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Yahoo Email Scan Shows US Spy Push To Recast Constitutional Privacy (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Yahoo Inc's secret scanning of customer emails at the behest of a U.S. spy agency is part of a growing push by officials to loosen constitutional protections Americans have against arbitrary governmental searches, according to legal documents and people briefed on closed court hearings. The order on Yahoo from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) last year resulted from the government's drive to change decades of interpretation of the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment right of people to be secure against "unreasonable searches and seizures," intelligence officials and others familiar with the strategy told Reuters. The unifying idea, they said, is to move the focus of U.S. courts away from what makes something a distinct search and toward what is "reasonable" overall. The basis of the argument for change is that people are making much more digital data available about themselves to businesses, and that data can contain clues that would lead to authorities disrupting attacks in the United States or on U.S. interests abroad. While it might technically count as a search if an automated program trawls through all the data, the thinking goes, there is no unreasonable harm unless a human being looks at the result of that search and orders more intrusive measures or an arrest, which even then could be reasonable. Civil liberties groups and some other legal experts said the attempt to expand the ability of law enforcement agencies and intelligence services to sift through vast amounts of online data, in some cases without a court order, was in conflict with the Fourth Amendment because many innocent messages are included in the initial sweep. But the general counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Robert Litt, said in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday that the legal interpretation needed to be adjusted because of technological changes.
perhaps its time for paid email service that has more protections.
Courts need to apply strict scrutiny to mass surveillance. That means questioning whether the measures are sufficient to significantly reduce terrorism, but that the measures are also the least restrictive way to do so. Because this involves the Bill of Rights, strict scrutiny needs to be applied. If mass surveillance was truly necessary and effective at preventing terrorism, I'd support it. However, it's not, nor does that reasoning apply to the prevention of most other crimes that are typically cited as justification for this. Just because law enforcement and spies say they want certain powers doesn't mean that those requests should be granted. My hope is that we'll eventually realize that treating everyone like a terrorist is as ridiculous as treating everyone like a Communist agent.
Internal emails show the same thing happened (and is happening) in both Canada (starting in the 1950s) and the UK (more recently).
Rights must be refreshed with the blood of spies occasionally.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"While it might technically count as a search if an automated program trawls through all the data, the thinking goes, there is no unreasonable harm unless a human being looks at the result of that search..."
If you have an automated search through all data, and then humans are informed of every case where further investigation will occur it is exactly the same as having complete and full investigation of all data. Note also the criteria for search are set by the watchers, and can be changed at any time.
If you want a lessening of the restrictions placed on your godsforsaken cursed asses, get a fucking AMENDMENT.
Best of luck, you're going to fucking need it.
What you're doing is VERY MUCH ILLEGAL. In fact, those little orders where you had a SECRET court, which is IN VIOLATION of the Constitution, are also in violation of the Constitution. There is no "reasonable" qualification in the Fourth Amendment. And...as rightly observed by the Supreme Court in Marbury v. Madison...
This also applies to actions by the Courts themselves (a decision at-odds with, or to use the terminology of the time, repugnant to, is void) and any parts of the Administration (With the same applying.)
This is void. As such, you're under no obligations to abide by it. Use of force to enforce such void things is a Tyranny.
If a tree falls in the forest, and the only robot that heard it only logs the metadata, does it make the parallel construction to implicate it in the 2001 World Trade Center Bombings to aid in justifying a clear-cut logging operation?
Good people go to bed earlier.
"Plebs are already sharing all of this personal information with various online services anyway, why cant we just have the data they are already giving away?"
I personally enjoy my dangerous privacy/freedom over some illusion of safety at the expense of my keeping personal papers and effects to myself. To that effect, I don't use cloud services, I handle my own communications and pay a premium for privacy when its to much of a hassle to handle something on my own hardware/software.
On the other hand, my countrymen choose to trade their personal details away, and willingly track their own every move, in exchange for free email and instant communications. That is not enough of a reason to take from my choice to not willingly hand over a log of my daily activities and shopping habits, nor is it justification for my government to collect all of this data "just in case"
You want MY data? Pay for it. It is not on the barter table.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Well, it's a private business so there is no expectations of "rights" when using their service, right? A private company can work with the government for any manner of searchers that are not protected because a private company is free to do with their data as they please and as a user you have no rights beyond a EULA that can change without warning for any reason as per said EULA.
That is what I hear whenever there is an issue involving the rights of citizens on websites. Website is private therefore you have no rights using their service. You can just use a different website. Impartiality for public accommodations is so last century.
Someone is attempting to implant malware in the reuters.com article via a third party tracking service. Be careful.
It's only going to get worse. The vote count confirms it, in Europe, the Philippines, the US.... Human rights are for losers and pansies. Face the facts, we are on our own. There's nowhere to run anymore. The last shining light burned out on 9/11...
I'll worry about the NSA and the almost-literally-zero percent chance that I'll wind up in gitmo because some algorithm (and several investigators/judges/jurors/etc.) misinterpreted my emails as coded threats to blow up the white house when someone does something about the infinitely more Orwellian surveillance private corporations are allowed to get away with in the service of flooding my entire waking life with advertising. The most recent developments in Zuckerberg's lifelong quest to become literal Big Brother and create his own Ministry of Truth are only the latest sign that we have more to fear in practice from Facebook than the NSA.
Yes getting hypothetically fucked over by the government based on misinterpreted information is much worse than advertising and censorship (just ask Saddam), but the total actual harm is much, much worse in the later case, since these problems affect a huge percentage of people in the world every single day.
How many decades?
5? 6? 10? 15? 20?
Inquiring minds need to know!!!!
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
As someone dealing with the VA, they literally can't find or openly ignore their own documentation on their own servers from their own doctors and surgeons and even when they are mailed and/or faxed directly to their offices when it comes to dealing with disability claims and them actually doing their damn jobs and working for you but then they want to look at everything in the sun about you when it comes to actually working against you......
One word, Illuminati.
> the US has been into mass surveillance for so damn long with the approval of the American public ... I don't think there is any turning back now
I don't see public opinion forcing major changes, except possibly as part of a larger party platform, if for example the Libertarian party came to power of the next 20 years.
However, the Constitution already bars unreasonable searches, and the Supreme Court can strike down the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, without any massive political movement or cooperation from any government agency. In fact, the Southern District has already struck down the section of the Patriot Act which allows National Security Letters. The court ruled that the NSA mass phone records program was unconstitutional. That's already happened, and more decisions along those lines may be coming.
...the legal interpretation needed to be adjusted because of technological changes.
So, does this mean we can finally get around to banning possession of non-muzzle loading smoothbore firearms?
Of course government agencies are going to go after this stuff. And it's not just governments diving in either. The whole ad structure business is flawed to the core.
The problem is the existence of that data in the first place! I don't understand how businesses have been let away with such a free for all. It should have been knocked on the head a decade ago.
Yeah the Director is right. They should update the laws. TO STRENGTHEN CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTIONS. The judges should be coming down on this shit hard. Your e-mail is exactly the same as your private mail. They couldn't open it then and they shouldn't open it now. It's not rocket science. Your communications are yours and not the governments. Is the post office allowed to read your mail? Fuck no.
With NSLs it doesn't matter whether they're public, private, free, or paid. The problem is the politicians who are passing abusive laws.
While this is true to some extent, it's important to understand how the wicked web was woven in order to unravel it.
HashTag FCC complaint ID# 12-C00422224 , and Hillary and Colin. And protecting (business and military tactical) relationships and status quo(s) with other superpowers. And PRISM.
There is no engineering reason why the lions share of important data that had historical 4th amendment protections could not have been completely under users control. Sure, the feds could xerox three hundred million NSLs if they wanted or needed to. But by forcing them to go after individuals instead of chokepoints, I think public understanding could have been furthered towards evolutions that were better successful at passing along privacy benefits to the next generations. Scanning emails with algorithms for targeted advertising is a business model that could not have succeeded if the corrupt government had been honest with the citizenry about the cyber status that they most certainly had a NEED TO KNOW. Snowden appeared to help. But not enough.
> the Supreme Court is going to strike it down based on..well, what exactly?
Here's one possibility:
> The FISA court is in itself a response by Congress to the Supreme Court's determination in 1972 that national security investigations are subject to 4th Amendment provisions and require judicial warrants.
Given the court has already (repeatedly) that mere pro forma due process is not due process at all, they could certainly decide that the existing FISA court procedure does not in fact provide protections required by the 4th, that a court which *always* rules in favor of the government is essentially a false court.
Another approach they could take is also hinted at in your post. You say "The FISA court is in itself a response by Congress". Congress can create a court under Article I of the Constitution:
---
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
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Any court created by Congress, including the FISA court, is expressly *inferior* to the Supreme Court, and SCOTUS can set rules and procedures for all inferior courts. Even without striking down the law, SCOTUS could neuter the FISA court by setting it's procedural rules.
PS, while SCOTUS *could* rule that the FISA court is essentially a sham court, they won't go that far because that would set up a direct confrontation with the executive. They would instead do something less drastic, perhaps rule that in order to comply with the fourth amendment, the FISA court must do a, b, and c.
Again, they already ruled recently that the mass collection of call records from phone companies is unconstitutional - it is entirely possible for the court to take action in this area. In fact, that's their job, safe guarding Constitutional rights is an essential part of the mandate of the court, since at least Marbury v Madison.
Have you ever sent yourself a Yahoo email and wondered why it takes so damn long for it to appear in your inbox?
Because it gets queued to a spy scanner that pushes it through a dozen fucking filters.
Funny how U.S. intelligence services turn from human intelligence to signals intelligence in the light of warnings from:
Flight instructors ...and many more.
Russia regarding the Tsarnaev brothers
Parents of terrorists
Are they lazy or just incompetent?
privacy in electronic communication services are an question way before Obama was elected...
* calm down, AC (you like trolling, huh?)
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Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Robert Litt can kiss my ass! Robert Litt, you are a bastard and a SOB. You are also a fascist motherfucker!