I am confused how reading a news story in a certain window of time could serve as evidence or probable cause or reasonable suspicion of anything. Seems utterly bizarre.
That seems plausible but I would think that there could be a lot of other sites the person visited that would be easier to track down. Maybe that’s what they did and the reason they’re dropping this subpoena.
This is just a charitable guess. A guess with equal probability to anything.
Another guess is they want a precedent to subponea Fox News readers and classify people by political opinion. Albeit less charitable, it has equal probability.
That's what I think, yeah — they cross-referenced the information anotherway (from another technical source or like you say, another site maybe) and withdrew.
>> how reading a news story in a certain window of time could serve as evidence or probable cause or reasonable suspicion of anything.
So... I have no idea how they thought it would apply in this case, or what investigators had in mind.
That said, very broadly and in theory, in today's world almost any data point can be predictive of almost any behaviour. This is the premise of ad-tech. Less amorphously, you could probably construct a theory. People reading the story within a certain window of time, within a certain geographical area... etc.
Evidence, probable cause & reasonable suspicion as legal terms, that's a different matter.
> almost any data point can be predictive of almost any behaviour.
This isn't really true, though, even in theory. In practice it's much worse, as we aren't very good at using even large collections of data points in most cases to predict behavior. We can in some very few, narrow contexts occasionally do better (sometimes much better) than a random guess once in while.
I didn't mean it quite literally, and specified that I'm not suggesting that police had something like this in mind. My uneducated guess is that police were after something specific relating to other information that they already had. That's generally how police investigations work.
That said, the one relatively broad concept where "we" consistently do better than random guesses is ad-tech, which is where the bulk of private efforts to this effect are concentrated currently. The premise here is quite literally "every data point is predictive of behaviour," behaviour being stuff related to the goals of advertisers.
It's not a huge leap to suggest that fb & adwords' system can be used to predict crime, insurance claims, HR-related stuff etc.
We may not be good at this, but the collective wisdom at most corporations states that a best predictor of what someone will do, is what they have done in the past. My point is that it is being used and inferences are drawn regardless.
I’d imagine it’s part of the process of attribution for something. If you know they accessed the news site during a time frame it may help with attribution or possibly placing them in a certain location at a certain time - both of which might be important and both of which you may know via some out of band method.
It could also be used to de-anonymise someone if they made an OpSec mistake e.g. accessing the news site outside of Tor or a VPN and you happen to know (via some out of band method) that they did this and so could use it to get their actual-IP.
It wouldn’t be a straight forward “if you accessed a news page you are guilty of something”.
That's called a dragnet. Suspects are not found by this method, innocents are found, it all hinges on the assumption that the guilty party will be present, which in fact may not be the case. Good policework identifies the suspect first, then finds corroborating evidence.
It makes sense that the person would be scouring the news for an incident that involves himself. Isn't that in Sherlock Holmes - The Study in Scarlet? Sherlock used false advertising in a newspaper of a missing ring found near the crime scene. The person who claimed to have the ring is the culprit. This also happens in Death Note, another work of fiction, where L, the detective, uses news media to narrow down the possible suspects.
My guess is that they have some sort of photo, screenshot, or video that happens to show that a suspect had this page open on a computer or mobile phone, and that they can reliably date the time of this photo or video.
Depending on details, it may not be an unreasonable request. The question is more one of trust: do we trust the FBI that it's a reasonable request?
This is why all the stuff like the activities the Snowden leaks demonstrated or Trump's idiotic harassment of the press through the DOJ are so harmful far beyond the direct harm they did: they justifiable and seriously erode trust, and then there is a serious case like this and "trust us" no longer carries any value. A sad state of affairs where everyone loses.
> Depending on details, it may not be an unreasonable request.
No. Under no circumstances is it acceptable for governments to ID readers of a news article. Such an act is a direct attack on the freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and freedom of the press. IMO it very clearly crosses a line on what law enforcement can and cannot do in a democratic society.
Note that law enforcement has (over)broad powers for investigation at their disposal already, and they were able to find the suspect "through other means." There was no justification whatsoever for the subpoena.
It seems no different to me than subpoenaing say, a private clubs membership records.
The danger comes when law enforcement uses the evidence they gather from one case, to target someone who hasn’t committed a crime. Which clearly hasn’t been shown to be done here.
Equally bad. Freedom of association is also an enumerated right. Without demonstrable cause, none of the government’s business. Yes, I’ve been protected from such harassment thanks to that right.
Still even if they had such a screen shot I don't get how reading a news article about a sex offender would be incrimnating even if you were a sex offender yourself.
It sounds like what they were trying to do was identify someone.
It is quite common to know something about the recent behavior of someone that has some connection to a crime but not know who they are.
You might not know who robbed the bank, say, but you know their getaway car was a red Corvette with a license number that ended in 6. Or you might know that a recently killed body was disemboweled with a Kobalt brand model #TRS-5CF-K34714 trenching spade (it was left at the scene) and your forensics people were able to determine that it had not been used before this so was probably recently purchased.
In the first case, you are going to ask your state's motor vehicle department for a list of all registered red Corvettes in the area of the robbery. In the second case you are going to see if any Lowe's in the area (Kobalt is their house brand) can tell you who recently bought a #TRS-5CF-K34714 trenching spade.
You aren't asking because owning a red corvette is incriminating, or because owning a #TRS-5CF-K34714 trenching spade is incriminating [1]. You are asking because whoever did the crime is probably either in the set of red corvette owners for the robbery or the set of #TRS-5CF-K34714 trenching spade owners for the disemboweling, or someone in those sets is connected to whoever did the crime. Even if the connection is innocent talking to them can be useful--the red Corvette may have been a ride share, for example, and the driver had no idea he was serving as getaway driver, but he still may be able to provide details about the robber that will help find him.
Here it sounds like they determined that there was someone connected to the shooter and they wanted to find that person but did not know their identity, but did find out somehow that it was likely they had read that article within a 35 minute window on a particular day (I have no idea how they would have found that out).
> Still even if they had such a screen shot I don't get how reading a news article about a sex offender would be incrimnating even if you were a sex offender yourself.
What? Absolutely no one said or even implied any such thing.
Photos of in child sex abuse cases are routinely scrutinized in great detail to reveal clues about the location, time, and anything else that might lead to the individuals in the case.
Interpol has an entire website dedicated to help identify objects in pictures[1], asking members of the public to help identify everyday things like T-shirts. Actually, one of the top results pictures right now is "do you recognise this newspaper?"
No one is suggesting that "wearing this t-shirt" or "having this newspaper" is incriminating in and of itself. Finding these people from vague online pictures where they intend to remain anonymous is tricky business, and sometimes with a bunch of these clues combined with some other information they can identify offenders and/or victims.
Of course there are trade-offs involved in all of this, and it's important we have robust public conversations discussing those; as I mentioned in my previous comment, the lack of trust here is a big issue. But much of this entire thread is ... disappointing. I wish people would keep cooler heads (as well as, you know, actually read the article before commenting).
