What Law Enforcement Will Do To Get Your Info

Thank ZDNet for getting me this information with its Signal unveils how far US law enforcement will go to get information about people.

In the search warrant, Santa Clara Police sought to get the name, street address, telephone number, and email address of a specific Signal user. It also wanted billing records, the dates of when the account was opened and registered, inbound and outbound call detail records, voicemails, video calls, emails, text messages, IP addresses along with dates and times for each login, and even all dates and times the user connected to Signal.

In response to the search warrant, Signal provided law enforcement authorities with timestamps regarding the account specified in the search warrant. The timestamps showed the dates that the account last connected to Signal.

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The company's interaction with Santa Clara County police didn't end there, however, as the law enforcement authorities then issued a non-disclosure order that required Signal to not publicly disclose that it received the search warrant. 

The non-disclosure order was then extended four times, which resulted in Signal's request to unseal the search warrant being repeatedly pushed back. In total, it took Signal almost a full year before the company was able to legally publicly disclose the process it underwent when it received the search warrant.

This is what the war on crime, the war on drugs, have brought to you. I have my phone and computer monitored but then I committed a crime, I am a felon. What are you? A suspect. In every war there is an enemy. Anyone not of the police is that enemy. Therein lies the real point on which the police needs reform. Civilians cannot be the enemy.

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