How about passing a law explicitly covering the kind of information being collected and sold as actually being private, and against the law to share with anyone without a warrant?
> ... as mentioned in page 573 of the terms and conditions users have agreed with
Except that it's not how EULA do work. If it's made illegal by law (which GP suggess), then lawyers writing these EULAs can write anything they want in fineprint: it's not superseding the law.
You can't make this blanket illegal. For example, if you buy something online, the seller will need to share your address with the delivery company, unless they do the delivery themselves, with is impractical most of the times. So you can make laws regarding the transfer of personal information, but these are bound to be really complicated, just look at GDPR.
But that's not the same? The online retailer is /giving/ my address to the courier. Without it the retailer nor the courier will be able to give me the service/product I'm paying for.
I think it's perfectly fine to make ‐reselling‐ of personal data blanket illegal. Since it's my data, I might have consented to giving the data to someone for some purpose. However, they absolutely have no implied consent that they can sell that data to someone else, no matter what their EULA says. If they want to sell it, then I need to get a dividend of that sale revenue, since it's my data.
This is not a physical good that's changing owners. It will always be irrevocably linked to /me/. That's what makes it valuable. So the owner of that data will forever and always be me, no matter who "bought" it. Exactly the same way that buying a digital game does not make me an owner of that copy, but merely the owner of a perpetual-yet-revokable license to play the game on my sanctioned console.
So, take any service that connects buyers to sellers: eBay, Craigslist, AirBnB, realtors, etc... They are essentially in the business of trading personal data, so that the buyer and seller can get in contact and complete the transaction. It is even more obvious in dating sites/apps.
...but that's not the same you might say. That's right, but how do you put that into law? You need actual rules, "don't be evil" is not enough. There are hundreds of cases where sharing personal data is "right" and expected, and hundreds of cases where it is "wrong". You want to allow the "right" usage and ban the "wrong" usage. And then you have lobbies trying to explain why they are on the right side and their opponents are on the wrong side, and then you will have lawyers who are really good at finding loopholes, and in the end, what you get is something like GDPR with all its complexities. You can't really escape it.
These examples are no good. It's unnecessary to put into law that if someone explicitly hires you to share particular information with some set of people, you're allowed to. You're not only allowed to, you're required to, because that's the business arrangement you've made.
You're making an "it's all so complicated" argument, but not pointing out any actual occasion in which it might be complicated.
> There are hundreds of cases where sharing personal data is "right" and expected, and hundreds of cases where it is "wrong".
This is as close to a direct citation of the law of averages that I've seen in a long time.
> And then you have lobbies trying to explain why they are on the right side and their opponents are on the wrong side,
"Everybody is going to complain anyway..."
> lawyers who are really good at finding loopholes
The problem is lobbyists that are very good at adding loopholes.
> in the end, what you get is something like GDPR with all its complexities. You can't really escape it.
When you want to pass a law limiting what companies can do with data without the user's consent, but don't really want to limit what companies are doing in any way, you end up with weird, baroque definitions of data and consent.
If you're never willing to risk profits, or to make certain businesses completely unsustainable, then every regulation must come accompanied with either a trivial method for large enough companies to ignore it, or must be paired with a completely unrelated regulatory giveaway.
People say this but probably underestimate how much the NSA at least pretends to follow the letter of the law compared to intelligence services in almost any other nation on the planet.
Them following the law is entirely downstream from Congress doing things like what Wyden is doing. Their existence is predicated on congressional satisfaction, and many congresspeople are at least fellow travellers to the practical frustrations many people on this site have with the NSA. It's never enough, but it's _something_.
Meanwhile plenty of countries just have their intelligence services tucked away, out of the spotlight, and with barely any legal framework to bind them.
> Them following the law is entirely downstream from Congress doing things like what Wyden is doing. Their existence is predicated on congressional satisfaction
The director of the NSA outright lied to congress while under oath and has faced zero consequences for it. There is zero meaningful oversight in the US and congress is absolutely powerless to do anything but bitch and moan about it publicly just like the rest of the American people. That was what drove Snowden to finally leak what he knew. He saw that congress had no means of knowing what was happening and therefore they couldn't do anything to stop it.
Not even the president can do anything about the NSA. Obama campaigned on ending the mass surveillance of the American people. Presidential candidates tell a lot of lies while trying to get elected, and Obama was an effective orator, but he was also a civil rights attorney and taught constitutional law. I believed he meant what he was saying when he said that the NSA was ignoring the law whenever it was convent for them, and that he would oppose any bill that included retroactive immunity for telecom companies that were handing over American's data to the NSA illegally.
Of course, once he got into office everything changed and he very quickly spoke out in favor in the NSA, he vastly expanded their powers to spy on Americans, and he granted immunity to those same telecom companies. I figure that means that once he was elected the NSA showed Obama some super secret information that convinced him that violating the constitution was necessary or perhaps he was shown exactly how much dirt they had on him and his family and he was threatened to fall in line.
Either way, it doesn't appear that anyone at any level of government can oppose the NSA in a meaningful way.
Which most likely is part of the problem. There is no major outcry about any of this. It's a mere inconvenience to agencies, congress, courts, press, etc - nobody seems to care much about it.
An intelligence agency’s role is gathering intelligence on malevolent entities that threaten a country in some way. Not more, not less—but their role certainly isn’t breaking laws per se, or amassing data on the general public to engage in pre-policing. No matter how much certain parties may advocate for that, a democracy cannot exist in a surveillance state, and anyone convinced of that has lost democratic legitimacy.
They equally gather information on friendly democracies, bribe or blackmail people, hack computers, they are involved in trade negotiations, watch what all the parties are doing in civil wars, etc. It's not a good guys vs bad guys, good vs evil thing. They are a limited exception to democratic governments abiding to the rule of law. They are hired thugs, "our thugs". And I am not disputing that they are necessary. Just that it is a bit naive to think people whose job it is to break laws all day long will abide to another law. That's why they tend to be scandals rich organisations.
Gathering information on friendly democracies, or watching what all the parties are doing in civil wars, is not a violation of US law. Espionage between states is rarely a violation of the law of the state that is doing the espionage. The “friendly democracies” on which the US spies, are in turn gathering information on the states they consider friendly democracies.
What is considered malevolent is obviously dependent on the perspective, but we cannot accept agencies without any oversight or control, that will always lead to a shadow government. Which leads me to my point: we need to be extra vigilant when it comes to the mandate of intelligence agencies.
That's not true at all. Intelligence agencies can't just do whatever they want. They are beholden to the people just like every other government agency. They can be granted power to do things that ordinary people can't, but that doesn't mean they are above the law.
Yes they can do whatever they want and no they’re not beholden to anyone. When has the NSA ever been held accountable for their illegal spying on US citizens?
Right, I'm not saying that they don't break the law. They do. But technically, their role is not to break the law. There ostensibly is oversight but it obviously doesn't work well enough.
They can and they do. Look at the history - they routinely kidnap, torture, assassinate, spy on citizens, support all kinds of illegal activity and make unscrupulous deals with terrorists and tyrants. Every now and then they slip up and the government has to pretend to give a damn and they go through a show of righteous anger and then once the heat is off and constituents are satisfied the intelligence agencies go right back to doing what they were doing anyway.
The government doesn't want intelligence agencies reined in by anything but American interests. They want those agencies to be free do commit whatever evil is deemed necessary to further those interests, laws and Constitution be damned. The NSA is still spying on everyone. The CIA still runs torture camps around the world. Nothing changes. Snowden didn't change anything. Assange didn't change anything. Wyden isn't going to change anything.
The ability of the American people to hold their government to account in any meaningful way is a facade. Americans live under the oligarchy of corporations and the military industrial complex, not any kind of functional democracy. The American people, despite their guns and breathless evocations of the Founding Fathers, are not in control.
Indeed. Being granted exclusive powers that would otherwise be illegal must always be given the respect it deserves: use of powers only when and as far absolutely necessary and reporting of and punishment of transgressions, intentional or not.
There is nothing more morally corrosive than a law enforcement agency betraying the trust represented by their powers.
I think the parent is referring to foreign law. Which all intelligence services break as a part of their purpose, to spy.
Although that statement is just an oversimplification of the situation. The government should follow domestic law even if it breaks foreign law by design.
To the extent that maybe it is, it should be other countries laws. Nobody has the authority to grant such law breaking permission (without a warrant). When you break the rules establishing a system, you no longer have that system, but a free for all.
The US constitution in particular aims to protect the people from government overreach. See the original amendments and read them in that light.
Even from a pure legalistic point of view, US laws have extraordinary extra territorial reach. I believe if a bribe occurs between two foreigners in a foreign country, the mere fact that they used USD for payment brings it within US jurisdiction. And certainly if a US citizen is involved.