[XorNot]

Parallel construction only works if you've actually committed a crime and left evidence somewhere it can be plausibly found - i.e. "a random search of the public woods near your area found a shallow grave, and tire-tracks matching your car" - but the search was conducted because what actually happened was you were telling a guy "yes I definitely killed Tony and buried him in the woods".

People keep using the term as though it implies some legal means of fabricating evidence against someone: which is ridiculous because if you're willing to fabricate evidence, you don't need to actually find any.

It's also worth noting that in the case of incidental wifi surveillance, it's likely the plain-sight doctrine would apply: if you're being imaged and positioned by broadcasts you yourself are making and nearby devices can receive, then this would be ruled in plain sight and rightly so (I can't stop my routers and devices from detecting nearby devices as part of interference avoidance).

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

> committed a crime and left evidence somewhere

A Harvard professor wrote a book titled Three Felonies A Day which argues that there are so many laws to break that an average working professional in America will commit an average of three felonies every day. I do not know the accuracy of the claim but this idea of over-criminalization is an interesting one to think about.

Specifically, how likely is it for a person to have unknowingly committed a crime and left evidence? (Of course, it’s not a violent crime assuming a regular sane individual.) Are you certain you’ve never left evidence for any sort of “white collar” crime which you unwittingly committed?

[vjk800]

There are (at least) two ways to think about the law. One (which technical people tend to subscribe to) is that the law is analogous to a computer code for the society and the ideal is that it is followed at all times. The second is that the law is there as a backup when someone is clearly causing trouble and other, more informal means to stop them have failed.

In the second interpretation, it is desirable to have some sort of law always ready to apply when a problematic situation arises, and everyone committing technical felonies every now and then is just a (mostly) harmless side effect of the system working as intended.

The second interpretation is, I believe, also often applied when new laws are written. Usually the logic is: there is some kind of a problem that the politicians need to address, and the problem itself is too complex to directly address so some kind of proxy law is made that gives an excuse to throw problematic people in jail. See e.g. loitering laws.

[checkyoursudo]

I am skeptical of the claim but not the conclusion. I take the claim anyway to be a bit of hyperbole to sell more books.

One of the biggest problems in law is what IT/CS people might call technical debt. New laws get added all the time while old, often-outdated or useless laws rarely get removed. The problem is that those old, even outdated and useless laws can sometimes be leveraged against you in new or novel ways, sometimes that the drafters of the laws never would have expected. Legislative intent is not always clear and not always decisive.

[matheusmoreira]

Even if you committed a crime, police should not be able to find out about it through illegal means. Police should not be allowed to run SIGINT operations on citizens. They should not even have that capability. Why is it normal for police to have these literal spy movie technologies?

[atoav]

Because in the typical American mind a thee-not-me-mentality is very prevalent. They are the sole protagonists of their own lives and they believe they have invincible plot armor like the protagonists in the action movies.

That means people believe the police having Gestapo-capabilities will only ever hurt others (who must then have deserved it!) and never them.

That a free democracy is a finely balanced system between the power of the people and the powers of the three branches isn't something they ever consider. That capabilities can breed their own perverse incentives and a culture of disservice is a few complexity levels further up the tree still.

[t0bia_s]

Because people generally wants rulers above them. It is a state doctrine that tells you it is for your protection.

But if someone stole your bike, usually police wont find it.

[TeMPOraL]

> But if someone stole your bike, usually police wont find it.

That is a "we're not in a post-scarcity society" problem - stolen bikes tend to be below the cut-off point of cases the police can afford to take on. It's not like they have nothing more important to do.

Unfortunately, there aren't many good solutions to this, and the most direct one involves giving even more spy movie tech to the police, so that bike theft case can be solved with a click of a button - but we probably wouldn't want to live in a world where police can actually do that.

[t0bia_s]

Oh they definitely have tools to find who stole bike in city where CTTV is on every corner.

[TeMPOraL]

There may be a camera on every corner, but I bet half of these cameras are fake, and most of the rest are privately owned, therefore a huge hassle to get footage from.

[red-iron-pine]

the police absolutely found my bike. it had a tracker on it and very distinctive paint.

if you go to them and say "my bike is gone" they'll ask what details you can provide. if the answer is "none" then they're not going to try that hard. hundreds of other missing goods cases too, and many of those could be more than your bike, and have actual leads.

[brigandish]

> Parallel construction only works if you've actually committed a crime and left evidence somewhere it can be plausibly found...

> if you're willing to fabricate evidence, you don't need to actually find any.

I am reminded of "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

Or, in the not famous enough "Don't talk to the police" lecture[1], the policeman telling how he can just surveil anyone for long enough and they will break the law, because, as the lawyer points out in his part of the talk, there are so many laws that it's basically impossible not to breach one at some point.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

[bhaney]

Ah, so we don't need to worry about egregiously illegal privacy violations as long as we have nothing to hide. Thanks.

[developer93]

I don't think that's what they were saying. I read it as the law is unlikely to protect you

[8organicbits]

> It's also worth noting that in the case of incidental wifi surveillance, it's likely the plain-sight doctrine would apply

Plain-sight should mean observation with the natural human senses, and I think the courts agree. There is nothing "plain" about radio signals leaking through walls. The thermal imaging example in the article as well.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_surveillance_doctrine

> the drone observed “each window of Plaintiffs’ residence and outbuildings” and was “outside [law enforcement’s] visual line of sight,” violating both federal and Indiana law.

Placing a device outside a home to collect WiFi signals doesn't sound like "visual line of sight". I.E. clearly a 4th amendment search requiring a warrant.

Collecting records stored by devices that had been in the area already seems plausible, but would presumably require a legal justification to search those (warrant, consent, etc). But to my understanding, devices don't store such records.

[avidiax]

Parallel construction is foremost a run-around of the "fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine".[1]

It allows law enforcement to use methods that might amount to illegal searches, and then avoid judicial scrutiny of those methods.

See, for examples of such methods, Stringrays, "persistent surveillance"[2] aircraft, and NSA information sharing agreements.[3]

"Plain sight" doctrine isn't going to apply to these methods. You aren't allowed to use deconvolution to look through frosted glass and call it "plain sight", just as you can't use methods not in typical use to abuse WiFi as an imaging service. You can probably use WiFi traffic metadata, however, just as you can retrospectively use cell tower data.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree

[2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/07/a-tivo-for-crime...

[3] https://www.engadget.com/2017-01-12-obama-expands-the-nsas-a...

[grecy]

> Parallel construction only works if you've actually committed a crime

What about if you're doing something that isn't illegal yet, but a new Politician decides he doesn't like the cut of your hair and then targets you later because you were doing it.

What about if you just have someone come over to visit your home who is known to disagree with someone that becomes a Political leader in the future and they punish you for it.

etc. etc.

There are a million reasons why privacy is very important.

[XorNot]

> What about if you're doing something that isn't illegal yet, but a new Politician decides he doesn't like the cut of your hair and then targets you later because you were doing it.

That would have nothing to do with parallel construction and everything to do with someone having sufficient political power to change the law to target you - either specifically or generally.

Someone with that much power could also just wipe out illegal search and seizure restrictions.

But again this is also based on a misunderstanding of the process: you can't use parallel construction to make illegally obtained evidence valid to use. You can only use it to indirectly guide the discovery of other evidence which must already exist and be plausibly findable by regular means.

i.e. if the police stop on the high way and notice disturbed ground and discover a dead body, that's something which could happen by pure chance. Parallel construction is suggesting that a police car should stop at a particular point on a highway, and have a good look around.