Learn from this story, and just don't talk to them.
The dangerous part of this story is that she reports her grand jury experience as a success, suggesting that you _can- talk to the state and 'win'. Maybe it was as successful as she thinks, maybe it wasn't. And we can't say that you can _never_ be succesful talking to the prosecutors; never say never. But what we can say is that they are _experts_ at 'winning' in those confrontations, they've trained for it and practice it every day, no matter how smart you are you're _probably_ going to end up hurting yourselves or your friends and loved ones by talking to the prosecutors.
Stick with the conclusion from the first part, never, ever, talk to the prosecutors.
This is a tricky subject but I feel compelled to point out that it's not so simple. If I hadn't talked to the USAO when I received a proffer letter in 2006, I might have been in Aaron's position trying to defend myself at trial for doing nothing wrong. Instead, the U.S. Attorney (a different one) decided to drop the issue (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/13/technology/13secure.html).
I don't know if there's really a lesson to be learned from the story other than to be very careful when it comes to doing anything that might be even remotely perceived as "hacking" because the justice system is incredibly broken. You don't get to choose your prosecutor.
"Do not talk to the police" does not mean "do never cooperate or be utterly destroyed".
There may be some damn good reasons to cooperate, but you need an attorney to estimate the impact of any statement you make, even if you did nothing wrong.
You were the potential defendant, and you were facing indictment and prosecution for a crime 95% of jurors wouldn't understand, and your lawyer probably suggested that you accept the proffer. I can see how that might be a good idea, because a proffer is a gateway to the prosecution offering immunity, a good plea deal, or dropping the case entirely.
Talking to the police/feds/prosecution under other circumstances, or accepting a proffer when you're not under investigation or without advice of counsel, is where the problem lies.
"Federal agents have the right to lie to you-and to put you in prison if you lie to them. Any citizen who makes even a single-word false utterance (”no,” “yes”) to a federal agent faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine." : http://jimbovard.com/blog/2010/08/18/the-crime-of-lying-to-t...
They try to make witnesses contradict themselves, so that they can invoke this law and scare them into testifying what they need to hear.
It's especially true with the FBI or any other person connected with the federal government in an investigation. Making false statements is a separate crime in itself. 18 USC § 1001 [1]
This is an insightful video to watch. I've seen it before and have to say it didn't hit on any of the obvious reasons that its a bad idea to speak to the police.
I felt sick reading her account and couldn't finish. She is not the person I would want by my side going through something like that. In spite of being a "reporter on hackers" she was extremely naive of the system. How can anyone in the right mind recommend that the prosecution reads a document called the "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto"?
It's a good thing to read, even so. Melancholy and sad, but not something I regret reading. It's not as informative (in terms of actionable advice) as the article on HN about how to (politely) not talk to investigators, but it showed the depths of how adversarial they can make it -- it's a game for them.
How do you come to this conclusion? It doesn't appear she had much of a choice. Her two successful lawyers in a fancy, shiny, expensive office gave her this advice:
"I asked my lawyers to refuse, and we fought about it, repeatedly. They brought up things from my past that could be used against me; not criminal behavior per se, even they admitted, but they wanted me to have immunity."
Different people have different situations; no single piece of advice can apply to all people. Speaking for myself, if somebody placed me in a tricky position where my past could be used against me I would always put myself first if it meant protecting myself and my family.
Being a single mother is tough enough; being a single mother, struggling with money, involved in things you don't understand, being threatened by people with significant amounts of power (is it hard to believe eventually they would have done something to threaten her daughter?) would be enough to convince most normal people to speak. Given the information she had at the time she made a rational (debate-fully wrong) choice.
While there may be strong arguments for the case that the prosecutor's actions are unethical, ultimately Aaron's actions put her into this situation. His blaming her for her actions after being caught up in his battle, while wanting to protect herself and her child, is offensive to me.
It's sad that she beats herself up - she lost in a game she was not trained or skilled enough to win, a game somebody else forced her to play.
1) She ended up deciding those lawyers were crap, right?
2) Her lawyers didn't care at all about protecting Aaron, they cared about protecting her -- because that's 'officially' what lawyers are supposed to do, throw everybody but their client under the bus. (If you WANT to do this too, and you're being offered immunity, well, that's different).
3) Non-political laywers will often not have good advice in political cases, in part but not entirely because of #2 above. And probably related to her deciding #1 above in the end.
YES, being involved in things you don't understand, being threatened by peopel with power, etc., YES, that is enough to convince most normal people to speak. I am NOT blaming those who are duped into speaking, again, the cops are EXPERTS at duping you. Which is why I'm saying, when you hear about this happening to someone else, the more people that learn from it the better: don't talk to the cops.
Now, if you actually _want_ to accept an immunity deal to 'snitch' on someone else (say, because you think they ought to go to jail), then okay. But, other than that, if you think you can actually make things better for you or someone else by talking to the police -- well, like I said, we can't say in 100% of cases that won't work, never say never: We can say that you are unqualified to have any idea if it will work or not, and that usually it won't. Don't talk to the cops.
Could someone explain why she felt compelled to talk? She was advised to by her lawyers, and she was concerned that she'd be arrested if she didn't. Was it because she had a legal obligation to assist in the investigation of the crime?
IANAL. Not legal advice. I'm far from qualified to advise on legal matters. Entertainment purposes only.
Once you're given immunity, you can be compelled to testify, since the only restriction is on self-incrimination; self-incrimination is impossible once you have immunity. (Essentially, it's also only protection against self incrimination; you can be forced to incriminate others. There are limited exceptions for doctor/patient, priest/victim, spouses, attorney/client.) If you refuse at that point, it's potentially contempt of court.
Grand Jury rules are also somewhat different from trials.
IMO, she made some seriously bad life decisions in both retaining logs (making them is bad enough, but retaining them indefinitely is horrible), and in testifying. But not out of malice, just ignorance or something. The party to blame here is the prosecution and government for creating a world where random girlfriends and journalists need to be combatants.
You're bringing up a good point here. I think it is seriously chilling that I am only a subpoena away from giving up the secrets of my friends that are archived in my e-mail account, in Skype's logs or on Facebook. I know secrets that, although not illegal, I would go far out of my way to keep secret because they would jeapordize the livelihood of my friends. The US government can basically look these up if it finds a good reason to do so.
A hacker would berate me for keeping secrets on other people's machines, or berate my friends for communicating through insecure channels. But most people will simply never think this way. You could have said the same for phone conversations back in the day, but these were not logged indefinitely.
I think that the loosely restricted use of electronic records is a dark development.
> I think it is seriously chilling that I am only a subpoena away from giving up the secrets of my friends that are archived in my e-mail account, in Skype's logs or on Facebook.
Hahaha, no you're not. Gmail, Skype, and Facebook all have streamlined and well-trod paths for turning that stuff over to the feds. If it was truly serious business, you'd be lucky to even find out it had happened.
She says she was ill (from the car accident) while she was debating whether to accept the proffer, so she probably wasn't thinking completely clearly, perhaps overly affected by Aaron's paranoia. His paranoia was justified. Hers wasn't. They could scream at her lawyers, subpoena her laptop, subpoena her to testify before a grand jury... all of which they did anyway.
At least a few seasoned federal criminal defense attorneys suggest never accepting a proffer unless you're at serious risk of being prosecuted, which she wasn't.[1]
Suppose she didn't accept the proffer offer. Her laptop data still gets subpoenaed. She's still subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury. She takes the stand and takes the fifth. Either Steve doesn't give her immunity and she doesn't testify, or Steve gives her immunity blind (without having the opportunity to know what she's going to say first), in which case she's in exactly the same situation she ended up in.
Her lawyers probably decided that getting her to cooperate and accept the proffer might keep Steve from yelling at them so much, and it didn't violate their duty to her, since cooperating or not didn't affect her so much as it affected Aaron, so they advised her to cooperate. Since she wasn't a suspect and Steve was being hostile anyway, her laywers could have told her to do just about anything short of perjuring herself or disobeying subpoenas, and they would have adequately served their duty to their client; the outcome for her would probably have been similar, too: after the grand jury appearance, she never heard from Steve again.
The entire wealth and resources of the federal government when wielded by a prosecutor against an individual is truly terrifying, and not surprisingly abused constantly.
Those powers are meant to go after "well armored" entities like organized crime and "well entrenched" corporations, bankers, wallstreet, etc. to protect the people of the state from what they could not individually protect themselves against.
But going after individuals guarantees wins which helps the victory scoreboard and political careers. Going after entities that have armies of lawyers and boatloads of cash is far less profitable and far more risky.
"A couple of publication notes. First, Quinn Norton did not accept money for the publication of this story. We offered. She has chosen to donate the money we're paying her. Second, I edited this story. Third, we've published several snippets of writing that Norton penned during the time of the trial along with her present account because their content -- a letter to the prosecutor and a reflection on Norton's father -- are an important lens for her state of mind at the time of the investigation. "
This one article would not make the difference, though I wonder if your greater point may be that it can be hard to get by in this country when you grant money an ethical/emotional/moral or otherwise personal value beyond beyond the apparent financial value.
Wow. I had no idea she was so relatively destitute; it's a lot easier to criticize someone's actions and unfamiliarity with the legal process when you're used to dealing with startup founders, people who have had Jennifer Granick on speed-dial, etc. I guess being an independent journalist doesn't pay well, and if you're being entangled in something in your personal life, vs. through through something you've published, you're kind of on your own.
Still, a personal "document retention policy" is essential if you do anything interesting at all. In addition, I have a pretty bad memory.
Wasn't Aaron a fellow at Harvard Law school and didn't he hang out with Larry Lessig? The part of the story I don't understand the most is why the high profile lawyer who was egging Aaron on to break the rules seems to have played a minor role after his arrest.
i.e. another big East Coast university (primarily MIT, now Harvard) fucking over people actually doing something useful, more in keeping with their purported mission than anything the institution currently does.
I hope MOOCs, online collaboration, one on one communication, self-directed projects, etc. destroy these outdated medieval legacies.
As far as I can tell, Larry (Lawrence) Lessig is a civil copyright/technology/IP rights attorney, and not known to be a criminal defense attorney. Even with his high profile status, he may not have much criminal defense experience.
EFF circa 2013 is a large institution. It does good, but it isn't at all focused on defending people in "boring" cases, which was kind of its original mission (Steve Jackson Games).
There isn't an organization in the tech community which defends people from computer related crimes on bogus but boring grounds the way the ACLU does for pure, conventional free speech.
I think that would be a useful organization; even if a defendant is a racist troll, he deserves a competent defense, and computer crimes are still complex and novel enough that normal legal defense is probably not ideal. Unfortunately I'm not (yet) in a position to fund something like that.
EFF isn't that large (I work there). It takes on cases in exactly the same way as ACLU does, for impact on the law.
It was involved in the Swartz case, but mostly as a resource to help people find other criminal defence lawyers. Lots of people got caught up in the investigation, and they couldn't all be represented by the same firm.
LOL. Weev isn't getting support from the EFF because he is Weev. Who the hell would want to defend him? And specifically here, Weev burned certain bridges there through his normal every-day work as a troll.
Logging. I do it, automatically in my chat clients, because otherwise I will totally forget little details about everything. Mom's address? Friend's anniversary? Details of X problem and its requirements? Logged.
A document retention (And deletion!) policy seems like it's important to have, even in personal use cases, as this article pointed out.
>>These days, I not only don't log, I refuse to talk to anyone who does. I often refuse to communicate without encryption.
This is the lesson to take away from all this. People on this forum have always talked about freedom to bear arms. It is not that difficult to realize this fact, Freedom to bear arms in our times is cryptogrphy/encryption not guns.
Encryption is not relevant when prosecutors can subpoena all your electronic equipment and find every single trace, log files, historical messages, etc.
But agree, the real lesson to take away if you ever find yourself in a similar situation is: don't ask, don't talk, don't write.
Sadly, Aaron was right in trying to avoid any conversation about the case, even with loved ones. The only way to "win" is not to play.
Computers are an extension of one's mind, and should be subject to the same fifth amendment protection. We wouldn't say that protection against self incrimination no longer applies once information can be scanned directly out of the brain (although the doublespeaking sovereign nine probably would, sigh). I have hope that ubiquitous stenographic file systems can maybe show people the way and encourage such push back. We'll see.
I feel sorry for Quinn Norton an innocent bystander in all this. It seems everything she did including talking to the prosecutors she did what she honestly thought was the best thing to do. She did need to protect herself and her daughter. Her life was thrown upside-down during those months she was involved in this case, unfairly.
"I was told that changing my behavior while being investigated could be held against me, because in an investigation it is suspicious to learn from your mistakes."
Google "subsequent remedial measures" and know that this isn't always true. INAL yet but I'd love to represent tech-savy clients who need help navigating the horrible world of the law.
"I told them about the Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto. And in doing so, Aaron would explain to me later (and reporters would confirm), I made everything worse. This is what I must live with."
Not just worse, she gave them a case they didn't have (although arguably a better prosecutor would have googled)
Learn from this story, and just don't talk to them.
The dangerous part of this story is that she reports her grand jury experience as a success, suggesting that you _can- talk to the state and 'win'. Maybe it was as successful as she thinks, maybe it wasn't. And we can't say that you can _never_ be succesful talking to the prosecutors; never say never. But what we can say is that they are _experts_ at 'winning' in those confrontations, they've trained for it and practice it every day, no matter how smart you are you're _probably_ going to end up hurting yourselves or your friends and loved ones by talking to the prosecutors.
Stick with the conclusion from the first part, never, ever, talk to the prosecutors.