electronic, internet and semiconductor industry for most of its growth, and it appears that they could put a damper on growth if they won this case --which I believe is clearly a violation of citizen privacy.  I'm also disappointed that the Obama administration is defending the Government's right to search all of anyone's cell phone for any trumped-up charge.

Police searches for years have focused more and more on the electronics, and it appears that the trend will continue.  Searches, for other than illegal drugs, have moved from searching file cabinets and desk drawers to hard drives.  Searches for pornography, drug sales, and terrorism plots have all moved to the computer data bases.  Immigration and customs officials have been searching laptops and hard drives on routine basis.  This type of "fishing expedition" done by police often turns up some sort of violation that allows the police to charge an individual with a crime.

Since many of us now have "our whole lives" on our computer --and most are moving it towards the cell phone, this random search could find chargeable offenses such as income tax violations, child support violations, or even building code violations.  From our phones we can now access our bank & investment accounts, our address book, the locations we've been, all phone calls and text messages, all photos,  all email, income tax filings and records, all our music, books, videos, and web site visits

It is easy to sympathize with the situation the police are in.  They are rated upon their effectiveness.  If they pull someone over and don't find something to charge them with, they have, in effect, wasted their time.  They really want to stop crime, but are also rated on how many "busts" they score, and how much fine revenue they bring in for their city, county or state. They want to get as much bang for the taxpayer's "buck" they can get --that means writing tickets, citations, or making arrests.  Looking through a citizen's cell phone is probably a quick and easy way for them to find something to write a citation for.  Even if the Supreme Court does decide that the police need a search warrant to go through a person's phone, they still will use the argument:  If you have nothing to hide, why don't you let us quickly search your phone --if we have to get a search warrant, you'll have to stand out along side this highway for an hour or so until someone brings a warrant --and this will be much quicker!
Some privacy problems may not seem too important in a metropolitan area where it is unlikely that you will ever see the same police officer twice.  However is rural or small town areas, everyone knows everyone.  Friendships and grudges can last a long time.  Police are more able to "get even" with old rivals, lovers who have done them wrong, or business competitors of family members.

There are a lot of ancillary questions about police taking and searching a cell phone or laptop:

1. How long can the police keep the cell phone?  While in their possession, are police responsible for any damage to hardware, software or files? 
2. Do they provide citizens with another phone to use while they have yours?  If they have taken all of your files and records within the phone, can they provide you a copy back to use -- some business are dependent upon it.  
3. Do citizens have to give police their pass code, or finger print scan to be able to access their phone?  Are there penalties if they don't provide that access?  My phone has an SD memory card that can hold a lot of files.  Will we also have to provide that chip?  If we have multiple chips, will we have to provide all of them?  
4. Do you have to give police passwords so they can get onto your "cloud" files from your cell phone?  In fact, a lot of the information that appears to be on the phone, is often, actually on a server accessible from the phone. 
5. Are police permitted to crack your passwords to go through your phone, laptop hard drive, or cloud files?
6. How are we, as citizens, protected from police sneaking files or records onto our phone or laptop that could incriminate us?  There are strict protocols for crime scenes, but probably not for cell phone searches.
7. Are police permitted to make a copy of everything on your phone, hard drive, or cloud?  How will the integrity of that copy be maintained?

I believe that the Supreme Court has a very tough challenge in making this decision.  I hope they agree to error on the side of freedom vs police state.  We've lost too much freedom and privacy lately.  Police argue that they need these powers to fight crime.  However crime is down --way down in the US and the world.  If recreational drugs weren't illegal they would have nothing to do, and they know that they would need less than half of the existing numbers of police, prosecutors, judges, bailiffs, court reporters, prisons and prison guards --all part of the "business" they are in.  

Drug enforcement gone wrong

I read this editorial ( Drug enforcement gone wrong - latimes.com:) in the LA Times today by Theshia Naidoo and Lynne Lyman about using undercover police agents in schools to "bait" kids into committing drug offenses.  Theshia and Lynne are staff for the Drug Policy Alliance and have had lots of experience on this.  Apparently Riverside County allows undercover agents to work on a school campus to try and get kids to violate drug laws.  Yes, I recognize that drugs on campus is a serious problem.  Yes, I would like to keep children away from drugs.  Yes, I do understand how frustrating it can be to try to keep drugs off campus and away from children.  It is a very difficult task!  However this technique done by the Riverside County Sheriff is "over the top" when it comes to common sense.

I can imagine that when I was in 9th or 10th grade, how an attractive female senior might have easily influenced me to steal a couple of pills from my mothers medicine chest to win her appreciation.  However apparently the Riverside sheriff department not only does that but also preys upon children with special needs, such as a boy with autism.

I've always thought that the "bait" technique was questionable for any situation.  I'm not sure it has ever been tested with a supreme court decision, but it should border on being unconstitutional.   Bait systems are similar to speed traps: Police in a small town put a small 25 mph sign up on a nice, wide, 60 mph highway and then collect lots of money from the tickets they issue.Easy money!  Very easy policing!   Police Women dress up as prostitutes and then "hook" Johns and arrest them -- more easy arrests and money!  I think the police department employees enjoy doing it too!  Police or agents visit a politician and offer to "donate" a million dollars to their campaign if they'll vote a certain way.  That makes for great publicity!

Some people may believe that right and wrong is simply "black and white" --so the politician, John, or high school student should know what is right and wrong. Many religions try to teach that "black and white" definition.    However in real life, we all know, it is much more of a "shades of gray issue."  We all know the story of the man asking a woman if she'll go to bed with him for a million dollars.  When she says yes, he says:  "now that you've established yourself as a prostitute,  lets haggle about the price."  I believe that everyone has a price.  We've seen it in bad, immoral decisions made by "unfailable Popes" as well as TV evangelists who have studied and espoused those black & white moral definitions.   How can we ever expect young teenagers to be able to always make the correct decision?  Why would our police and sheriff departments even dream about baiting these kids into becoming a criminal?  

Death row inmate Glenn Ford released 30 years after wrongful conviction | World news | theguardian.com

I'm glad that justice was partially served in this case.  However, I think it is wrong that the prosecutors who withheld important evidence,and the witnesses who lied under oath, the the appeals judges who knew Ford was likely innocent are all getting off scott-free.

Death row inmate Glenn Ford released 30 years after wrongful conviction | World news | theguardian.com:

I would think it would be fair if those individuals had to pay some compensation to Mr. Ford, if not serve some "hard time" for their actions.

30 years is a long sentence for an innocent person.  The part I hate about the fight to release wrongfully convicted prisoners is that so often the original prosecutors, even though now presented with convincing evidence of innocence still fight back against releases as if they are protecting their "baby"...That clearly isn't fulfilling their oath of office to promote justice.  

The Espionage Act needs revision -- Reference Leon Panetta's "pass" on enforcement

The LA Times published an "op-ed"editorial written by John Kiriakou who is currently serving time in prison for releasing information about the CIA's torturing of captives.

I got 30 months in prison. Why does Leon Panetta get a pass? - latimes.com:

John Kiriakou believes he was a "Whistle Blower" who was revealing the clearly illegal activities of the CIA in doing waterboarding.  Apparently he knew he was releasing information to the press.

On the other hand, Panetta thought he was talking to a room of cleared people, but there happened to be some uncleared press people.

Over 25 years ago, I was involved in similar situations where a political appointee was speaking to a large audience and inadvertently released classified information to people who were not authorized.  In that situation, and I would assume also in the referenced "Panetta" situation mentioned in the article, a security officer detained all attendees to that conference and debriefed everyone.  That debriefing, in effect, swore all to keep the secrets that were inadvertently released.  There are standard procedures for handling the inadvertent release of classified information.  I get the impression that it happens a few times every year.

In John Kirakou's situation, he released information without giving Government security an opportunity to "debrief" the reporters.  This is a significant difference. He, in effect, intended to release that information to the public.



I do agree with Kirakou, that the Espionage Act needs some serious updating.  It is currently too vague and can be applied inconsistently and unfairly. A lot has changed over the years --and the use of the internet has changed almost everything!  Too many times our country has given prosecutors new powers and they have abused them in order to get a "win" instead of trying to achieve "justice."



I certainly agree that any new version of Espionage Act needs to be very tough on the release of information.   However we do seriously need a way to protect "whistle blowers."  That protection needs to be built-in to any new law.  I believe that if we had a good, somewhat independent, method of doing whistle-blowing, that a lot of classified information could be protected even better than it is.  For example, if Snowden knew he could have reported his concern to someone who could have done something about the NSA spying on Americans or foreign leaders, would it have provided an outlet for him, and protected some of the information?



The real question is:  Who would be that "independent" contact for a whistle-blower to talk to?  Clearly the organization's "Inspector General" is not the right spot.  I would suspect that if Kirakou or Snowden reported to their IG, the first thing that would be done  was that Kirakou or Snowden would be locked up in a cell and never heard from again.  Should it be an office of the GAO?  An independent organization, similar to the FED?  How could this be implemented?  It is a very tough problem!



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Chad Dixon, polygraph: The Obama administration doesn't want you to know how to beat a lie detector test.

I think this situation is absolutely outrageous!  It is a clear miscarriage of justice and something I never thought would happen in the United States.

I've been through quite a few polygraphs, about every 5 years from the early 1980s.  Each time I thought that the whole process was rather "shady."  If you have been through the process a few times, you'll realize that the polygraph is very unreliable.  I was told several times that I had lied, when I knew I had told the truth, for example.  It is clear that they depend upon the "mystique" around their system to try to enhance the responses of a person's body to try to determine truth or lie. Polygraphers are very polite, they dress professionally, and have a relatively standard way they do things.  Not much changed in the polygraphs I went through over my 25 year span of experience.  Yes their electronics got smaller, and their recording system went from pens on paper to electronics and digital video recording.  Polygraphers always seem to do something during the polygraph to try and get your body to respond --typically with some sort of anger.  For the tests I experienced they always treated them sort of secret.  They sent us to plain unmarked rooms and instructed us to not tell anyone what went on.  I'm suspicious that that is to try and get our bodies & minds sensitized for the test.   The whole process was typically recorded on video, or monitored by one way mirror.  There is always a mysterious "back room" of other people who have to go over the results and "get back" to you--but only if there is a problem.  You never get to meet any of the "back room" people --part of the secret!

I''m very skeptical about the value of polygraphs. I was surprised to learn that there are organizations who are not just skeptical, but are "anti-polygraph."  I've often thought that the best that a polygraph program could hope for was the deterrent effect.  People might not do something wrong, if they thought that maybe it could be uncovered in the future through a polygraph. I think it is really stretching to say that it is capable of predicting when someone will do something wrong.   When national security issues are at stake and billions of dollars of investment or lives are at stake, it is extremely important to make sure that our Government employees and contractors are honest and will not steal or reveal secrets.Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning Wikileaks have caused immeasurable harm to our country.  They didn't just embarrass our country, they did permanent damage to our intelligence system, which will seriously reduce or capability to catch terrorists, or defend against them.   It certainly would have been good to been able to prevent that from happening by determining if one of them were possibly going to expose our nation's secrets.  Examples like this, I'm sure, are very frustrating to Government security.  No mater what they do, all it takes is one person, out of hundreds of thousands, and we've blown it!  Use of polygraphs is one way of possibly protecting us from that problem -- added on top of normal background investigations and training.  However it isn't enough --and now, it is clear that we're compromising another of our freedoms by using polygraphs. Yes it is a tough trade-off!

Apparently this guy described as a normal dad and little league coach, Chad Dixon was charged with instructing people on how to beat polygraph tests.  I suspect that the so-called professional polygraph associations have rapidly pushed for this prosecution because they realize they have a "house of cards" and that this sort of situation could destroy what little believability that polygraph testing still has.   The results of polygraph aren't admissible in court already, and there is a HUGE industry of people involved in giving these tests.

Chad Dixon, polygraph: The Obama administration doesn't want you to know how to beat a lie detector test.:  I must admit, I am surprised that this prosecution is attributed to the Obama administration!  The Bush administration believed in torture, rendition, warehousing people in Guantanamo etc --but this seems to be out of character for what Obama and his administration believe in.

Clearly there is no "crime" committed if someone lies during a polygraph.  When undergoing a test we aren't "sworn to tell the truth" of course, and there are no laws requiring us to be truthful.  So now this Chad Dixon, is going to go to jail for teaching people how to lie on a polygraph! http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/08/30/4276087/feds-want-prison-time-in-unprecedented.html#.UjYk48Ym2So

  This seems to go against every understanding I have of what our Nation's Bill of Rights stands for.  Where do these prosecutors come from?  It is clear that first amendment rights are violated by this prosecution: http://rt.com/usa/feds-prosecuting-polygraph-teachers-599/
Clearly this person was singled out, since there are many web sites and other people who sell similar training: See this article: http://www.opposingviews.com/i/technology/gadgets/chad-dixon-gets-8-months-jail-teaching-how-beat-lie-detector-test#

I certainly hope that Chad Dixon will be defended by some organization like the ACLU who will help them take this case to the Supreme Court.  It is a shame that he "admitted" to doing it --but it would be hard to not do so  The question: is what he did a crime?  If someone can go to jail for teaching something, could we now see people go to prison for teaching how to grow marijuana?  how to refine cocaine?  How to practice yoga (that might relax someone so they could beat a polygraph test?).

JUDGE RULES IN NO-FLY LIST SUIT THAT PEOPLE HAVE A RIGHT TO

I saw this article in today's Union Tribune, where a judge in Oregon has ruled that people do have a right to fly on an airplane.
JUDGE RULES IN NO-FLY LIST SUIT THAT PEOPLE HAVE A RIGHT TO FLY | UTSanDiego.com  I'm totally in favor of maintaining a good security system for our US transportation system(s).  A no-fly list seems to be a reasonable approach to singling out suspicious individuals for special inspections of their bodies, carry-ons and luggage.  I'd assume that the no-fly list also includes criminals that probably are to be held or arrested if they are caught trying to pass through a security checkpoint.  However with millions of travelers, and possibly billions of records, it is likely that mistakes can be made with identity.

Over the past 12 years there have been a lot of situations where people have been stopped from flying on a plane due to mistaken identity with someone who is on the "no fly list" kept by Homeland Security.  There are many other people who are on the no fly list, who don't know they are on the list, and if they do find out they are on the list they have no way of finding out why they are on the list, or have any easy, quick way of "clearing their name."  They say that a form can be filled out on line, but there are no time limits.  Citizens can appeal to a Judicial Review" but are not permitted a hearing where evidence can be presented.

Apparently, when this type of situation has come to courts previously, the courts have determined that the citizens didn't have a "right" to fly, and could, instead, drive, take a bus, or ride a train.  So the Government was under no obligation to explain why a person is on the list, nor does the government have to provide a process to clear their name (expeditiously) This latest court ruling implies that we do have a right to fly, and maybe the Government should help provide a process for clearing names.  In this case, U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown of Portland has asked for more information about the "redress" process.

I've often thought that with the internet, there must be a clear, simple process for verifying  identities and for helping people clear their name if they are on the "list" due to an error.  Photos, fingerprints, face recognition and other biometrics can be sent and verified within seconds.  You would think that Homeland Security officers at the airport could use that info to validate identity etc.  I'm sure that the Government's argument is that if they had to provide more people to perform a redress process efficiently and quickly, it would increase the cost of their operation.  That is probably true.  However, to be fair to everyone, we should agree to pay that cost as part of the necessary costs for our security.

It will be interesting to see what happens based upon this ruling.  Will it go up to the US Supreme Court?

Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board --Exists, but no teeth!

I just read in the Wall Street Journal about the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB).  I doubt if most citizens even knew it existed.  However it is in the "hot seat" now!  Here's info from Wikipedia: Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:.  It is pretty clear that the PCLOB is pretty much overwhelmed with their responsibility and limited resources available to them.  See this blog: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/07/a_problem_with.html  Yeah, terrorism is one of the worse invasions of privacy and civil liberties -- however we shouldn't just give "carte blanch" to our defense & police agencies. It is important to strike a balance.

Yes, all of the agencies should be required to publish a plan for how they handle privacy and civil liberties.  The plan should be updated every 4 or 5 years --that is eternity in compared to our technology revolution.   The "top level" plans should be unclassified.  However the agencies can have classified plans that are "consistent" with the top level plan.  Those top and second level plans should be reviewed by the PCLOB, and at least one committee from Congress and the Senate as well as being approved by the Attorney General.

Then, the agencies should be held to following their plans.  They should be audited by their own inspector general, and have sample inspections done by the Attorney General and the GAO.

The PCLOB should have it's staff beefed up to be able to handle this responsibility.  It should also be required to publish a report to Congress, at least every two years, that describes the status of the agencies in writing their plans, getting them approved and how well they are actually following their own plans