this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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Technology
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The whole point of Mastodon is to speak publicly, so I'm not sure I see the problem.
Other than the server owner's property being unnecessarily confiscated, of course. Such thievery is quite clearly a tactic for depriving defendants of the financial and other resources they need to prove their innocence in court.
The problem is DMs. Having what appears to be a "private" communication mechanism that isn't private at all might mislead users into divulging information that could put them at risk.
When you type up a DM on Mastodon, there's a little popup notice that appears next to the text box that says:
IMO the platform handles informing users about this responsibly.
Exactly! Mastodon was not conceived to be a private sharing space.
How is a law enforcement agent staring at some workstations and computers to know what equipment was involved in the alleged crime they are raiding the facility for? If the FBI was raiding a home for child abuse and pornography, there's no way they have the access or expertise at the time of a raid to know the server in the corner is only for Mastodon, the box over there is just a Linux firewall, and that box over there is a porn server. There's no practical way to trust a defendant on site as to what is relevant to an investigation or not. I agree that unnecessary confiscation is a problem, but in general I don't think the ill intent is there. I'm not a law enforcement officer, nor am I lobbying in any way for them, I'm just putting myself in their shoes in this situation.
That would be a valid argument if they timely returned whatever they don't need, but they don't, so it isn't.
Maybe not, but if they're not completely incompetent, they'll have images of all of those devices within a day or two. They don't have any legitimate need to keep the seized equipment after that.
The cruelty is the point.
We're talking about law enforcement agencies, not an IT department. Of course it's technically possible to image a machine quickly. However, there are all kinds of steps and rules for chain of custody, transporting evidence, cataloging it, storing, examining it, etc. and a finite number of personnel to perform the work. Revisiting the child pornography example I used, fingerprints and DNA evidence on equipment could be quite relevant to a case. There may even be a need to examine hard drive platters (old school spinning disk, not SSD obviously) to determine if there was data deleted in the past. It's rather simplistic to say it's a matter of just imaging and returning as quickly as possible. I agree the equipment being gone often presents a hardship for a defendant, but arguing that it's intentionally set up this way to inflict cruelty ignores the reality of investigations.