The secret government requests for customer information Yahoo made public Wednesday reveal that the FBI is still demanding email records from companies without a warrant, despite being told by Justice Department lawyers in 2008 that it doesn’t have the lawful authority to do so.
That comes as a particular surprise given that FBI Director James Comey has said that one of his top legislative priorities this year is to get the right to acquire precisely such records with those warrantless secret requests, called national security letters, or NSLs. “We need it very much,” Comey told Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., during a congressional hearing in February.
At issue is whether the national security letters empower the FBI to demand what are called “electronic communication transactions records,” or ECTRs. Such records can include email header information – not their content – and browsing histories.
In 2008, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded that the FBI was only entitled to get the name, address, length of service, and toll billing records from companies without a warrant. Opinions issued by the OLC are generally treated as binding and final within the executive branch.
The FBI has said it disagrees with that conclusion, and interprets the opinion differently, according to a 2014 inspector general report. It sees the question as more of an “impasse” than an actual legal barrier.
But activists, members of Congress, and academics think the DOJ opinion was pretty clear.
“The Justice Department told FBI officials that if they want to demand Americans’ email records, they need a court order,” Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in a statement emailed to The Intercept. “It is very troubling that the FBI has apparently not been adhering to that guidance.”
“It seems that the FBI has again crossed the line when it comes to ECTRs, even after being explicitly told — under the Bush administration, no less — that they were not legally authorized to demand these personal records absent a court order,” Robyn Greene, policy counsel for the Open Technology Institute, wrote in a message to The Intercept. “The last thing Congress should be doing right now is giving the FBI more leeway to abuse its NSL authorities.”
The FBI declined to comment. But one of the letters Yahoo released — after being released from a gag order — started as follows:
Under the authority of Executive order 12333, dated July 30, 2008, and pursuant to Title 18 of the United States Code (U.S.C.), 2709 (201 of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986) (as amended), you are hereby directed to provide to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) the names, addresses, and length of service and electronic communications transactional records, to include existing transaction/activity logs and all electronic mail (e-mail) header information, for the below-listed email/IP address holder(s).
Major service providers know the FBI doesn’t have the authority to make all those demands. In fact, Yahoo did not turn over the electronic communication transactions records, including “activity logs and all e-mail header information.” “We disclosed [the records] as authorized by law,” wrote Chris Madsen, head of Yahoo’s global law enforcement, security, and safety team, in a blog post.
Chris Soghoian, chief technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union, said FBI agents might be hoping at least some recipients don’t know they lack the authority they claim to have.
“Essentially, the FBI believes they can ask for the sun, the moon and the stars in an NSL, while knowing that tech companies don’t have to turn over anything more than name, address and length of service,” he wrote in an email.
“The FBI asks for so much, because it is banking that some companies won’t know the law and will disclose more than they have to. … The FBI is preying on small companies who don’t have the resources to hire national security law experts,” he argued.
Facebook officials drafted and made public their law enforcement guidelines in 2012, in the hopes of clarifying what they believed technology companies are required to turn over. “We interpret the national security letter provision as applied to Facebook to require the production of only two categories of information: name and length of service,” read the guidelines.
Technology companies rarely talk about NSLs because of the accompanying gag orders. But one technology company official told The Intercept on background that “it is our general understanding that other companies also comply narrowly (in line with the DOJ OLC Opinion).”
The FBI issued nearly 13,000 national security letters in 2015 alone, for information about almost 50,000 different people. They go to internet, technology, social media, and communications companies of all sizes, as well as banks.
Only now are some of the gags being lifted, nearly two and a half years after President Obama announced that he was ordering the Justice Department to terminate gag orders “within a fixed time unless the government demonstrates a real need for further secrecy.”
The debate over how much power an NSL grants started 10 years ago, when two unidentified technology companies refused to provide information beyond the most basic subscriber data. (In NSLs of that era and before, that have since been disclosed, the FBI’s demands sometimes included web browsing records as well as email metadata.)
The companies argued that the law cited in the NSLs didn’t obligate them to turn over anything more – and President George W. Bush’s Department of Justice agreed.
The FBI has repeatedly asked Congress to give it the explicit power to get email and browsing data through NSLs, with no success. Right now, there are provisions in two separate bills that would do so.
Privacy advocates have fought tooth and nail against such a move, considering it a huge expansion of the FBI’s warrantless surveillance capabilities.
Comey described the change during a congressional hearing in February. “It’s necessary because what I believe is a typo in the 1993 statue that has led to some companies interpreting it in a way I don’t believe Congress ever intended,” he said. “So it’s ordinary, but it affects our work in a very, very big and practical way.”
Privacy advocates say that’s disingenuous—and they are even more infuriated that the FBI is apparently asking for that information anyway.
“This should send up a huge red flag for Congress about the real potential for abuse,” OTI’s Robyn Greene concluded.
“i want it all”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFDcoX7s6rE
the F…B…I…. is the enforcement arm of the federal reserve – a private corporation run by and for the zions who paid off the US congress in 1913 to own the US economy.
ps – it’s actually a “growth” ponzi scheme that will destroy America in 2 more generations unless wallstreet thieves are put into prison for a very long time and the US takes possession and ownership of the US currency and grounds it to gold or silver for relational stability.
Zions, owners of the US economy, are prepared to shoot and kill protesters.
what are you folks afraid of? personally I haven’t done anything to be afraid of.
the conflict between the justice dept. and the FBI is to protect their darling presidential candidate Hillary.
I haven’t done anything to be afraid of lies and the lying liars that lie…
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2852366-Leopold-FOIA-NSA-Emails-About-Snowden-Concerns.html
Oh please. Even Martin Luther King Jr. was targeted by the FBI. If you haven’t been targeted by the FBI and are an American citizen, then you need to get more involved in politics.
Please cut me a break…
A bigger story is the stealing of info from smaller corporations/individuals and feeding that info to ‘special interests’ that favor a certain group of Senators and/or Congressman. Follow the money folks.
Comey’s most ludicrous spin yet.
“See, I believe there’s a typo, so….”
In my opinion, Comey should step down; or be forced to. What he’s failing to understand is that even if we banned encryption, even if we allowed them to do whatever they wanted with or without warrants and let them dictate over corporate america, it still wouldn’t address the “going dark” problem. He is like a seven year old who pubically cries to get what he wants (recipe to crack Iphone) and when he finally gets it (paid 3rd party to do it) he gloats and shares the rewards with other agencies.
He lacks innovative and technical depth. Period.
This is a serious problem (going dark) – a very serious problem that cannot be addressed by employing the same schtick tactics as he’s so comfortably used to.
In my opinion, Comey should have his head on a pike. All he wants is to steal more from taxpayers and obtain more unwarranted power to suppress free speech.
I notice from some of the comments below that many are apparently convinced that we are dealing with a rogue agency here, one that does not take direction from above. Kindly consider the possibility that they are in fact acting completely in accordance with such direction, that it is not so much FBI director Comey but rather his boss, President Obama, who is responsible for this. In a way, it makes little difference because Obama as commander in chief *is* responsible, whether he ordered it or not.
As evidence of Obama’s position, kindly consider his speech to the US Air Force Academy graduation ceremonies of this past week, in which he bragged about the extrajudicial murder of suspected terrorists and enemies. Not a word in it about the rule of law.
Obama is notorious for playing the public with his okey-dokey.
He publicly proclaimed that he wouldn’t support any health care proposal that didn’t include a public option, when in fact one was never on the table. In 2007 candidate Obama railed against telecom immunity, insisting he, Senator Obama would boldly lead the filibuster against it, and subsequently showed up to vote in favor of it. He campaigned on reforming NAFTA as his campaign team covertly advised the Canadian authorities to disregard the happy talk.
That he is being his duplicitous self in the matter is the most logical explanation, not the black helicopter/rogue agency nonsense.
Comey’s a typical GOP leader, he’s a complete head case, and being the top guy at the FBI has made him even more paranoid than he was before he was appointed, which is saying a lot.
Fuck Obama for not putting an end to this. Comey and Clapper should be in prison.
So should Cheney, Alexander, Hayden, many people in GCHQ, and many people at NSA — and many government-contracted companies utilized by either/both to perform things they want to keep off their books (not only black projects).
And Obama.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the moral enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” – Joseph Goebbels
Fascinating quote. Would you please direct me toward its source?
The F.B.I. has entered into a conspiracy to overthrow the Constitution of the United States
National Security Letters – – and the illegal use of the device known as STINGRAYS – for which police departments must sign a agreement to keep it confidential FROM THE COURTS – and the F.B.I. will tell you how the recreate the evidence so it show it was obtained using a STINGRAY….
FOURTH AMMENDMENT – illegal search…
Which is to say nothing of the FBI’s access to illegal dragnet wiretap data through access to NSA databases. Stingrays might as well be a limited hangout.
Y U P …. F.B.I. – N.S.A. – C.I.A. …….hand in hand to obscure the truth….
They probably got bored with simple parallel construction when they realized they could do massively parallel construction, with ever-increasing layers of secrecy vis a vis ‘not wanting to disclose’. Kinda like a Tootsie Pop.
We are seeing before our eyes, a total shift to a police state and unfettered surveillance access with no pretext of privacy. People now are asked to “inform” on their neighbors after relentless propaganda of immanent attacks by “terrorists”. We the people have lost our country by the tyrannical rulers warned about by the founders of the American experiment. Well the experiment is failing by the exact thing warned about by our founders. In a world of rapidly diminishing resources and economic stagnation, by a failed model based on endless expansion, a war or a collapse is looming on the near horizon. To predict the future is a pointless exercise in depressing speculation. However the pieces are falling in place exacerbated by the ever growing presence of policies as, e.g. the FBI and DOJ in general, toward a clamping down of the populace. I see no difference in the current crop of politicians to indicate that we won’t keep getting more of the same policies already in place. Sorry.
Here we see President Obama’s handling of illegal govt surveilance in a nutshell. Let it continue or expand it and then classify the illegal surveillance processes as legal – problem solved!
Why Comey wasn’t fired long ago after presiding over this stuff points to the level of corruption endemic to the current administration. Do ISP’s have to keep a log of your web activity? (sounds like something we would have looked down upon in the former East Germany)
If Comey really wants to fix a word somewhere that affects FBI “work in a very, very big and practical way,” perhaps he could remove “integrity” from their motto. That way, his agents might feel a lot less guilty having to both ignore the crimes of the elite while still using their corrupt informant system to set up and entrap more “terrorist” propaganda patsies. Win-win.
Wouldn’t it be great if the FBI would simply do its job? Well, maybe it is just doing its job. It seems in many ways that it’s become merely an investigative tool for the 1%, assisting the overseers in their lording over the 99% loser contingent. At this, the agency is most adept. At virtually anything else, not so much.
Among the many serious problems with America, the FBI and DOD being totally out of control – IOW, rogue – qualifies as the most dangerous to a democracy. But, America is plutocracy and authoritarianism is the plutocrat’s tool to prevent dissent and maintain order.
The gag order is just more police state BS. I think anyone who gets one of these should publicize it as widely as possible. The FBI doesn’t protect us from terrorists, the ARE terrorists.
Fine report and thank you Jenna for keeping us informed.
What’s the latest news about Pluto? The news is so bad lately, I could use a diversion :-)
real good news
7 year old boy in japan lost in forest for a week, found alive and well.
upon being found, gave a big smiling V!
Meanwhile, several seven year olds died from American bombs in the middle East and several other seven year old refugees drowned trying to immigrate to Europe. Is this a bad time to say #JapaneseLivesMatter ?
@JDawg –
Oh my. Barabbas was trying to do a nice thing and give me a piece of good news. Does the nationality of the boy matter? I think not. I’m just glad he’s ok! Could you not see that he had a GOOD motive for his reply?
Yes, it is so sad that we humans are still bombing each other (too often us Americans) and my heart aches as do that of others for the plight of refugees. Just sometimes one needs to see just a glimmer of some good news —- sometimes one just needs that. That’s what Barabbas was trying to help me with and I think you overreacted quite a bit.
@Barabbas –
Thank you. That is very good news. I really love such stories of miracles or near miracles :-)
Does not the head of the FBI answer to the head of the Justice Dept., ie the Attorney General?! If I were the Attorney General I would be walking around with the head of the FBI’s ‘head’ on a pike and asking the question: Who’s Next?
even she is too cowardly to prosecute police who murder.
even she is too cowardly to prosecute the bankster thieves that destroy countries.
even she is too cowardly to prosecute the war criminals bush and cheney.
a government of cowardly overpaid freaks wanting a lot of money and secure employment at the expense of everyone.
Loretta Lynch is the Attorney General. She collaborated with James Comey (FBI Director) to eliminate the possiblity of HSBC executives facing criminal prosecution for their role in laundering over $2 billion (at least) in Sinaloa drug cartel money, as well as hiding $120 billion in corporate profits in a Swiss branch-based tax avoidance shelter:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/will-hsbc-deal-come-back-to-haunt-loretta-lynch-20150209
“In fact, the harshest penalty any individual at HSBC had to suffer in that case was the partial deferral of some bonuses.”
This might come as shock to those who bought into Obama’s “Hope and Change” message of 2008, but these are the kind of people he appointed. There’s no doubt that in an honest system, Lynch & Comey would both be removed from office for corruption and collaboration with crooked banking executives.
Oh, but she’s going after Guzman, the head of the Sinaloa cartel, sure to be a big media show trial, so that makes it all OK. . . and she gets to keep her job as long as she doesn’t interefere with Wall Street laundering money for the global heroin cartels. Apparatchik, defined.
The operative question here is, Who’s in charge? There is ample evidence, if you consider not only Ms. Lynch but also her predecessor, Mr. Holder, that since day one of the Obama administration the job of the Justice [sic] department has been to protect certain criminals and certain forms of criminal activity. With all their investigators, agents, forensic accountants, and access to massive data bases they were unable to bring a single indictment for the massive fraud Wall Street committed.
And the answer to the question is, Barack Obama. Two different Attorneys General, two different FBI directors, the same behavior. Duh, it’s their boss.
Why the fuck should anyone value the legal opinions of the DOJ’s OLC? This is the same branch that conjured up legal interpretations of 18th century law to secretly justify targeted killings of American citizens abroad.
… American citizens abroad, and in neighborhoods near you…
“Why the fuck should anyone value the legal opinions of the DOJ’s OLC?”
Well, don’t you think that there’s a pretty good argument that branches and agencies of the DOJ, itself, should generally be expected to comply with them? ;^)
The FBI is a crooked tool of Wall Street interests; their refusal to investigate the bank and hedge fund executives who played such a central role in the 2008 economic collapse brought on by their fraudulent subprime mortgage dealings should be proof enough of that; but with Comey in charge it will only get more corrupt, not less.
Consider this recent story as an example of FBI priorities – here, a security researcher finds that a big medical corporation has sloppily exposed patent data to anyone on the Internet due to bad software, and reports it to DataBreaches.net – what is the FBI response? You’d think they might dun the corporation responsible for sloppy handling of patient data – but no, quite the opposite:
http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/05/armed-fbi-agents-raid-home-of-researcher-who-found-unsecured-patent-data/
“FBI agents, one armed with an assault weapon, reportedly raided the home of a security professional who discovered sensitive data for 22,000 dental patients was available on the Internet . . . The FBI agent [who barged in with gun drawn] reportedly told Shafer that Patterson Dental, a parent company of Eaglesoft, was claiming Shafer had exceeded authorized access when viewing the publicly available data.”
That’s a good example of how the FBI acts more often than not to protect corporate criminality from public exposure – right in line with Obama’s war on whistleblowers in the federal government. There are many similar cases – such as going after ‘eco-terrorists’ who expose criminality in the fossil energy sector and agribusiness sectors – what kind of farce are they running these days?
Comey’s employment record since his last government stint which ended c. 2006 is right in line with this – first he goes to Lockheed Martin, which was involved in massive arms deals with Saudi Arabia – part of that $60 billion in sales overseen by Obama and Clinton (for which the Clinton Foundation was given a $10 million kickback); then when HSBC gets busted for laundering $2 billion in Sinaloa drug cartel money, and Obama’s AG Loretta Lynch gives them a ‘deferred prosecution agreement’ he moves over to ‘assist HSBC with due diligence’ – nothing but a coverup – and from there, Obama picks him as FBI Director.
And he performs as you might expect – when the San Bernadino shooting occurs, he and his team use it as an opportunity to expand domestic mass surveillance – although I guess the tech sector isn’t on the FBI’s preferred client list anymore – while ruling out any investigation of Saudi support for terrorism, despite the two shooters having close ties to Saudi Arabia. Can’t upset the Saudi-Lockheed arms deals, can he? What an absolute crooked corrupt sleazebag, and you can bet all his advisors and lackeys are of the same stripe – just waiting to get out of government and get that highly-paid corporate board position.
When a global empire becomes this corrupt, this rotten from the head down, you know it’s staggering around on its last legs.
You wish. But plenty of empires incorporated corruption into their political systems—in fact, imperial systems are corrupt by definition. The question is how long a supposed republic, without an established aristocracy, church, or monarch, can keep up the pretense. Every modern government has its secret police. The FBI took over the mob underworld carried out at least two of the four major assassinations of the 1960s. They have been doing this all along, there’s just less blood needed.
Well, a corrupt system has lots of inherent weaknesses in it.
The example I like to think about is based on logging in the 19th century in the western USA – they’d float the logs down a river to the sawmill, but this would occasionally create epic jams. So they had these experts, guys who would run out over the log jam, find the one ‘key log’, attach a cable to it, yank it out with a winch, and set the whole log jam free.
We just need to find those key logs and yank them out, and the whole corrupt structure will fall apart. And since the system is so riddled with corruption, it’s got lots of such key logs – ripe for virus, backdoors everywhere put in by corrupt officials and executives for their own personal benefit. Which of course is why Chinese? hackers were able to get into the government’s OPI and get all the personal data on government employees, as Douglas Rushkoff (my favorite meme warrior) explains:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/05/opinions/rushkoff-government-hack/
“what kind of farce are they running these days?”
It made me think of Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451″ where the children, say they heard that long ago firemen used to put out fires. I read that book 40 or more years ago so I might have some details wrong but I think the idea is right. OTOH, I also read Cook’s “The FBI Nobody Knows” evven before Bradbury and one could argue that the FBI are and were no firemen.
Dear James Comey. Your great grandchildren will spit on your grave..as they should. Let’s just hope THEIR grandchildren have the courage to rise up, armed to the teeth, to surround WDC and drag those cockroaches of tyranny like you, out of their granite palaces and burn them alive in the street. And THEN.. FORM A MORE PERFECT UNION.
Or let’s hope they elect leaders who aren’t sacks of shit. No need for such cruelty. We have free elections. Let’s fucking use them.
As long as corporations have corporate personhood rights that permit them to legislate what they want due to their being also able to buy politicians, judges and the media through corrupt campaign financing laws, they will always have and need their bullies to protect their interests, property and power
Well, yeah, but . . . in this case, the corporations concerned are at odds with the Fibbies, not in cahoots with them, because it is not in their interest to be seen as sharing customer info too readily. And, as the story explains, they are resisting.
Yes, Doug “it is not in their interest to be seen as sharing customer info too readily” and for obvious reasons they will lose customers to entities outside of the FBI’s jurisdiction. We knew the corporations were not fighting it out due to the goodness of their hearts.
It all seems like a poker play to set us up again. Remember during the Bush years when it all came out about all the information the administration was getting out of the communication industry. When the Bush administration and the communications industry should have been held responsible for what they did laws were actually grandfathered to protect them. And it was campaign donations to democrats and republicans that enabled the bill to be pushed through. The final thank you was the communications Industry sponsoring the Democratic National Convention
“It all seems like a poker play to set us up again.”
More and more, I get the sense that they aren’t bothering much with poker. They have sufficient control that they resort more readily to brute force every day.
At least at the national level, it’s difficult to see resistance as other than futile.
But yet we write
Yeah, we write. Some of us appear to be hardwired for resistance, futile or not.
and then there is that other piece regarding building 7. Imploding a building without a permit. Sure, not a crime, sure.
Oh, gawd.
From STRUCTURE Magazine, “the premier resource for practicing structural engineers.”
Single Point of Failure
Doug,
what if i know something you dont?
do you think i would spend effort pointing to a situation that has been played so often that everyone’s mind is made up and i want to convince people to take another look at what they have already seen?
i would not waste your time in that fashion.
thank you kindly for your feedback.
” what if i know something you dont?”
I’m sure you know many things I don’t, but one of the things I know without doubt is that 9/11 conspiracy theories about, for instance, controlled demolition, are utter nonsense. I know this because of literally hundreds of hours and thousands of pages of research into the work of the most qualified investigators who have done the most thorough, peer-reviewed investigations.
I have done this research because I have spent years listening to truther silliness and bad (often ridiculous) pseudoscience and I wanted to make sure my sense that it is all bogus is supported by the best evidence. It is.
There are lots of conspiracy theories out there that are worthy of serious consideration. With the revelations of recent years and our knowledge of history, we shouldn’t reject almost any without examination. And serious examination finds the WTC “controlled demolition” theories simply outlandish.
I have found, however, that truthers can’t be swayed by real evidence. They are so convinced in their beliefs that they have, effectively, become religious in nature. Challenges simply strengthen and confirm the fantasies.
So, when I rudely dismiss “trutherishness” with a sneer and, usually, a link to real research or professional opinion, I know I’m not going to change any truther minds. I just want other readers to know how idiotic I believe the pseudo-arguments are and to give them starting places to evaluate them, if they haven’t yet done so or are uncertain about the facts of the matter.
You can still correctly say the USG is at fault for the 9/11 attacks, though. First through their foreign policy, second through their neglect of intelligence they had access to, and third through their failure to intercept the aircraft.
Thanks for that, Doug.
It’s complete bullshit. They didn’t even get the time of the collapse right.
quote“This should send up a huge red flag for Congress about the real potential for abuse,” OTI’s Robyn Greene concluded.”unquote
Hahahahahahahah…hahahahaha..hohohohohohoh…hooohohohohoho..hahahahahahaha… hahaha… hahahah…
A red flag. For those fucking morons in Congress. right.
hahahahahaha… hahaha… hahahah…
Jenna… get a fucking grip. Those shithead dumbasses in CONGRESS ARE OWENED. COMPRENDE? Hahahahaha… sheezusHfucking christ… when are you people going to fucking get it?
A red flag. hahahahahaha… hahaha… hahahah…haha…hah ha ha fuk.
jenna knows what she is doing.
she does her part, we fill in the blanks.
just like a marriage ;)
The FBI …IS… a ..threat to the citizens of the USA. Take it as you want. They are no different than the Nazi party in 1939.
Correction… I made a mistake. There IS a difference. The FBI doesn’t wear a Swastica on their uniforms.
yayhoo and ah-beta-color went zionly some years back – say 2009. Then donald t calls out the reporter and derides him and the reporter challenges him and dt hits back hard, it will always be that way – and wallstreet zions realise they cannot speak for dt because he (and bernie) speak for themselves and the zionistas who sold america the crash, the war, the home theft, the currency scheme, the fraud, the bad investments, suddenly fear their game is up before they can capture the planet in their crooked game of marbles.
meanwhile china is also preparing to face off against the zionistas and – only guessing here – wont be pretty and will make vietnam look like a party.
Yahoo has a global law enforcement team?
Every carrier and ISP has to have staff to deal with law enforcement: they are bombarded with requests, subpoenas, warrants, etc.
Big ones need “global” teams because they deal with multiple jurisdictions all over the planet.
It’s scary out there.
it’s a frikn war for words and power
the less than 1% running the rothchild currency scheme on populations is a daid end game.
they know it, you know it, the public needs to hear it to see it before they feel it.
hint… the public needs to hear it first. and hear it they will.
Really this whole thing sounds like a #psyops to make the #vulgar99percent appeased.
The FBI can demand whatever it wants, as long as it doesn’t make explicit threats for refusing to comply. For example, it would be OK to say, “You like being in business don’t you? Well, I’d suggest you turn over all your e-mail records”. But it would be crossing a line to say, “Turn over all your e-mail records, or we’ll put you out of business”.
People understand that their rights are only an illusion. A good government doesn’t rub their noses in it.
quote”People understand that their rights are only an illusion. ”
Says an idiot of biblical proportions. Ok, I’m feeling generous tonight so let me clue you in, fuckface. The USA is the DUMBEST COUNTRY ON THE PLANET. Cue Trump. COMPRENDE? Now, go eat a piece of American pie and climb back under the rock you slid out from.
A good government doesn’t rub their noses in it.
ps…correction “A good government doesn’t rub their noses in it.”
Good government. In what universe?
judging by the talent, education and passion on TI, my guess is that benito is a satirical writer for like Harpers, or a comedy writer for SNL and does roast monologues for WHCD.
Well! I guess the general told you, Duce.
Capisci?
The F…B…I… has decided to be the niche market for email that neither the NSA nor CIA can do because as everyone nose, the F…B…I… is always on the trail sniffing like rin tin tin. And what better place to sniff than recorded and ready for court documents.
.egnellahc llams a meht evig ot rebmemer tsuj
fyi – i think this whole thing is just a way for them to cut back on paperwork because i believe they could get warrants anyway.
So what was the outcome of the FBI (James Comey) fighting tooth and nail against Apple -trying to access the San Bernardino shooter’s IPhone? SQUAT!
Nothing was gleaned from the iPhone. Comey wanted all privacy and caution thrown to the wind in the scant, remote possibility that there would be a living suspect to go after. There wasn’t.
Now the fucking bully is hoping to scare smaller ISPs to squeal on their customers with power he (& big brother) don’t possess. How pathetic!
Comey must have known that there was almost no chance that perpetrators who had taken such care to erase their tracks on other devices would have left anything of value on that phone. Beating up Apple was just taking a chance to see how far the courts would let him go and how far Apple would go in resisting.
He and his orcs did get a pretty good win with the purchased crack for the phone, though (whether it is real or not). They have successfully caused Apple and millions of users additional worry about the security of their data and enhanced the Fibbies’ reputation as data bandits.
If you want to be the neighborhood’s unchallenged bully, you gotta keep ’em all scared.