<story><title>Verizon fell for fake &quot;search warrant,&quot; gave victim&apos;s phone data to stalker</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/verizon-fell-for-fake-search-warrant-gave-victims-phone-data-to-stalker/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>usrbinbash</author><text>&amp;gt; The documents are written on simple copy paper and lack any kind of security features.&lt;p&gt;Wait, sorry, sorry, sorry, hold up, full stop...could you repeat that again?&lt;p&gt;These orders arrive &lt;i&gt;AS GODDAMN PAPER PRINTOUTS?!?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Am I to understand that official orders that instruct telco providers to provide the private communication data of people, are transmitted as smushes of pigment on thin pieces of wood-paste, instead of a digitally signed file that the recipient can trivially verify with the ordering entities public key?</text></item><item><author>pseingatl</author><text>Forging a judicial order is trivial. There is no way Verizon or anyone else knows if there is a specific form used in one of the 1700+ counties that comprise the US. Federal subpoenae are even easier because they are uniform and are filed under seal. Verizon can&amp;#x27;t call the Clerk&amp;#x27;s office and ask, &amp;quot;did the grand jury really issue a subpoena?&amp;quot; The documents are written on simple copy paper and lack any kind of security features. Expect more of these as word gets out. Also, it&amp;#x27;s easy enough to file a small claims case and have a subpoena issued. Usually, there&amp;#x27;s no one to quash the subpoena. Civil subpoenas take a little longer than criminal ones and you have to pay to have them served, but so what?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wruza</author><text>It’s amusing how much HN expects from “the outer world”.&lt;p&gt;Companies can adopt new tech in 1-2 years. Industries have around 5-10 years inertia. Bureaucracies like courts still live in the past millenia. You should be happy that they are using email.&lt;p&gt;The best security measure they will implement after this article going wide is something like “only emails from @&amp;lt;domain&amp;gt; are valid, but we’ll destroy you anyway in case a judge mistakenly sends you an order from his own gmail”.</text></comment>
<story><title>Verizon fell for fake &quot;search warrant,&quot; gave victim&apos;s phone data to stalker</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/verizon-fell-for-fake-search-warrant-gave-victims-phone-data-to-stalker/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>usrbinbash</author><text>&amp;gt; The documents are written on simple copy paper and lack any kind of security features.&lt;p&gt;Wait, sorry, sorry, sorry, hold up, full stop...could you repeat that again?&lt;p&gt;These orders arrive &lt;i&gt;AS GODDAMN PAPER PRINTOUTS?!?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Am I to understand that official orders that instruct telco providers to provide the private communication data of people, are transmitted as smushes of pigment on thin pieces of wood-paste, instead of a digitally signed file that the recipient can trivially verify with the ordering entities public key?</text></item><item><author>pseingatl</author><text>Forging a judicial order is trivial. There is no way Verizon or anyone else knows if there is a specific form used in one of the 1700+ counties that comprise the US. Federal subpoenae are even easier because they are uniform and are filed under seal. Verizon can&amp;#x27;t call the Clerk&amp;#x27;s office and ask, &amp;quot;did the grand jury really issue a subpoena?&amp;quot; The documents are written on simple copy paper and lack any kind of security features. Expect more of these as word gets out. Also, it&amp;#x27;s easy enough to file a small claims case and have a subpoena issued. Usually, there&amp;#x27;s no one to quash the subpoena. Civil subpoenas take a little longer than criminal ones and you have to pay to have them served, but so what?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vintermann</author><text>&amp;gt; instead of a digitally signed file that the recipient can trivially verify with the ordering entities public key?&lt;p&gt;They wouldn&amp;#x27;t want that, because they don&amp;#x27;t want it to be easy to prove that they demanded surrender either.</text></comment>