Slashdot Mirror
Google: FBI's Plan To Expand Hacking Power a "Monumental" Constitutional Threat
schwit1 writes with news about Google's reservations to a Justice Department proposal on warrants for electronic data. "Any change in accessing computer data should go through Congress, the search giant said. The search giant submitted public comments earlier this week opposing a Justice Department proposal that would grant judges more leeway in how they can approve search warrants for electronic data. The push to change an arcane federal rule "raises a number of monumental and highly complex constitutional, legal, and geopolitical concerns that should be left to Congress to decide," wrote Richard Salgado, Google's director for law enforcement and information security. The provision, known as Rule 41 of the federal rules of criminal procedure, generally permits judges to grant search warrants only within the bounds of their judicial district. Last year, the Justice Department petitioned a judicial advisory committee to amend the rule to allow judges to approve warrants outside their jurisdictions or in cases where authorities are unsure where a computer is located. Google, in its comments, blasted the desired rule change as overly vague, saying the proposal could authorize remote searches on the data of millions of Americans simultaneously—particularly those who share a network or router—and cautioned it rested on shaky legal footing."
Google doesn't give a damn about the privacy of the data of millions of Americans. All they care about is to keep the data to themselves and not share them with the authorities, only because they will lose market share.
Traitors be Traitin? LoL
1) Of course it is
2) That's the frickin' point
See, the people advocating unlimited surveillance couldn't possibly be stupid enough to not know this.
They just don't give a fuck.
This is "Yarg! We need security by any means, and if we shit on your rights, too fucking bad, because we're the good guys".
These clowns might actually believe they're "doing this for the greater good" -- but so does every fascist and dictator who decides they will do it anyway and we'll thank them later.
Unfortunately, since these people have sworn to uphold the Constitution, I think they should be hanged or shot. Because whatever they think they're protecting, they're doing more damage to our liberties than they are solving problems. In fact, they've become the problem.
Once they get over their illusion they're doing it for our own good, then the fun really begins, and the fascism really goes into effect.
Law enforcement have basically said "fuck the law, the law is what we say it is". And they feel entitled to do anything they want to. Which means law enforcement is more or less deeming themselves in charge of everything.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
You don't have to like or trust Google(and you shouldn't) to agree that "Hey, let's quietly change rule 41 so that all you need to 'remote search'(by means tactfully unspecified) a computer anywhere is the approval of a judge, doesn't much matter which, from one of the 94 federal districts, rather than one at least vaguely related to the matter at hand!" is...perhaps...a bad move.
"Parallel Construction"... What good is a cool, powerful, sinister toy if you don't have a cover story that allows you to lie about the origins of evidence that would otherwise be inadmissible?
Suppose you let judges authorize surveillance where the location cannot be determined. Five things would happen:
1) FBI would not try to determine the location, because they might find it is an unfriendly location with an unfriendly judge
2) FBI would shop for jurisdiction. Just as patent trolls all go to Marshall Texas, the troll rubber stamping capital of the world, so the FBI will go to whatever district will rubber stamp their requests.
3) Fail to get the warrant? There's no cross linkage between districts, judges won't spot they're being asked again for the same warrant, so FBI can simply keep hawking the request around till the get it.
4) Target will be listed as 'terrorist', actual target device will be router through which millions of peoples data passes, but then why would a judge in Aspen care about people in Newyork. They're not his family and his friends.
5) The FBI contracts this out to NSA, who accidentally store all the info while processing the warrants in these giant data centers they accidentally built, and accidentally data mine it.
"What to all men with power want? More power." -- The Oracle.
The only forces that can stop the government from attaining more power are:
1) Wealthy special interest groups that want that power for themselves and have enough clout to fight for it (like Google, in this specific case).
2) Unified pushback, in the form of informed voting, on the part of the majority of voters (extremely rare, as the issue has to be very direct and poignant for this to happen).
That's the way it is. Have a nice day.
Memex isn't sinister at all. It's a very old idea, and it allows indexing of every possible URL out to some length, in real time. For those who have the resources to run it, that's a pretty nifty device. If they can see every criminal website, then they can obtain warrants for the sites based on their content. At that point, they can seize servers to catch the sites' clients.
Parallel construction is automatically built into that. While they're building a database of website clients, they have probable cause for a warrant to target local machines. If they need another layer, then they can subpoena the ISP.
If we were to be cynical then we could say that they want the use of encryption to qualify as probable cause (they've asked for that), but that's a really, really bad idea. And I don't think that's what this is. I think this is about trying to get in the middle of connections to locate clients and websites at the same time, which suggests either that they're understaffed or that they have no faith in Memex. I'd find it hard to believe that the FBI isn't well-staffed.
Meaningless in the USA, at least. An "informed voter" has the same candidate choice as the uninformed voter, and the candidates have been vetted by the Parties.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Law enforcement has already reached a point at which many crimes must remain unpunished due to the economy of making arrests. There is already a situation in which only crimes that can generate money for the state are sought out. For example a drunk driver will pay stiff fines, be forced to make bail and often end up with mandatory therapy sessions with a county agency which charges a hefty fee week after week for months or years as well as a probation fee every month and states and counties may get a boost in federal funding for making such arrests. But there are other crimes that simply cost the state money so those arrests are sometimes avoided. But worse yet we have so many things considered crimes that many people are not aware they are committing a crime. These people can be leaned on by law enforcement to provide information or do things that they would not normally do. There are child welfare workers who get a call from the cops concerning a need to bash into a home and ask the child welfare worker to call in an address over a supposed complaint of a child being mistreated at the address. Armed with a bogus warrant the cops can gain sudden entry and search a home. This has gone on for decades. The child welfare workers need cooperation from the cops and are unusually willing to help generate such false warrants.
“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.