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VOICE ARCHIVE

Orin Kerr

@orinkerr
34 posts
2025-04-19
I agree that cell tower dumps are searches under Carpenter, as I reject the mosaic theory (see my book). But the CA5's Smith ruling is wrong, as I argue in my new article: Warrants do indeed allow searching the digital haystack if the filter is narrow. https://papers.ssrn.com/... [image]
2025-04-19 View on X
404 Media

A Nevada judge rules that “tower dumps”, the law enforcement practice of grabbing vast troves of private personal data from cell towers, is unconstitutional

Cell towers record the location of phones near them about every seven seconds.  When police request a tower dump, they ask a telecom for the numbers & personal information of every...

Warrants for cell tower dumps are unconstitutional general warrants, D. Nev. rules per Judge Du—adopting the CA5's Smith geofence decision, though not bound by it. A warrant cannot not allow searching a digital haystack to find the evidentiary needle. https://fourthamendment.com/ ... #N [image]
2025-04-19 View on X
404 Media

A Nevada judge rules that “tower dumps”, the law enforcement practice of grabbing vast troves of private personal data from cell towers, is unconstitutional

Cell towers record the location of phones near them about every seven seconds.  When police request a tower dump, they ask a telecom for the numbers & personal information of every...

2024-01-16
Super-interesting story about streaming fraud—relabeling others' music as your own to get streaming revenue from it—featuring @VolokhC's own David Post (as a subject of the fraud, not the author of the article). https://www.nytimes.com/... [image]
2024-01-16 View on X
New York Times

A look at music streaming fraud, including bot farms and pirates relabeling musicians' work to steal revenue; Beatdapp estimates fraud costs musicians $2B/year

relabeling others' music as your own to get streaming revenue from it—featuring @VolokhC's own David Post (as a subject of the fraud, not the author of the article). https://www.ny...

2023-12-15
NOTABLE: Google announces dramatic changes to its “location history” function that should nullify all geofence warrants going forward—and I wouldn't be surprised if that is the point. Code is law, as they say. https://blog.google/... (h/t https://fourthamendment.com/) [image]
2023-12-15 View on X
Forbes

Google confirms that it will no longer respond to geofence warrants after making changes to the way Maps stores users' location data

“Geofence warrants,” which allow law enforcement to get location data across a wide area, have become commonplace in recent years.

2023-04-13
“Mr. Zhong's case is one of the highest-profile examples of how federal authorities have pierced the veil of blockchain transactions.” https://www.wsj.com/...
2023-04-13 View on X
Wall Street Journal

How the US is making arrests and seizing crypto funds, like James Zhong's 50K+ bitcoin, using Chainalysis and other tools to identify criminals via transactions

Federal authorities are making arrests and seizing funds with the help of new tools to identify criminals through cryptocurrency transactions

2023-02-09
With Netflix cracking down on password sharing, you may be wondering: If Netflix says you can't share passwords, but you do, could it be a crime—in effect, hacking in to Netflix? It's murky. I looked into this in a 2016 article; key pages are below. https://columbialawreview.org/ ... https://twitter.com/...
2023-02-09 View on X
Canadian Press

Netflix rolls out its long-anticipated password sharing rules in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain; other countries will be added in the next few months

Under new rules, premium and standard account holders will be given option to add extra members for $7.99 per month

2023-01-16
I'm very skeptical of this. Hasn't it been the case for many years that “citizen” inputs like emails to Congress are often noise, not real people, and that legislators already know to ignore them? Not sure what AI could change if it's ignored already. https://www.nytimes.com/...
2023-01-16 View on X
New York Times

AI tech like ChatGPT can be used by bad actors to lobby within democracies at incredible speed and scope, costing far less than troll farms like Russia's IRA

New York Times : Tweets: @intuitmachine , @willwilkinson , @pstasiatech , @nytopinion , @orinkerr , @arfung , and @geoffmanne Tweets: Carlos E. Perez / @intuitmachine : Is the sid...

2022-12-10
The more important question: Is Twitter civilly liable for giving private communications to Weiss? If they disclosed private user DMs, yes, they probably are liable, under 2702 and 2707. https://twitter.com/...
2022-12-10 View on X
Bloomberg

Twitter Trust and Safety VP Ella Irwin says she took the screenshots of internal systems that Bari Weiss shared and that “reporters were not accessing user DMs”

do Weiss and Taibbi have access to users' DMs? It would be good to get clear explanation about this screen and yes/no answer to this straightforward question. https://twitter.com/....

<Looks at his mentions, sees people wondering if Bari Weiss violated the Stored Communications Act by looking through private DM's with Twitter's permission but not that of sender/receivers.> Nope, no violation, see the 18 U.S.C. 2701(c)(1) exception. https://www.law.cornell.edu/ ... https://twitter.com/...
2022-12-10 View on X
Bloomberg

Twitter Trust and Safety VP Ella Irwin says she took the screenshots of internal systems that Bari Weiss shared and that “reporters were not accessing user DMs”

do Weiss and Taibbi have access to users' DMs? It would be good to get clear explanation about this screen and yes/no answer to this straightforward question. https://twitter.com/....

The more important question: Is Twitter civilly liable for giving private communications to Weiss? If they disclosed private user DMs, yes, they probably are liable, under 2702 and 2707. https://twitter.com/...
2022-12-10 View on X
TechCrunch

Despite Elon Musk's opaque approach, the “Twitter Files” give a peek at moderation at scale and are a win for transparency, while failing to prove systemic bias

Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk, is feverishly promoting his “Twitter Files”: selected internal communications from the company …

<Looks at his mentions, sees people wondering if Bari Weiss violated the Stored Communications Act by looking through private DM's with Twitter's permission but not that of sender/receivers.> Nope, no violation, see the 18 U.S.C. 2701(c)(1) exception. https://www.law.cornell.edu/ ... https://twitter.com/...
2022-12-10 View on X
TechCrunch

Despite Elon Musk's opaque approach, the “Twitter Files” give a peek at moderation at scale and are a win for transparency, while failing to prove systemic bias

Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk, is feverishly promoting his “Twitter Files”: selected internal communications from the company …

2022-12-09
The more important question: Is Twitter civilly liable for giving private communications to Weiss? If they disclosed private user DMs, yes, they probably are liable, under 2702 and 2707. https://twitter.com/...
2022-12-09 View on X
Bloomberg

Twitter Trust and Safety VP Ella Irwin says she took the screenshots of internal systems that Bari Weiss shared and that “reporters were not accessing user DMs”

Elon Musk is giving outside writers unprecedented access to internal Twitter Inc. information …

<Looks at his mentions, sees people wondering if Bari Weiss violated the Stored Communications Act by looking through private DM's with Twitter's permission but not that of sender/receivers.> Nope, no violation, see the 18 U.S.C. 2701(c)(1) exception. https://www.law.cornell.edu/ ... https://twitter.com/...
2022-12-09 View on X
Bloomberg

Twitter Trust and Safety VP Ella Irwin says she took the screenshots of internal systems that Bari Weiss shared and that “reporters were not accessing user DMs”

Elon Musk is giving outside writers unprecedented access to internal Twitter Inc. information …

2022-04-01
It's not everyday that you read a @nytimes article on the Stored Communications Act that includes a link to a @CalifLRev student note. But here's one, on a difficult policy question relating to an ambiguity in the SCA and CSAM laws. https://www.nytimes.com/...
2022-04-01 View on X
New York Times

To avoid erroneously flagging CSAM, Meta's training docs tell content moderators to “err on the side of an adult” when judging people's age in photos or videos

Michael H. Keller / New York Times :

2021-11-25
According to its CFAA claim filed today, Apple thinks that when your iPhone's operating system is hacked, Apple is hacked— and it can sue— because Apple still owns the operating system on your iPhone. Hmm, seems like a pretty big stretch to me. https://www.apple.com/... https://twitter.com/...
2021-11-25 View on X
New York Times

Apple sues NSO Group in US federal court, seeking to ban NSO from using Apple products and alleging NSO illegally targeted Apple users with surveillance tools

2021-11-24
According to its CFAA claim filed today, Apple thinks that when your iPhone's operating system is hacked, Apple is hacked— and it can sue— because Apple still owns the operating system on your iPhone. Hmm, seems like a pretty big stretch to me. https://www.apple.com/... https://twitter.com/...
2021-11-24 View on X
New York Times

Apple sues NSO Group in US federal court, seeking to ban NSO from using Apple products and alleging NSO illegally targeted Apple users with surveillance tools

Apple accused NSO Group, the Israeli surveillance company, of “flagrant” violations of its software, as well as federal and state laws.

2021-10-01
“How a Secret Google Geofence Warrant Helped Catch the Capitol Riot Mob,” interesting from Wired. Seems like an obvious and important use of geofence warrants to me, but I gather a lot of the details are missing at this point. https://www.wired.com/...
2021-10-01 View on X
Wired

Investigation finds 45 criminal cases that cite Google geolocation data, obtained via a geofence warrant, to place suspects inside Capitol during Jan. 6 riots

and unearthed six previously unidentified mob members, including a Chicago cop. https://www.wired.com/... Mark Harris / @meharris : New from me: How the FBI used @Google geofence w...

2021-06-15
Does a cease-and-desist letter close the gate that makes a public website off-limits to its recipient, so that visiting is like hacking in? Or does putting information out there in public where everyone has access an open gate that authorizes everyone to visit the public URL?
2021-06-15 View on X
Reuters

SCOTUS throws out a lower court ruling that had allowed 3rd-party scraping of LinkedIn users' public profiles, sending the dispute back to federal appeals court

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday gave Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O) LinkedIn Corp another chance to try to stop rival hiQ Labs Inc …

2020-12-04
Apropos the 6th Circuit case below, apparently the provider scanning practice may be banned in the EU soon absent a court order (which I assume means an EU-equivalent to a wiretap order), effectively ending it there, https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
2020-12-04 View on X
New York Times

EU law inhibiting the monitoring of email, messaging, and other services that takes effect Dec. 20 would also restrict scanning for child sexual abuse imagery

Regulators argue that while abuse imagery on the internet is abhorrent, unchecked scanning for it by tech companies could violate privacy rights. Tweets: @gabrieldance , @alexstamo...

2020-12-01
I'd guess that the Court reverses in the end, in part based on their recent past w/ the scope of criminal statutes. Justice Alito suggested that he saw this as a hard case, and he's probably the most in general on the govt's side of crim cases.
2020-12-01 View on X
Politico

SCOTUS worries about CFAA's sweeping nature, with Justice Gorsuch saying that the US government's view of the law risks “making a federal criminal of us all”

The Supreme Court on Monday indicated serious reservations about the ambiguity and scope of the nation's only major cybercrime law …