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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

> They are, however, being harmed.

No they're not. Which ones will live a day less of their lives?

If I'm on surveillance footage near a crime scene, police have the right to look for me and question me. This isn't any different. It's just different sets of photons and electrons.

I respect the rights to privacy, but a crime happened, and the police have the tools to investigate. It's barely an inconvenience.

The burden of proof will still be on the investigators and prosecution to find out and show beyond a shadow of a doubt who performed the swatting.

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> Which ones will live a day less of their lives?

The ones who, having had their political inclinations revealed to adversarial law enforcement, then become subject to harassment for those views which should have been private.

> If I'm on surveillance footage near a crime scene, police have the right to look for me and question me.

The question is whether they should have the right to seize the surveillance footage by force if the proprietors would rather protect the privacy of their users. The third party doctrine is wrongful.

And given that it exists, so is keeping records like this that can then be seized using it.

> The burden of proof will still be on the investigators and prosecution to find out and show beyond a shadow of a doubt who performed the swatting.

This is assuming they're trying to prosecute a particular crime rather than using a crime as a pretext to get a list of names.

And it's about the principle, not the particular case. Suppose a protester commits a crime and now they want a list of all the protesters. Any possibility for harm there?

> The question is whether they should have the right to seize the surveillance footage by force if the proprietors would rather protect the privacy of their users.

If there was a crime committed outside your home and you have surveillance footage that has captured passers by, you would not offer it to the police because you would rather protect the privacy of the all the anonymous passers by when one of them is likely the culprit?

That strikes me as highly unlikely. And if you wouldn’t, I am willing to bet that most people would. Why care about the privacy of anonymous passers by when you can help catch the perpetrator and increase safety around your home?

> If there was a crime committed outside your home and you have surveillance footage that has captured passers by, you would not offer it to the police?

These are not the same. You might think the difference is subtle, but I'll tell you that that subtly matters. And matters a lot.

And tbh, these two scenarios are quite different.

I think the analogy is rather strong. Where does it differ?

In one case the homeowner has surveillance footage and freely offers it to the police because they want to assist the investigation. In the other case the police seize the footage by force even though the homeowner is totally innocent and might not trust the government with a record of all of their own comings and goings and associates etc.

Just confirming that this too is the distinction I see. I'll expand since there is so much confusion around this:

The difference is how information was gathered.

People volunteering information to an authority? Perfectly fine (especially in cases when information was not requested).

People being compelled to provide information? Needs friction (checks and balances).

People being compelled to provide information about others who then unknowningly being investigated? Needs even more friction.

It's also important to note that in the hypothetical that random passerbyers are not being investigated either. A specific type of behavior is being sought. Either the explicit act of the crime being committed or a STRONG correlation with another piece of evidence (such as already knowing what the criminal looks like and trying to find a better view). Random people are not considered suspect.

In the article's case all viewers were considered suspect.

>Why care about the privacy of anonymous passers by when you can help catch the perpetrator and increase safety around your home?

well if we're resorting to hyperbole comparing a murder to "watching a youtube video": say you knew and had multiple whistleblowers pass by in your footage, and they are all wanted by the government. You turning over the footage puts those whistleblowers in danger, who's only "crime" is revealing government corruption. Is catching one crook worth endangering multiple good people?

> No they're not. Which ones will live a day less of their lives?

There are cases like the bombing in Madrid where the US agencies cast out a wide net over possible suspects using data about people who converted to Islam and then used a bad finger print match (which everyone told them was garbage) to terrorize one suspect for weeks. They had no evidence that the guy was involved, they had no evidence that any of their suspects was involved, but they had a narrative and where happy about every bit of data that supported it. Meanwhile Spain convicted the actual bombers.

> There are cases like the bombing in Madrid where the US agencies cast out a wide net over possible suspects using data about people who converted to Islam and then used a bad finger print match (which everyone told them was garbage) to terrorize one suspect for weeks.

Some hyperbole in your telling of the story and failure to mention that he was awarded restitution. According to Wikipedia:

Brandon Mayfield (born July 15, 1966) is a Muslim-American convert in Washington County, Oregon, who was wrongfully detained in connection with the 2004 Madrid train bombings on the basis of a faulty fingerprint match. On May 6, 2004, the FBI arrested Mayfield as a material witness in connection with the Madrid attacks, and held him for two weeks, before releasing him with a public apology following Spanish authorities identifying another suspect.[1] A United States DOJ internal review later acknowledged serious errors in the FBI investigation. Ensuing lawsuits resulted in a $2 million settlement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Mayfield

What point are you trying to make with this example?

That it should never have happened?

And? As someone harassed and stalked by police officers (many years ago now) I assure you, restitution after the fact fixes nothing. I’d rather not be harassed and stalked in the first place, especially when such activities have led to a life long distrust of the people who in theoryyy I should be able to turn to in trust. Today I wouldn’t engage with a police officer regardless of circumstance. they are just another armed gang to me.

What's your point? Someone wrongly being detained/prosecuted/charged/hung/etc in the past does not make it right now. It doesn't make it any less wrong then. Nor are people of a government homogeneous. Especially America. The great American past time is shitting on America. But if you're going to dismiss wrong because wrong was done in the past (or even let it slide or be apathetic) that is enabling. Being upset and angry is very different than apathy.

My point was that it was wrong. I do not agree with casting wide nets in the hope that someone might fit whatever profile the police or other agencies have pulled out of their asses.

Your point came off as whataboutism. This may not be what was intended, but this is how I interpreted it and it appears that others did as well. Thank you for clarifying and I'm sorry we miscommunicated.

> Which ones will live a day less of their lives?

Your liberties encompass so much more than this and a government that treads on them recklessly does far more damage than to simply waste an individuals time.

> It's barely an inconvenience.

You assume it's not. How would you verify this? Why should you have to?

> Your liberties encompass so much more than this

You don't have a liberty from being investigated if they have evidence. They're not snooping around in your home without cause. The swatter was watching the live stream, and the timestamped IP logs can corroborate.

Just because it was an IP address and not a face or license plate on camera doesn't make it any different. You can't hide behind a chosen technology stack as a shield when the fundamentals of the case are the same.

> You don't have a liberty from being investigated if they have evidence.

The evidence has to be specific to an individual. In these cases they're obviously not.

> The swatter was watching the live stream, and the timestamped IP logs can corroborate.

He wasn't the only one doing so.

> Just because it was an IP address and not a face or license plate on camera doesn't make it any different.

Yes it does. There are wildly different expectations of privacy between these two scenarios, this is immediately apparent, and easily demonstrable.

I feel like you're just trying to win an argument and not actually thinking this through. I'm not saying you're fundamentally wrong on facts it's just that to follow your conclusions blindly does in fact violate individual rights, and those rights are superior to the governments "right" to investigate crime.

> You can't hide behind a chosen technology stack as a shield when the fundamentals of the case are the same.

You can't hide behind weak evidence to violate the privacy of groups of individuals. The crime has already occurred. The damage is done. You can't solve that problem by causing _more_ damage.

> This isn't any different. It's just different sets of photons and electrons.

And a dictator is just another set of cells and organic compounds? You can't break things down into this because then literally everything is the same. Literally everything you see is just a different set of photons and electrons. But those things have real effects. They aren't fungible. I don't care that my partner sees pictures of me naked, but I sure do care if cops or "the government" is, despite it being "just a different set of photons and electrons."

> The burden of proof will still be on the investigators and prosecution to find out and show beyond a shadow of a doubt who performed the swatting.

The burden of proof is step by step. I don't think I should have to cite the 4th Amendment but

  The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and ***no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.***

The setup was to treat the government as an adversary. Needing to understand positive rights vs negative rights[0]. Obviously rights are not infinite, but there should be friction. Doesn't matter if the thing is seemingly innocent or inconsequential, what matters is power. Perception shifts and creeps so this is why people take a stand at what might seem trivial. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights

[1] https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-nie...

> The setup was to treat the government as an adversary. Needing to understand positive rights vs negative rights

+1 on citing the constitution's wisdom of treating the government itself as adversarial, due to the enormous power it has.

+1 on pointing at the difference between positive and negative rights in this context.

There was a swatting incident and they have a time window where they'd like to corroborate IP logs.

An IP address is no different from a license plate on camera. It's a lead and the evidence was gathered at a crime scene. Nobody's home is being entered into. Nobody's iCloud account is being unlocked and ransacked. Gathering these logs alone won't lead to those things happening either.

I'm all for limits on power, but this seems to be entirely reasonable. This isn't a fishing expedition. IANAL, but I don't see how the 4th would be violated with either a court order or willing third party handing over the logs.

If the investigators get the IP logs, they shouldn't then be able to take those logs and ask the ISP for everything that those people were doing. The burden will be on the investigators to find more evidence linking one of those IPs to the call.

More crime will happen digitally year by year. Swatting has already entered the public consciousness. Just wait until people start strapping bombs to FPV drones or calling grandma with your voice.

We shouldn't stop at the software stack as some kind of impenetrable legal barrier that shrouds investigation. We should respect and enhance limits on power, but we also need to modernize the judicial tools to tackle the new reality.

The framers couldn't have imagined "swatting". The law needs to understand this. It should provide scoped-down investigatory tools that simultaneously guard and respect our constitutional rights and privacy. Access to anything beyond the scope of an actual crime that took place should be restricted.

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