Heed well the following XKCD cartoon. Click here for the full-resolution version.

“You are not a lawyer” (YANAL) is a fascinating, brief, but effective introduction to the fallacy of using technological reasons for a jury to doubt certain evidence in court, thereby failing to meet the “reasonable doubt” qualification for guilt. I was a little disappointed by the picture that it paints of the modern legal system, which can disrupt your life even without you being guilty in the first place. This all comes down to the search and seizure process, which is the point of Ohm’s article. For whatever doubt you can invent, by resorting to some technological reasoning (e.g. a trojan, open wifi, etc) you will first be searched, and that might well be evidence of your crime (in the event that you actually committed a crime). If you didn’t do anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about, right? Not so fast: it’s hard to imagine anyone not being injured, one way or another, by the modern legal process. If you’ve done nothing wrong, at a minimum, you should still fear the search and seizure.

RTFA: http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/paul/being-a…

When techies think about criminal law, and in particular crimes committed online, they tend to fixate on this legal standard, dreaming up ways people can use technology to inject doubt into the evidence to avoid being convicted. I can’t count how many conversations I have had with techies about things like the “open wireless access point defense,” the “trojaned computer defense,” the “NAT-ted firewall defense,” and the “dynamic IP address defense.” Many people have talked excitedly to me about tools like TrackMeNot or more exotic methods which promise, at least in part, to inject jail-springing reasonable doubt onto a hard drive or into a network.

People who place stock in these theories and tools are neglecting an important drawback. There are another set of legal standards–the legal standards governing search and seizure–you should worry about long before you ever get to “beyond a reasonable doubt”. Omitting a lot of detail, the police, even without going to a judge first, can obtain your name, address, and credit card number from your ISP if they can show the information is relevant to a criminal investigation. They can obtain transaction logs (think apache or sendmail logs) after convincing a judge the evidence is “relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation.” If they have probable cause–another famous, but often misunderstood standard–they can read all of your stored email, rifle through your bedroom dresser drawers, and image your hard drive. If they jump through a few other hoops, they can wiretap your telephone. Some of these standards aren’t easy to meet, but all of them are well below the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard for guilt.

Courtesy of Dena Lurie:

January 20, 2009: It was Inauguration Morning at around 5 am, my boyfriend Nick returned home after working at the “Black Tie and Boots Ball.” I awoke to his entrance and greeted him. He told me that people are already lining into the Metro stations to head down to the Mall. This was going to be a long, hectic day, I thought to myself. Nick crawled into bed and we didn’t get up until around 9 am. We were fortunate enough to be staying with some friends of the family who were living in Arlington. They drove us to a nearby Metro station at around 10 am. The Metro ride certainly took longer than usual on this historic morning. The train stopped in its tracks fairly consistently, as we waited for trains ahead to move a bit further. The Metro was crowded and we were all heading to the exact same place. Eleven o’clock rolls around, we have half an hour to get to our “viewing spot” in front of a Jumbotron. We finally arrived to our exit in DC only to enter a scene of madness. The crowd was overwhelming. While we were on the train, Nick and I had planned our route to our desired Jumbotron, but of course once we got off the train, we diverted from our plan immediately…whisked into a sea of people.

Everyone was walking in the same direction, for the same reason, with the same feeling of joy. It was a very unique moment, one in which will never be repeated. While the crowd was 2 million wide, there was a sense of community. The excitement was in the air and it was certainly a magical moment. Every single person walking the streets of DC that day was in a good mood. Everyone was happy. In fact, you could hear the conversations of the people to your right, speaking of this amazing, memorable moment. And people to your left are having the same conversation. Those thoughts interrupted every block by a loud “Get your Obama merchandise here” or “We have exclusive Obama watches, come this way”, etc. It was as if I was at an Ohio State football game, multiplied by 20! There were people selling Obama merchandise on every single corner. There were large tents housing vendors selling food and “Inaugural hot chocolate” on every block. Not only was the atmosphere festive, but it felt like a large festival. There were buses blockading streets here and streets there. And policemen everywhere, however the rapport with the men on-duty was unusual, being that the circumstances were unusual. They were in just as good of a mood as everyone else.

We, along with hundreds of other people, reached a suitable stopping point in front of one of the twenty or so Jumbotrons. As I looked around at the crowd, I saw people of all ages, from the elderly to infant children. I saw people of all ethnicities, and heard many people speaking foreign languages. There were people climbing trees, and even sitting atop of the port-a-potties that lined the Mall, just to get a better view of the big screens. Standing in the shadows of the Washington Monument, I felt as though I was a part of something big. Emotions overcame me, and I began to cry. I had feelings of relief, happiness, inspiration, and redemption. I thought back to my personal long road to this moment. I supported Obama before he even began his campaign to the Presidency. He inspired me. I donated what I could (which was little) to his campaign, and I had never donated to a politician before. I volunteered for his campaign, and I had never volunteered for a politician before. I trusted his words and motivations, and I had never trusted a politician before! This is not only my personal story, but millions of Americans. He inspired so many people, it’s unfathomable. Obama didn’t win this election, we all did. That is the overwhelming feeling that we all felt out on that Mall, as I’m sure everyone at home watching felt too. This was our moment.

According to the Washington Post there were: 10,000 National Guard on duty, 8,000 on- duty state police and sheriffs, several hundred FBI agents, secret service, and homeland security officials, and an additional 10,000 National Guardsmen on stand-by, and not one arrest.

Both Biden and Obama took their oaths, and then Obama gave his speech. I was on a high, feeling great. Then my boyfriend Nick turned to me and said, “I have something for you.” I looked down and in his hand was a beautiful diamond ring. Millions of people surrounded us, but at that moment we were the only two people in the world. He proposed to me. So now, while January 20, 2009 will forever be the day that America received their first African American President, for me, it will also be the first day of the rest of my life.

inauguration

Thanks Dena!