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New technology can make it easier to catch criminals, but also to implicate innocent people in the process.

A Gainesville residents recent experience showed the need for caution and safeguards when using such technology. As NBC News reported, Zachary McCoy received a letter in January telling him that the Gainesville Police Department requested information related to his Google account which the company would be releasing in seven days, unless he went to court to block it.

The letter lacked details on exactly what the police wanted except for a case number, which led McCoy to an investigation report on a burglary 10 months earlier. The crime happened at an elderly womans home less than a mile from where McCoy lived.

He knew he had nothing to do with the break-in, but was worried about being arrested, so he hired Gainesville attorney Caleb Kenyon. Kenyon found that the letter was prompted by a geofence warrant, which seeks records for any devices in a certain area during a specific period.

McCoy, an avid biker, recorded his rides on an exercise-tracking app that used his phones location services which relayed his movements to Google. McCoy took frequent loops through his neighborhood, and found that his route on the day of the burglary passed the victims house three times in an hour.

It was a nightmare scenario, he told NBC News. I was using an app to see how many miles I rode my bike and now it was putting me at the scene of the crime. And I was the lead suspect.

Geofence warrants are increasingly being used by law enforcement agencies around the country to solve a variety of crimes. But they can also implicate innocent people, such as an Arizona man who was wrongly arrested for murder largely based on Google data received from a geofence warrant.

McCoy told NBC News that he might have ended up in a similar situation if his parents hadnt given him money to hire a lawyer. Kenyon filed a court motion seeking to void the warrant and block the release of any further information. The State Attorneys Office ended up withdrawing the warrant and police were persuaded that McCoy was not involved in the crime.

The case raises constitutional questions. The Fourth Amendment requires warrants to be based on probable cause and that police must specifically state what property is being seized. But geofence warrants let police conduct sweeping searches of phone data from large numbers of people.

The situation shows the need for the legal system to catch up with technological changes, and for law enforcement and the public to both use caution. People should also take note of the information theyre sharing with Google and other technology companies, including the terms of service to which theyre agreeing.

While mistakenly becoming a suspect in a criminal case is an extreme example, there are plenty of other ways in which personal data can be misused.

This editorial was originally published by the Gainesville Sun.

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Another Viewpoint: Approach new technology with caution - The Ledger

South Dakota (NBC)(03/16/20) On Feb. 11, 2019, undercover detectives removed the trash from outside a 57-year-old paralegals home in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in hopes of finding her DNA.

Police were led to Theresa Bentaas home by a new investigative technique that combines direct-to-consumer genetic testing and genealogical records.

The detectives believed they were close to solving a crime that had haunted the city for 38 years: a newborn left to die in a frigid roadside ditch, tears frozen to his cheeks.

Once theyd taken the garbage from Bentaas home, the detectives pulled out beer cans, water bottles, and cigarette butts, according to court documents.

They sent the items to a state crime lab, where analysts extracted DNA that they said might belong to the babys mother.

Citing those results, one of the detectives got a search warrant to obtain a DNA sample directly from Bentaas.

When he showed up at her home, Bentaas admitted to leaving the baby in the ditch in February 1981 after secretly giving birth, saying shed been young and stupid and scared, according to an affidavit submitted by the detective.

A few days later, according to court documents, Bentaas DNA swab revealed her as the babys likely mother. Police then arrested her for murder.

Bentaas has since pleaded not guilty, and now, on the eve of her trial, she is fighting the charges against her.

One of her main arguments is that police violated her constitutional protections against unreasonable searches when they used her trash to find her DNA and develop a genetic profile, without first asking a judge to sign a search warrant.

People do not have a privacy interest in the things they throw in the trash, but they definitely have privacy interest in their DNA that is on those items, Bentaas lawyer, Clint Sargent, said in an interview. And theres nothing a free person can do to not deposit DNA on the stuff they deal with every day.

The Minnehaha County prosecutor handling the case against Bentaas did not return a request for comment. Neither did a spokesman for the Sioux Falls Police Department.

The practice of going through a potential suspects garbage for evidence is not new, but it is facing new scrutiny from civil liberties groups and privacy advocates who see danger in law enforcements unchecked power to obtain peoples DNA, which is unavoidably left on just about everything anyone touches, without them knowing about it.

The tactic has grown more frequent with the increased use of investigative genetic genealogy, which relies on DNA and ancestry records to find people with links to DNA left at a crime scene.

Police try to confirm the connection by obtaining the persons DNA, often through surreptitious means.

Without protections, every one of us is vulnerable to having our DNA secretly tested and scrutinized by police without judicial oversight, said Nathan Freed Wessler, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, who specializes in technology and privacy.

The ACLU, along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights nonprofit, filed a joint brief Monday in the Bentaas case in Second Judicial Circuit Court in Minnehaha County, arguing that while it is legal for police to rifle through someones trash for evidence, extracting and sequencing a DNA sample found on that item should first require going to a judge for a warrant. Not doing that, the groups said, violates the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The filing is the first in what the groups say will be a national effort to challenge cases in which police have used trash and other abandoned items to secretly access a potential suspects DNA.

Among the cases they are watching is the upcoming trial of an Orlando, Florida, man charged with the 2001 killing of a college student.

The goal, they say, is to persuade judges to require police to first come to them for permission, in the form of a warrant.

Our DNA can reveal so much about us that our genetic privacy must be protected at all costs, an Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer wrote in a blog post this week.

Prosecutors say that argument is a stretch. They point out that the Supreme Court has ruled that it is OK for police to search through someones garbage, and criminal defendants have largely failed in the past to challenge the collection of DNA from trash and other items.

The Minnehaha County states attorney made those assertions in a brief opposing Bentaas motion to suppress the DNA evidence against her.

Duffie Stone, president of the National District Attorneys Association and a prosecutor in South Carolina, said police are allowed to go through someones trash or collect abandoned objects, regardless of whether they use those items to find DNA.

Making it more burdensome to test abandoned items for DNA would slow criminal investigations, which often rely on trying to find DNA not only from things left in the trash but also all sorts of objects found at crime scenes, from guns to gum, Stone said.

Theyre trying to extend the expectation of privacy to shedded DNA cells, Stone said. I dont think the courts are going to go with that, and from a practical standpoint it would be impossible for law enforcement to work with that on a regular basis.

Elizabeth Joh, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law, who studies criminal procedure and police surveillance, said that as covert collection of DNA becomes cheaper and easier, there need to be more rules, from the courts or lawmakers, covering it.

There is basically nothing regulating or guiding the police on what to do other than their own internal guidelines, Joh said.

On Friday, Bentaas defense team and Minnehaha County prosecutors argued the DNA collection issue before Second Circuit Court Judge Susan Sabers, who said shed make a decision by Tuesday, Sargent, Bentaas defense lawyer, said.

Bentaas trial is scheduled to begin April 20.

The trial could mark the final chapter in a mystery that has haunted Sioux Falls for nearly four decades.

The baby died years before DNA became a crime-solving tool. Residents arranged for a funeral and burial and named the boy Andrew, which was inscribed on his gravestone.

In 2009, a detective, hoping to use new DNA analysis methods to find a new lead, arranged for the body to be disinterred, according to court documents, but the babys DNA profile wasnt closely related to any profiles in the states crime database.

Last year, police turned to investigative genetic genealogy, which seeks DNA links outside of crime databases.

Investigators built a family tree that pointed them to Bentaas, according to court documents.

Her arrest triggered a wave of relief across Sioux Falls.

Lee Litz, who found the baby at the side of the road, told a reporter last year that he considered the boy his long-lost son and saw Bentaas arrest as justice for a community that refused to let his death go forgotten.

There are times when I wish I hadnt found him and there are times that Im glad I did, Litz told the Argus Leader newspaper. I just wish I found him earlier, when he was still alive.

Stay up to date with the latest news by downloading the KTVE/KARD News App from theApp StoreorGoogle Play.

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Woman fights the murder charge of killing her own infant saying police illegally obtained DNA from her trash - KTVE - myarklamiss.com

The U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote tomorrow on whether to extend the USA Freedom Act. The House quickly approved an extension last week even as coronavirusmania started running wild all over the federal government. The extension repeals the NSAs data collection program, something the agency claims already ended. Independent advisers can also review requests by law enforcement on FISA warrants, provide advice, and identify concerns with the warrant request.

Questions remain on whether the USA Freedom Act will reform the FISA process or allow it to carry on with minor changes to the process. It appears Congress wants the latter more than the former given House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadlers decision to call off a vote on the bill last month. He and Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff disagreed with multiple proposed amendments by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren that changed the FISA process more including increased Fourth Amendment protections in the U.S.

Senate leadership is unlikely to go for more reform given the interaction on Thursday between Senator Mike Lee and Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr. Lee attempted to get a 45-day extension of the current FISA rules so the Senate could offer up amendments to the House-passed bill. Burr objected to the request, not once, but at least four times to a simple unanimous consent of the extension.

It was during this debate when Burr offered up a rather curious comment regarding Executive Order 12333 used by the intelligence community to collect information.

The statement elicited alarm from FISA reform advocates.

If thats true, and the executive branch truly believes it can conduct warrantless surveillance on Americans via Executive Order 12333, that ought to prompt questions from every member of Congress and the public on what, if any, limits the executive branch believes exist on their power to spy domestically, FreedomWorks Senior Policy Analyst Josh Withrow told me in an email. FISA was passed into law very specifically to prevent the kind of lawlessness that Senator Burr casually implied on the floor of the US Senate.

Mark Jaycock at Electronic Frontier Foundation previously wrote about the dangers of EO 12333 in 2014:

The Executive Order purports to cover all types of spying conducted with the Presidents constitutional powersincluding mass spying. Thats important to note because some of the spying conducted under EO 12333 is reportedly similar to the mass spying conducted under Section 702 of the FAA. Under this type of spying, millions of innocent foreigners communications are collected abroad, inevitably containing Americans communications. In the Section 702 context, this includes techniques like Prism and Upstream. While we dont know for sure, the Executive Order probably uses similar techniques or piggybacks off of programs used for Section 702 spying.

The second section of the EO partly covers mass spying by establishing what information intelligence agencies can collect, retain, and share about US persons. The current guidelines, the United States Signals Intelligence Directive SP0018, also known as USSID 18, are (just like the minimization procedures based off of them) littered with loopholes to over-collect, over-retain, and over-share Americans communicationsall without a probable cause warrant or any judicial oversight.

Just slightly troubling, to say the least.

Its time for Congress to go further than the banal limits in the USA Freedom Act. Repeal EO 12333. The White House would likely veto any repeal, however, Congress could always vote to override. The next step is real limits on what data the intelligence community can collect, especially when it comes to the data of American citizens. After all, the Constitution does require Congress to set all rules of governance not the presidency through executive fiat.

Lees desire for a 45-day extension to review the USA Freedom Act makes sense. The bill is around 50 pages long. Congress is more focused on coronavirus. Lets review the act and make necessary tweaks to protect Americans and their privacy from intrusive government. Anything else is a dereliction of duty by Congress.

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Thoughts on tomorrows vote on the Freedom Act extension - Hot Air

This week, we filed anamicus brief in a South Dakota case arguing that the Fourth Amendment prohibits the police from surreptitiously collecting our DNA without a warrant. This case is one of the first to challenge the collection of DNA from a free person after results of a genetic genealogy database search linked her to a crime.

In the case, prosecutors have charged Teresa Bentaas, a lifelong Sioux Falls resident, with first degree murder for abandoning a newborn 39 years ago. To link Ms. Bentaas to the baby, police secretly collected her DNA from items they found in her trash, extracted and sequenced it, and then compared it to the babys. Ms. Bentaas was not under arrest or in police custody at the time they collected and searched her DNA, so, unlike an arrestee, there can be no argument her Fourth Amendment rights were in any way diminished.

Ms. Bentaass attorneys have filed amotion to suppress the DNA evidence and all evidence collected by the police after that, arguing this secret and warrantless rummaging and data collection violates the Fourth Amendment and South Dakotas state constitutional equivalent. EFF, joined by the ACLU and ACLU of South Dakota, filed a brief in support.

Prosecutors claim that the Fourth Amendment doesnt apply in this context because Ms. Bentaas abandoned her privacy interest in her DNA when she left it behind on the items she threw out in her trash. However, we argue the Fourth Amendment creates a high bar against collecting DNA from free people, even if its found on items the person has voluntarily discarded. In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourth Amendment does not protect the contents of peoples trash left for pickup because they have abandoned an expectation of privacy in the trash. But unlike a gum wrapper or a cigarette butt, our DNA contains so much private information that the data contained in a DNA sample can never be abandoned. Even if police dont need a warrant to rummage through your trash (and many states disagree on this point), Police should need a warrant to rummage through your DNA.

A DNA samplewhether taken directly from a person or extracted from items that person leaves behindcontains a persons entire genetic makeup. It can reveal intensely sensitive information about us, including our propensities for certain medical conditions, our ancestry, and our biological familial relationships. Some researchers have also claimed that human behaviors such as aggression and addiction can be explained, at least in part, by genetics. And private companies have claimed they can use our DNA for everything from identifying our eye, hair, and skin colors and the shapes of our faces; to determining whether we are lactose intolerant, prefer sweet or salty foods, and can sleep deeply; to discovering the likely migration patterns of our ancestors and the identities of family members we never even knew we had.

Despite the uniquely revealing nature of DNA, we cannot avoid leaving behind the whole of our genetic code wherever we go. Humans are constantly shedding genetic material; In less time than it takes to order a coffee, most humans lose nearly enough skin cells to cover an entire football field. The only way to avoid depositing our DNA on nearly every item we touch out in the world would be to never leave ones home. For these reasons, as we argue in our brief, we can never abandon a privacy interest in our DNA.

The Bentaas case also raises thorny Fourth Amendment issues related to law enforcement use of genetic genealogy databases, which South Dakota police used earlier in their investigation to try to find a genetic connection to the deceased baby. Weve written about these issues before. In the Bentaas case, the police exhumed the body of the infant, extracted a DNA sample from the remains, and then worked with a private company called Parabon Nanolabs to search through the consumer genetic genealogy database GEDmatch, to try to find a connection between the infants DNA and GEDmatch users. Parabon wasnt able to find a close relative but did identify two individuals who could have been between sixth to eighth degree relations. A police officer then did his own research on public data websites to try to find a potential suspect. He settled on Ms. Bentaas and her husband, both potential biological matches, and then surreptitiously collected DNA samples from items he found in their trash.

This process of searching genetic genealogy databases in criminal investigations has become quite common. More than 26 million people have used genetic genealogy databases like GEDmatch to identify biological relatives and build a family tree, and law enforcement officers have been capitalizing on all that freely available data in criminal investigations across the country. Estimates are that genetic genealogy sites were used in around 200 cases just last year. For many of those cases, like this one, officers never sought a warrant or any legal process at all before searching that private database.

Police access to this data creates immeasurable threats to our privacy. It also puts us at much greater risk of being accused of crimes we didnt commit. For example, in 2015, a similar forensic genetic genealogy search led police to suspect an innocent man. Even without genetic genealogy searches, DNA matches may lead officers to suspectand jailthe wrong person, as happened in a California case in 2012. That can happen because our DNA may be transferred from one location to another, possibly ending up at the scene of a crime, even if we were never there.

Even if you yourself never upload your genetic data to a genetic genealogy website, your privacy could be impacted by a distant family members choice to do so. Although GEDmatchs 1.3 million users only encompass about 0.5% of the U.S. adult population, research shows that their data alone could be used to identify 60% of white Americans. And once GEDmatchs users encompass just 2% of the U.S. population, 90% of white Americans will be identifiable. Other research has shown that adversaries may be able to compromise these databases to put many users at risk of having their genotypes revealed, either at key positions or at many sites genome-wide.

This is why this case is so importantand why we need strong rules against police access to genetic genealogy databases. Our DNA can reveal so much about us that our genetic privacy must be protected at all costs. We hope the South Dakota court and other courts addressing this issue will recognize that the Fourth Amendment protects us from surreptitious collection and searches of our DNA.

Excerpt from:
Police May Not Need a Warrant to Rummage Through Your Trash, But Warrantless Collection of DNA Is Unconstitutional - EFF

In the aftermath of the McDonald's Monopoly scandal from the 1990s one of the biggest fast-foodscandals in American historythe major players and prize "winners" were handed minimum sentences for their white-collar crimes. And asseveral participants hadclean records prior to the charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, it was enough to keep them on the straight and narrow.

But what about the more experienced criminals in the group? As detailed in HBO's docu-series "McMillion$," in order for the scheme to work and attract people who needed the cash prizes, those familiar with bending the law were a vital component to the scam.

The McDonald's Monopoly crime ringwas led by Jerome Jacobson, the ex-cop who managed to rig the game through most of the '90sand helped a group of "winners" steal over $24 million from the company. Participants ranged from experienced mobsters to average citizens whowould benefit greatly from big cash winnings.

Andrew Glomb joined the heist shortly after mob boss Gennaro Colombo died in 1998. An ex-con and former drug dealer fresh off probation, hewas responsible for distributing winning tickets and expanding the "winners" network for Jacobson. So where is he now?

Well, today, Glomb hasseemingly kept his head down andavoided all trouble with the law.

"I have been a 'good boy!'" Glomb told Oxygen.com in an email.

As depicted in the docu-series, Glomb's first foray into crimewas while doing drugs in1979 with best-selling author Harold Robbins. Recalling that in Robbins'novels characters would inhale amyl nitrate before engaging insexual activity, Glomb asked if he could try some. He subsequently panicked at the reaction his body had, even calling a friend to get him out of the party.

Shortly thereafter, his cousin asked if he could get him quaaludes, and he deferred to the friend he called during his moment of panic after his first drug experience.Realizing the money to be made in this "business," Glomb became a drugtrafficker in Florida, according to "McMillion$."

His drug enterprise was relatively short-lived. On Sept. 10, 1983, while traveling from Miami to Dallas with 8.9 ounces of pure cocaine to deliver to his co-conspirators, several federal agents arrested him outside a Pan American terminal at the Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Airport. On Dec. 6, he entered a conditional plea of guilty to one count of conspiracy to possess cocaine with intent to distribute, according to his public case profile.

In February 1984, he was sentenced to 12years confinement plus a $15,000 fine. He entered the plea on the condition that he be able to appeal the question of whetherhis fourth amendment rights were violated, as he was seized without a warrant, according to the case profile.

But rather than report to the Montgomery Federal Prison as instructed on March 20, 1984, Glomb fled the country and went on a 16-month tour of Europe.

"You're always worried looking over your shoulder every time you see two guys with suits on, you think it's over," Glomb explained in the documentary.

He was finally arrested in 1985 at a San Diego doughnut shop after shipping a car in his name to Long Beach and had toservethe entirety of his jail sentence, as detailed in his case profile.

By the time he was contacted about the McDonald's crime circuit, Glomb had recently gottenoffparole.

"I was very skeptical," Glomb said in the docu-series. "I said, 'I don't think I want to know anything about it.' And then probably two or three days later, I said, 'You know what? Let's meet and we'll talk about it.'"

Glomb was presented with a $1 million winning piece, which he then gave to a friend to split between the two of them and Jacobson.

Glomb made winners out of friends he had made while dealing drugs and serving his prison sentence. In1999, one of the $1 million winners was a convicted cocaine distributor, according to The Daily Beast.

Glomb was ultimately arrested on August 22, 2001. He was convicted of mail fraud and conspiracy and sentenced to a year and one day in prison,theoutlet reports.

Today, Glomb haskept quietand continues to payrestitution fees of $164.70 per month, according to the docu-series.Glomb also still keeps in touch with Jacobson, now in his late 70s and in poor health. He noted in his interview with The Daily Beast that whereas some may be bitter about the sentence, he understands that what he did was wrong.

"It was a game, and I lost," he said in the docu-series.

But when asked if he would do it again in "McMillion$," Glomb quickly responded: "Tomorrow."

Get all your true crime news from Oxygen. Coverage of the latest true crime stories and famous cases explained, as well as the best TV shows, movies and podcasts in the genre. And don't miss our own podcast, Martinis & Murder!

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'I Have Been A Good Boy!' Andrew Glomb Says Of Life After McDonald's Monopoly Scandal - Oxygen