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by jsmeaton 2828 days ago
I dont think this is true. I don’t believe there is any evidence that the US government is analysing all emails hosted by all US companies.

Rather, if the US government asks for a particular individuals emails the provider must grant the request provided there is a valid (possibly secret) warrant.
4 comments
danesparza 2828 days ago
There is evidence that they certainly have the capability of analyzing much (if not all) communications in the world: https://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/internet-privacy/s...
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fps_doug 2828 days ago
Post Snowden I wouldn't safely assume that the govt/three letter agencies don't do something just because there is no evidence. Snowden was years ago, the NSA surely didn't sit on their hands in the meantime, especially now with SSL being deployed everywhere. "Oh right what we did was evil and wrong, let's stop everyone"
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jsmeaton 2828 days ago
The claim made was that they do. You don’t get to say that without providing evidence. You can say they might be, but that’s a different claim.

Also, capabilities matter. I have no doubt if they could they would. The Snowden revelations mainly revealed partnerships between service providers and gov agencies. Simply existing in the US does not mean your data is automatically available to 3 letter agencies. It could, but there is no evidence to suggest that it is.

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daxorid 2828 days ago
> You don’t get to say that without providing evidence

Put a parakeet in a windowless room and close the door. I can reasonably make the statement that the parakeet is perching, looking around, and/or preening its feathers, because that's what parakeets do. I wouldn't need direct observational evidence to make this statement.

Panopticon-level spying is what intelligence agencies do. It's what they've striven to do, as much as possible, without getting caught. The Binney and Snowden leaks corroborate this, and there's no reason to believe they've suddenly stopped trying to. OP doesn't need evidence to make the reasonable claim that intelligence agencies spy on us, and likely do it by hoovering up our data for analysis.

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jsmeaton 2828 days ago
Yes agencies like to spy. Do they have a camera in every house in America?

Again, I’m not saying they wouldn’t or wouldn’t like to. But saying “they do EVERYTHING post-Snowden” isn’t a very good argument, and definitely isn’t a fact.

And if the claim is “spy agencies spy” then the country of origin for your data probably doesn’t matter. Invoking “post-Snowden” usually relates to Prism, which was a partnership with specific providers.

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doubt_me 2828 days ago
Meta data is more than enough. They don't even care about the contents.
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jsmeaton 2828 days ago
That wasn’t the claim made.
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eldridgea 2828 days ago
The US government doesn't need a warrant for emails older than 180 days that are still on the server.

Emails older than that are considered abandoned[0] and treated the same as an abandoned storage unit, due to an old law from the time when email was regularly downloaded and purged from the server by local email clients.

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/when-can-the-government-read...

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