How an Unlikely Subpoena to Google Helped Solve a Complex International Missing Person Case (andrewwatters.com) 46
Long-time Slashdot reader wattersa is a lawyer in Redwood City, California, "and a Slashdot reader since 1998.
"I recently concluded a three-year missing person investigation that unfortunately turned into an overseas homicide in Taiwan. I was authorized by my client to publish the case study on my website, which is based on our recent court filings..." And yes, he writes that the case was solved with a subpoena to Google: I filed that case in late 2019 and then used the subpoena power to try to solve the disappearance, which seemed appropriate. We solved the case in late 2020 due to a fake "proof of life" email that the suspect sent from the victim's email account, which he sent from a hotel where he testified he was staying alone on the night of the disappearance — after (according to him) dropping off the victim at the local train station. The victim could not have sent the email from the other side of Taiwan, which is where the email indicated it was from.... The suspect in my case is a Tony Stark-level supergenius with a Ph.D. and dozens of patents, who works at a prominent engineering company in California. He is currently wanted in Taiwan.
The case was solved with a subpoena to Google for the login/logout history of the victim's Gmail account and the originating IP address of the proof of life email. Although Google does not include the originating IP address in the email headers, it turns out that they retain the IP address for some unknown length of time and we were able to get it. When it became clear that this case was a homicide, co-counsel and I dismissed the conservatorship case and filed a wrongful death case against the suspect in 2021.
We continue to gather information through subpoenas, depositions, and interviews, all of which show that the victim died in a 10-hour window on November 29, 2019. The wrongful death case goes to trial in late 2023 in Santa Clara County. This is a rare case in which the family can afford an expensive, lengthy, attorney-led private investigation.
The original submission includes additional details about a rarely used statute in California that allows conservatorship of a missing person's estate — and apparently grants subpoena power. And it was in response to such a subpoena that Google produced the originating IP address of that crucial proof of life email.
"This obscure statute in the Probate Code was instrumental in solving the case because we didn't have to wait for law enforcement to take action, and we were able to aggressively pursue our own leads. This gave the family a sense of agency and closure, as well as the obvious benefit of solving the disappearance. Also, Taiwan law enforcement could not do subpoenas from Taiwan, so we ended up contributing to their investigation to some extent as well."
"I recently concluded a three-year missing person investigation that unfortunately turned into an overseas homicide in Taiwan. I was authorized by my client to publish the case study on my website, which is based on our recent court filings..." And yes, he writes that the case was solved with a subpoena to Google: I filed that case in late 2019 and then used the subpoena power to try to solve the disappearance, which seemed appropriate. We solved the case in late 2020 due to a fake "proof of life" email that the suspect sent from the victim's email account, which he sent from a hotel where he testified he was staying alone on the night of the disappearance — after (according to him) dropping off the victim at the local train station. The victim could not have sent the email from the other side of Taiwan, which is where the email indicated it was from.... The suspect in my case is a Tony Stark-level supergenius with a Ph.D. and dozens of patents, who works at a prominent engineering company in California. He is currently wanted in Taiwan.
The case was solved with a subpoena to Google for the login/logout history of the victim's Gmail account and the originating IP address of the proof of life email. Although Google does not include the originating IP address in the email headers, it turns out that they retain the IP address for some unknown length of time and we were able to get it. When it became clear that this case was a homicide, co-counsel and I dismissed the conservatorship case and filed a wrongful death case against the suspect in 2021.
We continue to gather information through subpoenas, depositions, and interviews, all of which show that the victim died in a 10-hour window on November 29, 2019. The wrongful death case goes to trial in late 2023 in Santa Clara County. This is a rare case in which the family can afford an expensive, lengthy, attorney-led private investigation.
The original submission includes additional details about a rarely used statute in California that allows conservatorship of a missing person's estate — and apparently grants subpoena power. And it was in response to such a subpoena that Google produced the originating IP address of that crucial proof of life email.
"This obscure statute in the Probate Code was instrumental in solving the case because we didn't have to wait for law enforcement to take action, and we were able to aggressively pursue our own leads. This gave the family a sense of agency and closure, as well as the obvious benefit of solving the disappearance. Also, Taiwan law enforcement could not do subpoenas from Taiwan, so we ended up contributing to their investigation to some extent as well."
This is a good reminder (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't use Gmail if you don't want Google to track your every moves.
Or indeed any Google product.
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Re:This is a good reminder (Score:5, Insightful)
In fairness, the criminal didn't have a choice here, as he used to victim's Gmail account. It's not like he could have told him "Look, I plan on killing you and sending a fake email from you from your account. Could you get a ProtonMail account please?"
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Yes he could have. Everything is about proper planning. Sloppy, very very sloppy.
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I was making a joke, but you brought up a point I made in another comment about our two (or more) tier justice system. Basically, the assailant chose their target poorly because the victim had a wealthy family that cared enough to spend that wealth to hunt him down, even if the police couldn't be bothered. If it had been most of us, it would have ended in the 'Unsolved Missing Persons' pile and forgotten for the reasons you mentioned.
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Basically, the assailant chose their target poorly
This wasnt serial killer stuff, he murdered his wife.
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According to the article, his previous wife died apparently with unexplained bruises while he was dating the one in the story. And he's with a new woman now...
If he isn't a serial killer, he definitely sounds like a predator who prefers murder to divorce.
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Sigh... I was pointing out that his targets werent chosen based on "murder-ability", hence the quote I choose.
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Re: This is a good reminder (Score:2)
Proton Mail's privacy is proven by their transparent business model (which makes you the customer rather than the product), their reputation, and the lega
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What difference would it make if their software was open source?
all of them: it garantees that isn't backdoors on the software (for the rest: TL;DR)
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Re: This is a good reminder (Score:2)
Lol. How are you going to provide "garantees" against this: I create a codebase, I open source it, I privately fork the codebase and install backdoors on my fork, I continue to apply any patches to the public codebase against my private fork (ensuring none of them break the backdoors), and run the forked code on my server.
Any level of protection that open source might provide only exists if you compile the code yourself and run it on hardware you can trust.
Re: This is a good reminder (Score:2)
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Well, as to "running your own email server", this is prevented by all (most of) the IPs refusing to accept email from your server. Even small commercial companies can't do that anymore.
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Well, as to "running your own email server", this is prevented by all (most of) the IPs refusing to accept email from your server. Even small commercial companies can't do that anymore.
Email servers send email to IPs? I'd love to know how to send email to a random IP.
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The folks you *should* blame are the spammers.
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The problem occurs for most of us for non-criminal activities. You tell a joke that someone thinks you should be cancelled for, especially someone in govt? Your emails about your dog Dmitri sound like emails about Russian spying? Lots of reasons you can get screwed when your emails are misconstrued by busybodies.
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If by "every move" you mean the IP address that an email was sent from, something which almost all email service providers keep in order to deal with spammers, then yes.
Even Proton Mail stores IP addresses and hands them over when a court tells them to, so I'd love to know what your solution is. Don't use email?
As for TFA, this guy clearly wasn't a genius if he didn't even use a no log VPN.
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Keep rubbing the Oditurs noses in it !
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It's unlikely, because most police departments won't do it, and most families can't afford to...or don't even know that it's appropriate.
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The headline is indeed not a complete lie, but if you have a last email from a disappeared person, I think a subpoena to the email provider is anything but "unlikely".
I think the point in this case is that it wasn't a subpoena from the police, but instead from the estate of a missing person.
Two-tier justice system (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just more evidence of the two-tier justice system we have in the US: One for the rich and one for everyone else. (Minorities, especially those of dark skin might have a good case for a 3-tier system.) Don't get me wrong, I hope the family gets justice in this case, just it sucks how this 'missing person' case would have turned out for any of the rest of us.
Re: Two-tier justice system (Score:1)
There is no place on earth where a government wouldâ(TM)ve gone through such lengths. Government anything is always worse than private anything, once a government does something they have no incentive to improve their services.
If you want to keep more of your money, so you are more likely to fund these investigations when you need them, abolish the government. If people have a need, an industry around them will spring up.
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What history and under what system? How much government services are trickling down to you today? It sure isn't policing crime, or investigating murders, or providing quality health services.
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What a great idea. I mean fuck poor people who wouldnt be able to afford what you describe regardless of tax status, right?
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You are absolutely correct.
This case is in the less than 1% of cases where the victim's family can afford to do something. This investigation lasted three years and cost the family more than $100,000 for two lawyers and a substantial amount of work during that time.
One idea I broached to the state Attorney General, whose office I've been corresponding with, is publishing a web page about this statute that explains the process. At least that way, the family has the option of doing a GoFundMe and then hirin
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Compare this to the teen who snuck out the house, last seen with a known white women before he was found dead in a ditch. That was an accident.
But the more apt comparison is the couple in Idaho who killed their kids and spouses. Going on like three years. No convictions.
On the other hand, the woman in South America who murdered her husband a
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This is just more evidence of the two-tier justice system we have in the US
Is it though? I mean, most obviously, you do realize this is about a crime that happened in Taiwan, right?
Rather than reflecting anything on the US justice system, I’d suggests this reflects the current oddness in dealing with crimes that happen in Taiwan given its status as a non-recognized country. The problems the US justice system had in pursuing this case are the same problems you’d find anywhere else because the problem lies with Taiwan’s status, not the justice system of the country
Dude, don't brag about an ongoing investigation (Score:2)
Someday that will be me. (Score:1)
Someday that will be me, but since my "parents" will be the ones who actually killed me, nobody will bother looking for me unless one of you does.
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Stop with the time-traveling prediction of your death. It's killing me!
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Marry. Problem solved.
Google doesn't send the sender IP in the header? (Score:2)
I wasn't aware of this. I thought sender IP is generally send together with the email?
So gmail is good to be used by scammers cos victims will have to spend a bunch of money to subpoena google to get the IP (most of the time police don't do much in such cases, as I understand). And if you cleaned out a victim, they may not have the resources to get a lawyer anyway.
Good to know what "industry" gmails are good for.
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I wasn't aware of this. I thought sender IP is generally send together with the email?
So gmail is good to be used by scammers cos victims will have to spend a bunch of money to subpoena google to get the IP (most of the time police don't do much in such cases, as I understand). And if you cleaned out a victim, they may not have the resources to get a lawyer anyway.
Good to know what "industry" gmails are good for.
The sender IP is for the originating SMTP server. The only time the local IP would be in the email is if you're operating your own server. This isn't just a Google thing, it's how the standards always worked. The user's web browser is just the interface. Back when the interface was a terminal, we never included the logged-in user's telephone number. The email headers are for troubleshooting purposes, not digital forensics. That's what server logs are for.