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Technology, Not Law, Limits Mass Surveillance
holy_calamity writes "U.S. citizens have historically been protected from government surveillance by technical limits, not legal ones, writes independent security researcher Ashkan Soltani at MIT Tech Review. He claims that recent leaks show that technical limits are loosening, fast, with data storage and analysis cheap and large Internet services taking care of data collection for free. 'Spying no longer requires following people or planting bugs, but rather filling out forms to demand access to an existing trove of information,' writes Soltani."
CIA's 'Facebook' Program Dramatically Cut Agency's Costs.
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You're correct, but it's gotten way, way worse in the past decade.
The truly Orwellian thing about this nightmare isn't even so much the surveillance, but the wholesale redefinition of language. Plain English no longer means what plain English means, and we have traded rule of law for rule of lawyer.
It's not torture, it's "extraordinary rendition for enhanced interrogation techniques."
And of course you still have due process, it's "a process that is due, but not necessarily judicial."
And you're not being jailed without trial. You're being "indefinitely detained."
I would say we need a Constitutional Amendment that Congress shall make no law infringing upon your right to privacy, but without another amendment that says "no really, plain English means plain English" it wouldn't matter much. And they'd just twist that to mean "plain English in the context of this amendment means English which, plainly, means what we want it to mean."
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
why didn't they notice that the Boston Bombers were planning on setting off bombs in public?
Either:
(a) they're not a Panopticon, or
(b) they're massively incompetent, or
(c) they don't care what happens to the Plebs.
In any of the cases, we don't actually have anything to worry about.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html ...
"Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all. Cheap computing makes possible just about cheap everything else, as does the ability to make better designs through shared computing.
There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all."
Going forward, there are many other implications of trends from "better, faster, cheaper". We should think about the positive trends and try to help amplify them. Related suggestions by me in areas of collective intelligence for mutual intrinsic security, space settlement, and health sensemaking:
http://www.phibetaiota.net/2011/09/paul-fernhout-open-letter-to-the-intelligence-advanced-programs-research-agency-iarpa/
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html
https://www.changemakers.com/morehealth/entries/health-sensemaking
Or, read "The Skills of Xanadu" for ideas from the 1950s by Theodore Sturgeon which helped inspire Ted Nelson and hypertext and so the world wide web:
http://books.google.com/books?id=wpuJQrxHZXAC&pg=PA51&lpg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false
Or look to groups like the Maker community or sustainable technology community inventing new ways of local subsistence.
Something I wrote thirteen years ago to Doug Engelbart's Unrev-II mailing list, and we are still more-or-less following predicted exponential trends: ...
"[unrev-II] Singularity in twenty to forty years?"
http://www.dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/0126.html
"Below are six "explosive" technology trends that all appear to culminate in around twenty years. Even if some of them don't pan out, the others will revolutionize our world (for good or bad).
You may argue the dates -- ten years for some, forty for others. You may point out Y2K didn't melt things down, that AI researchers predicted AIs by now, that fusion power was supposed to be here by now, etc. And you would be right to be skeptical. My point is that these are trends in many different areas -- any one of which would make this world radically different. Together, they spell awesome change -- in economics, politics, lifestyle, relationships, and values.
It is quite likely we are heading for a singularity in
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
The fourth amendment seems pretty clear to me.
Unfortunately it's not when it comes to electronic communications.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
A phone call isn't clearly covered, and SCOTUS explicitly decided it wasn't in 1928, then reversed itself in 1967. That's also when they came up with the "reasonable expectation of privacy" test, which I always thought was reasonable. Of course 1967 was an era when the court thought its job was to defend the Bill of Rights, rather than play nitpicking legal games to create as many loopholes as possible.
Don't bother trying to convince me that email, etc, should be covered by the 4th, as you'll be preaching to the choir. I don't give a damn what kind of legal games they play about you not owning the servers or storage medium. That's like saying that the 4th doesn't apply if you rent rather than own your home. My only point was that SCOTUS is free to play lots of games. My favorite is their recent Catch-22 nonsense, that you can't sue the government for a secret program violating your rights because you can't be sure they've been violated (of course not, it's a secret!). Maybe Snowden will release info on who has unlawfully been a surveillance target so they can sue.
But there are dictators already, they are the corporations who are rewriting US laws and circumventing the constitution in their favour.
Stop apologizing for the politicians.
Corporations do not write or rewrite law, politicians do. Politicians sell the service of lawmaking to corporations.
Clearly you dont care.
"His name was James Damore."
I've used the fact that GoogleFiber was my first ISP choice involving IPv6 to press a new novel interpretation of NetworkNeutrality. It seems to be going somewhere. ComIntercept(FCC->Google):
"The enclosed informal complaint, dated September 1, 2012, has been filed with the Commission by Douglas McClendon against Google pursuant to section 1.41 of Comissions's Rules, 47 C.F.R. // 1.41. Also attached is Mr. McClendon's October 24, 2012 complaint forwarded to the FCC by the Kansas Office of the Attorney General. Mr. McClendon asserts that Google's policy prohibiting use of its fixed broadband internet service (Google Fiber connection) to host any type of server violates the Open Internet Order, FCC 10-201, and the Commission's rules at 47 C.F.R. // 8.1-11.
We are forwarding a copy of the informal complaint so that you may satisfy or answer the informal complaint based on a thorough review of all relevant records and other information. You should respond in writing specifically and comprehensively to all material allegations raised in the informal complaint, being sure not to include the specifics of any confidential settlement discussions. ...
Your written response to the informal complaint must be filed with the Commission contact listed below by U.S. mail and e-mail by July 29, 2013. On that same day, you must mail and e-mail your response to Douglas McClendon.
The parties shall retain all records that may be relevant to the informal complaint until final Commission disposition of the informal complaint or of any formal complaint that may arise from this matter. See 47 C.F.R. //1.812-17. (seriously, can't I and Google just depend on the NSA's backups of our records? :)
Failure of any person to answer any lawful Commission inquiry is considered a misdemeanor punishable by a fine... ... ...
http://cloudsession.com/dawg/downloads/misc/mcclendon_notice_of_informal_complaint.pdf
http://cloudsession.com/dawg/downloads/misc/mcclendon_oct24_2012_complaint.pdf
This represents Google getting 'served' this week, my form 2000F 'informal' 53 page complaint that suggests that NetNeutrality provides protections against ISP blocking to my home servers as well as to Skype's. Google has been compelled by the government to respond to me on July 29th. GoogleFiber's 'evil' terms of service prohibit hosting any kind of server without prior written permission against your residential connection. And zero transparency for any alternate server-allowed plan rates, or what kinds of reasons they might use to disallow a requested written permission (which is laughable as the FCC 10-201 NetNeutrality document goes out of it's way to laud Tim Berner Lee's invention of the web atop tcp/ip, specifically, without having to have gotten any permission from any government or network provider)
I forwarded the documents to schneier@schneier.com and requested any insight he might have into the matter. I got an email response (theoretically perhaps spoofed) that read "Thanks.\n\nGood Luck."
I wonder if you could sue the feds for spying on you, and use the lawsuit to get a subpoena against the federal agency in question. When the subpoena is inevitably challenged on grounds of national security, rebut that with the fact that your constitutional rights are provided by the constitution which supercedes any laws that make the information secret in the first place (supremacy clause).
Of course, this is doomed to failure since the feds have shown they'll do whatever the hell they want to anyway.
The truly Orwellian thing about this nightmare isn't even so much the surveillance, but the wholesale redefinition of language.
Orwell's classic essay on the subject, Politics and the English Language.
We BELIEVED there was privacy, because the Government told us about the protection, and the media supported them. The olde-tyme radio cops got away with what society thought was fair.. today, Law and Order:(n) or CSI:(m) would at least make a 'big deal' about a sketchy search without PC, or when handling a suspect who hasn't been properly Mirandized.
...10 business days, lady..."; she received a letter from an attorney - with a copy of the accident report, asking if she needed any legal advice or representation.
Also, NJ State law about "Red Light Cameras" requires that the footage recorded is destroyed within 60 days - if nothing is illegal, or no charges filed; and within 90 days after the matter is settled ( if you are charged, and just pay the ticket) . Another case of nobody watching.. search YouTube and find at least 5, probably a dozen NJ Red Light Cam videos.. posted as marketing from the camera company! Big brother ( d/b/a private contractor) is watching, recording, and had their fingers crossed when they promised to destroy the footage.
Until relatively recent credit card legislation, citizens had no expectation of privacy against data collection ( selective surveillance) by non-government agencies. This surveillance has been happening since before most of us were even born. It is not new.. but the media has ignited the flames of FUD, and the methods for collecting, analyzing , and distributing information have grown exponentially as a result of computers and the changes they bring to society.
In 1897 or so, S&H Green stamps started a " marketing loyalty program". Your grocer ( gas station, Sears & Roebuck) could influence your purchases by adjusting the 'bonus levels' of green stamps you received in return for a purchase. When they chose to, they could also watch meta-trends, or even specific consumer behavior changes, because all the stamps were serial-numbered. S&H, when they received the redeemed booklets, could measure the effectiveness.. which retailers were distributing more, which customers were collecting & returning more, how many just got lost or never filled a book? The company changed over time.. and never really returned to the giant stature they had after the 1970's inflation/stagflation.. but they still exist, and offer web-based purchase premiums.
Around 1920, Al Neilsen got tired with his day job, and decided to create A.C. Neilsen ; to rate how well radio advertisers were doing. The company is still around today, trying to measure DVR and Netflix data, too. This was probably one of the original "crowdsourced" industries.. I mean, if you get "selected" today, they only pay you a dollar a week - if your data is on-time.
Criminal records, property records, articles of incorporation, lawsuits.. all were considered public record at one level or another. I was taught how to search all that paper at my local County Courthouse back in the mid- 1980s. At the time, only criminal records actually required that you produce ID and a legitimate reason to ask.
My sister was in an auto accident last summer. Before the local police were ready with a report "
It was around 1902-1904 that the Northeast's major Life & Medical insurers got together and built what we now call the MIB ( Medical Information Bureau). Any insurer.. and lots of other "qualified participants" ( =$ ?) can add, edit, or search these records about every one of us. Every time an insurance company paid a claim (or messed up a claim) medically, that info was added to the collection. Today, we just call this a database.
Again.. no protection here. Last time I checked, the MIB was voluntarily adopting a model similar to credit reporting agencies.. they would provide an individual with a personal report ( minus trade-secrets and scoring), and give the individual some righ
They'd never call it "Patriot talk." Remember, "Patriots" are the brave men and women who spy on everything you do to keep this great nation and its people safe.
Other awful problem of the state of the language: we've pre-Godwined ourselves. We're so ingrained with the idea that comparing something to nazi germany means that you have lost perspective and your argument has devolved into flinging hyperbolic insults, and you have therefore lost. People do not understand the literal definition of Fascism anymore, and as Orwell said in Politics and the English Language (relinked from a response to my original post by a fine poster), "The word fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable.'"
In fact, "Italian Fascism promotes a corporatist economic system whereby employer and employee syndicates are linked together in corporative associations to collectively represent the nation's economic producers and work alongside the state to set national economic policy."
Doesn't that sound like someplace we know? Where through "regulatory capture" (a fancy way of saying "industry writes government regulation to their benefit"), and "campaign contributions" (i.e., "bribes") the government and industry are basically one in the same?
Yes, that's America. But you can't say it! Because if you do, you lose. "Well that's ridiculous! I don't see any dictator marching Jews into ovens!"
You can't even criticize the system of our government, because the word that properly describes our system of government is no longer allowed in public debate. Orwell would be...not proud...sadly resigned?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
"They'd never call it "Patriot talk." Remember, "Patriots" are the brave men and women who spy on everything you do to keep this great nation and its people safe."
A friend recently linked me to an article about this very thing. For a change this is not Godwin's Law; this is actually relevant.
The reason it was possible for Hitler and the Nazis to rise to power, was because the populace mistakenly believed "patriotism" was not loyalty to The People or their country, but to their government. Big Mistake.
Patriotism is loyalty to your family and your neighbors, not to Barack Obama.
...the researcher, Ashkan Soltani, may not have enough understanding of the United States of America to come into a more holistic conclusion that it was the technology that puts the limit on the Big Brother
There was a limit, - and I use the past tense, "was", - and that limit, was morality
You just gotta be an American to understand what makes an American, an American
It's not a "snide remark" or a "fool's pride", but to be a true American, one has to have that sense of responsibility, that morality that pushes one to respect other people's rights, that forces one to limit oneself in order to not infringing onto other people's "space"
It was a social construct - that, in order for others to respect your right, you gotta respect others first
Unfortunately, all that had gone out of the door, when the congress critters in Washington D.C., stop thinking of themselves being Americans, but rather, a part of the global ruling elites governing the entire world
The erosion of morality on Congress Hill did not start with Obama, it started way back during Clinton's administration
While some may want to push the envelope to Tricky Dick's time (after all, he was the president who was pushed out of his presidency), but during Tricky Dick's era, the sense of morality was _still_ intact, or Richard Nixon wouldn't have to move out of the White House
Compare to Richard Nixon, how many of you think that Obama feels ashamed of what he has done ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !