Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Search and Seizure, Electronic versus Non Electronic forms

   Recent articles and officially FBI having confirmed as of recently that a 'faked' web site were used in a phishing scam to gain access to teen suspect's computer, only adds to potential concern on the matter of search and seizure of data/information or what one could term as intellectual property on a privately owned machine.

   I think the biggest problems surrounding the use of viral mechanism to gain entry into a form of private residence is that likely one should imagine the structure of logic involved in the search of such property.  Here if one were to think of a given case, which actually related an issue concerning the warranted search of a home based upon a described 'reasonable' suspicion that because a known suspect's car were in proximity to a known possible address, this should necessarily entail reasonable cause for searching the property by law enforcement, or loose implicit assumptions being that  reasonably a suspect were likely in a home, however, neither owing to any additional evidence of being on such property.  As it turns it this weren't allegedly enough cause for a warranted search of the property for such individual.  More reasonably, you think of this in the context, of say for instance, a known suspect that has an arrest warrant for traffic violations, and local law enforcement irrespective of all other non offending occupants of the home are given to any persistent level of harassment by law enforcement concerning search of a given property at the whims of law enforcement.

   The bigger problem with electronic surveillance and warranting of say wiretaps or searching electronic domains are that legal definitions may not be defined exactly one and the same?  And here in the bigger problem.  If this model were given to the traditional mode of a warranting process and property search, likely the FBI's case would be thrown out in a flash, or at least any evidence gathered in such process would not be considered acceptable given the means and methods used in conducting the search.  On the other hand, local law enforcement and federal agencies may have found loop hole methods for entry into private homes...the problems here are that phishing scams could be employed in less than specifically targeted ways, imagine a potential case generates local attention to the extent of garnering the interest of any number of residents that are equally innocent on the matter of potential threat but having been subject to search electronic residential searches.  Obviously to sift through any number of systems to reach the conclusion that any one resident were guilty, would strike in the traditional warranting system for searches as bad constitutionally speaking.  But in a electronic search, apparently this appears to be potentially weaker?  Secondly even if a potential suspect's computer were targeted specifically meaning that no other computer were sifted for information, what reasonable cause for search existed in the first place?  Here it is hard to imagine that a fake article's content would provide ample reasonable cause, or at least alone that something other would need be furnished in justifying the cause for search of such computer...at least I would be interested in hearing the supposedly justifiable reasons given.

   This also raises another point concerning why I believe at times culture remains in some ways more apathetic relative to another potential outcomes if conditions were strikingly different.  If in a tangible way, for instance, any household were more likely subject to and/or having known someone having been subject to more frequent search and seizure in the obvious sense, would likely lead to general outcomes of populations being less ambivalent concerning the matter of property searches, or this leading one could imagine to a greater degree of anger and distrust of ruling institutions and/or related law enforcement bodies.  On the other hand, because electronic searches appear to be in some ways so non invasive to most persons, in the absence of any tools that would aid in identifying a breach of residence, we are less accustomed to thinking that our private and personal data could be compromised.  This inherent problem I believe had led to a culture of relaxation and increased permission concerning the acceptability of a form of property search, or that as decades of technological adoptions have existed, and so to the permission given over time for any given search of private data, culture hasn't related perhaps as strongly to the clear and present danger of insecurities of privacy in general.  Obviously if we feel inconvenienced less in the obvious context of a search of personal data we think less of a given intrusion.  On the other hand, there may be potential increased cause for concern regarding private data and the loopholes having been created in exploiting searches for whatever cause supposedly legal or not legal at all.  We have seen the potential for such exploitation, for instance, in the sorts of surveillance tools developed by and for law enforcement agencies that end up in the hands of individuals that aren't involved in law enforcement, or to say the least have not only nothing of justifiable cause for searching and stealing private data, but in another way is tantamount to the outright criminal behavior similar to theft or burglary.  Interestingly in this present age, I haven't heard so much the outrage or anger provoked when data has been stolen say, for instance, most recently when allegedly private intrusion into a reporter's system were simultaneously used in public context for revealing supposedly salacious or compromising details regarding existing relations between such reporter and the subject matter that the reporter were writing about...as it turns out these accusations by likely thieves were all erroneous and badly co opted in the first place, but nothing of the private intrusion were really called upon in such process for what appeared to be nothing more than a bad burglary in a #gamergate sick phishing expedition.  The same would also be true with respect to the seizure of private emails of a top climate science expert that would supposedly call into question the climate science movement.  As it turns out, again the seizure of private data not only failed to yield the death knell of a movement, but also leaves something of a troubling legacy behind the seizure of private data and who is doing it, coupling this to a culture that seems more reticent to question such behavior if only having been conditioned socially to growth in such behavior.  Obviously in this day and age, a tangible and troubling prospect concerning the matter of privacy seems in some ways to reflect that we are more likely accustomed to listening to the presentation of arguments given by those engaged in so much the ill warranted process that we supposedly had traditions in safe guarding a society against.  The root cause of problems in procedural handling in the search and seizure of data, could have a basis in the process that we have identified leading to the cause for seizure.  Obviously we wouldn't like it if our society were given to the arbitrary whims of fault finding when there is likely and most likely none, given to those in power to arbitrarily decide what is right and wrong for us.  If we could less likely do our jobs well enough in finding fault, perhaps, we might in some other context be fired from our jobs for the sake of accountability to say the least as a bad crooked and corrupt investigator.

Personally in more tangible ways, if having understood concerns on the matter of privacy, when we find that if and when are privacy were being used in less benign and more malicious ways, as in the case of social harassment, the inability to find work/employment, friendships, increased social isolation, and/or any number of factors that effect how we are able to function as individuals in a given society, obviously the ill effects of loss in privacy could be more amply understood.  On the other hand, just because we are conditioned in knowing what someone else is doing, apparently likewise may not be leading to furthered social tolerances, or that dare we say, articles are published relating at times to those engaged in victimizing as opposed to those victimized.  
  

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