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A law that was allegedly passed in response to corporate accounting scandals like Enron's and Worldcom's is now being used far outside of its original intentions:
A lot of Internet users delete their browser history and clear their cache and cookies.
It's just one of those things you do — some more often than others — if you own and use a computer.
"If you don't clear this information, it's there for someone to come along and retrieve — either by sitting down at your computer or remotely if you visit vicious websites or get a virus," said a Patrol Tech expert.
But the recent Boston Marathon bombing trial has brought to light a law, ratified in 2002, that could land you with a federal charge of obstructing justice for — wait for it — clearing your browser history.
Techdirt points out some of the serious problems with this chilling precedent:
In a hypothetical posed recently (containing a real-world example), finding yourself in possession of child pornography poses a serious dilemma. Possession is a crime, but so is destruction of evidence. Sarbanes-Oxley demands the preservation of evidence in "foreseeable" investigations, and child porn possession is one of those crimes no law enforcement agency ignores.
The article over at Dailykos covers the relevant section of the law, along with other details:
Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
The spirit of this law seems to be just another way to criminalize spoliation, but like too many laws in the post-9/11 world its written overly broad and rarely, if ever, used for its stated purpose. It scares me to see that simply performing maintenance on your computer, or worse being the victim of a CP-rickroll, will land you in prison no matter what you do. Is there anything we can do to stop this creeping totalitarianism, or is the police state already so entrenched that the only option left is to abandon ship?
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday June 11 2015, @08:34PM
So they have to prove you knowingly deleted evidence of a crime and they can't force you to testify against yourself. Seems pretty difficult to prove. Anyways, if someone is sending you childporn then you should report them. Just don't delete your history before you do! (lol)
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Thursday June 11 2015, @10:15PM
But by not deleting it you are in possession of it, which is in and of itself a crime regardless of how it got there.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by tibman on Friday June 12 2015, @12:16AM
Yeah, i guess any time someone finds a body and reports it they are tried and convicted for murder.
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(Score: 4, Informative) by Grishnakh on Friday June 12 2015, @01:07AM
Fallacy: false equivalence.
The fact is, CP is treated differently than just about anything else. Mere possession is illegal, no matter how you got it, and it's become a boogeyman even worse than terrorism somehow. However, stumbling across a dead body (even in your own house) is not illegal by itself.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Friday June 12 2015, @01:30AM
Are you saying that everyone who has reported CP they saw while browsing the web has been sent to jail?
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @02:19AM
There have been cases of persons reporting CP with evidence being tried and found guilty of possession of CP. The moral of the story is "never talk to the cops."
The point of "zero tolerance" is so that everyone gets there chance to spend time in jail. It's the American way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @02:27AM
All computers you own, including all removable media and stuff like cell phones, will be carted off as evidence. You might get it back with only minor damage after a few years have passed.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by lentilla on Friday June 12 2015, @02:39AM
The conversation will never go "Excuse me, Officer, but I came across some C.P. whilst browsing, would you look into it?" No, it will never happen like that. What will happen is that you will suddenly be under the microscope.
It is not out of the realm of possibility that your computer will be seized. In a way that's understandable - secure the evidence until it is known what we are dealing with. Once they have your computer it is likely that they will scan it. I've seen some odd things turn up in browser caches (as in, "wtf? where ever did that come from?") so I wouldn't like to take a gamble with somebody who has a axe to grind. (Remember that law enforcement generally assumes that everyone who isn't wearing a badge is a criminal. That makes sense, because the citizens they deal with are usually the naughty ones.) As the sages say "give me six megabytes committed by the most honest of web browsers, and I shall find a reason to 'rm -rf *'".
I imagine I'd personally be in a for a world of hurt. You see, my computer isn't "normal" (no Windows, and not even a Mac), so I must be hiding something. Right? Full disk encryption is even more of a red flag.
The only (reasonably) safe way to report C.P. is through your lawyer. Even then, it's still a dicey proposition. It's the kind of thing that is best reported anonymously. Of course not everybody feels like dropping a couple of hundred bucks to report something.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by CirclesInSand on Friday June 12 2015, @02:08PM
(Remember that law enforcement generally assumes that everyone who isn't wearing a badge is a criminal. That makes sense, because the citizens they deal with are usually the naughty ones.)
Would you trust the competence of a doctor who thinks that everyone they meet is sick?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VortexCortex on Friday June 12 2015, @04:52AM
Anyways, if someone is sending you childporn then you should report them. Just don't delete your history before you do! (lol)
Good luck:
<iframe style="width:1px;height:1px" src="http://kiddyporn.com/randomimages.php">
You see, that blog you regularly visit runs Wordpress giving it multiple SQL injection vulnerabilities, and some angsty teen script kiddie who installed Metasploit used it to place a hidden iframe on the blog which causes your browser to download several random child porn images to your browser cache without you even knowing it. You see, the teens are pissed that expressing their sexuality via "sexting" is criminalized. It doesn't matter if they're wrong or right, what matters is they're rebelling to show how ridiculous making a series of bits illegal is. So, how will you explain the evidence in your ISP's records and your web browser cache which shows you regularly downloaded kiddie porn for months on end? I sure as hell hope you set your history to clear every day and have been using whole disk encryption from the get go in order to mitigate the danger of having possession of illegal strings of bits that you'll never even see. On the other hand, if you do then the ISP records will prove you're destroying evidence. Protip: The prosecutors are corrupt and do not unsually give you all the evidence they have, such as the NSA PRISM data with the HTTP-REFERRER header (sic) which shows the requests were automated and the HTML which shows the CP was invisible.
Now, you might think this is a hypothetical, but I've cleaned such code out of web sites about fifteen times over the past several years. Often times the skiddies don't close the hole they got in with and the site remains vulnerable so some other skiddie who overwrites / changes the child porn injection code. That means the site admin might not even know they were linking you to CP by the time the exploit is purged, and don't know to notify the authorities or their users. I only found out because I'm thorough and checked site backups to see how far back the exploit existed.
One of the key tools of a Police State is to make laws that no one can avoid breaking, and make many of them. Then if they don't like you for some reason, say your political opinion or activism efforts, or exposing police corruption, they can simply arrest anyone for any reason and be sure to find a Don't forget, the FBI uploads child porn too. [sfgate.com] These are the URLs skiddies like to inject links to.
Now, I will pose this question: In a Post-Snowden world and post-COINTELPRO nation [wikipedia.org] wherein the NSA and FBI are known to covertly discredit dissidents and activists (from civil rights to environmental) and now have the powers to implant any computer system with any digital "evidence" they want, and where the NSA lies to both the Public and Congress itself, how can we possibly prosecute any charge that is brought against any citizen using only digital information stores as the evidence of crime? "Prove the NSA didn't do it", should be all anyone has to say now. Alas, no one (esp. a jury of average idiots) would believe being a tree hugger or making inciting observations about corporate greed impacting environmental issues would cause the government to attack you, even if we have public records showing the FBI has been doing such things since it's inception in 1908. In fact, if you try to bring that up in court you'll get held in contempt for grandstanding -- the same as if you bring up rampant Breathalyzer inaccuracies due to lack of maintenance.
Sadly, it's time to stop giving the government the benefit of the doubt. Also, never ever talk to police, ever. [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by davester666 on Friday June 12 2015, @05:10AM
They will argue that the fact that you deleted your internet history meant you knew you did something wrong and that you actively took a step to destroy evidence of having done it.
Now, prove that's not true.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday June 12 2015, @07:25AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Friday June 12 2015, @07:43AM
It should be. Except you've been doing criminal activity for a long time, and have learned how to cover your tracks.
You will wind up having to prove:
1) that you HAVE been doing it every week, not just last week
2) that you have been doing it for some reason other than to hide your criminal activity
The prosecutor probably wouldn't have to prove your intention, but let the jury infer the reason why you would delete the history.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Friday June 12 2015, @10:00AM
It's much worse than that. In order to pile on as many charges as possible, they want to add on things like "lying to a federal officer".
So they'll enter your house, take a snapshot of your browser history (even if it's harmless - perhaps especially if it's harmless). Then give you reason to clear it, by accusing you of whatever. Finally, ask you threateningly "you didn't clear your browser history, did you?". Which you reflexively deny - voila, a clear felony, because they already know that you did. Even if they can't prove anything else, they can get you on this.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.