• Tag Archives FBI

  • FBI’s massive porn sting puts internet privacy in crossfire

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    For two weeks in the spring of 2015, the FBI was one of the largest purveyors of child pornography on the internet.

    After arresting the North Carolina administrator of The Playpen, a “dark web”child-pornography internet bulletin board, agents seized the site’s server and moved it to an FBI warehouse in Virginia.

    They then initiated “Operation Pacifier,” a sting and computer-hacking operation of unparalleled scope that has thus far led to criminal charges against 186 people, including at least five in Washington state.

    The investigation has sparked a growing social and legal controversy over the FBI’s tactics and the impact on internet privacy. Some critics have compared the sting to the notorious Operation Fast and Furious, in which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed the illegal sales of thousands of guns to drug smugglers, who later used them in crimes.

    Defense attorneys and some legal scholars suggest the FBI committed more serious crimes than those they’ve arrested — distributing pornography, compared with viewing or receiving it.

    Moreover, the FBI’s refusal to discuss Operation Pacifier and reveal exactly how it was conducted — even in court — has threatened some of the resulting criminal prosecutions. Last month, a federal judge in Tacoma suppressed the evidence obtained against a Vancouver, Wash., school district employee indicted in July 2015 on a charge of receiving child pornography because the FBI refused to reveal how it was gathered.

    Similar motions are pending in other prosecutions in Washington and elsewhere around the country.

    During the two weeks the FBI operated The Playpen, the bureau says visitors to the site accessed, posted or traded at least 48,000 images, 200 videos and 13,000 links to child pornography. At the same time, agents deployed a secret “Network Investigative Technique,” or NIT, to invade their computers, gather their personal information and send it back to the FBI.

    According to court documents, between Feb. 20 and March 4, 2015, as many as 100,000 people logged onto the site, which was accessible only by using the anonymous “Tor” browser, which encrypts and routes internet traffic through thousands of other computers to hide the identity of a user.

    Tor, which is used for private communications by government officials, lawyers, journalists, judges and others, was thought to be virtually uncrackable until news of the FBI’s operation became public.

    Mozilla, the company that offers the Tor browser, asked the FBI to reveal its methods so it can be patched, warning in a court motion that, “absent great care, the security of millions of individuals using Mozilla’s Firefox internet browser could be put at risk” by its disclosure. The Tacoma judge denied the request.

    The FBI declined to be interviewed for this story.

    Full article: FBI’s massive porn sting puts internet privacy in crossfire | The Seattle Times


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  • Senate Still Considering Giving FBI More Power to Spy on Browser History

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Despite strong opposition in Congress and from the grassroots, the FBI is still pushing to expand its National Security Letter (NSL) authority. The proposed amendments would allow the FBI to serve companies with NSLs and obtain a wide range of Internet records, known as Electronic Communication Transactional Records (ECTRs), including browsing history.

    In addition to a well-documented history of NSL abuse over the last 15 years, the FBI routinely exceeded its authority, claiming for years that it had the power to demand ECTRs with an NSL. It took an intervention [.pdf] by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in 2008 to definitively establish that the law did not support those claims. Unfortunately, an amendment, sponsored by Senators John McCain and John Cornyn and vigorously promoted by FBI Director James Comey, would grant the FBI the power to access ECTRs, including information like a users’ browsing history as well as other online records.

    As Senators Ron Wyden and Martin Heinrich explained in Slate, this information reveals a lot about people; it’s “almost like spying on their thoughts.” Giving the FBI power to obtain these sensitive records with an NSL is especially dangerous, because NSLs operate without prior judicial approval and come with a gag order in nearly all cases. In other words, the FBI would be able to secretly demand this revealing information from Internet companies about their users and gag the companies from notifying policymakers, the press, or users themselves.

    Having lost a recent vote on the amendment as part of the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, the amendment’s sponsors are trying to simply bring it up for a vote again. (Similar proposals have also been attached to the 2017 Intelligence Authorization Act and the Email Privacy Act  [.pdf].) Obscuring the significance of these proposals—which would effectively overwrite parts of the Justice Department’s 2008 memo—the FBI Director has described it as a “typo fix.”

    Take a moment now to tell your Senators to vote against expanding NSL powers by opposing McCain amendment 4787. On Monday, July 11, as part of a day of action, Senators Wyden and Heinrich will host a Q&A on Twitter and Facebook to share their concerns. Join them to learn more and hear the latest updates on when the amendment might come up for a vote.

    Source: Senate Still Considering Giving FBI More Power to Spy on Browser History | Electronic Frontier Foundation


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  • FBI Must Not Sidestep Privacy Protections For Massive Collection of Biometric Data

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    San Francisco—The FBI, which has created a massive database of biometric information on millions of Americans never involved in a crime, mustn’t be allowed to shield this trove of personal information from Privacy Act rules that let people learn what data the government has on them and restrict how it can be used.

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed comments today with the FBI, on behalf of itself and six civil liberties groups, objecting to the agency’s request to exempt the Next Generation Identification (NGI) database from key provisions of federal privacy regulations that protect personal data from misuse and abuse. The FBI has amassed this database with little congressional and public oversight, failed for years to provide basic information about NGI as required by law, and dragged its feet to disclose—again, as required by law—a detailed description of the records and its policies for maintaining them. Now it wants to be exempt from even the most basic notice and data correction requirements.

    NGI includes prints and face recognition data from millions of everyday people who’ve committed no crime but have had their biometric data collected when they needed a background check for a job, applied for welfare benefits, registered for immigration, or obtained state licenses to be a teacher, realtor, or dentist. For example, NGI holds millions of photographs searchable through facial recognition and accessible by 20,000 foreign, federal, state, and municipal-level law enforcement agencies.

    The public’s understanding of the FBI’s collection of biometric information is only now coming to light because the agency has been less than forthcoming about its data gathering. In June, the Government Accountability Office published an exhaustive report revealing that the FBI has access to hundreds of millions more photos of Americans than we ever thought and has been hiding that from the public in violation of federal and agency laws for years. Previously, many believed that NGI just contained criminal case records such as fingerprints and mug shots collected during arrests.

    “The FBI has sidestepped the Privacy Act as it has expanded NGI, essentially saying ‘just trust us’ with highly personal and private data,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Jennifer Lynch. “But the FBI hasn’t proved itself to be worthy of the public’s trust. Exempting NGI from the Privacy Act will eliminate our rights to access our own records and take action against the government when it make mistakes with that data. The Privacy Act is only the barest of protection for Americans, but the FBI wants to escape from even that basic responsibility.”

    The FBI refuses to recognize accuracy is an issue with face recognition or to publish any data on NGI’s accuracy rates. However, research has shown that face recognition misidentifies African Americans, ethnic minorities, women, and young people at higher rates than whites and men. This means that potential errors within NGI will likely impact people of color more frequently, especially because FBI databases include a disproportionate number of African Americans, Latinos and immigrants, thanks to well-documented racial bias among law enforcement.

    This is why it’s particularly important that people be able to use the Privacy Act to learn about NGI—it ensures that people can access records the FBI has on them and allows them to take the FBI to court, if needed, to correct any inaccurate information.

    “Over 2,000 Americans have signed an EFF petition objecting to the FBI’s exemption proposal, including the vague, incomplete explanation of how the FBI is maintaining our private records,” said Lynch. “Our message to the FBI is that citizens deserve the right to know what information it has on them, and the bureau must beobligated to correct inaccurate data. Its attempt to skirt these rules must be rejected.”

    EFF was joined in its comments by American Civil Liberties Union,Advocacy for Principled Action in Government, Council on Arab-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Fight for the Future, National Immigration Law Center, and National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild.

    Source: FBI Must Not Sidestep Privacy Protections For Massive Collection of Biometric Data | Electronic Frontier Foundation


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