[HN Gopher] The Wyden Siren Goes Off Again: We'll Be "Stunned" b...
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The Wyden Siren Goes Off Again: We'll Be "Stunned" by NSA Under
Section 702
Author : cf100clunk
Score : 316 points
Date : 2026-03-13 16:13 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.techdirt.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.techdirt.com)
| ticulatedspline wrote:
| Will we? like doesn't everyone already assume the the NSA has had
| their hooks in basically everything possible.
|
| Like I'm having a hard time concocting a reveal that would be
| "Stunning"
|
| "NSA wiretapped all major phone carriers, recorded every voice
| conversation and text message of every citizen"
|
| Meh, not that stunning. at least not in a "violation of rights"
| kinda way. Maybe in a "wow they had the technical acumen to even
| handle all that data" kind of way
|
| "NSA has secret database with all medical records", "NSA has logs
| of every credit card transaction", "NSA can compel anyone
| anywhere to spy and reveal all data on anyone for any reason"
|
| Would any of these reveals actually be "stunning", frankly I've
| assumed the worst for so long that the response will be more like
| "wow, that _all_ they 're doing?"
|
| like opening a diaper on a kid with IBS, you expect it to be so
| bad when it's a normal turd you're suddenly really happy about
| shit.
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised by it, but "they're actually using all
| of the above, laundered through some extra steps, to provide
| leads to state and local LEO" would probably get people pissed
| off.
| HoldOnAMinute wrote:
| Soma ( social media ) keeps everyone comfortably sedated
| bram98 wrote:
| anxiously sedated
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| > Would any of these reveals actually be "stunning", frankly
| I've assumed the worst for so long that the response will be
| more like "wow, that all they're doing?"
|
| You're far more cynical than the typical citizen, who Ryder is
| addressing.
| Rooster61 wrote:
| That's not what the quote is referring to directly (the title
| is a bit misleading):
|
| "In fact, when it is eventually declassified, the American
| people will be stunned that it took so long and that Congress
| has been debating this authority with insufficient information"
|
| You are correct that the American populace has normalized this
| already. The fact that this is done without congressional
| oversight is indeed stunning. Or at least it would have been a
| decade or two ago.
| lokar wrote:
| HN readers won't be surprised, but I don't think that's who he
| is talking about.
|
| Most Americans have this kind of thing tuned out, that have
| bigger issues in their lives.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Would any of these reveals actually be "stunning",
|
| Everyone knew the NSA spied on everyone, yet Snowden leaks were
| truly stunning, because no one had evidence of the sheer scale
| of what the NSA (and collaborators) were engaged in. Wyden
| Siren was already firing off about that many years beforehand,
| before we knew the actual truth, so considering his record, I'm
| also skeptical it'll be "truly shocking" for the average HN
| tech-nerd, but for the general public, to have evidence of what
| the government does? Probably will be "stunning", but the one
| who lives will see.
| rockskon wrote:
| So - given the law allows the NSA to do things given legal
| constructs, reality be damned, then what new legal construct
| do you think Wyden is sounding the alarm about?
|
| When we un-tether the possibile from tech-specific
| delineations, you'll find things get more and more alarming.
|
| Whatever it is Wyden is sounding the alarm about, you can be
| certain the sole protection we have - the sole guiding
| principle and bulwark against abuse - is the agency's culture
| given the rampant "incidental" collection and the public
| claims that putting the equivalent of a removable sticky-note
| over the names of U.S. citizens from their personal data is
| sufficient to satisfy the 4th Amendment as the NSA searches
| through our persinal data in bulk.
|
| And what is culture if not the people we have to promote the
| practices?
|
| Boy am I glad we have an administration that lets agencies
| largely lead themselves and doesn't engage in efforts to
| replace a large part of various agency's workforce -
| specifically those who care about the agency's culture!
| imglorp wrote:
| Don't forget backdooring or interfering with multiple
| cryptography standards, at least Dual_EC_DRBG and RSA.
|
| Or backdooring most major microprocessors (tpm).
|
| Etc?
| runjake wrote:
| To which TPM backdoors are you referring?
|
| I am aware that similar accusations are leveled against Intel
| ME and AMD's Platform Security Processor.
| bram98 wrote:
| .
| imglorp wrote:
| Yeah. Obviously we can't know officially for decades but
| there's still some signals. One is the HAP flag (1, solid)
| to turn off IME, which has had at least one pubic vuln. Are
| they merely reducing their attack surface? Why can only
| they buy CPUs without IME (2, rumor)? Etc.
|
| https://www.csoonline.com/article/562761/researchers-say-
| now...
|
| https://www.franksworld.com/2025/09/18/the-intel-backdoor-
| no...
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Wyden is a national treasure.
|
| Thank you for your service, Ron.
|
| Also: Hello from Roseburg.
| davidw wrote:
| I hope we get someone as good as he is when he retires. Waves
| from Bend.
| dlev_pika wrote:
| Wyden is a vote I cast without issue.
|
| He is one of the few that is actually looking into Epstein bank
| accounts movements.
| contubernio wrote:
| Secrecy is anathema to governance accountable to the governed.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I looked up Section 702 and top result was an official government
| powerpoint justifying it to the public.
| https://www.dni.gov/files/icotr/Section702-Basics-Infographi...
|
| Under "Oversight", they point out that the Privacy and Civil
| Liberties Oversight Board concluded that that the government's
| Section 702 program operates within legal constraints, as
| recently as 2014! Wow! </sarc>
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Everyone who's not terribly worried about privacy always uses the
| line 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to
| worry about', but my line of thinking is not 'do i trust the
| government' it's 'do I have faith in all future forms of
| government who will have access to this data'
|
| Given how fast and lose I've seen the DODGE folks play with the
| data they have, _absolutely not_. I still shudder over the fact
| that my OPM data was hacked years ago
| alpple wrote:
| if you're not doing anything wrong, a government that is doing
| something wrong may not like it
| EGreg wrote:
| This, exactly.
|
| And governments are always doing something wrong...
| dylan604 wrote:
| DOGE != DODGE
|
| They may have dodged, ducked, dodged the rules while they
| DOGE'd their way through the government, but not sure if they
| used RAM trucks while they did it
| briffle wrote:
| I have seen what happens with garbage-in/garbage-out in
| databases, so this kind of stuff terrifies me. I often think of
| a case where we had a person listed twice in our database, with
| same address, birthday, etc, only thing different was gender,
| and last 2 digits of SSN were transposed..
|
| After we 'fixed' the issue a few times, they BOTH showed up to
| our office.
|
| Both Named Leslie, born on same day, a few small towns apart,
| same last name and home phone since they had been married. Back
| then, SSN were handed out by region sequentially, so one had
| the last two digits 12 and the other 21.
| quesera wrote:
| That's funny as a human, amazing as a developer, and
| terrifying as a data processor. All at the same time.
|
| I'll bet that pair has stories to tell.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| I'm a man in my 40s. My eldest daughter is 17. We have the
| same first name (spelled differently, at least) and have
| had many cases where medical records have gotten confused.
|
| We _always_ double-check dosages for medications before
| taking them.
| dboreham wrote:
| Wait until you live in the same zip code with another
| person that has the same first name, last name and date
| of birth!
| projektfu wrote:
| This was a story I found amusing when I read it: "Letter
| from Chicago. Confusion oriented medical records."
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1605484/
| Intermernet wrote:
| When I was 18 I got called up for jury duty along with
| someone with the same name and age. It was confusing.
| They started referring to us by the suburb we lived in.
| Luckily both of us got passed over.
| briffle wrote:
| They both showed up in person, because that was NOT the
| first time that had happened.
| cestith wrote:
| My uncle married a woman with the same first and middle name
| as one of his sisters. My new aunt chose to use her husband's
| name as her married name, without hyphenation or anything.
| His sister, my aunt, never married. One was an RN and the
| other is an LPN.
|
| They were born in different years. Their SSNs were not close.
| For one of them the name was her maiden name. For the other,
| a married name. They went to different colleges and had
| different credentials. They did live in the same town.
|
| When my aunt died, all the credit companies and collections
| companies tried one of two recovery tactics. Some tried to
| make her brother pay the debts as her surviving spouse. The
| others tried to assert that the debts were incurred by his
| wife and that the mismatch of other data in their own
| databases was evidence of fraud.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Being married to someone with the same name could be very
| confusing!
| zrm wrote:
| I have two younger brothers. They have the same last name,
| first initial, a history of having lived at the same address,
| and the same birth date, because they're twins.
|
| Every time one of them goes to a particular medical facility,
| he has to explicitly decline having them merge their charts.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > but my line of thinking is not 'do i trust the government'
| it's 'do I have faith in all future forms of government who
| will have access to this data'
|
| This is how I view privacy as well. You never know who will be
| in power and who will access that information in the future
| with ill intent.
|
| This line of thinking kept me away from the Mpls ICE protests.
| All of the people that protested had their face, phone, and
| license plate recorded and documented.
|
| I'm not even afraid of being persecuted by the current
| administration, it's the possibility of a much worse
| administration in the future that gave me pause.
| EGreg wrote:
| Not even future governments. There's also this:
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/10/salt-typhoon-hack-
| show...
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _I'm not even afraid of being persecuted by the current
| administration, it's the possibility of a much worse
| administration in the future that gave me pause._
|
| Unfortunately, your (entirely understandable) position is
| exactly what will enable such an administration to come to
| power.
|
| What you are doing in 2026 is what you would have done in
| 1936.
| hollywood_court wrote:
| This is why I deleted all of my social media when it began to
| look like Trump was going to win his second term. I had
| already suffered enough harassment and death threats from the
| Nextdoor app and a bit of the same from Facebook.
|
| I know I'm already on some GOP list somewhere, but I figured
| I'd do whatever I could do to protect myself and my family
| from the local MAGAs in my area.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Does anyone ever actually use that line? Most people will argue
| that the trade off in privacy is worth it for security.
|
| That is, if you frame your argument such that you believe
| people don't understand the trade off it allows you to not
| engage with the fact they just disagree with your conclusion.
| fragmede wrote:
| The mistake would be reading Hacker News and walking away
| with the conclusion that because people don't post that
| reasoning here that it doesn't exist (and even then, you do
| find that does come up here on occasion). People with
| "nothing to hide" do actually believe that, and while they
| may not post it to HN for vigorous debate. The easy
| counterexample from history is the list of Jews kept by the
| Netherlands which was later used against them after they were
| conquered by Nazi Germany, but you'd have to interested in
| history to buy that reason. Some people simply shrug at the
| "if you don't have anything to hide then you won't mind me
| filming your bedroom" scenario as you being the creep in the
| equation. Some people just don't want the trouble and are
| fine with being surveiled because the powers that be are
| doing it.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Constantly. Most people have a hard time dealing with
| tradeoffs and think in absolutes. It goes along with "if
| you're not a criminal, you have nothing to fear from police,"
| another disturbingly common sentiment.
|
| Some prominent examples:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-22832263
|
| https://www.instagram.com/reel/DSVJmOajGDe/
|
| https://thestandard.nz/if-you-have-nothing-to-hide-you-
| have-...
| Zigurd wrote:
| Have you ever sat on a jury in a criminal case? A
| frighteningly high percentage of people will swallow every
| lie a cop tells, even when thoroughly discredited in cross-
| examination. There's no shortage of people to guard the
| concentration camps.
| jrockway wrote:
| I've been on a grand jury... the cops lied through their
| teeth, couldn't keep their stories straight through a
| prepared monologues reading from notes and ... everyone in
| the room picked up on it and didn't indict the suspects.
| Our grand jury was so cynical the DAs stopped giving us
| cases and made the other two grand juries stay late to make
| up for the lost capacity. It was great. We did something
| good. And it was just a bunch of random people from
| Brooklyn.
|
| The establishment likes to pat the establishment on the
| back but ordinary people seem to know what's up. In my
| minimal experience, anyway.
|
| (One thing to keep in mind... grand juries really are a
| cross-section of the population, whereas lawyers get to
| select jurors after talking to them, so there is some
| selection bias on ordinary juries that grand juries don't
| have.)
| arealaccount wrote:
| Yes all the time and it's not worth debating them as they are
| not about to say anything interesting.
|
| Usually just make a quip about having curtains then move onto
| discussing just how moist the turkey is this year
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Does anyone ever actually use that line?
|
| Not that exact phrase, it is too elaborate. Most people grunt
| "eh, don't care" and "it's free, right?"
|
| The average person really _is_ that apathetic.
| tomwheeler wrote:
| > it's 'do I have faith in all future forms of government who
| will have access to this data'
|
| And even this assumes that the government can and will protect
| the data from the various bad actors who want it, something
| they have absolutely failed to do on multiple occasions.
| rurban wrote:
| You forgot that your government is the bad actor. For them
| the laws do not apply
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _Everyone who 's not terribly worried about privacy always uses
| the line 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing
| to worry about'_
|
| The people who say "I'm not doing anything wrong, so I have
| nothing to hide" simply don't understand that it's not their
| call.
| themafia wrote:
| "If you have money in your pocket you always have something to
| worry about."
| the_af wrote:
| > _Everyone who 's not terribly worried about privacy always
| uses the line 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have
| nothing to worry about'_
|
| The right way to reply to that is: not everything that's legal
| must be public.
|
| You probably don't want the rest of the world to see you poop,
| or pick your nose, or listen to every word you say. Almost
| everyone has things they'd be embarrassed to disclose to other
| people. And this can be weaponized against you should any rival
| gain access to it.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Everyone who's not terribly worried about privacy always uses
| the line 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing
| to worry about',
|
| "Saying you don't need privacy because you have nothing to hide
| is like saying you don't need freedom of speech because you
| have nothing to say." - Edward Snowden
| pardon_me wrote:
| Locks on bathroom doors are for privacy, not security.
| jasomill wrote:
| I'd go further and say that checks on police and intelligence
| agencies exist to protect both the innocent _and the guilty_
| from abuse of power.
|
| If I'm doing something wrong, the onus is on the government to
| prove this within the rules established to prevent such abuse
| (and on the people, their elected representatives, and the
| judiciary to ensure these rules are sufficient to accommodate
| the interests of all parties involved).
| halJordan wrote:
| So, in theory, you do agree with the current fisa setup and
| were just haggling over details.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised by anything nowadays.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| I can't imagine it's anything people haven't been suspecting for
| years - if I had to take a wild guess, it's the government's
| interpretation of not needing a warrant to scour things for
| intelligence on citizens using things like adtech and stuff that
| probably should require a warrant.
| electronsoup wrote:
| If it was so important, wouldn't he just filibuster it till he
| got what he wanted?
| nozzlegear wrote:
| It's my understanding that a single senator can't just
| filibuster anything they want unless the conditions are right.
| It depends on a few different factors and requires the bill to
| be brought to the floor for debate, which itself would require
| cooperation from the majority leader. That's not likely to
| happen.
| recursivecaveat wrote:
| If you're solo you have to actually stand up and talk still it
| seems. (And even then a 60+ person majority can vote to close
| the debate on you) Nobody has done it solo for more than 24
| hours or so. Presumably at that point you're about ready to
| keel over.
| kelnos wrote:
| He needs 40 other Senators to agree with him; 60 votes can
| close debate and stop a filibuster.
| Hizonner wrote:
| Filibuster what, exactly? No proposal is before the Senate...
|
| ON edit: Oops, sorry, 702 is up for renewal. Still not clear he
| could win a cloture vote, though.
| losvedir wrote:
| Wyden has been special, as long as I can remember. I feel like a
| lot of us early tech people had something of a libertarian bent.
| I think to some extent I've grown out of it in my less idealistic
| older age, but the whole idea of freedom from the government,
| living your own life, not being spied on, still resonates with
| me, and Wyden has always been a champion of it to some extent.
| You used to have Ron Paul, and these days now Rand Paul and
| Thomas Massie sometimes waving that flag, too.
|
| It was definitely swimming upstream in the post-9/11 days. I was
| hopeful for a while with Trump that we'd see more of a mainstream
| resurgence, but it's not looking like it to me anymore.
|
| Anyway, I can only imagine what he's alluding to here...
| dlev_pika wrote:
| I think he is a reflection of the broader libertarian streak of
| Oregonians.
|
| Source: am Oregonian.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| The _interpretation_ of the law is classified? That's stupid and
| everyone who protected that classification, regardless of
| whatever the interpretation is, is a traitor!
| simulator5g wrote:
| Secret laws, secret courts... Jeez, man.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| This is why I'm never giving a penny to OpenAI again, now
| matter how much damage control Altman tries to do with "look,
| we reworded the contract to have redlines too!". Yeah, legal
| redlines that the administration can bypass with their secret
| memos and secret rubberstamp courts. This isn't even a Trump
| thing: the Bush DOJ wrote secret memos making torture legal,
| the Obama DOJ wrote secret memos making it legal to
| assassinate American citizens. Non-technical redlines which
| aren't under the vendor's control aren't worth a piss squirt.
| Gud wrote:
| By using ChatGPT, OpenAI are losing money.
|
| So if you want them to die faster, use their services.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Contra the popular memes, I don't think they're losing
| money with every query sent (the money pit is capex on
| new models and hardware, but I don't think inference
| itself is unprofitable), so this wouldn't actually work.
|
| I was already paying for Claude Max before the War
| Department fiasco, so there's not much more I can do to
| hurt OAI apart from complain about it online, although I
| did persuade several people on various group chats I'm on
| to switch.
| bigyabai wrote:
| I think it's a lost cause. Anthropic is still getting
| used at Palantir[0], their software is used in strike
| planning whether they consent or not. We can support them
| all day and fight OpenAI to the last breath, but ensuring
| AI is used responsibly is not up to any of us. It's the
| government's job to hold itself accountable, and _they_
| can 't do it. By digging in their heels, Anthropic is
| preparing for an unwinnable fight against an enemy that
| doesn't play fair.
|
| Considering how many lines Anthropic has crossed, it all
| feels like forced outrage to me. I feel ethically
| justified supporting _none_ of these companies, it 's
| reminiscent of the forced duopoly between iOS and
| Android.
|
| [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/12/karp-palantir-
| anthropic-clau...
| righthand wrote:
| It will go faster if they have no customers and they are
| building out software with expensive engineers.
| palmotea wrote:
| > This is why I'm never giving a penny to OpenAI again, now
| matter how much damage control Altman tries...
|
| Altman is like Musk: he showed his true colors _long_
| before the current politically-inflected drama.
|
| Musk was over-promising about self-driving, so much and for
| so long it became pretty clear he was a shameless liar.
| There are also so many reports of Altman lying (e.g. that's
| apparently why he got fired) and engaging in Machiavellian
| manipulations that you can be pretty sure he's a shameless
| liar too.
| stackghost wrote:
| Probably the actual classified artifact is an NSA policy
| document that details the NSA's own interpretation of the law
| and thus forms part of its governance.
| dlev_pika wrote:
| So glad to see my Oregon senator regularly on the money.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| The warnings are nice but he could just say what it is. Members
| of Congress have immunity for what they say on the floor of their
| chamber in session, classification or no.
| alwa wrote:
| Immunity from prosecution, maybe, but not immunity from
| consequence. I can't imagine congressional leadership would
| think of it as a good look--and isn't the "need to know" based
| on the congressperson's role? For example don't they brief only
| congresspeople in specific roles on specific matters, like the
| so-called "Gang of Eight" on intelligence matters? [0]
|
| It feels a little like keeping the filibuster around: maybe
| technically it's within their power to change the norm, but
| once unilaterally spilling secrets becomes The Done Thing, it's
| hard to imagine it wouldn't spin out into a free-for-all.
|
| For all the mud that gets slung around, I think congresspeople
| really don't get there without some kind of patriotic instinct,
| some kind of interest in the United States' ongoing
| functioning. And I certainly can't imagine they'd keep getting
| access to _new_ secrets after pulling something like that, one
| way or the other...
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_of_Eight_(intelligence)
| anigbrowl wrote:
| You can say the same thing about secret laws and tyrannical
| executives.
| themafia wrote:
| > congressional leadership would think of it as a good look
|
| Why do they have any power? Wyden was elected by his
| constituency. The "congressional leadership" can go pound
| sand. To the extent they have any power here it should
| immediately be completely neutered and then removed.
| Hizonner wrote:
| They can remove him from all his committees, including the
| ones that give him access to this stuff to begin with. If
| they really work at it, they can freeze him out to the
| point where he can't get anything done on this or any other
| issue. And they can use him revealing the information as an
| excuse to avoid blowback from their own constituents. It's
| not as bad as in the House, but it's pretty bad. Oh, and
| they can probably deprive him of the floor the second he
| starts to say anything "interesting".
|
| Yes, there are serious problems with the way Congress is
| organized, but there's probably a reason that practically
| every parliamentary body on the planet has similar
| problems.
| themafia wrote:
| > and they can probably deprive him of the floor the
| second he starts to say anything "interesting".
|
| So, move the show off the floor, never has it been easier
| to reach the population as an individual. Are the
| citizens that enraptured by "the floor" as it is? It
| seems to me, that if you were serious, this would be no
| problem at all.
|
| > there are serious problems with the way Congress is
| organized
|
| None of that is dictated by the constitution. You can
| change the way committees work overnight if you want.
| Some would argue that this happened in the 1970s and
| 1990s when party politics fully invaded what used to be
| assignments of seniority and experience.
|
| > but there's probably a reason
|
| Corruption. It's worth a lot of money to certain people.
| You can either design that out of the system or reduce
| the total power of that system relative to the
| population.
|
| I'm not sure you can do much until you get down to the
| bedrock problems here.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| To answer your question, Congressional leaders are elected
| by their colleagues. Their power comes from that and from
| the rules that Congress writes for itself.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| This is all true and it kind of defines the scope of the harm
| he is talking about: bad enough for vague warnings, but
| apparently not bad enough to risk consequences to seniority
| etc. by outright revealing it.
|
| Worth noting his full quote is that people will be "stunned
| that it took so long" for the info to come out. Which is not
| quite the same thing as being stunned in general.
| blueone wrote:
| I've stayed private for most of my adult life. Network wide dns,
| vpns, alternative personas online for different purposes, etc.
| Nonetheless, my personal data has been exposed numerous times.
|
| Once in a while, I'd get into a conversation with a friend or a
| stranger I met at some random function, and they'd ask how to
| stay private online and protect their data. I used to go in depth
| about how to do it, with excitement. Now I just say: be normal,
| fit in with the crowd, freeze your credit.
| newsclues wrote:
| As someone that worked in an illegal industry (urban
| pharmaceuticals), you need to appear normal and hide your
| crimes. If you just hide your crimes, you stick out and become
| a target.
|
| Plausible deniability is harder than just total protection.
| blueone wrote:
| Yes.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| It's very hard to participate in a digital society while truly
| remaining private. The things you do to ensure privacy generate
| their own type of unique signal!
|
| https://chuniversiteit.nl/papers/browser-extension-fingerpri...
|
| You know this, but "normal" patterns are less remarkable.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The whole concept of 'secret interpretations of law' is anathema
| to me. Secret information makes sense, there are lots of reasons
| a government might legitimately want to maintain a veil of
| obscurity. Secret interpretations of law are a manifestation of
| tyranny.
|
| I like Ron Wyden but he should just employ his Congressional
| privilege here and read it out.
| bram98 wrote:
| Whatever we imagine, the NSA seems to top it each time.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Uhm this article is a total lie, no?
|
| Claim: We'll Be "Stunned" By What the NSA Is Doing Under Section
| 702
|
| Actual quote: I strongly believe that this matter can and should
| be declassified and that Congress needs to debate it openly
| before Section 702 is reauthorized. In fact, when it is
| eventually declassified, the American people will be stunned that
| it took so long and that Congress has been debating this
| authority with insufficient information.
|
| He said people will be stunned that it took so long to be
| declassified; not that people will be stunned by what it is.
| root_axis wrote:
| It's been my experience that most people already assume full
| surveillance of everything happening on all devices.
| ionwake wrote:
| You'd be surprised, I know IT managers with 20 years experience
| who ( probably incorrectly) think otherwise.
| kittikitti wrote:
| I think it's going to be more about how many people have access
| to the surveillance who might use it for needless things or
| personal reasons, at a large scale.
| kittikitti wrote:
| I'm going to guess warrantless search of all of our data,
| retention policies, and the worst part is who gets access to
| search through it. Basically, I speculate that anyone under a
| loosely defined classification would be able to access it
| legally. I also think there's a bunch of information and password
| sharing between people who don't even have a clearance for it.
| Perhaps sprinkle in abusing this system for personal or political
| reasons.
|
| My word of caution is if you do have access to these systems or a
| shared password, tread very carefully.
| dmix wrote:
| FISA courts are not sufficient oversight of this stuff. Not to
| mention there's little rules for foreign data, including
| Americans talking to foreigners on the phone. As long as one end
| is foreign...
| query_demotion wrote:
| You're right. FISA courts are not sufficient oversight. Even
| Judge James Robertson resigned from the FISA Courts (FISC) in
| 2005 because:
|
| >On December 20, 2005, Judge James Robertson resigned his
| position with the court, apparently in protest of the secret
| surveillance,[11] and later, in the wake of the Snowden leaks
| of 2013, criticized the court-sanctioned expansion of the scope
| of government surveillance and its being allowed to craft a
| secret body of law.[12] The government's apparent circumvention
| of the court started prior to the increase in court-ordered
| modifications to warrant requests. In 2011, the Obama
| administration secretly won permission from the Foreign
| Intelligence Surveillance Court to reverse restrictions on the
| National Security Agency's use of intercepted phone calls and
| e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for
| Americans' communications in its massive databases.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| One of the things I am proud of as an Oregonian is that Wyden is
| one of my senators. And it looks like maybe, possibly, he is
| starting to make Merkeley a true believer as well. Which is good,
| Wyden is getting kinda old, and there aren't enough people like
| him in Congress, by a long shot.
| djoldman wrote:
| As I've said before:
|
| "I don't need to care about privacy because I have nothing to
| hide" is trivially disproved:
|
| Humans arrive at conclusions about other humans based on
| information. Sometimes these conclusions are incorrect because
| humans aren't perfect at reasoning and this happens more often
| with some kinds of information.
|
| Therefore, it's perfectly rational to hide/not-disclose/obscure
| some information to lessen the chance that others take action
| based on faulty conclusions.
| jmward01 wrote:
| I have wrestled with the concept of 'classified' many times. The
| question is always how you balance democracy's need for
| information with the real need to keep some things away from
| adversaries. I think the only answer is to vigorously enforce
| automatic declassification AND dissemination but also ensure that
| this happens within the useful lifetimes of those involved. This
| last part is especially important for accountability. Laws need
| to apply, without a statute of limitation, to abuse of
| classification and for that to happen this stuff needs to come
| out while those involved can still be held accountable.
| Additionally, if abuse is found while something is still
| classified there should be an immediate evaluation if the public
| interest in understanding the abuse outweighs the danger of
| releasing the information with an explicit understanding that the
| public has already received real harm compared to a theoretical
| harm of release.
|
| Another aspect is that we need to lower the bar for
| declassification in general. The reality of classified
| information is that it is almost universally boring and time
| limited in its value. Also, so many people have access to it that
| it leaks out slowly anyway. Just look at how much of the US
| military and contractors have or have had secret and higher
| clearances. [1] When multiple percentage points of Americans (and
| other governments) have access currently or have had access in
| the past to supposedly 'top secret' information then hiding it
| from the rest of the population just sounds silly. It is time to
| start re-asserting the public's requirement to be informed even
| if that has some potential risks or even actual harms associated
| with it.
|
| [1] https://news.clearancejobs.com/2022/08/16/how-many-people-
| ha...
| UltraSane wrote:
| I can easily imagine that the NSA has exabytes of data with
| Splunk style search capabilities. It would be ridiculously
| powerful.
| mpalmer wrote:
| No means of law enforcement should be so secret that even the
| legal basis for it can't be revealed to voters. If that renders
| said means impractical, too goddamn bad.
| xbar wrote:
| Thanks Senator Wyden. Please do not stop fighting for us.
| SauntSolaire wrote:
| The article lede reads: "Senator Ron Wyden says that when a
| secret interpretation of Section 702 is eventually declassified,
| the American public "will be stunned" to learn what the NSA has
| been doing."
|
| Technically the full quote from Wyden is: "when it is eventually
| declassified, the American people will be stunned _that it took
| so long and that Congress has been debating this authority with
| insufficient information._ "
|
| It's a small thing, but I find the click-bait editorializing from
| techdirt a bit off-putting.
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