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DOJ Launches New Cybercrime Unit, Claims Privacy Top Priority
msm1267 writes: Leslie Caldwell, assistant attorney general in the criminal division of the Department of Justice, announced on Thursday the creation of a new Cybercrime Unit, tasked with enhancing public-private security efforts. A large part of the Cybersecurity Unit's mission will be to quell the growing distrust many Americans have toward law enforcement's high-tech investigative techniques. (Even if that lack of trust, as Caldwell claimed, is based largely on misinformation about the technical abilities of the law enforcement tools and the manners in which they are used.) "In fact, almost every decision we make during an investigation requires us to weigh the effect on privacy and civil liberties, and we take that responsibility seriously," Caldwell said. "Privacy concerns are not just tacked onto our investigations, they are baked in."
... the head of one agency in the executive branch has said that it needs backdoors to be installed in devices (or the terrorists win). And now there's another agency (in the *same department*) whose "top priority" is the exact opposite?
Actually they do because we the people authorized them to do so. When a member of Congress authorizes a federal agency to act in that capacity they are acting on your behalf. That's what a representative government does. You might not like it but it does not mean that federal agency is engaging in an illegal behavior. Now if you want to change what they can do or raise the threshold by which that can do something, you can by working through your representative.
We CANNOT authorize the federal government to violate our rights without a constitutional amendment. That's the point of the constitution. It's a framework that the federal and state governments are bound to work within. Laws cannot be passed that violate the constitution. The constitution is very clear about when and how we lose those rights. Namely, when there's a warrant or we're convicted of a federal crime. There is, at no time, a way in which the government can legally search your property or correspondence without a warrant. Ever... under any circumstances. And we could not pass a law that allowed them to. Ever. We'd have to amend the constitution to make such a thing possible.
What the federal government is doing is without a doubt unconstitutional. The problem is, they are very aware of that fact. They see the constitution as an obstacle to their goal of "keeping us safe" As a result, they've gone to extraordinary lengths to hide their activity. They've made it very difficult to bring up their activity in court and challenge its constitutionality. As of yet, no challenge has ever been made to the federal government absent a trial. Basically, they are using the information they are garnering to disappear people into foreign governments that do not have our protections. They are not using he information to try and convict anyone so no-one can challenge its constitutionality. Efforts are being made by the ACLU and the EFF but it's a very difficult process.
If you truly understood what was going on, you'd be terrified. This is the path to Totalitarianism... despotism. The road we're on leads no-where good, and it's sad that our president, a constitutional scholar of all things, has actually expanded the activity.