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When the NSA intercepts it on the wire, under the presumption of investigating international terrorists (presumably in near-real-time) and the then shares it [0
by themartorana 11y ago
When the NSA intercepts it on the wire, under the presumption of investigating international terrorists (presumably in near-real-time) and the then shares it [0] with domestic three-letter-agencies, does it matter that they need a warrant to get it from "provider" (Google, etc.)?
[0] http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/us/politics/obama-administration-set-to-expand-sharing-of-data-that-nsa-intercepts.html?_r=1 http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/us/politics/obama-admin...
- rayiner 11y agoThis law applies to all email communications, including those between U.S. persons. The article you linked to talks about incidental data about U.S. persons collected by means other than "from a wire on American soil." Specifically, the NSA collection extends to: > [The] contents of the phone calls and email the security agency vacuums up around the world, including bulk collection of satellite transmissions, communications between foreigners as they cross network switches in the United States, and messages acquired overseas or provided by allies.
- kevin_thibedeau 11y agoExcept if you dare to use encryption. Then it becomes "foreign" even if the endpoints are domestic.
- disremembered 11y agoCould Congress pass a law to reclassify domestic encrypted communications as domestic?
- toomuchtodo 11y agoIf it overrides Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015: section 309. See woodman's post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11586178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11586178
- rayiner 11y agoSource?
- woodman 11y agoIntelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015: section 309 [0] "A covered communication shall not be retained in excess of 5 years, unless ... (iii) the communication is enciphered or reasonably believed to have a secret meaning;" [0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/4681/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/4681...
- rayiner 11y agoThat does not refute my point above. Section 309 only applies to incidentally acquired communication that is collected via the routes mentioned above. It does not allow the NSA to collect traffic between domestic endpoints just because it is encrypted.
- woodman 11y ago"covered communication" is defined in the prior page (309.a). The definition stands alone, regardless of how "incidentally" appears on the same page, it makes no reference to proceeding limitation or definitions. "...any nonpublic telephone or electronic communication acquired without the consent of a person who is a party to the communication, including communications in electronic storage."
- rayiner 11y agoYou don't ignore section headings when reading laws. Besides that, nothing in that section discusses granting authority to collect "covered communication." The section is discussing the retention policies of communications collected by some authorized manner.
- gknoy 11y agoYou might recall that the NSA has a curious definition of "collect". They use "collect" where most of us would use "search the existing massive database that we already collected".
- jsmthrowaway 11y agoRegardless of how you feel about a polarizing issue, I don't think anybody on any side has ever claimed that. Pretty big thread derail risk with this one, too.
- woodman 11y agoWow, well let me ruin your day: you are wrong. Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015: section 309. "A covered communication shall not be retained in excess of 5 years, unless ... (iii) the communication is enciphered or reasonably believed to have a secret meaning;"
- jsmthrowaway 11y agoI'm actually not, and 'rayiner is doing a pretty good job of explaining why in the second place you cited that law (for some reason), so I will not repeat that thread derailment.
- woodman 11y agoYeah, discussing domestic surveillance legislation in a thread linked to an article covering the latest domestic surveillance legislation is way off topic.
- pg_is_a_butt 11y agoforces them to spend more of your tax dollars creating a parallel case. that'll show 'em.
- briandear 11y agoA serious question here: has anyone reading this been arrested, prosecuted or otherwise harassed because of email contents obtained by the NSA? I am not in favor or warrantless searches, but it feels more and more like the tech community treats the NSA like Eastasia. I certainly could be wrong, thus the question.
- briandear 11y agoDownvoted? But no answer? Seems to prove my point that the knee-jerk hatred of the NSA ought to be backed by some real world facts.
- merijnv 11y agoYou appear to be ignoring the fact that even if you consider the NSA's work benevolent, it is only benevolent to US citizens. Meanwhile lots of us on here are, in fact, not US citizens, especially at this time of day. So the NSA's activities are all negative, no positive to non-Americans.
- davorb 11y agoIt's very hard to say, because of the use of parallel construction. We know very little about what the NSA does with its data; even members of Congress are being denied access to this information. But we do know for a fact that the DEA has prosecuted people based on information they received from the NSA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction http://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130...
- devishard 11y agoTech people should be concerned about this because we are the ones with the knowledge necessary to do something about it. Because there's no transparency, it's impossible to tell how many people have been harmed by the violation of their privacy. It may be that nobody here is in that group: hacker news readers are probably mostly white and upper-middle class, not usually a target demographic. But if we don't do something about invasions of privacy, no one will, because no one else is capable.