Secret Warrants and Black Bag Jobs--Questions

[Tim May]

On Tuesday, August 7, 2001, at 10:24 PM, Harmon Seaver wrote:

>       Interesting -- where did I get the idea that warrants for
> "surreptitious entry" were only allowd for cases of national security. I
> thought Reno was trying to get Congress to pass legalizing this, but was
> turned down.
>

First off, there is nothing particularly special about bugging a 
computer for passwords. Keystroke capture programs and RF bugs have been 
out for many years. And sneaking into homes and businesses to plant 
audio and even video bugs has been happening for many years, sometimes 
with secret warrants, sometimes without. Bugging a computer is not 
legally any different than bugging a telephone line. (Though if the 
computer is used as a confessional, or for attorney-client 
communications...OTOH, these uses are possible with telephones and I 
haven't heard that phone bugging is illegal. According to my sources 
("The Sopranos" 8-)), those doing the bugging are supposed to "not 
listen" except when putatively criminal acts are being discussed.

But as long as we're back on the subject of surreptitious warrants and 
black bag jobs:

I've wondered about two main things vis-a-vis these "black bag jobs" 
inside the U.S.:

1) Are the secret warrants always revealed eventually, regardless of 
whether a court case happens or the evidence is introduced? Is it 
possible that there are N never-revealed secret warrants for every 
warrant discussed in open testimony?

2) What happens in these breaking-and-entering raids if the homeowner 
surprises the burglar and kills him? Is a homeowner supposed to somehow 
know that the person sneaking around his home has a secret warrant 
signed by a secret judge in a secret courtroom?

(Sandy and Black Unicorn will doubtless consider it "bellicose" to say 
that if I ever find a black-clad ninja rustling around in my house, I 
expect to treat him as I would treat any other such varmint. A double 
tap in the center of mass. Probably Black thinks "Mr. Happy Fun Court 
will not be amused.")

So much for the Fourth Amendment, which was designed to protect against 
precisely this kind of police and state snooping. When a scrap of paper, 
issued in secret, enables the king's men to wander through a house, the 
"secure in one's papers and possessions" right has become moot.

The fact that judges now issues secret orders in secret hearings is not 
an excuse--I'm sure King George's men also had pieces of paper from the 
local rulers.

On the bright side, I expect this will cause those who think they may be 
targets of such snooping and breaking-and-entering to beef up their 
security, to install video cameras (defeatable, but also countermeasures 
to these defeats, such as offsite storage, 802.11b transmission to 
hidden recorders, etc.), and to do more of their sensitive work with 
laptops which they carry with them at all times.
(Today's 3-pound subnotebooks would be perfect, even for a 
style-conscious Mafia don. Or a PDA, for crypto. Lots of options. I'll 
leave it to Black Unicorn to explain to us that beefing up security is 
spoliation.)


--Tim May