Apple says it didn't know Trump's DOJ was asking for Democrats' data when it complied with subpoena

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: CNBC

TECH

Apple says it didn’t know Trump’s DOJ was asking for Democrats’ data when it complied with subpoena

PUBLISHED FRI, JUN 11 20217:38 PM EDT

Steve Kovach
@STEVEKOVACH https://twitter.com/stevekovach

KEY POINTS
-- Apple on Friday said it didn’t know former President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice was subpoenaed data on Democrats when it complied with the request.
-- Apple said it was under a gag order not to disclose the subpoena to the affected parties.
-- Microsoft also acknowledged it received a similar subpoena.


Apple said Friday it didn’t know former President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice was asking for the metadata of Democratic lawmakers when it complied with a subpoena seeking the information. ... Apple’s admission that it complied with the DOJ’s request demonstrates the thorny position tech companies are placed in when forced to balance their customers’ private online activity with legitimate requests from law enforcement. In general, companies like Apple challenge such requests, but in this case a grand jury and federal judge forced Apple to comply and keep it quiet. (1)

The admission follows a Thursday New York Times report that Trump’s DOJ seized at least a dozen records from people close to the House intelligence panel related to news reports on the former president’s contacts with Russia. At the time, the DOJ was looking for records from House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and committee member Eric Swalwell, D-Calif. (2)

Apple said it received a subpoena from a federal grand jury on Feb. 6, 2018. According to Apple, the subpoena requested data that belonged to a seemingly random group of email addresses and phone numbers. Apple said it provided the identifiers it had for some of the requests from the DOJ, but not all of the requests were for Apple customers.

Because of a nondisclosure order signed by a federal magistrate judge, Apple could not notify the people that their data was subpoenaed. The so-called gag order lifted on May 5, which is why Apple only recently alerted the affected users. According to Apple, the subpoena did not provide details on the nature of the investigation. ... Apple spokesperson Fred Sainz said in a statement that the company did not and could not have known who was being targeted by the request. .

{snip}

(1) https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/11/schiff-calls-for-probe-into-trump-doj-seizing-house-democrats-data-.html

(2) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/10/us/politics/justice-department-leaks-trump-administration.html

Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/11/apple-says-it-didnt-know-trumps-doj-was-asking-for-democrats-data.html

[Lovie777]

1. No body knows nothing . . . .

[COL Mustard]

35. Paging Sergeant Schultz. Sergeant Schultz To The Commandant's Office

Jetzt!

[bucolic_frolic]

2. A grand jury and a judge signed off on this, that is troubling

My uneducated guess, nat sec "need to know" request. Too much in the DOJ's hip pocket?

[gab13by13]

3. The easiest way to get the subpoenas

would be through a grand jury, the bar is pretty low.

[mpcamb]

5. Still, NAME THE JUDGE.

[gab13by13]

6. That is the scary part,

McConnell/Trump/Heritage Foundation put 323 Nazi judges on the courts.

[bamagal62]

11. This! I want to know the name of the judge.

[maxsolomon]

10. "A Grand Jury would indict a ham sandwich".

-Sol Wachtler

[Maxheader]

4. if their gonna bribe the eukraine,

their gonna bribe america...

[bucolic_frolic]

8. Good read

If they can document a few of those it might create some significant space for new appointees!

I really do think you're on to something.

[marble falls]

7. I'd think with all that loot and high-priced lawyers, their deniability would be more plausible.

[bluestarone]

9. Question for the smart ones here

What would have been the penalty, IF Apple would have NOT abided by this gag order? Seems like they COULD have blew this up in RUMP and BARRS face?

[bamagal62]

12. Would also like to know the answer to this.

Especially since, during that time, everyone was ignoring subpoenas.

[blueinredohio]

14. And they have plenty of money to hire some damn good lawyers.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

29. I get the point but a court subpoena is different than a congressional one

Just sayin'

[twodogsbarking]

13. When Trump accuses others of crimes

he is really telling us he has already committed the same crimes.
He has done it dozens of times.

[Wuddles440]

19. Projection....

is a standard MO for the GQP - always has been, always will be. It's in their DNA.

[onetexan]

15. Not buying the apple's bullcrap

[seta1950]

16. What I'd like to know

Is who is the federal judge , who thought this was ok to do?

[Chainfire]

17. Witch hunt?

[dalton99a]

18. The subpoena was signed by Jocelyn Valentine and authorized by Deborah Robinson

The nondisclosure order was extended three times, each time for a year, Apple said. When it was not extended for a fourth time, Apple said it informed the affected customers on May 5, 2021.

"In this case, the subpoena, which was issued by a federal grand jury and included a nondisclosure order signed by a federal magistrate judge, provided no information on the nature of the investigation and it would have been virtually impossible for Apple to understand the intent of the desired information without digging through users' accounts," Apple said in the statement. "Consistent with the request, Apple limited the information it provided to account subscriber information and did not provide any content such as emails or pictures."

The subpoena was signed by prosecutor Jocelyn Valentine and authorized by Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson in DC federal court, the source familiar with the request said.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/11/politics/justice-department-apple-congress-leak-investigation/index.html

[rockfordfile]

28. Jocelyn Valentine should be arrested.

[tavernier]

20. Say you own a boarding house with 500 rooms.

Some official government guy knocks on your door and says he wants the keys to ten of the rooms that are being rented by folks who are living there. You give him the keys because he looks and sounds threatening. You have no interest in finding out which folks you have just sold out, even though they are still paying you full rent.

Hmm.

[pnwmom]

24. You answer the door and they hand you a subpoena telling you to give them the keys. You do.

The subpoena comes with a gag order. The vast majority of people would comply.

[tavernier]

31. I think I was more concerned

that they would not be curious or concerned about who and why.

[pnwmom]

37. How do you know no one was? Or who knew about this besides the paralegal

who was given the task of answering the subpoena?

[DallasNE]

21. The Line Of Defense Here

Is the federal magistrate judge. So is this a case of Judge shopping and an ugly consequence of that practice?

[ShazamIam]

22. She is a Reagan era appointment and was also the Judge for Manafort and remember,

she just dropped some of the long list of his charges or something like that.

Here is more on her: https://heavy.com/news/2017/10/deborah-robinson-judge-manafort-son-federal/

[rockfordfile]

27. This is corruption and imo she should resign

[Hugh_Lebowski]

30. Judge for the arraignment of Manafort, trial judge IIRC was a dude named Ellis (nt)

[ShazamIam]

33. Yes, Judge Robinson was the presiding Judge, link posted

https://www.theroot.com/a-black-woman-judge-deborah-robinson-will-hear-the-ma-1820000480

[SWBTATTReg]

23. Seems like some civil lawsuits are called for here, being that these persons' civil rights and data,

were captured without legitimate cause, for purely political reasons. Also, again RICO the entire trump administration if you can't locate the actual person or persons that demanded this data. More than likely, it was trump all along in his attempts to hopefully capture some illegally obtained data on blackmailing these people whose data was captured illegally. The judges had to approve the wiretaps etc. for a valid cause, why did they approve these taps? That's why they have multiple tiers of judges approving these taps, so abuse can't happen and the abuse still happened. I dealt w/ subpoenas from the Feds quite a bit, call data (accounting wise), for a particular NPA NXX xxxx number, no reason or rationale was provided w/ the requests that came in, just the requests which my account exec passed to me (in IT) to gather the data and forward it to the account exec...

[sarcasmo]

25. Everybody using the Oliver North defense. LMFAO

[rockfordfile]

26. I'm not buying Apple's response

[Hugh_Lebowski]

34. It is totally viable that they were given cryptic identifiers to start

Data points like 'deviceID', which might look like gdafata3124ef33ef123.

They were then tasked to 'tell us what Apple account holder name is associated with the iPhone gdafata3124ef33ef123?'

Obviously once they replied with that info, they knew who the targets were, but I think they're arguing they didn't know originally/prior to their analyses.

You just have to kinda parse their corporate lawyer CYA word choice to realize that's what they are claiming.

[pnwmom]

38. Do you think the average American knows who Adam Schiff is? Or would recognize

most of the Congress members names on the list? Or their staffers?

[Hugh_Lebowski]

40. There also exists a possibility they didn't recognize it even AFTER they did the work, yes

But I don't think that's what they're arguing is my point.

A careful parsing of these words: "Apple said Friday it didn’t know former President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice was asking for the metadata of Democratic lawmakers when it complied with a subpoena seeking the information"

along with

"Apple spokesperson Fred Sainz said in a statement that the company did not and could not have known who was being targeted by the request."

leads me to that supposition.

"and could not" is a key addition to their claim, one which I strongly doubt their lawyers would make blithely, given the stakes and high-profile nature of the case.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

32. Sounds like Apple really didn't give them much

"Consistent with the request, Apple limited the information it provided to account subscriber information and did not provide any content such as emails or pictures."

And I don't have reason to doubt them.

This MIGHT make the whole thing a bit less egregious by everyone involved as IIRC it's already been decided by courts in the past that the bar for this type of information is lower.

I remember going through the whole 'metadata' arguments back in the NSA spying scandal of the Bush era.

The question this does bring up in my mind, however, is ... where did these anonymous identifiers they gave to Apple/MS come from originally?

I think there's a chance that other data, that probably should be more private (my suspicion would be the deviceIDs of phones, which is a random but unique identifier for a handset), was leveraged to get these identifiers, and then basically the DoJ reached out to Apple to confirm who they belonged to.

Which in turn makes me suspicious they either used NSA resources to track calls, or subpoenaed mobile call records from carriers as well because tracking calls and texts by mobile phones would be done via deviceID and IP address and similarly cryptic data points. This would be 'metadata'.

IOW the 'starting point' of all this might've been a massive data-mining operation of mobile and internet usage records.

And THAT might be where some real illegality came into play.

[monkeyman1]

36. "WHAT THE F%#K !

you've got to kid'n me ! these dumb people at apple don't recognize people's name's in the government! what stupid lawyer came up with that one ?

[pnwmom]

39. I bet if you went out onto any city street you'd find MOST people wouldn't recognize

names of Congress people out of context -- and no one would know the names of their staffers.

Only 37% can name their OWN representative in Congress. Many many fewer know the names of other people in Congress.

I bet Nancy Pelosi is one of the few, simply because Trump mentions her so often.


https://www.haveninsights.com/just-37-percent-name-representative/

[monkeyman1]

41. hate to say it , but , ya got me on that one ! thank's !!!

[C Moon]

42. There sure was a lot of dirt going on behind the scenes--and in the front, too.

[DFW]

43. Of course they didn't know. After all, what are they? A software company?

Oh. Wait. Never mind.