This is being wildly overinterpreted. It could just as well mean that the FBI is investigating CarrierIQ for misconduct. You can't FOIA this stuff during an active investigation for obvious reasons. I'm not saying this is necessarrily what's going on, but we shouldn't be jumping to the worst conclusions either.
It could, but that seems awfully naive. Is there any precedent for the justice department pursuing a civil privacy case via secret (!) FBI investigation? As opposed to, you know, just filing a suit and getting the relevant documents during discovery?
What makes you think this is a civil privacy case? It is quite possible carrier iq was violating federal wiretapping statutes, which will put people into prison for years if convicted. In a criminal investigation you need to, you know, gather sufficient evidence and justification to get a search warrant so that you can dig into bits that are not out in public; a manual describing what the software actually does is one piece of data that would help in this case.
I don't buy it. I'm not aware of any similar investigation of a corporate entity like that, are you? What would be the point when you could just subpoena the relavant documents? Why must they have secrecy? I'm no law enforcement expert, but the kind of scenario you posit just doesn't seem to happen in the real world.
On the other hand, the FBI has been repeatedly caught with its hand in the surveilance cookie jar.
Seriously, given the available evidence you can't honestly say you find it more likely that the FBI is secretly investigating an existing company than that it's using that company's data for law enforcement surveilance. Can you?
* FBI Digital Forensics Agent: "Hey, did you guys see all of this data CarrierIQ is dumping to the phone unencrypted? Gold mine! Where is that manual?"
* FBI Wiretap Expert: "So these idiots are doing our work for us and sending it to people we already have a open subpeona with for cases X and Y. I wonder what else they are sending that the AD wants in those cases? Where is that manual?"
* FBI Field Agent: "The director just sent me this memo that Senator Franken included two queries about these CarrierIQ clowns in the last packet from the committee. Time to prioritize the investigation! We do have the manual and copies of that web site in our subpeona request file, right?"
All three are possible. All three could be happening concurrently. None of them are illegal and only one is ethically questionable. You have no idea what kind of scenarios happen in the real world, but in your world it seems that questionable surveillance is the only possible justification. I have provided alternatives and if I had to give an honest guess I would probably say that right now all three are ongoing, forensics probably noticed it first and told the wiretap guys while at this time the political/legal case probably has more agents working on it than the other two.
The vast majority of investigations are 'secret' in that they don't give out any details in the middle of an investigation.
Just think about it for a second. If you have done something really bad and you know they are looking into you why not leave the country or destroy evidence etc? Granted, there are a lot of downsides to both of those but people are probably not thinking rationally in such situations.
That "if" is doing way, way too much work in your sentence. Yes, I must admit it's possible CIQ's executives and engineers are hardened criminals waiting to flee the country the the first hint of an investigation.
But I find it very unlikely (the fact that they haven't fled being a rather important piece of information, no?). I'm far more willing to believe that the FBI (quite correctly) sees CIQ's data as a useful surveillance tool and is using it in active investigations.
That three of you guys now are going out of your way to (seriously?) argue the opposite seems just mind boggling to me. I mean come on: of course the FBI wants CIQ data.
As much as it gins up page views, denial of access isn't proof of existence (you know once you are citing X-Files as your proof, you've gone off the deep end). I can easily see denying a FOI request on the grounds of "could reasonably be expected to interfere with law enforcement proceedings" as a simple rubber stamp way of avoiding to have go through the process of looking for the information that may not even exist. Not that it is less alarming, but I hate hazy conjecture boldly presented as fact.
I've been in touch with CIQ and have written about both sides of the story.
CIQ told me that if the FBI got CIQ's data, they got it from carriers, not from CIQ. It kinda makes sense, since law enforcement work with carriers all the freakin time anyhow.
That the FBI gets data about supposed criminals from mobile carriers? That they usually have something like a warrant or probable cause to do so?
I'm all about carrying a torch & pitchfork when it's necessary, but I find other government-sponsored BS (SOPA, for example) a bit more compelling & troublesome at the moment. From everything I've seen in corporate spy guides, it seems unlikely that the government is watching your every move if you're not doing something wrong or at least suspicious. It's not a perfect system, but it's not something to put Carrier IQ out of business for, either.
"From everything I've seen in corporate spy guides, it seems unlikely that the government is watching your every move if you're not doing something wrong or at least suspicious."
Ah, the old "if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear" argument...
I'm with frankc (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3347998); much as I suspect that nefarious goings-on are, well, going on, this seems more like evidence of over-reaching reflexive secret-keeping than of the FBI using CIQ data. (That's not to say that I don't believe it's happening, just that I don't believe that the FBI was 'tricked' into revealing anything here that it didn't want to reveal.)
Is there anyone out there with more experience of FOIA requests who can indicate whether this response (which the article itself calls a 'canned denial') actually indicates anything substantive, or is just boilerplate?
That's my point, though. He is not a nutcase, and his warnings were spot on. Since 9/11 this nation has descended into an oligarchical police state, wherein all federal policies serve either national security, which more often than not means "protect the wealthy from the middle- or lower classes."
This is not crazy talk. It might have been 30 years ago, but it is no longer. RMS is NOT a nutcase. He's spot-on.
Only a very few people are willing to adhere as tightly to a set of ideals as RMS, despite the severe personal hassle and time/energy expenditure. Perhaps 'nutcase' is unnecessarily pejorative but his behavior places him well outside the bell curve under which the vast bulk of humanity falls. Regardless of whether those ideals are correct/justifiable/etc.
I think too often "nutcase" is just a less well-reasoned way of saying, "decision weighting algorithm has different priors from mine," or, "doesn't conform to societal norms," rather than the "makes decisions with no rational basis" that the word seems to imply.
