That was some neat trick, how we came to be pumping our own gasoline and pouring our own soda fountain drinks. Nowadays, people can even scan their own groceries. I'll resist that one, thank you. Doesn't matter, you can either call me an old fogey or flatter me by saying that I've boldly drawn a line in the sand.
The worst is the do-it-yourself (DIY) company phone receptionist. All that button-pushing where a few words used to do the trick. We've been robbed, I tell you--slowly and insidiously shafted. People should definitely be paid for this kind of drudgery.
And I felt this way even before I knew all this DIY customer service might help the G-men spy on me.
Most of this story comes from the
Electronic Frontier Foundation. EFF, along with the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) recently filed a brief on the side of a federal court that has denied federal investigators access to the content of phone calls,
even if the content is numbers.
Here's how it works. So-called pen register or trap-and-trace devices (pen/trap for short) collect phone numbers called. As long as the content of the phone call isn't collected, it's not considered a search that requires a warrant (i.e., meets probable cause standards), just a "certification" that the pen/trap will aid a criminal investigation under the Pen/Trap Statute, which does not require judicial review of the facts.
The thing is, these pen/trap devices can collect any number punched into a phone. The U.S. government has requested that it be allowed to collect additional numbers, called "post-cut-through-dialed-digits," just as they do the phone numbers: Warrantlessly. (Ignoring the obvious snark-opportunities associated with the feds' actually seeking permission, I ask you simply to imagine this scenario the next time you activate a charge card, join a conference call, access your bank account, or fill a prescription over the phone.) EFF and CDT, agreeing with the court, argue that any such activity would violate wiretapping laws.
Pen/trap is not widely known. Neither is some of the other work that EFF has been doing on our behalf:
Until Magistrate Judge Smith asked for the brief, these pen/trap requests were unknown to the public. The judge previously asked EFF to respond to the government's secret requests to track cell phone locations without a warrant based on probable cause. Judge Smith as well as several other magistrates around the country have now held that the government cannot track cell phone locations unless it can show probable cause and a judge finds good reason to believe that criminal activity is afoot.
On another front, EFF continues to fight the government's efforts to derail its lawsuit against AT&T for providing NSA with phone records without the legal authority to do so. The feds, of course, are using the obscenely overused "state secrets privilege" to have the suit thrown out but a ruling in another case may throw a wrench into BushCo's "state secrets" success story. Tomorrow, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor will rule on the government's invoking the state secrets privilege in the case between the ACLU (et al) and the NSA over the legality of BushCo's wiretapping program.
This could save us from "the slippery slope," says John Dean:
DOJ attorneys have used this strategy successfully with FBI translator Sibel Edmonds twice, to prevent her from testifying about misconduct in the FBI. They used it again with Maher Arar, a Canadian who was arrested when passing through JFK airport, returning from his vacation, only to find himself "renditioned" to Syria, where he was tortured before being released because he was innocent. And they used it once again with Khalid El-Masri, the German citizen mistakenly arrested and flown to Afghanistan where he was detained, beaten, and tortured by the CIA.
But this time, the outcome may be very different. Because this is a case where the "state secrets" privilege plainly should not apply, and a case with a judge brave enough to rule that, in fact, it does not.
Amen.
[Cross-posted at SoapBlox-Chicago]