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As a US citizen you still have some semblance of rights under the constitution that dictate what the government can do.

DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
Snowden's leaks showed that the NSA was simply ignoring the 4th Amendment, and that the secret FISA court was letting the NSA do so. Theoretically, the Constitution protects you. In reality, the intelligence community acts largely in secret, and there's very little preventing them from violating the Bill of Rights. Citizens don't even know what rights they've given up until someone like Snowden spills the beans.
- temp8964 5y ago
  No. You need to understand what you are comparing to. The question is comparing US and Russia. No. It’s not the same. But you turned this question into comparing US to perfection. Yes, you are right. US is not perfection. But there is a big difference between 70 to 10, even both are not 100. What Snowden revealed does not make 70 to 10. If you think that way, you don’t understand how bad an authoritarian regime is.
  - rat9988 5y ago
    I put both russia and us at 10. Why would I rate it any better, given its past?
    - jiscariot 5y ago
      In the US the press can be openly antagonistic toward the government without reprisal beyond maybe having a WH press-core pass tossed. This provides a path for whistleblowers. Could the Russian press behave toward Putin as the US press toward Trump? If so, then you can have your 10s.
      - rat9988 5y ago
        Snowden and assange have been used as example. Although, there are probably more people shut by the Russian government than by the us, by far. The thing is, the US secret services are secretive enough that non one can complain about, independently of the ability of the people to complain.
      - juanani 5y ago
  - DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
    Putting a numeric value on this is silly. The fact is that the United States government can compel companies to aid in its surveillance (just recall when they forced Snowden's email provider to install a backdoor). Even if a company does not want to participate or is not compelled to do so, the US government has very significant capacity to break into and co-opt systems (all the way from targeted surveillance of individuals by intercepting and bugging hardware to tapping undersea cables to indiscriminately hoover up communications). So when people say that Kaspersky might be forced to go along with Russian intelligence, the same goes for American tech companies and US intelligence. There is indeed a 4th Amendment that is supposed to protect Americans, but the last two decades have shown that the government is perfectly willing to ignore that legal restriction. The US has the most extensive global surveillance system in the world. US intelligence services receive about as much funding as the entire Russian military. I have no doubt that Russia tries very hard to engage in extensive foreign surveillance, but its not in the same league as the US.
    - paulryanrogers 5y ago
      Isn't the difference that the government cannot permanently keep such compromises secret? They have to have a warrant for a limited period of time and limited scope? Illegal NSA dragnets and perjury in front of Congress notwithstanding.
    - Master_Odin 5y ago
      Yeah, I remember when the US government took Apple to court to get them to allow FBI to have a backdoor through the encryption and Apple did not capitulate, though the cases were eventually dropped. While US agencies certainly do crooked things, they do not have the capacity to force companies to do stuff under threat of violence and otherwise that Russia does with Kaspersky.
      - DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
        I also remember when: * The NSA secretly obtained access to every Verizon customer's entire call log. This was blatantly illegal (the 4th Amendment forbids general warrants), and it only came to light because of Snowden's leaks.[0] * Snowden's email provider, Lavabit, was compelled to install a backdoor that allowed the US government to read the emails of all of the provider's users. The process was supposed to be secret: the company was under a gag order. The public only found out because the founder spoke out.[1] There are many examples like this from the US (just look up "National Security Letter," or take a look at Snowden's leaks). You're citing one example in which a company successfully refused a request, but we also know from Snowden that there was mass collection on most Americans that went on for years in secret, despite the fact that it was blatantly illegal. The scale of surveillance conducted globally by US intelligence agencies is unparalleled. I'm sure Russia wishes it could collect information on the same scale, but it simply does not have the ability to do so. 0. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-reco... 1. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/20/why-did-lavabit-shut-down-snowden-email https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/20/why-di...
- lern_too_spel 5y ago
  No, Snowden's leaks show DoD lawyers working hard to justify programs under the 4th Amendment. In the fallout of the leaks, all but phone metadata collection passed muster.
  - DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
    The dragnet surveillance programs that Snowden revealed are obviously outlawed by the 4th Amendment. Of course lawyers working for these agencies will try to justify them. That's what they're paid to do. During the Bush Jr. years, lawyers for the administration also argued that torture was legal, despite the fact that it's blatantly illegal. Nevertheless, these programs are incredibly difficult to challenge in court, because the secrecy surrounding them makes even proving standing nearly impossible.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - lern_too_spel 5y ago
      There was only one extant US dragnet surveillance program in Snowden's leaks, which was the phone metadata collection, so I don't know why you have the plural. Snowden's leaks showed the lawyers' justification for that program (https://www.aclu.org/files/natsec/nsa/20130816/2009%20OIG%20Report%20on%20Bulk%20Collection.pdf https://www.aclu.org/files/natsec/nsa/20130816/2009%20OIG%20...) which said that the data does not fall under Fourth Amendment protection by Supreme Court precedent, and it was never ruled unconstitutional, only exceeding the law that the government claimed had authorized it.
      - DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
        Snowden's leaks revealed several mass surveillance, including PRISM, XKeyscore and Tempora. As for the (un)constitutionality of mass collection of Americans' call records, here's what Reuters[0] says: > In a ruling handed down on Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said the warrantless telephone dragnet that secretly collected millions of Americans' telephone records violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and may well have been unconstitutional. The court did not make any ruling on the Constitutionality of the NSA's mass surveillance program, but they wrote in their decision that it very likely was Unconstitutional.[1] Historically speaking, this NSA program is exactly the type of search that the 4th Amendment was intended to prevent. Americans were upset about "writs of assistance" that gave colonial officials wide powers to conduct searches against classes of people. That's why the 4th Amendment requires warrants to be specific and limited in scope. Handing out warrants that allow authorities to collect call logs of millions of Americans is blatantly Unconstitutional, and is exactly the sort of thing the 4th Amendment was intended to put a stop to. 0. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nsa-spying-idUSKBN25T3CK https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nsa-spying-idUSKBN25T... 1. https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/09/02/13-50572.pdf https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/09/02/1...
berdario 5y ago
That's nice for some people, but is cf141q5325 even a US citizen? I'm not, so from that point of view US companies cannot offer many guarantees to me
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

Snowden's leaks showed that the NSA was simply ignoring the 4th Amendment, and that the secret FISA court was letting the NSA do so. Theoretically, the Constitution protects you. In reality, the intelligence community acts largely in secret, and there's very little preventing them from violating the Bill of Rights. Citizens don't even know what rights they've given up until someone like Snowden spills the beans.

temp8964 5y ago
No. You need to understand what you are comparing to. The question is comparing US and Russia. No. It’s not the same. But you turned this question into comparing US to perfection. Yes, you are right. US is not perfection. But there is a big difference between 70 to 10, even both are not 100. What Snowden revealed does not make 70 to 10. If you think that way, you don’t understand how bad an authoritarian regime is.
- rat9988 5y ago
  I put both russia and us at 10. Why would I rate it any better, given its past?
  - jiscariot 5y ago
    In the US the press can be openly antagonistic toward the government without reprisal beyond maybe having a WH press-core pass tossed. This provides a path for whistleblowers. Could the Russian press behave toward Putin as the US press toward Trump? If so, then you can have your 10s.
    - rat9988 5y ago
      Snowden and assange have been used as example. Although, there are probably more people shut by the Russian government than by the us, by far. The thing is, the US secret services are secretive enough that non one can complain about, independently of the ability of the people to complain.
    - juanani 5y ago
- DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
  Putting a numeric value on this is silly. The fact is that the United States government can compel companies to aid in its surveillance (just recall when they forced Snowden's email provider to install a backdoor). Even if a company does not want to participate or is not compelled to do so, the US government has very significant capacity to break into and co-opt systems (all the way from targeted surveillance of individuals by intercepting and bugging hardware to tapping undersea cables to indiscriminately hoover up communications). So when people say that Kaspersky might be forced to go along with Russian intelligence, the same goes for American tech companies and US intelligence. There is indeed a 4th Amendment that is supposed to protect Americans, but the last two decades have shown that the government is perfectly willing to ignore that legal restriction. The US has the most extensive global surveillance system in the world. US intelligence services receive about as much funding as the entire Russian military. I have no doubt that Russia tries very hard to engage in extensive foreign surveillance, but its not in the same league as the US.
  - paulryanrogers 5y ago
    Isn't the difference that the government cannot permanently keep such compromises secret? They have to have a warrant for a limited period of time and limited scope? Illegal NSA dragnets and perjury in front of Congress notwithstanding.
  - Master_Odin 5y ago
    Yeah, I remember when the US government took Apple to court to get them to allow FBI to have a backdoor through the encryption and Apple did not capitulate, though the cases were eventually dropped. While US agencies certainly do crooked things, they do not have the capacity to force companies to do stuff under threat of violence and otherwise that Russia does with Kaspersky.
    - DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
      I also remember when: * The NSA secretly obtained access to every Verizon customer's entire call log. This was blatantly illegal (the 4th Amendment forbids general warrants), and it only came to light because of Snowden's leaks.[0] * Snowden's email provider, Lavabit, was compelled to install a backdoor that allowed the US government to read the emails of all of the provider's users. The process was supposed to be secret: the company was under a gag order. The public only found out because the founder spoke out.[1] There are many examples like this from the US (just look up "National Security Letter," or take a look at Snowden's leaks). You're citing one example in which a company successfully refused a request, but we also know from Snowden that there was mass collection on most Americans that went on for years in secret, despite the fact that it was blatantly illegal. The scale of surveillance conducted globally by US intelligence agencies is unparalleled. I'm sure Russia wishes it could collect information on the same scale, but it simply does not have the ability to do so. 0. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-reco... 1. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/20/why-did-lavabit-shut-down-snowden-email https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/20/why-di...
lern_too_spel 5y ago
No, Snowden's leaks show DoD lawyers working hard to justify programs under the 4th Amendment. In the fallout of the leaks, all but phone metadata collection passed muster.
- DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
  The dragnet surveillance programs that Snowden revealed are obviously outlawed by the 4th Amendment. Of course lawyers working for these agencies will try to justify them. That's what they're paid to do. During the Bush Jr. years, lawyers for the administration also argued that torture was legal, despite the fact that it's blatantly illegal. Nevertheless, these programs are incredibly difficult to challenge in court, because the secrecy surrounding them makes even proving standing nearly impossible.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - lern_too_spel 5y ago
    There was only one extant US dragnet surveillance program in Snowden's leaks, which was the phone metadata collection, so I don't know why you have the plural. Snowden's leaks showed the lawyers' justification for that program (https://www.aclu.org/files/natsec/nsa/20130816/2009%20OIG%20Report%20on%20Bulk%20Collection.pdf https://www.aclu.org/files/natsec/nsa/20130816/2009%20OIG%20...) which said that the data does not fall under Fourth Amendment protection by Supreme Court precedent, and it was never ruled unconstitutional, only exceeding the law that the government claimed had authorized it.
    - DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
      Snowden's leaks revealed several mass surveillance, including PRISM, XKeyscore and Tempora. As for the (un)constitutionality of mass collection of Americans' call records, here's what Reuters[0] says: > In a ruling handed down on Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said the warrantless telephone dragnet that secretly collected millions of Americans' telephone records violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and may well have been unconstitutional. The court did not make any ruling on the Constitutionality of the NSA's mass surveillance program, but they wrote in their decision that it very likely was Unconstitutional.[1] Historically speaking, this NSA program is exactly the type of search that the 4th Amendment was intended to prevent. Americans were upset about "writs of assistance" that gave colonial officials wide powers to conduct searches against classes of people. That's why the 4th Amendment requires warrants to be specific and limited in scope. Handing out warrants that allow authorities to collect call logs of millions of Americans is blatantly Unconstitutional, and is exactly the sort of thing the 4th Amendment was intended to put a stop to. 0. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nsa-spying-idUSKBN25T3CK https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nsa-spying-idUSKBN25T... 1. https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/09/02/13-50572.pdf https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/09/02/1...

berdario 5y ago

That's nice for some people, but is cf141q5325 even a US citizen? I'm not, so from that point of view US companies cannot offer many guarantees to me

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]