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. The government is misusing technology to gather too much intelligence on citizens rather than gathering intelligence on the criminals that matter. According to Edward Snowden in a video, the NSA has more information on citizens of the United States who have done nothing wrong than obvious potential criminals and other countries. Glenn Greenwald in a video said the end game is when governments stop spying on citizens unless they convince some court that person has actually done something wrong. 

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. -some stuff was cut- 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. In 2015 when there was the San Bernardino shooting and police, making an embarrassment of our law enforcement system, 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. They refused, claiming they want to keep privacy for their users. Apple said they didn’t want other nations to be asking for the ability to unlock an iPhone. It is an embarrassment that we don’t have the organization and laws in place to be able to unlock a phone used in a very serious criminal case. 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. Although it may seem I want less government involvement and now I am saying I want government taking command over a corporation, it is because that is for our protection, although the government spying is not. This is also an example of criminals slipping through both the NSA and the CIA despite them listening in on us. They have the wrong targets.

-much was cut here- 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 while discussing the collecting of data. 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 final interpretation up to the judge of the case. 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 access this given they found the IP address, know how to break through the security, and find the key to their encryption methods. This will take a lot of time, but for some people this is their full-time job. If the government had the ability to decrypt all your data, and they do it without a probable cause, that is a violation of personal rights. -much was cut here-

Some people say “I don’t have anything to hide from the government”. They may add that security comes first, and that if they know who the criminals are, it doesn’t matter how much they are spying on us. 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? Someone who the NSA finds suspicious due to their content will most likely be placed on a list, being 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 be if everything was suddenly made public. Glenn Greenwald presented this idea in his Ted Talks video about privacy and why it matters. He says that there are not just good people who have nothing to hide like the other type, and 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 you are unable to, 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 never 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 we are not constantly monitored. Neither were they in 1984, but they lived in fear of being monitored. Orwell’s narrator said the characters in 1984 were not constantly monitored, but they lived in fear of being monitored at any given moment, so they treated every moment as if they were being monitored. Referring to the Capella University post in the first paragraph, law enforcement is 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 than it does 2017. 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. They know how to present it as 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 that might contain very useful evidence if successfully extracted from devices found on the scene. When it comes to the data that is collected and presented in court, they seem to justify using it as a reliable source of evidence by saying that they extracted it without mishandling the device. 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 should be allowed to present relevant data to the court. 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 have even been planted. 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? If any data is to be used in court, it should pass many tests outlined by a computer forensics analyst. It must not be picked up and used, and 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. Our nation was founded on the base of rights, freedoms, and the people’s control. Some people believe these matters are only pertaining to the criminal justice system takes away our privacy for protection, and that 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. In 2005 someone put 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. Law enforcement should at least tell him to make it private access only, 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 was not made 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. We should never fear our government. They are there to promote and protect, but many times they become corrupt. We are the people who formed the government for the citizens of the nation. With this, 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” to the nation. The federal government has too much power. 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.
