Back in January, I wrote an article for Opensource.com arguing that judges need to be educated on open source licensing. A recent decision from the Eastern District of Virginia makes it clear that the judiciary needs to better understand technology in general. Before I get into the details of the case, I want to make it clear that I tend to be very pro-defendant on the 4th-8th Amendments. I don’t see them as helping the guilty go free (although that is certainly a side effect in some cases), but as preventing the persecution of the innocent.

The defendant in this case is accused of downloading child pornography, which makes him a pretty unsympathetic defendant. Perhaps the heinous nature of his alleged crime weighed on the mind of the judge when he said people have no expectation of privacy on their home computers. Specifically:

Now, it seems unreasonable to think that a computer connected to the Web is immune from invasion. Indeed, the opposite holds true: in today’s digital world, it appears to be a virtual certainty that computers accessing the Internet can – and eventually will – be hacked.

As a matter of fact, that’s a valid statement. It’s good security advice. As a matter of law, that’s a terrible reason to conclude that a warrant was not needed. Homes are broken into every day, and yet the courts have generally ruled that an expectation of privacy exists in the home.

The judge drew an analogy to Minnesota v. Carter, in which the Supreme Court ruled that a police officer peering through broken blinds did not constitute a violation of the Fourth Amendment. I find that analogy to be flawed. In this case, it’s more like the officers entered through a broken window and began looking through drawers. Discovering the contents of a computer requires more than just a passing glance, but instead at least some measure of active effort.

What got less discussion is the Sixth Amendment issue. Access to the computer was made possible by an exploit in Tor that the FBI made use of. The defendant asked for the source code, which the the judge refused:

The Government declined to furnish the source code of the exploit due to its immateriality and for reasons of security. The Government argues that reviewing the exploit, which takes advantage of a weakness in the Tor network, would expose the entire NIT program and render it useless as a tool to track the transmission of contraband via the Internet. SA Alfin testified that he had no need to learn or study the exploit, as the exploit does not produce any information but rather unlocks the door to the information secured via the NIT. The defense claims it needs the exploit to determine whether the FBI closed and re-locked the door after obtaining Defendant’s information via the NIT. Yet, the defense lacks evidentiary support for such a need.

It’s a bit of a Catch-22 for the defense. They need evidence to get the evidence they need? I’m open to the argument that the exploit here is not a witness per se, making the Sixth Amendment argument here a little weak, but as a general trend, the “black boxes” used by the government must be subject to scrutiny if we are to have a just justice system.

It’s particularly obnoxious since unauthorized access to a computer by non-law-enforcement has been punished rather severely at times. If a citizen can get 10 years in jail for something, it stands to reason the government should have some accountability when undertaking the same action.

I have seen nothing that suggests the judge wrote this decision out of malice or incompetence. He probably felt that he was making the correct decision. But those who make noise about the “government taking our rights away” would be better served paying attention to the papercut cases like this instead of the boogeyman narratives.

The easy answer here is “don’t download child pornography.” While that’s good advice, it does nothing to protect the innocent from malicious prosecution. Hopefully this will be overturned on appeal.