4 ms·

But that's just it. 1800: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall

But that's just it. 1800: 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... 2000: lol tech lets us read it all 2025: Oh no, crypto is good now? They want us to get a warrant and use non-dragnet surveillance to pursue leads? THE HORROR!

bluejekyll 6y ago
Honestly curious why the 2025 on the last comment. The police and govt have been screaming this ever more loudly over the last decade.
- stepstop 6y ago
  And I’d also add the Clipper chip to the history
- jjoonathan 6y ago
  Because the timeline is a simplification and because I didn't see (2015) in the title and thought "it's probably reasonable to speculate this mess will be cleaned up in the next 5 years." Joke's on me -- it probably did get cleaned up in the last 5 years, the resulting cutoff of illegal dragnet surveillance probably caused the panicked rhetoric about "going dark" we've seen from the intelligence community, and I probably would have been better off putting 2020. Calling 2000 as the "year of dragnet surveillance" has similar issues, because you could argue that dragnet surveillance really got started in the telegraph era and scaled during -- was it WWI? If I think too hard about these dates I'm going to wake up tomorrow drooling on the keyboard from a wikipedia binge.
leephillips 6y ago
c.1850: The feds camp out at AT&T telegraph offices and transcribe every single message with no warrants. Or something like like. It's in The Puzzle Palace.
Spooky23 6y ago
The root problem is a legal one. Electronic documents held by a custodian aren’t held to the standard that paper is. Hopefully the aftermath of this era of corruption and grift in government is a better legal framework.
6AA4FD 6y ago
I think it was on a post about FBI surveillance, someone pointed out that one of the big advantages of all of these surveillance methods are not just that they may miss some cases, but that they are much cheaper than lawful interventions. I would venture to say that if we spent more on pursuing issues that actually matter (not most drug crimes) we would be able to do better while ensuring a greater general level of privacy than we do right now, while also solving more problems. edit: I realize I wasn't clear what the more serious problems I'm referencing are. They are human trafficking, murder, domestic abuse and so on.
- opportune 6y ago
  You know what, you're right. What would be even more effective is if each person had a camera and microphone embedded into their bodies that uploaded all data directly to the government. Then it would be impossible to commit a crime and get away with it, and we would need far less police!
  - wwright 6y ago
    I think the comment you are responding to was effectively advocating for LESS surveillance, for what it’s worth.
  - 6AA4FD 6y ago
    I'm saying that law enforcement probably doesn't need such intrusive surveillance, and that better results without violations of civil liberties could be acheived if we spent more money on it (or spent our current outlays better).
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
The big thing that changed was in regard to long range messages. The biggest problem in the past was secure coordination. For example, the battle plans at the Battle of Antietam were discovered in cigars. Thus, the calculus was that people could keep their stuff private, but if they were trying to coordinate with others, communications were able to be cracked. However, now, people can do secure, encrypted communication easily with dozens of people worldwide. This changes the calculus of what they can accomplish. A person with a locked briefcase at home is pretty limited in what kind of stuff they can coordinate. A person securely communicating with dozens of people worldwide, can accomplish quite a lot without discovery. This changes the calculus from the 1800s.
- Y_Y 6y ago
  They really calculussed the calculus alright.
surround 6y ago
This parable from 1993 sums it up nicely. > There was once a far away land called Ruritania, and in Ruritania there was a strange phenonmenon -- all the trees that grew in Ruritainia were transparent. Now, in the days when people had lived in mud huts, this had not been a problem, but now high-tech wood technology had been developed, and in the new age of wood, everyone in Ruritania found that their homes were all 100% see through... > One day, a smart man invented paint -- and if you painted your house, suddenly the police couldn't watch all your actions at will... > Indignant, the state decided to try to require that all homes have video cameras installed in every nook and cranny. "After all", they said, "with this new development crime could run rampant. Installing video cameras doesn't mean that the police get any new capability -- they are just keeping the old one." [...] https://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/04/msg00559.html https://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/04/msg00559.html
- notRobot 6y ago
  This is incredible!
  - surround 6y ago
    I owe it to this comment for finding the parable https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22758407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22758407 With the author’s name (Perry E. Metzger) I was able to track down an archive of the original Usenet post.
- gorgoiler 6y ago
  This story didn’t make enough sense to really nail the issue. I’m surprised this parable is popular. Why would you build houses out of wood if the wood is transparent? It would make more sense if it were discovered years later that the police had special polarizing binoculars that let them see through the wood, which no one knew they had until it was too late and all the old mud huts had been phased out. Also, describing someone as a “paint technologist” when they are anti-paint is a confusing decision for a parable: a story intended to make a complex issue easier to understand. I initially assumed they were going to have a role analogous to a cryptographer, not an anti-privacy provocateur. Perhaps having the police attempt to foil insidious flower thieves or dastardly rebel plots to undermine the government controlled potato cartel would also be more in spirit with a parable. The use of awful real life crimes (against children, even) make this a difficult one to share.
amelius 6y ago
I like the analogy but I don't think it works. Basically the bad guys get a huge advantage (secure, in fact unbreakable communications over long distances) while the good guys have to live by 1800s rules? I think every new impactful tech requires a reevaluation of laws to keep the balance from tipping in the wrong direction.
- jjoonathan 6y ago
  Yes, but so far it has been a unchecked power grab. The balance has tipped in the wrong direction, because both extremes are the wrong direction. That's how balance works. If we push back against the power grab and come up with a compromise, then we can call it a reevaluation and throw around the word "balance." I also object to your wording around "bad guys" and "good guys." When Joe LEO wants to use the state surveillance apparatus to spy on his ex, is he a "good guy"? When the FBI mailed MLK Jr a suicide letter, was MLK the "bad guy"?

bluejekyll 6y ago

Honestly curious why the 2025 on the last comment. The police and govt have been screaming this ever more loudly over the last decade.

stepstop 6y ago
And I’d also add the Clipper chip to the history
jjoonathan 6y ago
Because the timeline is a simplification and because I didn't see (2015) in the title and thought "it's probably reasonable to speculate this mess will be cleaned up in the next 5 years." Joke's on me -- it probably did get cleaned up in the last 5 years, the resulting cutoff of illegal dragnet surveillance probably caused the panicked rhetoric about "going dark" we've seen from the intelligence community, and I probably would have been better off putting 2020. Calling 2000 as the "year of dragnet surveillance" has similar issues, because you could argue that dragnet surveillance really got started in the telegraph era and scaled during -- was it WWI? If I think too hard about these dates I'm going to wake up tomorrow drooling on the keyboard from a wikipedia binge.

leephillips 6y ago

c.1850: The feds camp out at AT&T telegraph offices and transcribe every single message with no warrants. Or something like like. It's in The Puzzle Palace.

Spooky23 6y ago

The root problem is a legal one. Electronic documents held by a custodian aren’t held to the standard that paper is. Hopefully the aftermath of this era of corruption and grift in government is a better legal framework.

6AA4FD 6y ago

I think it was on a post about FBI surveillance, someone pointed out that one of the big advantages of all of these surveillance methods are not just that they may miss some cases, but that they are much cheaper than lawful interventions. I would venture to say that if we spent more on pursuing issues that actually matter (not most drug crimes) we would be able to do better while ensuring a greater general level of privacy than we do right now, while also solving more problems. edit: I realize I wasn't clear what the more serious problems I'm referencing are. They are human trafficking, murder, domestic abuse and so on.

opportune 6y ago
You know what, you're right. What would be even more effective is if each person had a camera and microphone embedded into their bodies that uploaded all data directly to the government. Then it would be impossible to commit a crime and get away with it, and we would need far less police!
- wwright 6y ago
  I think the comment you are responding to was effectively advocating for LESS surveillance, for what it’s worth.
- 6AA4FD 6y ago
  I'm saying that law enforcement probably doesn't need such intrusive surveillance, and that better results without violations of civil liberties could be acheived if we spent more money on it (or spent our current outlays better).

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

The big thing that changed was in regard to long range messages. The biggest problem in the past was secure coordination. For example, the battle plans at the Battle of Antietam were discovered in cigars. Thus, the calculus was that people could keep their stuff private, but if they were trying to coordinate with others, communications were able to be cracked. However, now, people can do secure, encrypted communication easily with dozens of people worldwide. This changes the calculus of what they can accomplish. A person with a locked briefcase at home is pretty limited in what kind of stuff they can coordinate. A person securely communicating with dozens of people worldwide, can accomplish quite a lot without discovery. This changes the calculus from the 1800s.

Y_Y 6y ago
They really calculussed the calculus alright.

surround 6y ago

This parable from 1993 sums it up nicely. > There was once a far away land called Ruritania, and in Ruritania there was a strange phenonmenon -- all the trees that grew in Ruritainia were transparent. Now, in the days when people had lived in mud huts, this had not been a problem, but now high-tech wood technology had been developed, and in the new age of wood, everyone in Ruritania found that their homes were all 100% see through... > One day, a smart man invented paint -- and if you painted your house, suddenly the police couldn't watch all your actions at will... > Indignant, the state decided to try to require that all homes have video cameras installed in every nook and cranny. "After all", they said, "with this new development crime could run rampant. Installing video cameras doesn't mean that the police get any new capability -- they are just keeping the old one." [...] https://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/04/msg00559.html https://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/04/msg00559.html

notRobot 6y ago
This is incredible!
- surround 6y ago
  I owe it to this comment for finding the parable https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22758407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22758407 With the author’s name (Perry E. Metzger) I was able to track down an archive of the original Usenet post.
gorgoiler 6y ago
This story didn’t make enough sense to really nail the issue. I’m surprised this parable is popular. Why would you build houses out of wood if the wood is transparent? It would make more sense if it were discovered years later that the police had special polarizing binoculars that let them see through the wood, which no one knew they had until it was too late and all the old mud huts had been phased out. Also, describing someone as a “paint technologist” when they are anti-paint is a confusing decision for a parable: a story intended to make a complex issue easier to understand. I initially assumed they were going to have a role analogous to a cryptographer, not an anti-privacy provocateur. Perhaps having the police attempt to foil insidious flower thieves or dastardly rebel plots to undermine the government controlled potato cartel would also be more in spirit with a parable. The use of awful real life crimes (against children, even) make this a difficult one to share.

amelius 6y ago

I like the analogy but I don't think it works. Basically the bad guys get a huge advantage (secure, in fact unbreakable communications over long distances) while the good guys have to live by 1800s rules? I think every new impactful tech requires a reevaluation of laws to keep the balance from tipping in the wrong direction.

jjoonathan 6y ago
Yes, but so far it has been a unchecked power grab. The balance has tipped in the wrong direction, because both extremes are the wrong direction. That's how balance works. If we push back against the power grab and come up with a compromise, then we can call it a reevaluation and throw around the word "balance." I also object to your wording around "bad guys" and "good guys." When Joe LEO wants to use the state surveillance apparatus to spy on his ex, is he a "good guy"? When the FBI mailed MLK Jr a suicide letter, was MLK the "bad guy"?