• Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    16 hours ago

    On the first day it was released to the public.

    The encryption specialists at universities knew about the eliptic curve backdoor before it was implemented, and kept recommending that it not be.

    Remember that if the police can read your stuff, so can foreign interests, industrial spies, organized crime and militants of large scale political movements.

    Besides which here in the States, law enforcement is notorious for abusing their access to technology to bypass protections of the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, often relying on getting a warrant post hoc or lying to establish probable cause.

    And usually the judges don’t mind.

      • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 hours ago

        Go onto Techdirt ( here ) and check Tim Cushing’s blog. His beat is the abuse and corruption of our justice system. The latest issue I recall was using drones to peek into fenced backyards, into windows and deep across property lines, all without a warrant or probable cause.

        During the 2010s IMSI spoofers were being used but the Stingray corporation required precincts sign an NDE so parallel reconstruction (creating an alternative plausible path of investigation to lead to the same discovery of evidence) was the norm. Eventually defense lawyers learned to press the issue, as even FBI would drop cases before admitting they used IMSI catchers to spy on where a suspect’s phone was.

        One of my bigger beefs is the misuse of detection dogs, which have up to a ~90% false positive rate, called Probable Cause on Four Legs it’s known that most departments prefer trick-pony dogs who just signal a lot, in contrast to dogs who can actually detect stuff.

        Interestingly, there is a subset of the K9 sector who train and handle detection dogs (which are still legitimately used, say to detect explosives in long lines of luggage at airports), and thanks to the common use of dogs to force a search, the public has been losing confidence in them, and courts who believe dog searches are for real.

      • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        edit-2
        10 hours ago

        often relying on getting a warrant post hoc or lying to establish probable cause.

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

        Here’s a whole ass Wikipedia article on the very subject, because it’s been so widespread for so long it has a fucking name.

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

        Here’s a Wikipedia article on the mass surveillance by the DEA, which is where the data used for parallel construction was sourced.

        https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805/

        Here’s a good example from the first Wikipedia article about how the Feds pass signals intelligence to local law enforcement so they can start cases and claim they found the initial evidence some other way than illegal mass surveillance.

        For more history about attempts to install backdoors, see:

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

      • SulaymanF@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        edit-2
        13 hours ago

        There’s just so many examples

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

        Also, Greece had a national scandal where their phone system had legal backdoors added for wiretap orders, and someone broke in and published the confidential phone calls of politicians using the same system. The US is now dealing with a similar attack.