All Writs Act Lives

The All Writs Act is a law that dates back to the late 1700s. It allows the government to force companies to do all sorts of things. Completely legally. Usually very quietly.

In this case the government was trying to find a Russian national, Aleksey Burkov. The government wanted to track him so that he could be arrested and extradited. He was accused of running Card Planet, the dark web site that sold tens of millions of stolen credit cards to hackers.

In November 2015, according to records uncovered by Forbes, the government ordered both Sabre (the travel booking giant that used to be part of American Airlines) and their UK competitor Travelport to provide them with data on this guy.

The feds told them that they needed to provide “complete and contemporaneous real-time account activity” for Burkov.

They made them do this in secret. The only reason we are hearing about it now, 7 years after it happened, is that Forbes sued the government.

Travelport is not even a U.S. company.

The FBI tried to use the All Writs Act against Apple to unlock the San Bernadino killer’s iPhone. In that case, the feds wanted Apple to build a “defective” version of their operating system and force update the killer’s phone so that they could unlock it. Apple pushed back and eventually the FBI paid someone a million dollars to hack the dead guy’s phone instead of potentially losing a court battle which would have set a really bad precedent for the FBI. The FBI said they found nothing of use for their million bucks.

In this case, the travel companies didn’t have a good defense. The data existed. All the feds wanted was a real time feed of the data. It is unclear if or how much the companies charged the feds.

While the court order would have been effective for two years, apparently the found him in Israel that same year. Note to other crooks – don’t vacation in countries friendly to us. Actually, let me change that. PLEASE vacation in countries friendly to us – it makes the feds jobs easier.

Burkov claimed that he was just a programmer and he did not commit those crimes. He took a plea deal of nine years to avoid the possibility of 80 years. He was extradited back to the US in June 2020 and then sent back to Russia in September 2021, but the DoJ has not explained why.

After 233 years, the All Writs Act is still the law. Hackers beware.

Credit: Russia Today

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