Here, the government obtained multiple, time-limited warrants to search the device, but was unable to get into it. They sent it to be repaired. After the warrant extension expired, the repair guy fixed it and updated the firmware. (The record doesn’t say what version the firmware was, but it seems like it was standard firmware, not some special forensic firmware.) The next day, the government again obtained a warrant. Only after doing so did the government perform the search.
In this unusual situation, it’s reasonable to conclude that the device repair wasn’t a search. The seizure and the data access were both performed pursuant to a warrant. The only part that wasn’t covered by the warrant was just fixing the device in a seemingly conventional way to get it working again.
Original decision here, pages 3-4 has the relevant facts: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25423841/no-disassemb...
It went fine, ended in settlement in my favor.
https://www.flags.com/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about...
>> While some people believe that the fringe has symbolic meaning, its primary purpose is ornamental, giving the flag an air of distinction and honor. Fringed flags are usually displayed on indoor flagpoles, though they may also be used in parades or during other ceremonial presentations. It’s important to note that these flags are not typically flown outside, as the fringe is not designed to withstand outdoor weather conditions.
In short: people get confused because they only see the fringe on special occasions or indoors as in courtrooms. It has no meaning.
It's probably lost to time...
It seems like a waste of time at best. But have any sovereign citizen got what they wanted at the end of any kind of proceeding?
It seems like a very bad strategy to solve their own selfish problems. (DUI, speeding, not paying taxes, going against gun regulations, etc.)
And this strategy is usually coming from being unfortunately so tragically misinformed that they cannot help but reject the boring standard model of reality for a bouquet of conspiracy theories.
I was asking because in Germany, you generally (only) have to pay if you're convicted, I think.
Not everyone who doesn't get a building permit or a fishing license is a sovereign citizen.
With sovcit specifically, there is also a rational layer. Many people think the law some sort of elite club where mastery of a secret language can allow one to escape legal scrutiny. This comes from TV and the news that never explain the nuance of legal practice. They arent insane, just very incorrectly educated. Rosa parks was not insane. She knew she was breaking the law. The rational sovcit thinks themselves the next Rosa Parks, but mistakenly believe that means they cannot be arrested. Rational but wrong.
pc86 didn’t say sovereign citizenry is mental illness per se. They said it’s indistinguishable from mental illness if pursued all the way to a hearing. At that point, enough flags have been intentionally ignored to validly cross into delusion.
They are both insane, just in different ways. Sane people don't just automatically believe random stuff from facebook that is contrary to everything they know and have been taught.
This is a stretch, but possible. It breaks when that man is pulled over, cited, given the opportunity to research or consider another viewpoint, and then shows up in court to plead that case. That’s invisible-spiders levels of delusion, and while it may not be caused by a chemical or physical problem in the brain, it’s indistinguishable from it.
Freemasons exist and your judges, lawyers, and cops are freemasons.
(1/3) https://www.travelingtemplar.com/2017/05/justices-of-supreme...
(2/3) https://www.travelingtemplar.com/2017/06/justices-of-supreme...
(3/3) https://www.travelingtemplar.com/2017/09/justices-of-supreme...
Sure, but they don't have a secret language that allows them to escape legal scrutiny. Freemasonry isn't even an elite club, they'll take pretty much anyone willing to pay the dues and memorize some stuff.
Same, and I almost wrote a similar comment but figured it wasn't worth it.
Fun fact along the same lines: Homer Plessy (of Plessy v. Ferguson) had one African-American great-grandparent. He was of mostly European descent and would have been unnoticed had he not declared to the conductor that he was “colored”. He was sponsored by the railroad, which wanted to save money by not having to have separate cars for “white” and “colored” passengers, as it was rare to have a full complement of each.
Homer Plessy
The Wikipedia article on Plessy v. Ferguson explains the following:
“In 1890, the State of Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act, which required separate accommodation for black and white people on railroads, including separate railway cars. A group of 18 prominent black, creole of color, and white creole New Orleans residents formed the Comité des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens) to challenge the law. Many staff members of The New Orleans Crusader, a black Republican newspaper, were among the group's members, including publisher Louis A. Martinet, writer Rodolphe Desdunes, and managing editor L. J. Joubert, who served as president of the Justice, Protective, Educational, and Social Club at the same time Plessy was vice president.
The group contacted attorney and civil rights advocate Albion W. Tourgée, who agreed to help them bring a test case to court in order to force the judiciary to determine the constitutionality of Jim Crow laws. In his correspondence with Martinet, Tourgée suggested finding a plaintiff who had "not more than one-eight colored blood" and could pass as white.”
Rosa Parks
The Wikipedia articles on Rosa Parks and on The Montgomery bus boycott seem very clear that Rosa Parks decided on her own to break the law. Nowhere do they suggest that Parks was specifically selected to engage in her act of civil disobedience:
“In 1955, Parks completed a course in "Race Relations" at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, where nonviolent civil disobedience had been discussed as a tactic. On December 1, 1955, Parks was sitting in the foremost row in which black people could sit (in the middle section). When a white man boarded the bus, the bus driver told everyone in her row to move back. At that moment, Parks realized that she was again on a bus driven by Blake. While all of the other black people in her row complied, Parks refused, and she was arrested for failing to obey the driver's seat assignments, as city ordinances did not explicitly mandate segregation but did give the bus driver authority to assign seats.”
“During a 1956 radio interview with Sydney Rogers in West Oakland several months after her arrest, Parks said she had decided, "I would have to know for once and for all what rights I had as a human being and a citizen."
In her autobiography, My Story, she said:
People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in. When Parks refused to give up her seat, a police officer arrested her. As the officer took her away, she recalled that she asked, "Why do you push us around?" She remembered him saying, "I don't know, but the law's the law, and you're under arrest." She later said, "I only knew that, as I was being arrested, that it was the very last time that I would ever ride in humiliation of this kind. ... "”
Although I haven’t spent much time looking, a few minutes on Google didn’t turn up any evidence confirming either of your claims.
Why do you think they are true?
As for Parks, it's a recollection from some reading long ago. I can't cite it as it's been at least twenty years, but it's not out of the nature of the civil rights movement to have picked people who had unassailable character for test cases. Wikipedia is a valuable resource, but it's also not the place you go for a full story.
From https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/rosa-parks
> Mrs. Parks was not the first person to be prosecuted for violating the segregation laws on the city buses in Montgomery. She was, however, a woman of unchallenged character who was held in high esteem by all those who knew her. At the time of her arrest, Mrs. Parks was active in the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), serving as secretary to E.D. Nixon, president of the Montgomery chapter.
... which to me certainly suggests that she was not random.
As does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Gray_(attorney)
> Shortly after the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in December 1955, many black community leaders were discussing whether they would file a federal lawsuit to try to challenge the City of Montgomery and Alabama about the bus segregation laws.
> About two months after the bus boycott began, civil rights activists reconsidered the case of Claudette Colvin. She was a 15-year-old who had been the first person arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, nine months prior to Rosa Parks's actions. Fred Gray, E. D. Nixon, president of the NAACP and secretary of the new Montgomery Improvement Association: and Clifford Durr (a white lawyer who, with his wife, Virginia Foster Durr was an activist in the Civil Rights Movement) searched for the ideal case law to challenge the constitutional legitimacy of the Montgomery and Alabama bus segregation laws.
> Gray later did research for the lawsuit and consulted with NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorneys Robert L. Carter and Thurgood Marshall (who would late become United States Solicitor General and the first African-American United States Supreme Court Justice). Gray later approached Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith (activist), and Jeanetta Reese, all women who had been discriminated against by the drivers enforcing segregation policy in the Montgomery bus system. They all agreed to become plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit (except Jeanetta Reese due to intimidation by the members of the white community), thus bypassing the Alabama court system.
Heck, even the Wiki article on Parks notes that she worked for a pro-civil-rights white couple where the husband was a lawyer, that they had sponsored her in going to training on activism, and that that lawyer and the president of the local NAACP were the ones who bailed her out of jail on the night of her arrest.
I read the entire Plessy entry. Nowhere does it say that he was “sponsored by the railroad” or anything like that.
The closest thing I could find is the following statement:
“The railroad company, which had opposed the law on the grounds that it would require the purchase of more railcars, had been previously informed of Plessy's racial lineage, and the intent to challenge the law.”
I agree with you that Plessy was handpicked, but you also wrote that Plessy “was sponsored by the railroad.” That is what I responded to, and I still don't see any evidence that it’s true. On the contrary, it seems clear that Plessy was selected and sponsored by a group that had no affiliation with the railroad company.
What evidence do you have that the Comité des Citoyens — which recruited Plessy, orchestrated his arrest, and organized the litigation in Plessy v. Ferguson — was connected to the railroad?
Rosa Parks
None of the things you quoted are evidence that Rosa Parks was selected in advance, by anyone other than herself, to engage in her famous act of civil disobedience. Parks’ own statements after the event indicate that she self-selected.
The fact that Parks was very involved in the NAACP is not evidence that the organization recruited her to engage in civil disobedience. Most of what you quoted is in relation to litigation that happened after Rosa Parks’ civil disobedience.
You also wrote that “Various civil rights organizations had guaranteed her family that they would replace any income lost.” What evidence do you have that Parks received such a guarantee prior to her act of civil disobedience?
I don't have enough time to play Wikipedia editor games about attribution. Believe me or don't.
> They arent insane, just very incorrectly educated.
Well, they can be both. The test of insanity is to see what happens as they are faced with the usual adversity that comes with these beliefs. Are they capable of learning or keep doing something that every sane person recognizes will certainly lead to ruin (or at least failure)?
The problem is that our system as currently set up does not incentivize reporters working a "beat" for years where they develop enough domain expertise on a field to report on it competently. If we had actual senior legal reporters, senior national security reporters, senior tech reporters, and so on, they would have enough knowledge of those fields to effectively write for laypeople.
How does this apply to Techdirt? Tim Cushing has been a staff writer at techdirt for 12 years and works heavily on a legal, civil liberties/policy beat with a tech perspective. By your criteria, he should be a perfect example of journalists who have enough knowledge to effectively write for laypeople.
None of those facts means that it’s easy, or even possible to write a headline-length blurb can give laypeople the context they need to know what’s happening.
Maybe I’m wrong? Can you propose one that does?
I think that's a bit better
"merely repairing" seems misleading given what this allows for.
In fact, maybe they "repaired" it by installing an older, hackable firmware.
I guess an equivalent scenario, and I don't know how this would land in court, would be picking the front door of a house, but not entering. It facilitates the search, bit isn't one? Wherever that falls under the law, this should probably be consistent with it.
Even if that's the case, I think that the repair shouldn't have been performed by a detective (a government official whose stereotypical role is searching, not fixing) in a forensic lab.
> Detective Sheldon Clay, an HSI Task Force Officer at that laboratory was able to repair the iPhone 6 by replacing its circuit board and re-flashing the device's firmware. Mot., ECF 106, EX. D at 2. At that time, Detective Clay also determined that new forensic software was likely able to bypass the iPad's passcode.
[1] https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25423841/no-disassemb...
In all my experience I’ve seen 2 pro se defendants pull the “I’m a sovereign” spiel. Credit to them they both turned what should have been a 5 minute hearing into at least 15 minute circuses refusing to even announce their names for the record. Both were threatened with being held in contempt before the Judges passed on their cases and made them wait to hear the other matters on the docket.
Truly fascinating & unusual events and people, I think if you draw a vin diagram mental illness and Dunning-Kruger Effect these folks would be the overlap.
By 'the only part that wasn't covered', I think you meant "The only part that wasn't within a warrant period" (as opposed to not falling the scope of one of the warrants).
Assuming that, this is what I think you are considering.
Are the constitutional safeguards of these warrants reasonably satisfied here?
By declaring a repair
[a repair which occurred to enable and assist a search for incriminating evidence]
to not be a search (to not be an action that merits 4th amendment protections)
a court establishes that LEO are now free to forcefully perform certain evidence gathering actions on private devices without a warrant - as long as those actions can be construed as a 'repair'.Something like "Court Says Repairing Seized Phone isn't a Search" conveys the same meaning with fewer technical details, but is a little no duh. To me that is just as click bait-ish, because I would want to know who was dumb enough to try that as a defense, or wonder what the actual situation was.
> I brought both devices to the Newberg-Dundee Police Department Digital Forensics Lab and evaluated the iPhone 6 for function. I connected the device to power via the lightning connector and found it drew electrical current indicating it was attempting to charge the battery however the screen remained black. I attempted to power the device on with no change on the device screen. I located an identical model donor phone an A1549 and verified the donor device functioned properly. To eliminate the possibility of a hardware issue on the evidence device, I swapped the circuit board from the evidence device into the housing of the known good donor device. I attempted to boot the device however the screen remained black. I could tell the device was booting because it drew current when powered directly from a power supply however it was not booting normally. I was able to cycle the device between DFU mode and recovery modes but was unable to get to boot into a normal state and there was no change on the devices screen. Because the device would not boot normally or light the display, I believed there was likely and issue with the device firmware. I used a repair tool to re-flash the devices firmware. After the re-flashing repair process the device booted normally to the screen requesting the passcode. The board swap and firmware re-flashing processes do not change the user data on the device. During the board swap process, I only reassembled the device to a condition sufficient to make the device function.
> After receiving the copy of the search warrant, I connected the iPhone 6 to an advanced forensic extraction tool (Graykey). I used the passcode 070106 obtained from the previous extraction of the iPhone XS to unlock the device and obtained a Full File System extraction from the iPhone 6.
These sentences you wrote are just as misleading, if not more so. The "repair guy" was a government detective who performed the repair by re-flashing firmware at a forensic laboratory during a period when no search warrant was active [1]:
> Detective Sheldon Clay, an HSI Task Force Officer at that laboratory was able to repair the iPhone 6 by replacing its circuit board and re-flashing the device's firmware. Mot., ECF 106, EX. D at 2. At that time, Detective Clay also determined that new forensic software was likely able to bypass the iPad's passcode.
The headline of TFA claims that the reflashing of firmware was for the purpose of facilitating a search.
[1] https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25423841/no-disassemb...
Just physical access not mentioning firmware update means your device is compromised.
It sets a bad precedent.
It is not like people have too many rights as it is.
I'm more comfortable concluding that it's an illegal search than I am concluding that it's not a search at all. During the period that the warrant(s) didn't apply, it should have been sitting in a sealed evidence bag and not being modified by a 3rd party. The law doesn't and shouldn't make provisions for "eh, it's probably not a big deal, we'll probably get another warrant".
pursuant: in accordance with (a law or a legal document or resolution). "conversations that they wiretap pursuant to court order"
I probably see the word once a year at most, and kinda vaguely understood it from context, but I wanted to look it up.
What you have to watch out for is the legal two-step, where they do something like "install a firmware on the phone", which isn't a search, and then, oh gosh, the firmware just happened to sit there and flash all the contents of the phone on the screen because that's what the firmware does, we didn't actually search the phone, it just voluntarily dumped all its contents to the screen, so that wasn't a search either, so no search occurred.
How often do the police raid a place and confiscate filing cabinets but not look through them.
Usually instead of fixing what they have, they tend to destroy it.
How about installing firmware that will wipe the Secure Enclave on boot? Especially if the secondary step of turning on the device is done by the seizing authorities.
In the same way, shredding all your incriminating legal documents into a fun jigsaw puzzle for the cops to put together is also illegal.
Same with destroying documents. Having a retention period and destroying documents which have PII and could be used for identity fraud is a good practice. It's not generally illegal to do that either.
Where you get into trouble with the courts is when you have a specific obligation to retain or transfer information and you destroy it instead.
If a jury of your peers decides that you configured that firmware to protect your data from thieves, then it is not a problem.
But if a jury of your peers doesn't buy your assertion of that, and instead becomes convinced that you applied that (otherwise reasonable and legitimate) feature with the intent to destroy evidence of a crime so that it doesn't reach the court, then setting it up was a felony.
Basically, if you intentionally destroy evidence, either actively passively, you're liable.
It is kind of a broad law and is difficult to prosecute in many cases. The cops have to know that you did the crime and prove that the evidence existed. If you murdered someone and made it look like a suicide, the cops would have to not only suspect you but also know that you left fingerprints and DNA behind that are no longer present.
Call me cynical if you like. It won't bother me.
The government is here deliberately planning to take advantage of a seizure to damage someone's personal possessions. The right of that person to be secure in their possessions therefore should require a higher standard from the government than is required for mere temporary adverse possession after a seizure.
I fail to see how this doesn’t satisfy even a high standard of reasonableness.
Just because they had permission before and after their actions took place doesn't make it ok if they didn't have permission at the time of the action. To say otherwise seems to be begging for abuse of a loophole. I guess that's why they had to claim the action wasn't one a warrant was required for...
Same thing here. The government needs a warrant to seize the device or search for information on the device. Does it need a warrant to repair a broken device that it has properly seized, before then getting a warrant to search the device?
If you don't have a license, then get a friend to drive you. Or get an Uber. But you can't drive yourself. If you do, no matter how reasonable you feel your case was, you'll be in trouble.
In this case, they had an inoperable device, and they had a judge. Absolutely nothing stopped them from filing for yet another warrant and then proceeding only when they actually had it. But no. They wanted to skip their paperwork. They shouldn't get to.
The paperwork exists for a reason. That reason is why we shouldn't retroactively hand out warrants. And that's why we shouldn't do it here. The fruit of the tree and all that. The government knows how to do it right, and absolutely shouldn't. They don't get to beg a friendly judge for forgiveness later. They had no excuse for not simply doing it completely right.
I do have a problem with this, but only because of the time. The cops shouldn't get to take ages to examine stuff unless there's a huge amount of stuff to examine.
No, attempting to create a damaged version should not count as repair. Nor should we be lightly OKing the government's desire to do so.
There is a law against searching a device without a valid warrant.
The judge ruled that repairing a device seized as evidence is not a search.
I'm failing to see what the government did, that was against any law or policy.
Logically, yes. If you borrow someone's car to drive it, you don't have permission to change out the stereo.
52 devices could mean a phone, a tablet, and 50 USBs, SD cards, and such.
The problem with loading firmware to permit is the potential damage to the evidence and the potential to imply that the evidence was planted.
The vast majority of the cell phone hacking involves loading material into at least into memory and often modify the boot load sequence. This is how all that I worked with (e.g., Cellebrite, Magnet, MSAB, Oxygen, AccessData) function.
damage: I have toasted devices by hooking them up to forensic tools, mobile phones and more.
planted evidence: There have been several challenges to this (I think US v. Ganias), and let's not forget the Casey Anthony trial where they argued that the forensic tool CacheBack reliability. Not surprisingly, F/LOSS tools are better defense for this than black-box commercial ones.
The more complex the evidence collection, the more likely damage can occur, or planted evidence can be argued.
There will be some Official Ruling that you can't do this (probably antiquated 20th century) thing because that constitutes an Unlawful Search or whatever. Thank you to the Constitution for protecting our freedoms, etc.
Meanwhile, there will be a much more powerful way to achieve that goal using a smartphone, which is 100x more subtle and effective, which will be legal because technically it doesn't cross the big red line. There will be some arcane logic here that only a lawyer could love, but it will amount to 20th century technique = banned, 21st century cellphone technique = fine. So everyone will do that.
It'll just get more pronounced over time.
https://www.denverpost.com/2020/03/11/colorado-swat-house-de...
And at least that event had some condemnation in the media, as opposed to the routine destruction of digital personal lives escaping criticism even on techdirt.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_Unit...
Government has also demolished people's actual homes in the course of "crime fighting" and then refused to pay/fix them as well (that notorious case in Colorado comes to mind). But surely you can see there is still a distinction between things that happen infrequently, often with limited scope, or still at least with some semblance of a legal process, and what happens routinely to people accused of "digital crimes".
It should go without saying that I think all of these dynamics are terrible, and in dire need of reform. But at least civil forfeiture and "qualified" (née sovereign) immunity are getting talked about, while the totalitarian approach to personal digital infrastructure isn't getting so much attention.
> Federal Court Says Dismantling A Phone To Install Firmware Isn’t A 'Search,' Even If Was Done To Facilitate A Search
I like that this is in the 9th circuit so I think the defendant and this country’s subjects will get a favorable ruling
people ask me how much I want to make: enough to take any cases through federal appeals court
Distinguishable because it’s not a search. Can you draw a rule from this?
And that those other cases should have been challenged too, if they weren’t
I’ve seen too many things that were either difficult to challenge or only affected people too poor to challenge, to just accept a common practice because its common. I will accept prior case law from federal appeals courts though
I feel like there should be a limitation on government power here either way as they changed the circuitry and firmware. they should at least give more information about the firmware, for mounting a defense we should have information about the firmware itself
can we please encrypt everything and turn off government access for all communications now
https://www.wimmercriminaldefense.com/is-it-considered-theft...
Dismantling a safe to facilitate a search, isn't a search. So it's allowed, even if the safe is left damaged.
Tearing a house apart to facilitate a search, isn't a search. So it's allowed, even if the house is left damaged.
Disassembling a car to facilitate a search, isn't a search. So it's allowed, even if the car never runs the same later.
Meanwhile you'll find me in the corner that reads the 4th Amendment as follows:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
I think that if the result of a seizure is the potential permanent damage of my property, then my right to be secure in my possessions should be defended by demanding a higher standard from the government than that required for a mere temporary possession after a seizure. That principle applies just as much to electronics as it does to any physical item.
If they have a search warrant then a judge has, from a legal perspective, determined that the request/search is reasonable. So while you have the right to secure against unreasonable cases I think it is a reasonable trade off that those security mechanisms/processes/etc should either be removed by yourself or you should expect them to be removed for you.
[1] https://reason.com/2024/04/19/appeals-court-rules-that-cops-...
If you're asked to directly interact with anything like that you're very likely being set up to bring additional charges against you. You can be compelled to provide passwords, combinations, etc. in a court. You can't be compelled to actually enter the safe combination