[HN Gopher] NSA asks Congress to let it get on with that warrant...
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NSA asks Congress to let it get on with that warrantless data
harvesting, again
Author : LinuxBender
Score : 149 points
Date : 2023-01-15 19:06 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| TigerTeamX wrote:
| Reminds of a bit of European Union https://europa.eu/europass/en
| Apparently the EU now started competing with businesses and they
| try to capture everyone's data. And people love it...
| tomohawk wrote:
| Given the amount of FISA abuse that has occurred, it's time to
| just admit that people in power cannot be trusted to not abuse
| the system.
|
| They should either abolish it or change the law to put real
| penalties in place for abusing the system. Puting all of this
| machinery in place and then not providing a means to hold
| powerful people accountable for their actions when they abuse it
| is just asking for trouble.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/storage/120919-examination.pdf
|
| The above report is nice, but is anyone going to pay the price
| for the crimes committed here other than the victims?
| Arubis wrote:
| ...had they stopped? Or even slowed down? I've presumed that no
| one being held accountable meant USGov de facto granting
| permission for this to continue unabated, just please be more
| careful about being caught.
| colordrops wrote:
| There's no way they've stopped.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| Big Tech vs Big Government are the Church vs State of the digital
| era - they must be kept separate - and preferably somewhat
| adversarial - so that powers are divided and we the people have
| some sort of chance.
| sinenomine wrote:
| Big Tech vs Big Government vs The Intelligence Community vs NGO
| blub to be more precise.
| yucky wrote:
| I don't think so. Big Government uses Big Tech as a tool in its
| arsenal. There is no greater surveillance tool. Trying to keep
| them separated is like trying to keep Big Government separated
| from the Military Industrial Complex. They are two sides of the
| same coin.
| nwallin wrote:
| That's what he's saying. He's not saying that Big Government
| and Big Tech _are_ separated, he 's saying that Big
| Government and Big Tech _ought to be_ separated.
|
| In the West we fight pretty hard to keep the Church and State
| separated, but this isn't a natural state of being. The
| Divine Right of Kings, the Pharoahs were gods, Sharia law,
| the Japanese Emperor is the direct descendant of Amaterasu,
| the Spanish Inquisition, etc etc etc. History is rife with
| Church and State being two sides of the same coin. In fact in
| recent years certain government leaders have been pretty
| effective at intertwining the US government with
| Christianity, despite the separation of Church and State
| being enshrined in the First Amendment; prayer in schools,
| the repeal of Roe v Wade, etc.
|
| The link between big government and big tech (and big ag, big
| auto...) ought to be fought with similar gusto as we attempt
| to protect the separation we've won between church and state.
| kupopuffs wrote:
| Big government should just be treated as another customer of
| Big Tech
| speedgoose wrote:
| That would give them too much power, it is dangerous.
| xahrepap wrote:
| You just blew my mind. What a great comparison. I love it.
| Thanks for that thought. What a clear way to describe the
| problem.
| sysadm1n wrote:
| > Big Tech vs Big Government
|
| They're so heavily intertwined that bucketing them into
| distinct categories that don't talk to each other would be a
| massive ship to turn around.
| friendlyHornet wrote:
| At one point (and even still today in many countries outside
| the west), so were the church and state.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| The same can be said about religion and state, at least in
| the US. Doesn't take away from that being the platonic ideal
| we should strive for.
| vvovo wrote:
| Sounds reasonable. A warrant should be needed to query the data,
| but collecting it in the first place should be unrestricted.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| >I'm putting a camera up in your bathroom, but don't worry, no
| one will look...
| halJordan wrote:
| This describes all lawful intercept. The only thing keeping
| the police from going through your phone calls rn is a
| warrant.
| nhchris wrote:
| Incorrect. They need a warrant to (legally) even collect
| phone call audio - they can't tap your line ahead of time,
| and then get a warrant when they want to listen to the
| recordings.
|
| Unless you meant the metadata of who you called. But that's
| not the police collecting that data, but the phone company
| doing it voluntarily for billing purposes. If the company
| didn't keep those records, the police couldn't (legally)
| compel them to without a warrant.
| monetus wrote:
| I think the legal position is that only data access
| requires a warrant, not data retention. The in.es.a.
| argues this, local police don't have that access - they
| buy things like location data on the private market
| though
| nhchris wrote:
| Yes, that was the NSA's argument, but I'm unaware of any
| court buying it.
| superkuh wrote:
| Except that it doesn't actually keep them from doing it
| unlawfully. As long as they believe they're acting within
| the law (despite being wrong) they can do it with no
| consequences.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| [flagged]
| edgyquant wrote:
| Please keep comments like this to yourself, or find a relevant
| Reddit thread. We want actual discussion here not "funny memes"
| LatteLazy wrote:
| At this point, why would anyone believe they ever stopped? No
| real warrant has ever been required...
| tremon wrote:
| Has anyone been held accountable for the previous
| transgressions?
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| Has the government _ever_ been held accountable for previous
| transgressions?
| adastra22 wrote:
| Only the guy who revealed that transgressions were going on.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > No real warrant has ever been required...
|
| I see this as a consequence of monopolization of the sector,
| it's made it significantly easier to turn these few
| corporations into de facto wings of their organization.
|
| The conspiratorially minded wonder if they had a hand in
| forming the monopolies in the first place.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The death of antitrust law in the US can be tied directly to
| a bunch of federal judges that practically nullified it with
| the "consumer welfare" excuse decades ago. Modern tech
| companies are constructed to maximally exploit this loophole.
|
| The CIA also has In-Q-Tel to fund tech companies and develop
| surveillance tech. I _believe_ Facebook got some seed money
| off them early on but their Wikipedia article doesn 't list
| them.
|
| Neither of these are tied together in an obvious way, though.
| Like, the government doesn't directly create monopolies to
| obfuscate surveillance; in the world where we had hundreds of
| viable tech platforms and maximum ownership caps, we'd still
| have surveillance. Because the government is itself a
| monopoly. But they _prefer_ working with monopolies because
| they 're easier to regulate and comply with the law more. And
| monopolies also improve the economy, the failure of which is
| the number one killer of politicians.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| It's further upstream, the monopolization of telecom. Lot of
| talk about Snowden since his big drop but the whistleblowing
| from Mark Klein in 2006 is at least just as big of a deal
|
| > Mark Klein is a former AT&T technician and whistleblower
| who revealed details of the company's cooperation with the
| United States National Security Agency in installing network
| hardware at a site known as Room 641A to monitor, capture and
| process American telecommunications.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Klein
| shapefrog wrote:
| > why would anyone believe they ever stopped
|
| They didnt, congress authorised then reauthorised the programme
| and are going to reauthorise it again.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's not the premise of the article that it ever had. The IC
| has, and always has had, the broad authority to collect
| information on foreign nationals abroad, without a warrant. The
| issue here is much more subtle than that.
| [deleted]
| rand4505 wrote:
| Correct me if I am wrong, but isnt this really about the
| parallel construction that was going on while this was
| allowed?
| tptacek wrote:
| This is about the reauthorization of all of Section 702,
| which is the statute that allows the IC to compel US
| providers to provide information about foreign surveillance
| targets on foreign soil.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| From all that I've read, anything saying "NSA asks" feels like
| pure window dressing.
|
| The NSA does whatever it wants if it has the technical ability.
| That should be factored in by now.
| sysadm1n wrote:
| > The NSA does whatever it wants
|
| Whilst true, they want to be seen as angelic since they're
| following some laws. Can't be inferring people's pattern of
| life based of smartphone metadata without been seen as 'the
| good guys'!
| cm2187 wrote:
| Won't change much for us non-US nationals...
| tptacek wrote:
| No, it won't. It also won't change anything for US nationals
| who deliberately move their communications to platforms "hosted
| in Switzerland", which has always been a funny privacy move,
| because the US IC has blanket de jure authority to surveil
| foreign services; it's only the US providers that have these
| procedural protections.
|
| The statute we're talking about here, 702, is what enables the
| IC to compel _American_ communications providers to cough up
| data (about ostensibly foreign targets).
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > it's only the US providers that have these procedural
| protections.
|
| Even that is no guarantee as your packets can be routed into
| Canada and back if they need to be made foreign.
| tptacek wrote:
| 702 generally targets stored communications.
| halJordan wrote:
| Section 702 is not about Americans. It's only about foreign
| nationals (with an FI value). So the opposite is true: it will
| affect non-US nationals and it will not affect US nationals.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I don't understand why politicians don't worry that if the NSA
| are allowed to do this they will have a lot of _information_ on
| many people in public life including them. Do they not understand
| the NSA will be harvesting representatives data together with the
| rest of the citizens?
|
| Personally I would struggle to resist reading Biden's/Trump's
| emails, whereabouts and digital footprint for a day, it would be
| pretty interesting to say the least.
| sinenomine wrote:
| Surely various gentleman agreements are in place.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| You can agree things behind the scenes but who holds all the
| power in that situation?
| sinenomine wrote:
| This could be precisely the reason various groups seek
| representation not just in parliament, but in important
| three-letter agencies as well.
|
| In the end, the amount of power in the world is finite, and
| natural power-strivers participate in exercises in game
| theory over it.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| I thought the whole shitshow in 2016 with Obama accidentally
| spying on the Trump campaign would have, _at the very least_ ,
| lit a fire under the GOP's feet to reign in the government's
| surveillance apparatus.
|
| Who am I kidding? They don't want the boot off their face, they
| want it on their foot.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| Why would they do that?. The swamp part of the GOP and the
| swamp part of the DNC are basically the same establishment.
| They just market different things to different customers.
| They're like a megacorp selling all natural bullshit under
| one brand and rot your organs energy drinks under another
| brand. The Bernies and the AOCs and the MTGs they let make
| noise are just a permitted opposition.
| fallingknife wrote:
| I think they understand it very well and it's part of the
| reason they don't push back on NSA power grabs. As Chuck
| Schumer said "let me tell you - you take on the intelligence
| community - they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at
| you."
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(page generated 2023-01-15 23:00 UTC)