Posted on 06/07/2015 9:46:26 AM PDT by TaxPayer2000
Khairullozhon Matanov is a 24-year-old former cab driver from Quincy, Massachusetts. The night of the Boston Marathon bombings, he ate dinner with Tamerlan and Dhzokhar Tsarnaev at a kebob restaurant in Somerville. Four days later Matanov saw photographs of his friends listed as suspects in the bombings on the CNN and FBI websites. Later that day he went to the local police. He told them that he knew the Tsarnaev brothers and that they’d had dinner together that week, but he lied about whose idea it was to have dinner, lied about when exactly he had looked at the Tsarnaevs’ photos on the Internet, lied about whether Tamerlan lived with his wife and daughter, and lied about when he and Tamerlan had last prayed together. Matanov likely lied to distance himself from the brothers or to cover up his own jihadist sympathies—or maybe he was just confused.
Then Matanov went home and cleared his Internet browser history.
Matanov continued to live in Quincy for over a year after the bombings. During this time the FBI tracked him with a drone-like surveillance plane that made loops around Quincy, disturbing residents. The feds finally arrested and indicted him in May 2014. They never alleged that Matanov was involved in the bombings or that he knew about them beforehand, but they charged him with four counts of obstruction of justice. There were three counts for making false statements based on the aforementioned lies and—remarkably—one count for destroying “any record, document or tangible object” with intent to obstruct a federal investigation. This last charge was for deleting videos on his computer that may have demonstrated his own terrorist sympathies and for clearing his browser history.
Matanov faced the possibility of decades in prison—twenty years for the records-destruction charge alone.
Federal prosecutors charged Matanov for destroying records under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a law enacted by Congress in the wake of the Enron scandal. The law was, in part, intended to prohibit corporations under federal investigation from shredding incriminating documents. But since Sarbanes-Oxley was passed in 2002 federal prosecutors have applied the law to a wider range of activities. A police officer in Colorado who falsified a report to cover up a brutality case was convicted under the act, as was a woman in Illinois who destroyed her boyfriend’s child pornography.
Prosecutors are able to apply the law broadly because they do not have to show that the person deleting evidence knew there was an investigation underway. In other words, a person could theoretically be charged under Sarbanes-Oxley for deleting her dealer’s number from her phone even if she were unaware that the feds were getting a search warrant to find her marijuana. The application of the law to digital data has been particularly far-reaching because this type of information is so easy to delete. Deleting digital data can inadvertently occur in normal computer use, and often does.
In 2010 David Kernell, a University of Tennessee student, was convicted under Sarbanes-Oxley after he deleted digital records that showed he had obtained access to Sarah Palin’s Yahoo e-mail account. Using publicly available information, Kernell answered security questions that allowed him to reset Palin’s Yahoo password to “popcorn.” He downloaded information from Palin’s account, including photographs, and posted the new password online. He then deleted digital information that may have made it easier for federal investigators to find him. Like Matanov, he cleared the cache on his Internet browser. He also uninstalled Firefox, ran a disk defragmentation program to reorganize and clean up his hard drive, and deleted a series of images that he had downloaded from the account. For entering Palin’s e-mail, he was eventually convicted of misdemeanor unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer and felony destruction of records under Sarbanes-Oxley. In January 2012, the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit found that Kernell’s awareness of a potential investigation into his conduct was enough to uphold the felony charge.
At the time Kernell took steps to clean his computer, he does not appear to have known that there was any investigation into his conduct. Regardless, the government felt that they were entitled to that data, and the court agreed that Kernell was legally required to have preserved it.
Hanni Fakhoury, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says the feds’ broad interpretation of Sarbanes-Oxley in the digital age is part of a wider trend: federal agents’ feeling “entitled” to digital data.
Fakhoury compares the broad application of Sarbanes-Oxley in the digital realm to the federal government’s resistance to cellphone companies that want to sell encrypted phones that would prevent law enforcement from being able to access users’ data. When the new encrypted iPhone came out, FBI Director James Comey told reporters that he didn’t understand why companies would “market something expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law.”
“At its core,” Fakhoury says, “what the government is saying is, ‘We have to create a mechanism that allows everybody’s [cellphone] data to be open for inspection on the off-chance that one day in the future, for whatever random circumstance, we need to see that data.’”
Similarly, Fakhoury says the government’s underlying theory in cases like Kernell’s is, “Don’t even think about deleting anything that may be harmful to you, because we may come after you at some point in the future for some unforeseen reason and we want to be able to have access to that data. And if we don’t have access to that data, we’re going to slap an obstruction charge that has as 20-year maximum on you.”
As more and more data are stored online, the government wants and believes it deserves access to that data for policing purposes. But Fakhoury disagrees.
“The idea that you have to create a record of where you’ve gone or open all your cupboards all the time and leave your front door unlocked and available for law enforcement inspection at any time is not the country we have established for ourselves more than 200 years ago.”
This past February the Supreme Court somewhat narrowed the scope of Sarbanes-Oxley in the case of Yates v. United States. The feds had charged a commercial fishing captain under the same record-destruction law for throwing a batch of undersized fish overboard after a federal agent had instructed him not to. The Court ruled that applying Sarbanes-Oxley to the dumping of fish was too far afield from the law’s original corporate-crime purpose. Another Tsarnaev associate, Azamat Tazhayakov, who helped throw Tsarnaev’s backpack full of fireworks into a dumpster, may see his conviction overturned because of the Yates decision.
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But it appears that, at least for now, cases like Matanov’s and Kernell’s are still fair game. The Supreme Court did not answer the pressing question of how broadly federal prosecutors are allowed to use Sarbanes-Oxley in the digital age. Can you be prosecuted for deleting a potentially incriminating tweet? For uninstalling Firefox? For clearing your browser history? How much of their digital data should citizens have to preserve in case law enforcement wants to take a look?
In March, Matanov pleaded guilty to all four counts of obstruction of justice. When he entered his plea, he told Judge William G. Young that he maintains his innocence but fears a decades-long sentence were he to go to trial. His plea agreement with prosecutors calls for a 30-month sentence—still a harsh punishment for little more than deleting videos and clearing his browser history. Matanov’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for June.
“The whole case is mystery,” Matanov has said. The “FBI is trying to destroy my life.”
That’s what happened. Hillary Clinton heard that it’s a good idea to periodically clear her web browser and she confused that with web server.
Not unless you talk to the authorities and give them a foot in the door (aside from the fact that their are probably contractual assumptions in Internet use that makes the legal access easier).
People always ensnare themselves in this stuff by talking to law enforcement, thinking they can “explain” themselves or that by being chatty they will elict sympathetic understanding. That never happens...
Since I work in the banking industry and have to keep up on all the money laundering, OFAC and other regulatory laws I can speak from experience here.
You cannot be prosecuted for simply taking money out of the bank, period. That's a red herring.
You cannot be prosecuted for routinely taking money out of the bank in amounts under the $10,000 reporting requirement that the bank has to the Fed's either. If you cooperate with the bank, understand why the reporting requirements are there, and tell the bank what the money is being used for you'll not get a visit from the Feds.
You can be prosecuted for routinely taking money out of the bank in amounts designed to be under the $10,000 reporting requirement and refusing to tell the Bank what the money is for. That's called "structuring." The bank has a legal responsibility to report the transactions once a pattern has been established and there is reasonable doubt/suspicion about the bank's customer making the withdrawls, and then lying to the FBI about why the money was withdrawn from the bank.
That is exactly what Denny Hastert was arrested and indicted for.
Prior to the withdrawls in question, Hastert had zero pattern of activity indicating something suspicious was up. It was when he started making large withdrawls, then questioned about those large withdrawls by his bank did he establish a pattern of making withdralws under the $10,000 reporting requirement.
He then refused to tell his bank what the money was being used for which raised further suspicions, forced the bank to report the transactions, after which the Feds were called in. The fact that he lied to the Fed's made it a Federal Crime.
Now, I'll tell you that I don't like these stupid reporting requirements either (most banks don't either..) but it's the law and if we refuse to follow it, the bank is then under investigation for enabling/allowing money laundering and that has very serious consequences to the bank's ability to do business.
The last bank I worked at (ABN AMRO) here in North America was caught up in a money laundering scheme, nailed to the wall by the Fed's (Elliot Spitzer in NY no less...) and as a result that bank no longer exists here in North America.
Structuring withdrawls to avoid the reporting requirement is serious shit and if a bank doesn't report it they go down too.
But you can be. It's obviously illogical and immoral and unfair, but that doesn't mean the government is not doing it. This guy pleaded guilty and waived any right to appeal, so I guess we'll have to wait for the next test case to roll back this assault on the right to live our lives.
An 8 pound sledge dropped from 5 feet has the same net effect of making the drive unreadable. I suspect you just like using your MAP gas torch. ;-)
He knew his friends had committed a crime, and they’d borrowed his computer, so then he cleared his browser history. It’s pretty clear he thought there might be something incriminating there, which is why he got busted for destroying evidence.
“You Can Be Prosecuted for Clearing Your Browser History” ...(if you are peripherally involved in a nightmarish terrorist bombing, and after being interview by the police run home and destroy all electronic record of your contact with the leader of the cell)
Such behavior has always been a crime.
Screw this guy.
Wrong poster. Your post was meant for OldMissileer. I do not have a MAPP gas torch.
However, the 8 pound sledge will not do the trick. There are companies that can reassemble broken disks and/or reconstruct the data, even if it is done piecemeal.
Thanks for the correction, and pinging the right poster.
However, the 8 pound sledge will not do the trick. There are companies that can reassemble broken disks and/or reconstruct the data, even if it is done piecemeal.
Agree there are companies that know how to put together broken disk and re-assemble information piecemeal. Now here's a question:
Who am I most worried about getting my information off an old/failed hard drive? Johnny Hacker who found my disk drive in a pile of old computer equipment at the local recycling place, or a company that's going to spend hundreds of hours piecing shattered platters back together to re-assemble my information?
I'm not worried about the company that has the facilities to do it, because it'll cost some Johnny Hacker alot more to take it there and get the information off, than the information is worth.
So my 8 pound sledgehammer dropped from 5-6 feet works just fine for my personal purposes.
Now, at the large multi-national bank I work for? We don't send the disk drives off site until they're shredded. Doesn't matter if it comes out of a PC, one of our Servers, or one of our huge enterprise class storage arrays. They all go through a shredder that makes metal confetti out of 'em.
No one can re-assemble that. :-)
As they ALWAYS do with ANY law.
Whenever I retire an old computer I pull the hard drive. A couple of times a year I burn brush on my property and toss any old hard drives that I have into the fire. I guarantee not even the NSA can pull any data off of the small lumps of melted aluminum that I rake out of the ashes the next day.
You do realize that you ended your sentence with a preposition? Reminds me of an old joke.
A Texas college student went to South Padre for spring break. There were college students there from all over the country. He sat down at a bar next to another student and tried to make polite conversation.
"Howdy. I'm from Texas A & M. Where do you go to school at?" the Texan asked. "I attend Harvard, a university where students are intelligent enough to know not to end a sentence with a preposition," the other student responded.
The Aggie thought for a moment and replied, "Well pardon me. Where do you go to school at, asshole?"
Prosecutors are probably just throwing this out for leverage to get him to talk. If the case moves forward, then there should be a VERY busy prosecutor in D.C.
HAHA, like that would ever happen.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism,...
Bang!
“You Can Be Prosecuted for Clearing Your Browser History”
Stinking lying headline! Only if you just lied to the police!
Might be harder for the pigs to prove that you intentionally crashed your hard drive, rather than intentionally (attempted to) delete browser history.
Makes the 18th century Brits look like pikers...
The Foudning Fathers would be shaking their heads over the notion that lying to the police was some sort of bad thing...
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