DOJ under Trump demanded metadata on 73 phone numbers and 36 email addresses from Apple

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:
Jim Sciutto
@jimsciutto
New: DOJ under Trump demanded metadata on 73 phone numbers and 36 email addresses from Apple, the company said tonight. The Dept sent a broad request in February 2018 as part of its investigation that collected data on members of Congress, staffers and their families.
3:55 PM · Jun 11, 2021

[Maxheader]

1. Worthless bastards...

As worthless as the insurrectionists...

[drray23]

2. and it's all good apparently..

Commentators on msnbc ( Jill Wine Banks and others who are knowledgeable) were saying that it was a violation of policy but likely not illegal since they use subpoenas obtained via grand juries.
So again, everybody is outraged but there will be no accountability.
I still hold the hope there is more to it and they can get caught.

[Nevilledog]

3. I'd like to see the grand jury testimony that led to the subpoena issuance

[StarfishSaver]

8. There wasn't necessarily any testimony

Prosecutors often ask for these kinds of records before any testimony takes place as part of the investigatory process.

[Nevilledog]

14. But there has to be some nexus

Otherwise they could hand a grand jury a stack of blank subpoenas and say "Trust us, we'll fill them out later."

[StarfishSaver]

15. That's pretty much how it works.

It doesn't take much

[Nevilledog]

18. Never had a grand jury where a subpoena was authorized during the proceedings......

Must be a location, federal thing. If it's possible to get one from a grand jury without having a factual basis for it, the implication that there was a basis because "The Grand Jury" approved it is totally misleading. Not that I expect the press to get it right.

[Nevilledog]

21. What do you think about the scope of the demands?

Link to tweet

Tweet text:
Ryan Goodman
@rgoodlaw
An astonishing element to all this:

“The subpoena requested information on the targeted accounts BEGINNING WITH THE INCEPTION of the accounts through the day of the subpoena.”

@evanperez @ErinBurnett just flagged the importance of this @OutFrontCNN.

[StarfishSaver]

22. I think the whole thing is pretty outrageous

[RockRaven]

7. If it is a violation of policy, then people can be fired. Very very publicly. Name is mud style.

The day-to-day work -- even on these cases like these -- is done by career people, not political appointees. The political appointees are too few in number and too high up the food chain to not have career staff intimately involved.

"Just following orders" is no excuse. Bye bye job.

[StarfishSaver]

9. Often employees don't know it's a violation of policy

If they are not involved in the decisionmaking, they'd have no way of knowing if the subpoenas were being requested for improper purposes.

Surely there were employees who did know, but that wouldn't necessarily apply to all employees involved in this matter. And based on what I've read, there were prosecutors who pushed back hard on continuing the investigation because they told their higher-ups there was no there there

It's a complicated situation.

[dem4decades]

4. How about the Biden DOJ release the names and numbers afilliated with those phones and email address

[StarfishSaver]

10. Why would they do that?

[dem4decades]

17. Adam Schiff asked for the info and was stone walled. Shouldn't the Intelligence and Judical

Committees have access to who the DOJ spied on?

[StarfishSaver]

19. Not necessarily

[dem4decades]

20. well Schiff thinks it's necessary, I'll take his opinion.

[drray23]

12. probably not a good idea.

These people were spied upon by the Trump administration. They are the victims. Making their names public will further subject them to harassment by the right wingers, not to mention I fail to see what would be the point of doing so.

[kentuck]

5. Do more people still use Windows platform rather than Apple ?

If so, there are probably a lot more phone numbers and email addresses to come?

Androids are a huge share of public use, also.

I doubt they stopped at Apple.

[drray23]

6. They did not. Microsoft also announced that they had been under subpoenas

for an email account belonging to a congressional staffer. They were under gag order for two years and recently revealed it.

[dawg day]

16. I heard that "another provider' had already notified the targets

Not sure why it didn't come out back then.

All this to "investigate a leak" . Yeah, right. Trump and his lackeys were the biggest leakers in history.

[RegularJam]

11. What does "demanded" mean? nt

[Chainfire]

23. Exactly. Did some Federal judge sign off on such a Gestapo tactic?

Were the companies extorted to provide the data, or did they give it up willingly?

[druidity33]

13. What about Google? How many did they give up?

Are we upset with Apple because they disclosed this? Don't we want to know that they were forced to do this?