It is an unconstitutional practice. If they didn’t think it was they wouldn’t go through the extra steps to get the data. Outsourcing one part of the illegal enterprise doesn’t make the whole thing legal.
But if they want to play this game, an interesting way to bait a Supreme Court case might be to request a CCPA delete for the NSAs “commercial” data.
It's not just the NSA buying this data right? So is it illegal when say a marketing agency buys the data? If not why should it become illegal for the government?
The second piece about comparing the government to a business isn't valid. There exist many laws and rules that apply only to the government.
Not that I agree with the distinction. I think companies larger than the US government at formation should probably have rules to keep them good for humanity.
Indeed. Many laws and regulations around government agencies (not US specific, as I’m in the EU) specify what the agency is allowed to do, rather than what it isn’t. This is much easier to enforce, although it does require more regular review of regulations (that specify the details) to keep with the time.
Why not? Historically, corporations have had armed private forces that they've used to kill people.
Although you may have miss the tamer recent version where Ebay sent "a bloody pig
mask, a funeral wreath, and a book entitled “Grief Diaries: Surviving Loss of a Spouse", practiced installing a GPS tracker and then travelled 3000 miles to install one, "The Defendants also posted the Steiner’s address on Craigslist
and other websites, inviting strangers to the Steiners’ home for sex parties, and
advertising yard sales".
The story has a happy ending though as "Defendant Wenig departed eBay with a $57 million severance package.".
That eBay story is wild, and does make you wonder how deep the rot must be in that company. Also, why on Earth does eBay need a "global intelligence center" and a "global security team"? Do they have a completely separate line of business that I'm not aware of?
At least one person went to prison, so there's that.
Any sufficiently powerful corporation is indistinguishable from a government. There aren't many corporations who currently exercise their money to get such power, but it's happened before and can certainly happen again.
As it turns out, a bloody pig mask isn't a drone and planting a GPS tracker isn't the equivalent of killing or maiming everyone at a wedding and the people that did this were subject to criminal penalties.
This is in contrast to militaries who are assumed to operate as legitimate extensions of foreign policy.
> But if they want to play this game, an interesting way to bait a Supreme Court case might be to request a CCPA delete for the NSAs “commercial” data.
Can state law compel a federal agency to do anything?
> Can state law compel a federal agency to do anything?
Within the jurisdiction of a state, probably. States rights should have precedent over federal except in cases that involve interstate activity. This is being tested in Texas right now with various firearm laws that are meant for items made in and staying within Texas.
The Texas situation as I understand it is the state refusing to enforce federal law, which makes sense as the federal government has their own enforcement agencies. That seems a bit different from the state compelling the federal government to do anything.
If you don't want them to buy your data, stop selling it. Lock down your browsers. Don't use Facebook. Put a better OS on your phone. And sue every company that even hints at violating privacy rules.
It's not a full-scope solution. I think you'll find most things in the world are complex and require complex solutions, and most people are capable of understanding that discussing one solution doesn't negate the need for others.
Positions like this really aren't helpful because they detract from existing discussions on ways to mitigate data loss. The information a DMV sells isn't behavioral data.
There's probably a market for fake id streams: want my contact history? Fine here's 100 fake contacts. Want my location data? Fine. I'm at the Taylor Swift concert two states over. Want to listen in on my microphone? Fine. Here's a recording of Pat Boone trying to do rap.
That will come in next-gen adblockers. Ads will run in an emulated sandbox, unseen by the user. And many user-agent tools already allow randomization, a tiny fictional history.
Sure, but they'll be banned by Apple / Android ToSes. But meh, that shouldn't stop everybody. And it would be fun to watch the back and forth between ad tech and ad blockers.
There is a market for this but while Google controls android and Apple controls iPhone and it remains a duopoly theres no way in hell they will unlock their ecosystems enough to allow it to thrive.
That's an easy solve with a charge of corrupting of evidence or some such. We know you weren't at the Taylor Swift concert 2 states away because your WiFi history and cell tower triangulation puts you on the couch watching the Love Island.
When the Eye of Sauron gazes upon you, by nature of the gaze you are under suspicion. Depending what is found while the gaze is upon you might decide if you are guilty or not. However, you cannot be ruled out as a terrorist until you've been under that gaze. By falsifying your data just means that the gaze will be much more intense because you're clearly behaving in the manner of someone guilty. It takes time to determine if that guilty looking behavior is because of guilty actions or just some nerd trying to corrupt the data. Either way, you are behaving like a subversive, so you'll just be remembered for that for future investigations.
But hey, we make them send out “IMPORTANT UPDATE FROM _____ BANK” letters every time they change the pages-long legalese that allows them to sell all your data, and of course people read those from all the companies sending them and keep up on all the written mail-in opt-outs that expire.
GDPR is a disaster but the intent was good. Here in America we just say go for it.
This is exactly why the US Government will not create a Citizen Network for authenticated social sharing among actual participants in our Social Contract. It's absolutely a path to despotism, and very few have the stomach for rebellion.
Obviously, the intelligence agencies are thwarting the spirit of the law requiring warrants by buying data hoovered up by big data.
But I was always told growing up not to share things on the internet I don't want everyone to know. I feel like you kind of deserve having your data hoovered up by the government if you share that data publicly on social media, but personal responsibility doesn't appear to be a contributing factor in this discussion for some reason.
That's not the only source of data, obviously, but there are a lot of people on HN who think blocking ads is piracy. To those people, I present this exact problem, because they should have seen it coming. Adtech is amoral and unethical, and ways of life that rely upon it should collapse. No mercy, I don't care, find a better business model or live on the street.
personal responsibility is always important, but you are just blaming the victims. And you ignore the responsibilities of those we trusted. The tech companies have lied about, and disavowed the surveillance systems they use.
Let's be glad then, that policy is not based on your feelings. You had the privilege of education, that doesn't mean those still ignorant deserve the abuse.
It’s so obviously unconstitutional. If Congress gives them a pass, I don’t see how they would explain allowing agencies to sidestep the Constitution. At that point they’re not upholding the Constitution any more. The only chance is bringing it up to the Supreme Court.
The "unreasonable" part of the Fourth Amendment refers only to "unreasonable search and seizure" by law enforcement, not to any and every subjectively unreasonable aspect of society or law.
I'd state what the parent comment says a bit differently: the availability of data for purchase does not make its purchase by law enforcement magically "reasonable".
> 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.
In a digital world, one's "Person" and "effects" have become inseparable from the phones/platforms we communicate with. Participation in many cases is not a choice if one is to function in society.
The requirement that warrants are issued only upon establishment of probable cause also highlights the issue here. It seems highly dubious that a company holding your data and selling that data is somehow an acceptable end-around the warrant requirement.
Is this all technically legal? Seems like it might be. Is this what the authors of the 4th amendment had in mind? Seems extremely unlikely.
> Is this all technically legal? Seems like it might be. Is this what the authors of the 4th amendment had in mind? Seems extremely unlikely.
you are not inconvenienced when the NSA buys data in the same way that you're inconvenienced when you have to feed/house a soldier.
While it's extremely unlike the authors of the 4th amendment had the internet & etc in mind this concept of selling things to the government surely was known to them and so the current implementation would be OK from their perspective.
A lot of the first 10 amendments are about protecting your physical property from the Government. 2nd - Guns, 3rd - House, 4th - Property, 8th - Money. The digital bits that Google and etc created (ex. metadata) are clearly neither in your procession nor your property. There is no amendment that protects letters you wrote but gave to somebody else nor recordings made by somebody else of your interaction with them.
I should have been more clear, but it seems the message got to you correctly.
I can't read the 4th amendment and this article and not come to a conflict. It seems obvious to me that it is unreasonable to expect a person (with the average IQ being 94-98) to understand what data on their phone is public or private.
It's obvious because we have millions of teenagers believing they have privacy on their phones to a point where they break incredibly consequential laws to store sexualized imagery there.
What the average citizen believes is private is where the goal posts should be.
So a potential solution is to poll America asking the following question:
Donald Trump and Joe Biden would both like to download all the data on your phone to share with the world via press conference. Do you accept? If 50% of people so no, it is unreasonable.
Disclaimer: I worked on Geolocation products with the top 3 aggregators and have extensive experience with Palantir.
If we allow this logic what is to stop the following situation:
1. Landlord writes into rental agreements that they could have someone inspect the property every year.
2. Sold access to people's apartments to police officers every year.
In this situation a third party secured access to something which is traditionally constitutionally protected. This third party is in a position of power that is hard to bargain with (as many tech companies are). Most people wouldn't agree to this if they had the option to say no and would not expect this lease clause to be used this way.
If you have a friend who's willing to report on you for a price and the government pays the price the 4th amendment wouldn't have been violated. Why is is different because it's digital? The government isn't spying on you, it's just paying for information collected legally
If you call the gov and you confess to something that’s on you.
Your friend also cannot just bust into your house and search through your things. Now the government because it has enormous powers behind it and people willing to do the wrong thing on its behalf is specifically limited in what it’s allowed to do.
It depends. If someone breaks into your house with government encouragement, that’s a Fourth Amendment violation. If he breaks into your house because he’s a burglar, and then happens upon something he knows the government would want, and then sells that information to the government, it’s not a Fourth Amendment violation.
The 4A does actually evaporate for a subset of Americans. Reagan's EO12333 permits warrantless collection for Americans subject to background investigations. You are fair game for the panopticon from the submission of an SF86 application until the time you end your security clearance. The domestic surveillance apparatus exists, in part, to facilitate that need which is something the affected agencies want to preserve a carve out for.
Really a warrant should be required to carry out any kind of in-depth, prolonged, or otherwise invasive surveillance or investigation into someone.
It’s not just which data or where they get it (though surely many types and sources of data should be restricted too, especially without a warrant) but the fact that they are building a profile, targeting, etc. at all. These are things the government/law enforcement should not be doing lightly or without supervision.
I think it is reasonable for governmental agencies to have greater restrictions on their behavior without due process than a private company because the government has vastly greater opportunity to abuse this power.
if the availability of commercial data becomes necessary for a functioning NSA, it will be used as an argument against any attempt to regulate data collection
Wait is Snowden still considered a loser here? I can't keep track of the narrative.
We have an agency beholden to no-one with the power to blackmail any journalist, lawyer, politician, associate, etc.
We have an agency that seems to take pride in "hacking" the constitution. We've been shown glimpses and glimmers of clever mechanisms to run-around the US Constitution.
Go ahead and use a VPN and lock down your stupid android OS. You fail to grasp the breadth and depth of sources for harvesting "public" intel.
If you want to be a founder and have no moral code there's ample opportunity here. IoT and connectivity make it cheaper than ever to generate intel on people. Fingerprint people's voices in public, travel patterns, associations, bluetooth/wifi device ids, home wifi attributes, etc. Who's the customer? Big Brother.. Spy on your fellow Americans to help combat Terrorism.
Tin foil hat on: It might be too late for any of this to be meaningfully reformed. The people-in-charge already have enough blackmail on politicians they can drown out dissent. If there is any reform, the info gained from illegitimate sources is already stored as weights into a neural model for future use. Creating the neural model would be "constitutional" because the models aren't "searched" lol
Our national security apparatus is running on self-signed certs. Hope nothing goes wrong with that!
That's false. If an entity is above the law then it is above Congress. This exists.
If an entity can forever dismiss Congressional inquiry through unlimited open-ended legalistic escapes that are virtually always applicable, then it is de facto above Congress. This also exists, and is different than the first example.
I could see where you could get that notion from reading an org chart. However, Clapper lied to Congress, was accused of perjury, and allowed to resign. He now walks around as a free man with 0 consequences making whatever salary he's given from his consulting career.
Congress is a feckless body of government when it comes to checks and balances.
He wasn't charged because they didn't charge him. They're free to make that call. Was there any reason given? Maybe he cleared it up in closed door meetings?
What we learned from this is that you can get away with anything if you say "I made a mistake". Really, and which mistake are you owning up to with that comment? The part where you lied, or the part where you did the thing that you covered up with the lie? Feckless. I have no other word for Congress. Well, that's a lie, but not like anything is going to come of it!
You seem to be conflating a bunch of individual actors here.
Congress didn't testify to Congress, Clapper did. Clapper did so in both public and private settings.
Clapper didn't tell the truth in a public setting because it was classified. Clapper (privately & immediately) informed Congress of the need for a private meeting to correct things he said in the public setting.
This would be akin to your husband asking you were the cookies are and since you noticed your son around the corner saying you don't know. Then when you son leaves you tell him they're in the top of the cabinet. Nobody is going to actually be mad except your son (that's you in this example!).
Would it be too cynical if I suggested that many of our laws (worldwide, I'm not in or of the USA) exist in order to be sure компромат can be found on almost everyone?
It is an unconstitutional practice. If they didn’t think it was they wouldn’t go through the extra steps to get the data. Outsourcing one part of the illegal enterprise doesn’t make the whole thing legal.
But if they want to play this game, an interesting way to bait a Supreme Court case might be to request a CCPA delete for the NSAs “commercial” data.