hsi – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Sen. Ron Wyden Catches ICE Illegally Collecting Americans’ Financial Data

from the everybody-still-on-board-with-abolishing-this-national-embarrassment? dept

ICE wants data and doesn’t care how it gets it. Its recently-elevated pursuit of all things not considered naturally American has increased its demands for information on… well, everybody. It works with private sector data brokers and data analysts to hoover up location info — something not strictly limited to movements at or near borders. Nor is it limited to the non-Americans ICE believes should be tracked, captured, and ejected.

ICE has also gathered information collected by American utility companies, which includes customers’ names, addresses, cards/accounts used to pay bills, and usage records. This was also accomplished via a private party: the CLEAR database run by Thomson Reuters. ICE paid $21 million a year for access. It no longer has that access, thanks to pressure applied by Senator Ron Wyden.

ICE has shut down another data collection because Wyden started asking questions. And this collection may very well have been illegal. Using only self-issued administrative subpoenas, ICE was able to obtain millions of financial records from two money transfer companies, Western Union and Maxitransfers Corporation.

The EFF has more details in this post:

Beginning in 2019, HSI [Homeland Security Investigations — a division of ICE] sent eight administrative subpoenas to these financial services companies asking that they turn over all records for money transfers over $500 to or from California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico. Each administrative subpoena sought records for six-months at a time. In response, Western Union and Maxi provided 6.2 million financial records, including personal information such as names and addresses, to HSI. All of the information was entered into a database called Transaction Record Analysis Center (TRAC), which is run by a non-profit and facilitates law enforcement access to bulk financial data for 5 years.

Once again, Wyden’s pressure has resulted in a change.

According to Sen. Wyden, HSI terminated the program in January 2022 after his office contacted HSI about it.

But that’s not good enough for Wyden. His letter [PDF] wants more answers from ICE, leveraging its hasty abandonment of the program against it. It’s an illegal collection, as the EFF explains:

[T]his kind of bulk surveillance is illegal. By statute, these administrative subpoenas must seek records “relevant” to an agency investigation. Simply put, there is no way these broad requests for bulk records would turn up only documents “relevant” to specific investigations; instead it put everyone who transferred money, including U.S. persons, under surveillance.

From Wyden’s letter:

[T]he fact that HSI employees in Phoenix, AZ continued to send out these highly problematic |bulk summonses, every six months, without oversight by HSI and DHS headquarters indicates a weakness in the central supervision of this surveillance tool. Moreover, the fact that just one request fora briefing from a Senate office prompted HSI to immediately halt the flow of data suggests that the internal oversight system within DHS and HSI failed.

This is far from the only problematic aspect of this program. For one thing, the program ran for years prior to ICE’s adoption of the questionable bulk surveillance. An agreement between Western Union and the Arizona Attorney General in 2010 over money laundering allegations opened up this firehose, providing millions of transaction records from 2010 to 2019 — all of which could be accessed by federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies without any judicial approval.

According to HSI, this agreement expired in 2019. That’s when ICE took over, demanding the same production for the next two years. In 2021, ICE expanded these demands to include Maxitransfers. Those actions resulted in ICE obtaining more than 6 million financial records — something it managed to accomplish using only eight self-issued subpoenas. This is classic bulk surveillance, Wyden points out. There’s no way all six million records were “relevant” to HSI investigations.

His letter points out HSI’s February 2022 testimony resulted in members of its Congressional oversight hearing about the long-running program for the first time. And ICE’s internal oversight was bypassed as well, according to HSI’s own statements.

While HSI told my staff that the Special Agent in Charge of HSI Phoenix spoke to the HSI Assistant Director of Investigative Programs and with an attorney in the field office before issuing the first summons, no one sought legal guidance from HST or DHS headquarters and HSI never wrote or published a Privacy Impact Assessment analyzing this program. Indeed, HSI officials acknowledged that they only alerted DHS privacy officials after my office contacted HS to request a briefing about the program in January 2022.

Wyden says he’s all for engaging in legitimate law enforcement activity to stop money laundering and drug trafficking. But this ain’t it. This is an illegitimate and illegal bulk collection that was hidden from ICE’s multiple levels of oversight. It also allowed ICE to keep doing the sort of things that have many calling for it to be abolished… like disproportionately targeting minorities, low-income families, and immigrants who often utilize services like these because traditional banking options aren’t available.

If ICE wants to fight money laundering and stymie drug cartels, it needs to do better. And it needs to play by the rules.

Instead of squandering resources collecting millions of transactions from people merely because they live or transact with individuals in a handful of Southwestern states or have relatives in Mexico, HSI and other agencies should focus their resources on individuals actually suspected of breaking the law.

Hastily killing the illegal program isn’t going to stop Wyden from demanding answers. While it’s great the program is now dead, the flipside is that there’s likely another, equally-problematic program still in operation. It just hasn’t been uncovered yet.

Filed Under: clear database, databases, dhs, financial information, hsi, ice, ron wyden, subpoenas

ICE Is So Toxic That The DHS's Investigative Wing Is Asking To Be Completely Separated From It

from the annul-this-arranged-marriage-please dept

The Department of Homeland Security is trying to distance itself from its most toxic asset, the Washington Post reports:

Federal agents from Homeland Security Investigations say they have been kicked out of joint drug operations, shunned by local police departments and heckled at campus career fairs. Their parent agency, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, carries a stigma that is undermining their investigative work across the country, the agents said in an internal report.

The agents say they face a backlash in liberal “sanctuary” jurisdictions where authorities strictly limit contact with ICE but also in some Republican-led states where politicians are vocal in their support for the agency. And the toll on HSI agents is “getting worse,” according to the report that was prepared by a working group of agents formed by HSI to consider changes to the agency’s place within the Department of Homeland Security.

ICE has always been controversial. Under President Trump, the agency was unleashed. It willingly embraced its awfulness, deploying everything from fake warrants to fake colleges in its war on foreign residents and would-be immigrants, many of whom were here legally. It courted controversial tech companies to expand its surveillance arsenal and made it clear it was interested in ejecting as many foreign people as possible, rather than the “worst of the worst” Trump claimed his immigration policies targeted.

But now it’s clear that working with ICE means not actually getting any work done. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents have informed the DHS Secretary that partnering with ICE has all sorts of negative side effects. Agents are complaining about threats to their personal safety, crime victims being unwilling to engage with investigators due to ICE presence, and harming relationships with local law enforcement. ICE is a drain on resources due to its horrendous reputation. Here’s how the HSI agents put it in their letter to DHS officials:

“HSI’s affiliation with ICE significantly impedes investigations and HSI’s ability to fulfill its mission.”

Unfortunately, it appears this is unlikely to result in HSI decoupling from ICE. It would take an act of Congress to do so, and support for this sort of division is far from universal. The other solution is just as unlikely to happen: the rehabilitation of ICE’s image.

ICE has done a lot of damage to its reputation due to its willingness to become the embodiment of xenophobic presidential directives and policies. It could rein itself in, but any rehabilitation could easily be undone by the next president to take office. Most people never truly believed someone like Trump could ever be elected, but millions of Americans proved us wrong in 2016. All bets are off.

ICE’s response to the assertions in this letter is less than helpful. The agency, through a spokesperson, says nothing but uses a lot of words to deliver its nonexistent message:

In a statement, ICE spokeswoman Paige Hughes said the agency “relies on close working relationships with its state, local, and international partners,” but she did not elaborate on the details of the report. She added: “ICE refrains from discussing deliberations publicly with its partners to maintain operational security and in recognition of the sensitive nature of many of our activities.”

Congress may not be willing to bless a HSI-ICE divorce. But it’s clear from this letter that federal agencies forced to partner with ICE are being held back by ICE’s negative reputation. And ICE can’t blame anyone else for being so toxic its federal partners want nothing to do with it. It may have received questionable directives from the former president, but it was under no obligation to carry these out with as much enthusiasm and zeal as it did.

Plenty of federal agencies are capable of barely meeting the minimal requirements of Congressional and presidential mandates. ICE could have slow-walked its “toss out the brown people” directives until power changed hands. Instead, it showed itself to be an enthusiastic participant in bigoted policies, making it clear the 2016 regime change had simply allowed it to be the thuggish enforcer of immigration law it had always wanted to be.

Filed Under: dhs, homeland security investigations, hsi, ice

ICE Spent Your Tax Dollars Dragging A Journalist Through The Internet Sewer Over A Mistake She Apologized For

from the fine-people dept

Law enforcement officers protect their own. Even when they shouldn’t. They are quick to react when one of them is slighted and they do so knowing their position as arbiters of law affords them more protection against internet randos than the little people they’re supposed to be serving.

But something that gets lost in these far-too-common reactions is that this is how taxpayers’ money is being spent: on vindictive actions that could have been handled with a 30-second statement or a press release that might take all of 20 minutes to compose.

But instead of letting things go and realizing their position of power is probably all the response that’s needed, tax dollars are spent converting hurt feelings into investigations of private citizens who managed to offend the powers that be. Ken Klippenstein has obtained documents from a FOIA request (and the de rigueur FOIA lawsuit) that shows ICE decided to get all investigatory when someone mistook a tattoo on one of its officials for a racist symbol. That this person was a journalist makes it all that more problematic.

In June of 2018, Talia Lavin, then a fact-checker for The New Yorker, found herself in an unusual position for a journalist: She personally became the target of a government agency. She had come under the scrutiny of ICE’s Office of Public Affairs, the public face of the agency that played a central role in President Trump’s crackdown on undocumented migrants.

[…]

When Lavin saw a tweet from ICE featuring one of its officials, Justin Gaertner, with a cross-shaped tattoo, she wondered if it was the Iron Cross familiar to Nazi iconography. She posted a tweet comparing them. When people began pointing out that it could be another symbol, like a Maltese cross, Lavin promptly removed the tweet. But it was already too late.

ICE first responded with a press release. It was not your normal press release. It accused Lavin (mentioning her name [but misspelled as “Levin”) of “baselessly slandering” the “American hero” who worked for the agency. It demanded an apology and a retraction from Lavin and The New Yorker. Following ICE’s public flogging of Lavin, she became a target for vitriol and abuse by white supremacists and alt-right figureheads. Fox News called her a “little journo terrorist.”

Eye for an eye and all that, I guess. You’d think ICE would have been satisfied with the shitstorm it had stirred up. It provoked a response and got some of what it wanted. Lavin not only apologized but she resigned from The New Yorker.

ICE’s main focus — according to the documents obtained by Klippenstein — was securing the future of the official pointed out in Lavin’s since-deleted tweet. The Public Affairs office began burnishing the official’s war record and claimed to have evidence of credible threats to the official’s life. But the only “threat” detailed in email threads was one from someone responding to Lavin’s tweet, stating that the person wished whoever had wounded the official in combat “would’ve finished the job.” Cue a whole bunch of government gears, all grinding tax dollars into salve for skin-deep scratches.

“HSI Tampa will be carefully assessing the twitter based threats and will take appropriate action,” an HSI official replied. “Looping in AD [Assistant Director] Ip for C3 [ICE Cyber Crimes Center] support. HSI Tampa will be submitting a SIR [Significant Incident Report] shortly.”

More remarkably, the email communications indicate ICE may never have seen Lavin’s tweet before it was deleted. ICE’s press office — for all the time it spent making sure its official remained unslighted — didn’t bother preserving the tweet it found so offensive that it issued a press release decrying the person who had published it.

One tweet by a journalist containing one innocent mistake (it’s no secret white supremacists are drawn to law enforcement positions) led to multiple DHS agencies being apprised of non-credible threats while ICE’s public affairs office decided it was in the best interest of the public to publicly attack a journalist for screwing up. It got what it wanted — a retraction, an apology, and a resignation — but at what cost?

Certainly ICE took a hit to its credibility. It may have been correct about the innocuous nature of the tattoo, but it made its point by turning a journalist into a target for internet pitchforks. This is called “punching down.” It could have issued a statement in support of the official and left it at that, but instead, it felt compelled to turn this into a public flogging and an internal investigation handled so sloppily the multi-billion dollar agency couldn’t even search the Wayback Machine for the tweet prompting its deluge of unprofessional behavior.

Filed Under: dhs, foia, hsi, ice, intimidation, investigation, journalism, justin gaertner, talia lavin, the new yorker

Shitbirds Of A Feather Flock Together: ICE Signs $274,000 Contract With Clearview

from the voted-Most-Hateable-for-two-years-running! dept

ICE continues to not care what anyone thinks of it. Its tactics over the past few years have turned it into one of the federal government’s most infamous monsters, thanks to its separation of families, caging of children, unfettered surveillance of undocumented immigrants, its fake university sting created to punish students trying to remain in the country legally, its sudden rescinding of COVID-related distance learning guidelines solely for the purpose of punishing students trying to remain in the country legally… well, you get the picture.

Perhaps it’s fitting ICE is buying tech from a company that appears unconcerned that most of the public hates it. Clearview — the facial recognition software that matches uploaded facial images with billions of images scraped from the open web — is one of the latest additions to ICE’s surveillance tech arsenal.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) signed a contract with facial recognition company Clearview AI this week for “mission support,” government contracting records show (as first spotted by the tech accountability nonprofit Tech Inquiry). The purchase order for $224,000 describes “clearview licenses” and lists “ICE mission support dallas” as the contracting office.

That its new partner is being sued in multiple states (including a suit filed by the Vermont Attorney General) doesn’t appear to concern ICE, which is itself often on the receiving end of lawsuits. Clearview may be making good on its promise to pull out of the private market and sell only to government agencies, but that just means it will be only governments using unproven AI and scraped images to pursue investigations and arrest people.

Clearview’s statement to The Verge about its contract with ICE makes it appear this is all about the children:

“Clearview AI’s agreement is with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), which uses our technology for their Child Exploitation Unit and ongoing criminal investigations,” Clearview AI CEO Hoan Ton-That said in an emailed statement to The Verge. “Clearview AI has enabled HSI to rescue children across the country from sexual abuse and exploitation.”

Clearview leans on the children here, but the statement says a couple of other interesting things I’m sure Ton-That would rather slide by unnoticed. First: “and ongoing criminal investigations.” ICE considers every undocumented immigrant to be a criminal, which means the agency is going to use this software to track down people in the US for committing the civil violation of staying in the country without the proper paperwork. ICE has not been able to find enough dangerous immigrants to make the administration’s public statements about rampaging hordes of bad hombres come true, so it has decided to go after everyone, including students here on visas.

Second, Clearview claims it has “enabled” HSI to “rescue children across the country.” I’d say we’d just have to take its word on this but we certainly don’t have to take its word on this because it’s said things like this in the past only for the named law enforcement agency to contradict Clearview’s claims when asked for comment. That may be what Clearview hopes its partnership with ICE/HSI will do, but it’s difficult to believe the recently signed contract has already produced results or that ICE/HSI are really using this mostly to fight child sexual exploitation rather than just uploading photos of brown people and hoping for hits.

Either way, we can safely conclude both partners here suck. ICE is bad and keeps getting worse, and Clearview isn’t ever going to improve and is presumably still scraping sites for “content” it can sell to its customers.

Filed Under: dhs, facial recognition, for the children, hsi, ics, surveillance
Companies: clearview, clearview ai

DHS's Anti-Protest Gestapo Tactics Headed To Other Major Cities, Starting With Chicago

from the all-part-of-the-new-dissident-treatment-protocol dept

The tactics seen recently in Portland, Oregon — unidentified federal officers grabbing demonstrators off the street and hauling them away in unmarked vans — are apparently going to be deployed in other cities. The federal government’s response to ongoing demonstrations provoked by a Minnesota police officer’s killing of an unarmed Black man has been escalating in recent days. In cities like Portland — where protests have been a continuous fixture since early May — a blend of CBP, ICE, US Marshals Service, and Bureau of Prisons personnel have been brought in to, supposedly, protect federal property and investigate federal crimes.

But the tactics are disturbing. Dragging people off the street into unmarked cars and taking them to unknown destinations for questioning isn’t how America is supposed to work. There doesn’t appear to be much probable cause involved (simply being near federal property while protesting isn’t indicative of any criminal act) and the lack of identifying info on fatigue-clad officers just makes it that much easier for them to get away with rights violations. Detainees are being released without any paperwork, suggesting a lot of this federal intervention is off-the-books: undocumented and unsupervised.

The DHS likes its new Gestapo-esque tactics so much it’s taking them to other cities.

Chicago may see an influx of federal agents as soon as this week as President Donald Trump readies to make good on repeated pledges he would try to tamp down violence here, a move that would come amid growing controversy nationally about federal force being used in American cities.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security, for example, is crafting plans to deploy about 150 federal agents to the city this week, the Chicago Tribune has learned.

Homeland Security Investigations — a division that includes agents from several components — will be heading to Chicago to “assist in crime-fighting efforts.” No details have been provided by the DHS, leaving it open to speculation whether this will be more spirited-away-in-unmarked-vans action or something more conventional that targets the non-protest-related crime that has been an ongoing issue in Chicago for far longer than the recent unrest.

Money is on it being more of what was observed in Portland. President Trump has already made public statements about sending federal agents to cities “run by liberal Democrats,” apparently with an eye on shutting down anti-law enforcement protests.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is one of the “liberal Democrats” Trump is referring to. That’s why Chicago is next in line for some secret policing. Lightfoot would prefer this didn’t happen.

“We don’t need federal agents without any insignia taking people off the streets and holding them, I think, unlawfully,” Lightfoot said.

But she’s not completely opposed to federal help — as long as it’s actual help rather than a show of force meant to intimidate people engaging in protected speech.

If Trump wants to help, she said, he could boost federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives resources and fully fund prosecutors.

Even the Chicago PD seems concerned about the DHS’s tactics. The department issued a statement saying it is “critical” that federal law enforcement officers “coordinate” with the PD to “fight violent crime.” There’s nothing in the statement that says the PD has any desire to deploy its force against peaceful protesters or be perceived as standing idly by while federal agents drag people off the street and into unmarked vehicles.

The city’s police union, on the other hand, is pleased with any law enforcement activity — local or federal — that gives it an opportunity to criticize the mayor.

“I am certain you are aware of the chaos currently affecting our city on a regular basis now,” John Catanzara, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, wrote in a letter that was posted on the FOP’s Facebook page. “I am writing to formally ask you for help from the federal government. Mayor Lightfoot has proved to be a complete failure who is either unwilling or unable to maintain law and order here.”

Catanzara’s opinion is not to be trusted. He runs an organization that helps keep bad cops employed. And he’s the best fit for the FOP, given its “no bad cop left behind” focus. Catanzara is one of the most disciplined officers ever to serve in the Chicago PD. He’s also the only one to be elected head of the union while stripped of his police powers.

If this is the blueprint for the future, it’s goddamn frightening. President Trump may not understand the implications of the words he’s using or how they sound to people listening to him, but this statement at a recent press conference appears to indicate Trump prefers martial law and order to regular law and order.

“We’re going to have more federal law enforcement, that I can tell you,” he said. “In Portland, they’ve done a fantastic job. They’ve been there three days and they really have done a fantastic job in a very short period of time, no problem.”

When the feds step in to do the local cops’ jobs, that’s a move in the direction of martial law. Trump’s pro-cop rhetoric — something that never lets up even when cops are at their worst — indicates he’d prefer cops to be making the laws, rather than simply enforcing them. His willingness to send federal agents to cities led by politicians he doesn’t like suggests he wants to run those cities by proxy. This is a federal police state in the making, one that’s going to be increasingly difficult to differentiate from martial law if the feds aren’t able to shut down protests quickly enough.

Filed Under: chicago, cities, dhs, federal law enforcement, hsi, ice, portland, protests, secret police, us marshals

Kickass Torrents Gets The Megaupload Treatment: Site Seized, Owner Arrested And Charged With Criminal Infringement

from the because-of-course dept

So just as the US government itself is accused of being engaged in massive copyright infringement itself, the Justice Department proudly announces that it has charged the owner of Kickass Torrents with criminal copyright infringement claims. The site has also been seized and the owner, Artem Vaulin, has been arrested in Poland. As with the original Kim Dotcom/Megaupload indictment, the full criminal complaint against Vaulin is worth reading.

As with the case against Dotcom/Megaupload, the DOJ seems to ignore the fact that there is no such thing as secondary liability in criminal infringement. That’s a big concern. Even though Kickass Torrents does not host the actual infringing files at all, the complaint argues that Vaulin is still legally responsible for others doing so. But that’s not actually how criminal copyright infringement works. The complaint barely even shows how Vaulin could be liable for the infringement conducted via Kickass Torrents.

But, of course, that doesn’t matter because the guy at Homeland Security Investigations (formerly: ICE: Immigrations & Customs Enforcement) just spoke to the MPAA and the MPAA said that Kickass Torrents had no permission to link to their content. Yes, link.

As part of the investigation, I have communicated with representatives of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) regarding this investigation. The representatives provided me with information the MPAA had developed about KAT, among other websites. The representatives stated that the MPAA closely monitors KAT and that a significant portion of the movies available on KAT are protected by copyright. The representatives also specified that the MPAA has not granted permission to KAT to index, link, frame, transmit, retransmit, provide access to, or otherwise aid or assist those who distribute and reproduce infringing copies of copyrighted motion picture or television content of MPAA members.

Here’s the thing: most of those things listed above are not rights granted by the copyright act. The copyright act is pretty specifically limited to a few rights, including reproduction and distribution. But, again, note the games played in the complaint: “index, link, frame, transmit, retransmit, provide access to” don’t directly infringe on the stated copyright exclusive rights (yes, there are some cases where some of the above may infringe on some of the exclusive rights, but it’s not particularly cut and dry). So instead, the government tosses in this “otherwise aid or assist those who distribute and reproduce infringing copies of copyrighted motion picture or television content.”

So, you see, once again, the government is creating a form of secondary liability for copyright infringement that does not exist in the law. That’s a problem. Because that’s not how criminal copyright law works. At all.

Furthermore, the complaint goes on about how KAT, as it calls Kickass Torrents, rejected DMCA takedown notices for a variety of reasons, but leaves out the fact that KAT is not an American company and is not under the jurisdiction of US laws. So I’m not entirely clear why US copyright laws apply here. The best they can do is note that they found a few servers that were apparently in Chicago.

The complaint spends lots of time on the fact that KAT makes a fair bit of money from advertising revenue. But, again, I’m not entirely clear how that’s relevant to the claim of criminal copyright infringement. The implicit argument is clearly “people go to KAT to get infringing content, the site makes advertising from all that traffic, thus the revenue is ill-gotten gains.” But… again that relies on the idea that KAT itself is engaged in criminal behavior. Creating a popular tool for finding content — some of which may be infringing — and then making money from advertising, are separate things. It seems wrong to make this weird if->then conditional assumption that just because the site made lots of money it was infringing.

No one is suggesting that Kickass Torrents was not regularly used by individuals to infringe on copyrights. It was. A lot. And you can argue how horrible that is and how it was killing Hollywood and all that — but the specifics here do matter. The same arguments were made about the VCR for years. After all, the MPAA insisted that it was used exclusively to infringe on content for years until they finally realized that it was a good idea to release content for the home video market. And, again, the US government isn’t allowed to make up criminal liability concepts that aren’t actually in the law. They, and their supporters, of course will now argue that it’s not about secondary liability, but about “aiding and abetting.” But that argument doesn’t fly either. The standards for aiding and abetting are much more involved — and would require that the actual infringement be criminal. But that won’t fly, because the individuals downloading via Kickass Torrents weren’t violating criminal copyright law themselves.

In other words, the DOJ is trying to argue that helping a bunch of people engaged in civil copyright infringement magically turns into criminal aiding and abetting. But that’s not how the law works.

Meanwhile, the DOJ’s press release on this is filled with all the usual insane bluster:

“Copyright infringement exacts a large toll, a very human one, on the artists and businesses whose livelihood hinges on their creative inventions,” said U.S. Attorney Fardon. “Vaulin allegedly used the Internet to cause enormous harm to those artists. Our Cybercrimes unit at the U.S. Attorney?s Office in Chicago will continue to work with our law enforcement partners around the globe to identify, investigate and prosecute those who attempt to illegally profit from the innovation of others.”

Funny. Is he also going to charge the US Navy for its massive copyright infringement? Or is that not the kind of copyright infringement harm Fardon goes after?

“Vaulin is charged with running today?s most visited illegal file-sharing website, responsible for unlawfully distributing well over $1 billion of copyrighted materials,” said Assistant Attorney General Caldwell. “In an effort to evade law enforcement, Vaulin allegedly relied on servers located in countries around the world and moved his domains due to repeated seizures and civil lawsuits. His arrest in Poland, however, demonstrates again that cybercriminals can run, but they cannot hide from justice.”

The 1billionofcopyrightedmaterialsisanicetouch,butagainrepresentsmerelytheestimatedcoverprice,notanyactuallossestotheindustry.NotthattheDOJwantstoadmitthat.Butthenextguyisevenworse,nolongerjustclaimingthatover1 billion of copyrighted materials is a nice touch, but again represents merely the estimated cover price, not any actual losses to the industry. Not that the DOJ wants to admit that. But the next guy is even worse, no longer just claiming that over 1billionofcopyrightedmaterialsisanicetouch,butagainrepresentsmerelytheestimatedcoverprice,notanyactuallossestotheindustry.NotthattheDOJwantstoadmitthat.Butthenextguyisevenworse,nolongerjustclaimingthatover1 billion was distributed, but directly stating that Vaulin stole $1 billion.

“Artem Vaulin was allegedly running a worldwide digital piracy website that stole more than $1 billion in profits from the U.S. entertainment industry,” said Executive Associate Director Edge. “Protecting legitimate commerce is one of HSI?s highest priorities. With the cooperation of our law enforcement partners, we will continue to aggressively bring to justice those who enrich themselves by stealing the creative work of U.S. artists.”

Aren’t law enforcement people supposed to actually know the law? There was no stealing. There may have been copyright infringement using the tool that Vaulin built, but that’s not stealing.

“Investigating cyber-enabled schemes is a top priority for CI,” said Chief Weber. “Websites such as the one seized today brazenly facilitate all kinds of illegal commerce. Criminal Investigation is committed to thoroughly investigating financial crimes, regardless of the medium. We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to unravel this and other complex financial transactions and money laundering schemes where individuals attempt to conceal the true source of their income and use the Internet to mask their true identity.”

Illegal commerce? It was basically a search engine for free content. What illegal commerce happened there?

Yes, yes, lots of infringement happened via the site. No one denies that. But having law enforcement folks stand up and make clueless statements like this suggest they don’t even understand what Kickass Torrents did, and they just want to puff themselves up and look good for Hollywood.

Meanwhile: does anyone really believe that this move will cause anyone who used KAT to suddenly go back to purchasing movies?

Filed Under: aiding and abetting, artem vaulin, copyright, criminal copyright infringement, dhs, doj, hsi, ice, secondary liability
Companies: kickass torrents, mpaa

Homeland Security Wants To Subpoena Us Over A Clearly Hyperbolic Techdirt Comment

from the guys,-calm-down dept

Earlier this week, one of our writers, Tim Cushing, had a story about yet another abuse of the civil asset forfeiture procedure. You can read that whole story for the details, but the short version is that US Customs & Border Patrol, along with Hancock County (Indiana) Sheriff’s Dept. officers, decided to seize $240,000 in cash from a guy named Najeh Muhana. Muhana sought to get that cash back, but after a series of ridiculous communications, his lawyer was told that Customs and Border Patrol in Ohio was keeping the money, and that Muhana had “waived his rights to the currency.” This was not true, and certainly appeared to be pretty sketchy. Because of all of this, Muhana filed a lawsuit against US Customs & Border Patrol asking for his money back.

Not surprisingly, this story of what many would argue is just blatant theft by law enforcement (the people who are supposed to be protecting us from theft) upset a number of folks who expressed their frustrations in the comments — some using colorful language. That kind of language might not necessarily be considered appropriate in polite company, but isn’t entirely out of place in internet forums and discussions where rhetorical hyperbole is not uncommon.

So I have to admit that I was rather surprised yesterday afternoon when we received a phone call from an agent with Homeland Security Investigations (the organization formerly known as ICE for Immigration and Customs Enforcement), asking where they could send a subpoena to identify a commenter on our site. Our lawyer, Paul Levy of Public Citizen Litigation Group, requested more information and we were told that DHS is interested in obtaining user information on the following comment by “Digger.”

The only “bonus” these criminals are likely to see could be a bullet to their apparently empty skulls.

The person wronged probably knows people who know people in low places who’d take on the challenge pro-bono, after a proper “cooling-off” period.

Now, that’s pretty crude and a bit ridiculous. But it’s also pretty obviously not even anything remotely like an actual threat. First off, he’s not suggesting that he’s looking to do this at all. He’s suggesting that “the person wronged” — by which he likely means Mr. Muhana — would somehow get some friends to do this. This is pretty ridiculous and almost certainly wrong. Second, he’s actually responding to another comment, that reasonably bemoans the likelihood that those involved in all of this will receive no punishment at all.

Now, it’s entirely possible that there are more details here involving a legitimate investigation, but it’s difficult to believe that’s the case given the information we have to date. Also, we have not yet received the subpoena, just the phone calls and emails suggesting that it’s on its way. Normally, we’d wait for the details before publishing, but given a very similar situation involving commenters on the site Reason last year, which included a highly questionable and almost certainly unconstitutional gag order preventing Reason from speaking about it, we figured it would be worth posting about it before we’ve received any such thing.

We have told Homeland Security that we’re willing to receive the subpoena and review it, but that based on what we know, we have serious First Amendment concerns about the request itself. Multiple Supreme Court cases, including Rankin v. McPherson and Watts v. United States have made it clear that people have a First Amendment right to say that they hope the President gets shot, let alone a law enforcement agent. It may be rude and uncomfortable, but if it is not an indication of a “true threat,” then it is protected. And, as such, the idea of disclosing any information about someone who was clearly engaged in rhetorical hyperbole in an internet forum, likely leading to federal agents showing up at his or her door, is quite troubling to us.

Really, the most ridiculous part of this is why this is what’s being investigated, rather than why the government was basically able to just walk away with $240,000 from this guy and ignore his attempts to get his money back.

We will keep you informed… as much as we are able to.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, comments, dhs, free speech, gag orders, homeland security, homeland security investigations, hsi, ice, indiana, najeh muhana, ohio

ICE Takes To Twitter In Ridiculous Attempt To Defend Interrogating A Man In A Movie Theater For Wearing Google Glass

from the theft? dept

Earlier this week there was a report about a guy being yanked out of his seat in a movie theater for wearing Google Glass during the movie. Glass was turned off, and the guy kept them on because he had prescription lenses installed and wears them as his regular glasses. Both the MPAA and federal agents were called to interrogate the guy for a few hours, asking him a bunch of ridiculous questions until late in the night, before someone finally realized he hadn’t done anything. Both the MPAA and ICE confirmed the incident happened, and yesterday folks at ICE — who have recently been transitioned into the new Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) organization — decided to take to their bizarrely named twitter account, @wwwicegov, to further “defend” these actions, by talking up how they’re in charge of dealing with “movie theft.” Because, apparently, Homeland Security Investigations doesn’t understand the law, and doesn’t realize that (1) infringement is not, and has never been, “theft” and (2) a dude wearing a powered-off Google Glass is not doing anything wrong. Here are the tweets:

As you can see, there’s a lot of ridiculousness there — just the fact that they repeatedly refer to it as “theft,” as mentioned above. The problem is that ICE’s role as “the lead agency to combat piracy” is a joke. As ICE, it was supposed to focus on stopping counterfeit physical products from crossing the border. But with the help of Joe Biden and Hollywood, that mandate has been twisted repeatedly, so that what started as a very narrow mandate is now being treated as this broad mandate from an organization that doesn’t even understand the issues. For years now, the group has made sure to conflate the very, very different issues of counterfeits at the border with copyright infringement, as it tries to expand its own mandate.

And now that’s reached the absolutely insane point of yanking people out of their movie seats for doing nothing wrong, entirely on the say so of the MPAA — a private group which has a long history of overreacting badly to new technologies.

What comes out of this is that ICE/HSI now appears to be incredibly gullible, falling for basically every bullshit claim from the MPAA. Just imagine if ICE/HSI had been around and had this sort of broad stupid made-up power over “intellectual property theft” during the introduction of the VCR — back when the MPAA was declaring it illegal? ICE would be out there raiding and shutting down electronics stores for selling the devices. All because the MPAA said so.

Filed Under: copyright, google glass, homeland security, hsi, ice, infringement, movie theft
Companies: amc, mpaa