The article’s headline is rather misleading (I assume unintentionally), because it omits that the actual seizure and data access was done pursuant to warrants. Only the repair and firmware update was performed during a donut hole when one warrant had expired before another was granted.
Here, the government obtained multiple, time-limited warrants to search the device, but was unable to get into it. They sent it to be repaired. After the warrant extension expired, the repair guy fixed it and updated the firmware. (The record doesn’t say what version the firmware was, but it seems like it was standard firmware, not some special forensic firmware.) The next day, the government again obtained a warrant. Only after doing so did the government perform the search.
In this unusual situation, it’s reasonable to conclude that the device repair wasn’t a search. The seizure and the data access were both performed pursuant to a warrant. The only part that wasn’t covered by the warrant was just fixing the device in a seemingly conventional way to get it working again.
I agree that most readers won’t really ‘get it’ by reading the headline, and appreciate your useful addition so we all can get some context without the click, but in defense of the author, I think writing layperson-accessible headlines for technical legal articles is often impossible. Having attempted to make interfaces and applications that made raw legal data useful for laypeople, including with NN summaries and such, if there’s a meaningfully better solution, I sure couldn’t find it after a few years of work. For the same reason reading case law doesn’t effectively help laypeople represent themselves in court, you need context and background knowledge to make sense of legal concepts. (If you’ve ever seen an overconfident ‘sovereign citizen’ cite opinions in court while representing themself, you’ve seen why. And while most are obviously under-educated for the task, they’re probably not unintelligent and they clearly put a lot of effort into it.) To people used to reading legal texts and familiar with the trajectory of decisions in this space, the headline makes sense, and I think that’s probably the best you can do. Trying to construct a headline that’s representative while also giving laypeople the background and context they need to make sense of the topic becomes way too long to be a headline long before it accomplishes it’s goal.
Sovereign citizenry and misquoting admiralty law in your hearing about driving without valid registration or saying the court doesn't have jurisdiction because the flag has gold fringe on it is so close to mental illness it's hard to assign concepts like "smart" or "dumb" to it.
In the past I have considered pursuing litigation pro se because it is very difficult to find an attorney willing to take a public records case on contingency. The stereotype that anyone who represents themselves in court must be a soverign loon or think they're Will Hunting is one reason I did not do so. It is not ideal, but neither is not having access to the justice system due to not having a bunch of money to burn.
I represented myself pro se in a civil matter that really should have been in small claims but was in superior court because of the remedy being sought by the plaintiff.
>> While some people believe that the fringe has symbolic meaning, its primary purpose is ornamental, giving the flag an air of distinction and honor. Fringed flags are usually displayed on indoor flagpoles, though they may also be used in parades or during other ceremonial presentations. It’s important to note that these flags are not typically flown outside, as the fringe is not designed to withstand outdoor weather conditions.
In short: people get confused because they only see the fringe on special occasions or indoors as in courtrooms. It has no meaning.
It has something to do with (incorrectly believing) what laws apply to what court based on the type of flag. This is from memory so may be wrong but I seem to recall it being basically if there is gold fringe, the court is in/part of a different jurisdiction, and the procedures are different, and as such the (actually correct) procedures the judge and prosecutors follow are viewed as incorrect by the SC.
I'm aware of what the belief is (admiralty court, all that hokum...). I'm interested to know the actual origin of the belief-- like who was "patient 0" for coming up with the silliness.
It seems like a waste of time at best. But have any sovereign citizen got what they wanted at the end of any kind of proceeding?
It seems like a very bad strategy to solve their own selfish problems. (DUI, speeding, not paying taxes, going against gun regulations, etc.)
And this strategy is usually coming from being unfortunately so tragically misinformed that they cannot help but reject the boring standard model of reality for a bouquet of conspiracy theories.
They do "win" sometimes. The rational person just pays the ticket. The sovcit demands a jury trial and, rarely, gets a win when a deal is offered or a witness fails to show. And often just having the proceeding is the win. They get off on being the center of attention. Defending themselves in court is the one time all the important people have to listen to them. They enjoy it.
I found this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_costs which generally seems to say that you only have to pay in criminal cases if convicted, or in some states never. To clarify, I'm not talking about the costs of your own attorney, but the cost charged by the court itself.
I was asking because in Germany, you generally (only) have to pay if you're convicted, I think.
Some people like to portray petty mostly victimless lawlessness as sovereign citizen shenanigans as a means to discredit the reasoning that lead to those people to decide not to follow the law.
Not everyone who doesn't get a building permit or a fishing license is a sovereign citizen.
It isnt mental illness. Having incorrect beliefs is different than being insane. But it is a mental heath issue that leads people to adopt these beliefs. Be it flat earth, Qanon or Sovcit, people under stress will reach out to conspiracy theories in an attempt to regain a sense of community and control whilst thier lives are otherwise going off the rails. The beliefs are the symptom, not the disease.
With sovcit specifically, there is also a rational layer. Many people think the law some sort of elite club where mastery of a secret language can allow one to escape legal scrutiny. This comes from TV and the news that never explain the nuance of legal practice. They arent insane, just very incorrectly educated. Rosa parks was not insane. She knew she was breaking the law. The rational sovcit thinks themselves the next Rosa Parks, but mistakenly believe that means they cannot be arrested. Rational but wrong.
> people think the law some sort of elite club where mastery of a secret language can allow one to escape legal scrutiny
pc86 didn’t say sovereign citizenry is mental illness per se. They said it’s indistinguishable from mental illness if pursued all the way to a hearing. At that point, enough flags have been intentionally ignored to validly cross into delusion.
But i would say they are very distinguishable. The man who drives as 85mph because the spiders are chasing him is insane. The man who drives as 85mph because facebook told him that the state lacks jurisdiction over roads painted with yellow lines is not. The incorrect behavior (speeding) is identical but the overall situation is very distinguishable.
>The man who drives as 85mph because the spiders are chasing him is insane. The man who drives as 85mph because facebook told him that the state lacks jurisdiction over roads painted with yellow lines is not.
They are both insane, just in different ways. Sane people don't just automatically believe random stuff from facebook that is contrary to everything they know and have been taught.
As I read the original comment, it sounds as if they meant that continuing to insist that you were legally in the right is the problem. Being gullible is one thing. Insisting on your gullible belief when it's about to result in a prison sentence comes much closer to "invisible spider" territory.
> man who drives as 85mph because facebook told him that the state lacks jurisdiction over roads painted with yellow lines
This is a stretch, but possible. It breaks when that man is pulled over, cited, given the opportunity to research or consider another viewpoint, and then shows up in court to plead that case. That’s invisible-spiders levels of delusion, and while it may not be caused by a chemical or physical problem in the brain, it’s indistinguishable from it.
>Freemasons exist and your judges, lawyers, and cops are freemasons.
Sure, but they don't have a secret language that allows them to escape legal scrutiny. Freemasonry isn't even an elite club, they'll take pretty much anyone willing to pay the dues and memorize some stuff.
Not talking about lower levels here because those are the commoners. High ranking freemasons such as those found in positions of power are obligated to get each other out of trouble to the greatest effort possible given the circumstances.
Freemasonry only has 3 “ranks”. The organizations that have other levels, like the Shriners, York Rite, Scottish Rite (created in France in the 19th century) aren’t organizationally or legally related to any actual Masonic grand lodge — they’re a completely separate organization that only accept 3rd degree masons— the highest Masonic rank — as members. The conspiracy theory information you cite can’t even keep basic facts straight about the way freemasonry operates. I’m not even a Mason— this information is really really easy to find online.
Oh, is that what I said? Or is that what you wish I said because you had a specious response to it pre-cooked? Does your response directly address anything I said? Are you sure you're responding to me and not some conceptual 'other side' that has predictable views that perfectly yin-yang curve around 'your side' because falling back into groupthink is a lot easier than having to actually read and think about what other people say, and be accountable for saying things that are easily provably completely incorrect? Are you sure that's not what's happening here?
Rosa Parks also was a handpicked woman of unimpeachable character who deliberately chose to break the law that day. Various civil rights organizations had guaranteed her family that they would replace any income lost. Still a brave woman, but it was not a random decision on her part.
Fun fact along the same lines: Homer Plessy (of Plessy v. Ferguson) had one African-American great-grandparent. He was of mostly European descent and would have been unnoticed had he not declared to the conductor that he was “colored”. He was sponsored by the railroad, which wanted to save money by not having to have separate cars for “white” and “colored” passengers, as it was rare to have a full complement of each.
As cool as those anecdotes sound, I am not sure that either of them are true.
Homer Plessy
The Wikipedia article on Plessy v. Ferguson explains the following:
“In 1890, the State of Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act, which required separate accommodation for black and white people on railroads, including separate railway cars. A group of 18 prominent black, creole of color, and white creole New Orleans residents formed the Comité des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens) to challenge the law. Many staff members of The New Orleans Crusader, a black Republican newspaper, were among the group's members, including publisher Louis A. Martinet, writer Rodolphe Desdunes, and managing editor L. J. Joubert, who served as president of the Justice, Protective, Educational, and Social Club at the same time Plessy was vice president.
The group contacted attorney and civil rights advocate Albion W. Tourgée, who agreed to help them bring a test case to court in order to force the judiciary to determine the constitutionality of Jim Crow laws. In his correspondence with Martinet, Tourgée suggested finding a plaintiff who had "not more than one-eight colored blood" and could pass as white.”
Rosa Parks
The Wikipedia articles on Rosa Parks and on The Montgomery bus boycott seem very clear that Rosa Parks decided on her own to break the law. Nowhere do they suggest that Parks was specifically selected to engage in her act of civil disobedience:
“In 1955, Parks completed a course in "Race Relations" at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, where nonviolent civil disobedience had been discussed as a tactic. On December 1, 1955, Parks was sitting in the foremost row in which black people could sit (in the middle section). When a white man boarded the bus, the bus driver told everyone in her row to move back. At that moment, Parks realized that she was again on a bus driven by Blake. While all of the other black people in her row complied, Parks refused, and she was arrested for failing to obey the driver's seat assignments, as city ordinances did not explicitly mandate segregation but did give the bus driver authority to assign seats.”
“During a 1956 radio interview with Sydney Rogers in West Oakland several months after her arrest, Parks said she had decided, "I would have to know for once and for all what rights I had as a human being and a citizen."
In her autobiography, My Story, she said:
People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
When Parks refused to give up her seat, a police officer arrested her. As the officer took her away, she recalled that she asked, "Why do you push us around?" She remembered him saying, "I don't know, but the law's the law, and you're under arrest." She later said, "I only knew that, as I was being arrested, that it was the very last time that I would ever ride in humiliation of this kind. ... "”
Although I haven’t spent much time looking, a few minutes on Google didn’t turn up any evidence confirming either of your claims.
Keep reading the article on Plessy. It quite clearly goes on about how Plessy was handpicked for the second test case and had the cooperation of the railroad.
As for Parks, it's a recollection from some reading long ago. I can't cite it as it's been at least twenty years, but it's not out of the nature of the civil rights movement to have picked people who had unassailable character for test cases. Wikipedia is a valuable resource, but it's also not the place you go for a full story.
> Mrs. Parks was not the first person to be prosecuted for violating the segregation laws on the city buses in Montgomery. She was, however, a woman of unchallenged character who was held in high esteem by all those who knew her. At the time of her arrest, Mrs. Parks was active in the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), serving as secretary to E.D. Nixon, president of the Montgomery chapter.
... which to me certainly suggests that she was not random.
> Shortly after the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in December 1955, many black community leaders were discussing whether they would file a federal lawsuit to try to challenge the City of Montgomery and Alabama about the bus segregation laws.
> About two months after the bus boycott began, civil rights activists reconsidered the case of Claudette Colvin. She was a 15-year-old who had been the first person arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, nine months prior to Rosa Parks's actions. Fred Gray, E. D. Nixon, president of the NAACP and secretary of the new Montgomery Improvement Association: and Clifford Durr (a white lawyer who, with his wife, Virginia Foster Durr was an activist in the Civil Rights Movement) searched for the ideal case law to challenge the constitutional legitimacy of the Montgomery and Alabama bus segregation laws.
> Gray later did research for the lawsuit and consulted with NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorneys Robert L. Carter and Thurgood Marshall (who would late become United States Solicitor General and the first African-American United States Supreme Court Justice). Gray later approached Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith (activist), and Jeanetta Reese, all women who had been discriminated against by the drivers enforcing segregation policy in the Montgomery bus system. They all agreed to become plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit (except Jeanetta Reese due to intimidation by the members of the white community), thus bypassing the Alabama court system.
Heck, even the Wiki article on Parks notes that she worked for a pro-civil-rights white couple where the husband was a lawyer, that they had sponsored her in going to training on activism, and that that lawyer and the president of the local NAACP were the ones who bailed her out of jail on the night of her arrest.
I read the entire Plessy entry. Nowhere does it say that he was “sponsored by the railroad” or anything like that.
The closest thing I could find is the following statement:
“The railroad company, which had opposed the law on the grounds that it would require the purchase of more railcars, had been previously informed of Plessy's racial lineage, and the intent to challenge the law.”
I agree with you that Plessy was handpicked, but you also wrote that Plessy “was sponsored by the railroad.” That is what I responded to, and I still don't see any evidence that it’s true. On the contrary, it seems clear that Plessy was selected and sponsored by a group that had no affiliation with the railroad company.
What evidence do you have that the Comité des Citoyens — which recruited Plessy, orchestrated his arrest, and organized the litigation in Plessy v. Ferguson — was connected to the railroad?
Rosa Parks
None of the things you quoted are evidence that Rosa Parks was selected in advance, by anyone other than herself, to engage in her famous act of civil disobedience. Parks’ own statements after the event indicate that she self-selected.
The fact that Parks was very involved in the NAACP is not evidence that the organization recruited her to engage in civil disobedience. Most of what you quoted is in relation to litigation that happened after Rosa Parks’ civil disobedience.
You also wrote that “Various civil rights organizations had guaranteed her family that they would replace any income lost.” What evidence do you have that Parks received such a guarantee prior to her act of civil disobedience?
I told you, I read it a long time ago. Disbelieve me if you wish. It's nigh impossible to find genuine information anymore on the internet, assuming that what I originally read is even still up.
I don't have enough time to play Wikipedia editor games about attribution. Believe me or don't.
How can you think you're breaking a law that does not apply to you?
> They arent insane, just very incorrectly educated.
Well, they can be both. The test of insanity is to see what happens as they are faced with the usual adversity that comes with these beliefs. Are they capable of learning or keep doing something that every sane person recognizes will certainly lead to ruin (or at least failure)?
There's a huge gray area between "not understanding the law" and "being competent to litigate a case in court." It is entirely possible for non-lawyers to understand the gist of the law at a high level. And thus it's not acceptable to tolerate misleading headlines about legal decisions any more than it is to tolerate misleading headlines about any other decision. And God knows I've seen enough of them about other issues that are within my realm of professional expertise.
The problem is that our system as currently set up does not incentivize reporters working a "beat" for years where they develop enough domain expertise on a field to report on it competently. If we had actual senior legal reporters, senior national security reporters, senior tech reporters, and so on, they would have enough knowledge of those fields to effectively write for laypeople.
> The problem is that our system as currently set up does not incentivize reporters working a "beat" for years where they develop enough domain expertise on a field to report on it competently. If we had actual senior legal reporters, senior national security reporters, senior tech reporters, and so on, they would have enough knowledge of those fields to effectively write for laypeople.
How does this apply to Techdirt? Tim Cushing has been a staff writer at techdirt for 12 years and works heavily on a legal, civil liberties/policy beat with a tech perspective. By your criteria, he should be a perfect example of journalists who have enough knowledge to effectively write for laypeople.
Your distinction— understanding the law, broadly, and being able to try a case in court are themselves two extremes on the spectrum of people that understand law. The invective for clickbait obviously exists.
None of those facts means that it’s easy, or even possible to write a headline-length blurb can give laypeople the context they need to know what’s happening.
The author probably didn’t come up with the headline, the editor did. It’s one thing if the Office of Legislative Counsel tries and fails to come up with a succinct one liner, it’s another when an editor driven entirely by clickbait economic incentives does it. The latter rarely even try to be accurate.
I do sometimes wish articles had information in the byline about who wrote the headline as well as just the article, or that it became standard practice for authors to write the headlines as well.
Is it a "mere" repair when they crack open your device swap out the main board and replace the firmware? Imagine that their "search" turned up nothing? You'd still be left unable to get your device back intact or unaltered. Should the government be able to swap out hardware components and install whatever firmware they like on them without a court order? People have their own reasons for selecting the hardware that they do and for not installing certain firmware. Should the police be able to install firmware that isn't official?
"merely repairing" seems misleading given what this allows for.
To my understanding this was a routine repair operation. Yes, if forensic firmware had been installed or something like that, that's be different, but that's not what happened and doesn't appear to be part of the ruling.
I guess an equivalent scenario, and I don't know how this would land in court, would be picking the front door of a house, but not entering. It facilitates the search, bit isn't one? Wherever that falls under the law, this should probably be consistent with it.
> To my understanding this was a routine repair operation.
Even if that's the case, I think that the repair shouldn't have been performed by a detective (a government official whose stereotypical role is searching, not fixing) in a forensic lab.
This ignores the fact that the repair was done by a government detective at a forensic laboratory [1]:
> Detective Sheldon Clay, an HSI Task Force Officer at that laboratory was able to repair the iPhone 6 by replacing its circuit board and re-flashing the device's firmware. Mot., ECF 106, EX. D at 2. At that time, Detective Clay also determined that new forensic software was likely able to bypass the iPad's passcode.
I’ve attending 1,000’s of arraignments, motion calendars and pleas.
In all my experience I’ve seen 2 pro se defendants pull the “I’m a sovereign” spiel. Credit to them they both turned what should have been a 5 minute hearing into at least 15 minute circuses refusing to even announce their names for the record. Both were threatened with being held in contempt before the Judges passed on their cases and made them wait to hear the other matters on the docket.
Truly fascinating & unusual events and people, I think if you draw a vin diagram mental illness and Dunning-Kruger Effect these folks would be the overlap.
For sure. I think part of it is what happens when Dunning-Krueger strikes someone confident and charismatic enough to teach their ill-conceived ideas to others who find the idea appealing enough to take it and run with it. A runaway bullshit train. Eventually it becomes widespread enough to become “conventional wisdom” to to some groups and most people don’t question conventional wisdom imparted by people they trust. It seems a lot of conspiracy theories work that way.
Natural result of YouTube scholars learning “appeal to authority” logic fallacy - it somehow becomes reasonable to reject any and all authorities while simultaneously accepting any single YouTube video as truth.
Yes, I wouldn’t know how to explain all that in a headline either! Unfortunately the word “misleading” has multiple connotations—I wasn’t saying the author was trying to deliberately mislead, but rather that the reader shouldn’t conclude too much based on the headline alone.
> The only part that wasn’t covered by the warrant was just fixing the device in a seemingly conventional way to get it working again.
By 'the only part that wasn't covered', I think you meant "The only part that wasn't within a warrant period" (as opposed to not falling the scope of one of the warrants).
Assuming that, this is what I think you are considering.
Are the constitutional safeguards of these warrants reasonably satisfied here?
Instead, I believe the following is the matter for concern here.
By declaring a repair
[a repair which occurred to enable and assist a search for incriminating evidence]
to not be a search (to not be an action that merits 4th amendment protections)
a court establishes that LEO are now free to forcefully perform certain evidence gathering actions on private devices without a warrant - as long as those actions can be construed as a 'repair'.
It doesn't seem misleading to me just overly technical for no reason.
Something like "Court Says Repairing Seized Phone isn't a Search" conveys the same meaning with fewer technical details, but is a little no duh. To me that is just as click bait-ish, because I would want to know who was dumb enough to try that as a defense, or wonder what the actual situation was.
The forensics report suggests the device was reflashed with its normal firmware, and a different set of forensics tools were used to access the device once it was repaired.
> I brought both devices to the Newberg-Dundee Police Department Digital Forensics Lab and evaluated the iPhone 6 for function. I connected the device to power via the lightning connector and found it drew electrical current indicating it was attempting to charge the battery however the screen remained black.
I attempted to power the device on with no change on the device screen. I located an identical model
donor phone an A1549 and verified the donor device functioned properly. To eliminate the possibility
of a hardware issue on the evidence device, I swapped the circuit board from the evidence device into
the housing of the known good donor device. I attempted to boot the device however the screen
remained black. I could tell the device was booting because it drew current when powered directly from
a power supply however it was not booting normally. I was able to cycle the device between DFU mode
and recovery modes but was unable to get to boot into a normal state and there was no change on the
devices screen. Because the device would not boot normally or light the display, I believed there was
likely and issue with the device firmware. I used a repair tool to re-flash the devices firmware. After the
re-flashing repair process the device booted normally to the screen requesting the passcode. The board
swap and firmware re-flashing processes do not change the user data on the device. During the board
swap process, I only reassembled the device to a condition sufficient to make the device function.
> After receiving the copy of the search warrant, I connected the iPhone 6 to an advanced forensic
extraction tool (Graykey). I used the passcode 070106 obtained from the previous extraction of the
iPhone XS to unlock the device and obtained a Full File System extraction from the iPhone 6.
> They sent it to be repaired. After the warrant extension expired, the repair guy fixed it and updated the firmware.
These sentences you wrote are just as misleading, if not more so. The "repair guy" was a government detective who performed the repair by re-flashing firmware at a forensic laboratory during a period when no search warrant was active [1]:
> Detective Sheldon Clay, an HSI Task Force Officer at that laboratory was able to repair the iPhone 6 by replacing its circuit board and re-flashing the device's firmware. Mot., ECF 106, EX. D at 2. At that time, Detective Clay also determined that new forensic software was likely able to bypass the iPad's passcode.
The headline of TFA claims that the reflashing of firmware was for the purpose of facilitating a search.
[uneducated impressions:]
Sure, it sounds like technicality. It is a shame it is not treated as such. The right solution would be to force government officials to do their job and get warrants on time next time.
Just physical access not mentioning firmware update means your device is compromised.
It sets a bad precedent.
It is not like people have too many rights as it is.
>In this unusual situation, it’s reasonable to conclude that the device repair wasn’t a search.
I'm more comfortable concluding that it's an illegal search than I am concluding that it's not a search at all. During the period that the warrant(s) didn't apply, it should have been sitting in a sealed evidence bag and not being modified by a 3rd party. The law doesn't and shouldn't make provisions for "eh, it's probably not a big deal, we'll probably get another warrant".
Author chose to take a jab at "walled gardens" which made absolutely no sense. They basically implied that because both iPhones and iPads were accessed in this way, Apple's ecosystem is worthless. Or something. Clearly had an agenda.
Here, the government obtained multiple, time-limited warrants to search the device, but was unable to get into it. They sent it to be repaired. After the warrant extension expired, the repair guy fixed it and updated the firmware. (The record doesn’t say what version the firmware was, but it seems like it was standard firmware, not some special forensic firmware.) The next day, the government again obtained a warrant. Only after doing so did the government perform the search.
In this unusual situation, it’s reasonable to conclude that the device repair wasn’t a search. The seizure and the data access were both performed pursuant to a warrant. The only part that wasn’t covered by the warrant was just fixing the device in a seemingly conventional way to get it working again.
Original decision here, pages 3-4 has the relevant facts: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25423841/no-disassemb...