
As technological inventions and innovations are being released rapidly from many different large companies, our personal freedoms are becoming more at risk. Not only from the companies or hackers, but from the government. The government and criminal justice system, federal, state, and local, do not know how to use technology, give away personal information stored in new technology, spy on citizens through technology, and don’t know which data formats can be considered reliable beyond a reasonable doubt. In one case where a personal computing device was used as a tool in a criminal investigation, a man was declared not guilty of abusing his wife after reviewing data police collected from her smart watch. Per the data, on the night that she claimed he abused her, she was out on a run, not at home. In a Cappella University Blog post, one of their professors of criminal justice discussed the use of drones in the future to watch citizens, and can accuse citizens for committing crimes from video data extracted from the drone. Does the government hold their control over technology to keep us safe, or do they seek more and more control over citizens? Isn’t this breaking our constitutional rights?

With more technology being found within the court system requires more training for these new technological advances. Intel is now manufacturing microprocessors that have transistors in them that are 14nm wide, or 14 billionths of a meter. A rare and experimental technology in 1970, just 47 years ago, is what powers everything we use from our smart phones, smart watches, Blu-ray players, refrigerators, cars, door locks, laptops and even our intensive gaming computers. With these powerful chips that power through our lives, data is being collected. The more personal an item is, the more useful it can be in a criminal case. We can use technology to our advantage, giving police and the courts the upper hand by more easily identifying criminals by showing data collected from their devices. Although this may sound great, it is not that easy. How can someone prove that the collected data is from the owner of the device, is it reliable, and if that is proved then what about the invasion of privacy. Should there be a search warrant for collecting this information? Should this information be handed to everyone involved in the investigation? Experts from the RAND study warn that digital tools may tip the scales in favor of one side or another depending on whether there is a skilled analyst on both sides who can use the data. More training will be required to ensure that everyone is up to speed with technology being presented as evidence. The courts and law enforcement agencies must take initiative to educate the criminal justice workforce on how to properly use the new technology. Efforts should focus on trying to settle disputes on how to use technology. Necessary laws should be put in place to ensure that the outcome of the case is right, and law enforcement handles issues with technology in the best way possible to ensure the safety of the community, and the nation. It was ridiculous in 2015 when there was the San Bernardino shooting and police were unable to unlock the shooter’s smartphone, and received no help from the phone’s manufacturer, Apple. The police should have someone on staff who can break into the phone, but even though they couldn’t even after the FBI tried, Apple should have opened it for them. The refused to claiming they want to keep privacy for their users. Apple didn’t want other nations to be asking for the ability to unlock an iPhone, so they didn’t give it to the United States, their home. It is an embarrassment for our nation that we didn’t have the organization and laws in place to be able to unlock the phone, and even though we failed, Apple should have been required to give the United States the ability to unlock it by law. They still have the option to refuse to give other nations the ability to unlock iPhones.

Just as Apple wants their technology to stay away from government control to protect their user’s personal information, how are other technologies being handled by the government? Despite what I think about Apple’s decision in that one case, I wouldn’t want the government to have total control over all the content on my personal computers. The fourth amendment to the United States Constitution says “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” There have been no recent court cases referring to this amendment on the topic of seizing data from personal technology. The Bill of Rights has always had some breathing room, as it says many times “but upon probable cause” or another similar phrase leaving the judging up to the judge of the case on whether it was probable enough. While we may view our technology as personal “effects” or “papers” that shouldn’t be search without a warrant, what about the data packets flying around over the internet? Does it matter if these are on the public web or the private web, and is there even such thing as the private web? “The Deep Web” refers to any website that requires some type of authentication and permission to access. Since social media, cloud storage, email, and even private YouTube videos fall under this, it is believed that 99% of all content stored on the internet is a part of the deep web. However, anyone can still figure out how to access this data since all they need to do is type in the correct IP address, but all the data will be heavily encrypted. If the government had the ability to decrypt all your data, and they do it without a probable cause, I know that is a violation of personal rights. We live in a world with a lot of blurred lines when it comes to finding the best middle ground. The government wants to protect its citizens, but if we don’t let them have access to all technology will that inhibit their ability? I can’t say for everyone, but I know that I don’t have anything to hide from the government. That doesn’t mean I want them to watch me through my technology though. It’s my private technology after all, and won’t that make all of it work slower with their spying?

Some will say what I said. You don’t have anything to hide. They will add that security comes before everything else, and that if they know who the bad guys are it doesn’t matter how much they are spying. The problem is that we know most the information collected by the NSA and other agencies is mostly not relevant to national security, and when it is, what kind of action is taken? He will most likely be placed on a list and will be watched more carefully, waiting for him to cross some sort of line. Sometimes it becomes too late. And we are the ones being watched even when most of us do nothing. But why would we care anyway, do you really have anything to hide? The reality of the situation is that we are all hiding something. Just think how crazy the world would go if everything was suddenly made public. Glenn Greenwald presented this idea to us in his Ted Talks video about privacy and why it matters. He says that there are not two types of people as one may think. There are not just good people who have nothing to hide like the other type, the bad people who plot shootings and bombings on the internet. Instead we need to think of something we do, not on the internet but in our physical lives, that we’d be embarrassed if anyone else saw it. This can be singing or dancing, or some other weird things we do only when we think we are alone. The point is we all have something to hide, and our privacy matters. He says those who say they do not care about their privacy put passwords on their email and social media accounts just as they put locks on their doors. If you have nothing to hide, then you should be able to give away your passwords to all of your emails and social media accounts publicly to let someone sift through and publish anything he finds interesting. If not, you have something to hide. Although mass surveillance may be unnoticeable or undetectable it still restrains us. Greenwald said how a man who is still will not notice his chains, and he means that if we live like we are being watched constantly in fear that we may be watched at all at any point, we will not be free. The government uses the internet for surveillance, and many people want to take it back to the way it used to be, a freedom. He refers to Orwell’s 1984 which many people will quickly say that’s not the world we live in, we are not constantly monitored. Neither were they in 1984, but they lived in fear of when they are being monitored. Also, think about the Capella post that I mentioned in the first paragraph. They are considering using drones as a new way to gather intel and spy on people searching for criminal activity. That sounds a lot more like 1984. It appears the government is watching us more and more. Do you still have nothing to hide?

We have all heard to not trust everything that we read on the internet. But does the court system trust all the data collected from individual’s personal devices? The quality of information gathered about crimes must be justified. When it comes to the gathering of data, usually a computer forensics analyst will know exactly how to gather and obtain the data correctly without harming the evidence, and know how to present it to be reliable evidence. However, there aren’t many computer forensics in the world, and they are mostly associated with crimes involving technology directly, or major crimes in which there was technology involved that might contain very useful evidence if successfully extracted. What about when it comes to data that was collected by police and presented in court. The police justified it by proving that they extracted it without mishandling the device, and have not altered any data. They also prove it belongs to the right person involved in the case. Does the court have the right to open the data and share it publicly now? The court can ask to open it and share it publicly only if the owner allows it. If the owner believes it can incriminate him, he can say no, and even plead the fifth if necessary. However, they should be able to go get a search warrant and if they find any relevant data, they can be allowed to present that relevant data to the court. To do this, an analyst must be needed. Or should the entire device be shared publicly incase the analyst messes up? The information finally ends up in the case, all without a computer forensics analyst, but is it even reliable. If the court believes it is reliable data, then the owner has no control over the outcome, and he can end up losing because of the data presented. The data could’ve been planted; however, that would be unlikely. But how much would you trust a smart watch like in the case discussed in the first paragraph. What if there was a case where the statistics collected on a car could change the outcome, and they gather the data, and the court used it even though there was no proof the owner was the driver when that data was collected, it was just proved he was the owner. Would he be responsible for any crimes committed using his car? I believe that if any data is to be used in court, it must pass many tests outlined by a computer forensics analyst. It cannot be picked up and used, it must be presented in different forms, all with the same outcomes. Robert C. Newman started his career at the University of South Carolina in 1969 in the computer science department. He has earned advanced degrees in computing, and has worked with BellSouth, AT&T, IBM. He also worked with the federal government, as well as South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama in law enforcement. He is an active member of the FBI’s Coastal Empire Infraprotection of data and computer resources and network administration. Newman laid out the four steps to computer data in a case: acquisition, identification, evaluation, and presentation. Each step requires a wealth of knowledge about computers and how to properly handle them to preserve data, just like a CSI investigator might try to preserve DNA from a crime scene. The data must be collected correctly and carefully with proper technique and training. It must be able to be duplicated constantly and have the same data repeat when it is supposed to. It depends on whether it is hardware or software, and what they data is. It needs to be relevant to the case, and the computer forensics expert must be able to show through careful documentation and the ability to recreate the scenario that everything is accurate and reliable data. It would be expensive to have a computer forensics expert work on smaller cases involving smart phones which is why they aren’t usually involved. They are instead working with large companies usually and figure out fraud within the company.

Our freedoms are being violated by the government. They have been monitoring us more closely and they have taken the freedom of the internet from us. We all have something to hide, and we all deserve privacy in our nation of rights and freedoms. Some people think all this pertains to how the criminal justice system takes away our privacy for protection, and they have nothing to hide. We all need privacy, and the criminal justice system needs to get better organized with their laws to keep the balance between freedom and justice. An example is in 2005 when someone had Star Wars Episode III in the public internet rather than the deep web. He didn’t even move it onto a server, it was installed to his own computer, but anyone can access and download the file off his computer. And 133,000 people did. He did not sell the product, nor did he distribute the copyrighted material for free. It was his copy that he got, on his computer, but can be accessed publicly. This shouldn’t go unpunished or else this will become more of a problem, and should at least tell him to make it private access and possibly give him a fine, less than $1,000. During the investigation, they found he “conspired with others to distribute [more] copyrighted movies”. The numbers for people who accessed these were not released, but he received two counts of 10 years in prison and a $500,000 fine. This was done through a technology called Torrent, developed by the US Military, and is not a bad product, but the website he did it through was permanently shut down even though they may not have been involved and Torrent is necessarily just for copyrighted material. It is important to realize that the government is not always perfect and can mishandle cases, but they can also be too drastic and controlling, and can therefore be feared with and viewed with a negative connotation. We should not fear our government, we are the people who formed the government for the citizens of the nation. We need to take back the internet. We would be doing a service to our country by believing that the government should not involve themselves in every aspect of our lives. They should not spy on us, and they should not take our personal information for the small chance that we are one of the “bad guys”. The criminal justice system needs to wake up and figure out just what all of this technology truly means, and how they should properly handle it, while staying true to the Constitution. We live in the an age where digital technology is used in everything we do, but the government doesn’t need to regulate it like they regulate airplanes, with security watching you at all times.
