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Google Releases Data On FBI Spying
An anonymous reader writes "According to Wired, 'National Security Letters allow the government to get detailed information on Americans' finances and communications without oversight from a judge. The FBI has issued hundreds of thousands of NSLs and has even been reprimanded for abusing them.' It's significant, then, that Google has released data about how many NSLs they've received annually since 2009. The numbers are fuzzed — the FBI apparently worries that if we know how often they're spying on us, we can figure out who. But Google is able to say they've received from 0-999 letters each year for the past four years. And we know it's likely near the upper end of that range because they list the number of accounts affected, as well: always over a thousand."
We've gone way too far with empowering the government. The time is now to roll back the "emergency" terrorism powers the government gave itself after 9/11. We are not "at war" with Al Qaeda in the United States. There are plenty of opportunities to catch terrorists without infringing on the rights of law-abiding Americans who have done nothing wrong.
These powers were voted into place in a panic and now we're living with the consequences.
Who did what now?
"National Security Letters" were quite plainly search warrants and subpoenas without Fourth Amendment protections back when they were first proposed. And that's all they'll ever be: If the FBI had real evidence that somebody was a bad guy, they could have easily gone to a judge and said "We'd like to investigate this person, and here's why."
Instead, we're heading into Kafka land: People investigated and/or locked up without charges, without evidence they can confront, without a chance of freedom, and punishment of death when it's all over.
I am officially gone from
Because most of what they have to read when they're figuring out what's up with someone that fits into what they're researching is as poorly written as that summary/post. That's some fine editing, there.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
'In the interest of National Security' is a fast and loose term that has too often been used to escape the cleansing sunlight of oversight.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
When you have done nothing wrong, you have your good reputation to worry about...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I have had between 0 - 999 cancerous growths in my life.
Mr. Rove, are you taking your medication as the doctor prescribed
after the last election ?
FBI releases data on Google spying.
If not at the institutional level, then at least at the individual level, SOMEONE who is given unfettered access to a database on everyone will use it to check up on their old girlfriend, look up celebrities, dig up dirt on their neighbors, etc. The FBI is made up of human beings just like any other institution.
Your political party doesn't care about your rights and only represents corporate interests.
Frankly I was expecting more.
Has anyone lost his job or gone to jail?
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
Taking a step back for just a moment, I can see an actual suspect (one in which they have gone and gotten a warrant on) having a mail account that has mailed xxx number of other emails - if they really think their warranted suspect is a terrorist threat then they will want to look into the email accounts/gchat logs of those he emailed.
I think the concept of needing to do this is ok in certain investigations but it needs needs more judicial oversight with checks and balances. Even if it's a judge saying "what investigation is this attached to?" and tying it to a subpoena'd suspect. I'd also like to make sure that this is only used for national security issue. I wouldn't want this flipping over into normal run of the mill criminal activities. I'd even go so far as to say "If evidence is found in this way it's off limits" as evidence so it doesn't have the temptation of being abused.
We've gone way too far with empowering the government
powers the government gave itself after 9/11
Which is it? Did "we" empower the government, or did government give themselves those powers?
Sure they are sending ~3 requests a day to an organization that can handle millions of queries per second. I would be upset if they had sent individual letters -- now that's abuse!
I'm not even going to worry about the privacy issues, in my mind I'm imagining Google as a one-man (or two-man) IT department where your highest paying client sends you fewer than 3 requests per day. We get these ridiculous RFPs where they ask us to detail our 'strategy' for this or that, and sometimes I'd like to tell them, "we have none." Are you joking? We're not hundreds of guys here, and we're not on your payroll!
That would cripple me. I can't imagine receiving 3000 requests per day and having to process them in order to be in compliance with the law.
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
Are they trying to show how much of "good guys" they are for being open about this, trying to make us see through the fingers with the fact that they are actually handing their users' inboxes out to the feds?
It is over 9,000!!!!!
There is no law protecting them, so fbi/cia/whatever could ask their records too. why not release those numbers too?
...for the corporate sponsored shadow government. God damn... I miss the days when there were at least some corporations that stood up to this kind of abuse.
I am anonymously telling you to fuck off. Sorry in advance, there making me.....
ENG 160 rocks!!
that the people who can't be trusted with cellphones because they sext pictures of their junk to everyone in the contact list also can't be trusted with surveilance powers unfettered by a judges discretion?
Say it isn't so!
We would need to roll back the GOP. Buried deep underneath might be the reminants of (big D) Democratic spines.
The fourth amendment is not ambiguous, and any act of congress that purports to grant the authority to the FBI to write their own warrants is unconstitutional, and therefore not a law at all.
To make this stop, people have to refuse to comply with these “national security letters”, go to court, and sue the FBI for civil rights violations.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"...we're heading into Kafka land..."
Huh? We've been there for quite some time, big guy! I mean, back in the early 1900s, when Rockefeller wa supposed to have broken up Standard Oil, the world's largest monopoly (today called ExxonMobil), it was only done on paper --- he established a holding company specifically to move the stock ownership to each holding company, as each unit was supposedly "sold off."
Because Standard Oil was then sold on the Curb Market (street market or outside market, not on the NYSE where it would have to list specific financial data on assets), Rockefeller was able to avoid outsiders having any definite knowledge of their actual assets, later this would be further elaborated, over the years, to hiding their wealth and ownership through foundations, trusts, unregistered trusts and offshore finance centers).
For further elucidation in the matter, read John Moody's The Masters of Capital, and The Truth about the Trusts, as well as William C. Moore's Wall Street (these books are somewhat old, but you have to start way back to understand why nobody today knows who the eff owns anything, and believe you me, buddy boyo, they still own all this stuff!!!!).
Uh, no, that doesn't follow. There is no basis for the assumption that the average number of accounts affected by an NSL is 2 or fewer, which is the assumption necessary to conclude that "over a thousand" accounts affected makes it more likely than than not that the number of actual NSLs is in the upper half (much less "near the upper end") of a 0-999 range.
In fact, the numbers for 2010 (0-999 NSLs, and 2000-2999 accounts effected) are only consistent with > 2 accounts per NSL, which suggests that (presuming the accounts/NSL ratio is the same across years) the number of NSL in the other years were likely in the lower half of the 0-999 range.
It actually is quite ambiguous. Read literally it never requires a warrant (much less specifies who can issue them): it requires only that searches and seizures not be "unreasonable", and that any warrants that are issued be based on probable cause, and specific as to the places to be searched and things to be seized. Those two clauses have no actual explicit relationship in the text.
How about increments of 100 per year AND if the last n years were all under 100, a sum total of those years in increments of 100.
Example:
2008 - less than 100
2009 - less than 100. 2008-2009: between 100 and 200.
2010 - between 100 and 200
2011 - between 100 and 200. 2010-2011: between 0 and 100
2012 - between 100 and 200. 2010-2012: between 100 and 200