4 ms·
Of all the people to be concerned about mass surveillance, I'm not sure why "an encyclopedia anyone can edit" would be the group to have standing here.
by powera 4y ago
Of all the people to be concerned about mass surveillance, I'm not sure why "an encyclopedia anyone can edit" would be the group to have standing here.
- convolvatron 4y ago_anyone_ should have standing here
- ClarityJones 4y agoPart of the purpose of standing it to prevent "friendly lawsuits." If _anyone_ can challenge a law simply because they claim to be opposed to the law, then people who support the law could establish favorable precedent by mounting a flawed challenge that's designed to fail. Standing does not _fully_ prevent this. Sometimes a person may want to plead guilty to conduct that is not a crime, or intentionally lose and serve a few years in prison if the state has agreed to not prosecute them on charges that would land them several decades. However, it's a somewhat useful ~"you have to have some skin in the game if you're going to participate in making the rules."
- convolvatron 4y agoif the NSA is illegally surveilling the entire US population, how is it that you say that they have no skin in the game.
- selectodude 4y agoYou have to show measurable harm beyond "I don't like it", basically.
- sebzim4500 4y agoIf courts don't think that being spied upon gives you standing for a lawsuit, doesn't that completely defeat the point of the fourth amendment?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ClarityJones 4y agoSo, I skimmed the recent 4th Circuit opinion (copied below). Ultimately the NSA won on the state secrets doctrine. However, as it relates to standing the gist is that Wikimedia only proved that the NSA had the capacity to copy their communications, but the NSA showed they had the technical capacity to perform the operations without copying Wikimedia's communications. I.e. Even though the NSA tapped the backbones, they could filter out what they did and didn't review / copy independently from Wikimedia's communications... Is that true, IDK. I haven't reviewed the evidence. Quote: Both parties have focused their discussion of Wikimedia's standing on the three prongs necessary to establish the Wikimedia Allegation,[32] which were enumerated in the Fourth Circuit's remand order in this case. See Wikimedia Found., 857 F.3d at 210-11. The three prongs are: (A) Wikimedia's communications almost certainly traverse every international Internet backbone 601*601 link connecting the United States with the rest of the world; (B) the NSA conducts Upstream surveillance at one or more points along the Internet backbone; and (C) the NSA, for technical reasons, must be copying and reviewing all the text-based communications that travel across a given Internet backbone link upon which it conducts Upstream surveillance. Together, these three prongs would establish that the NSA has copied and collected some of Wikimedia's communications in the course of the NSA's Upstream surveillance program, thereby providing Wikimedia standing to sue here. The sufficiency of the evidence with respect to each of these prongs is discussed in detail below. The summary judgment record contains specific facts which show no genuine dispute as to the veracity of the first two prongs of the Wikimedia Allegation. With respect to the third prong, however, the summary judgment factual record contains specific facts that establish, without a genuine dispute of material fact, that the NSA, in the course of Upstream surveillance, does not need to be copying any of Wikimedia's communications as a technological necessity. Thus, the summary judgment record does not contain the facts necessary for Wikimedia to establish standing at summary judgment via the Wikimedia Allegation.
- mschuster91 4y agoEven data about who is reading what is insanely valuable to three-letter dataminers. Someone who searches for known drug precursor chemicals? Potential next Walter White, put him on automated surveillance to check if he buys stuff. Someone searching for known explosives precursor chemicals? Potential next Islamist or far-right terrorist, flag them. The list goes on and on, and these scenarios are no longer science fiction - once you have the data, it's easy to create such automations. Wikipedia even provides helpful classification with its category system.
- deelowe 4y agoParallel construction is the thing that worries me the most. One agency picks up on interesting search traffic, another one has a lead from an interview, another has location data from cellphone logs. Then, someone sits down and constructs a case knowing that these details will come to light in a trial and incriminate the suspect. All the while, there were no warrants, no charges, nothing, until all the pieces of the case had already been pulled together. This is not how the system was designed to work.
- colpabar 4y ago> The American Civil Liberties Union, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, and the law firm Cooley LLP represented the Wikimedia Foundation in the litigation.
- bawolff 4y agoYou could read their legal briefs to find out, but i think the argument is basically by the pigeon hole principle, the NSA could not possibly not have been spying on them because Wikipedia is so large it is impossible to not spy on them when doing mass internet surveilence.
- sublinear 4y ago> permits the government to intercept Americans’ international communications without a warrant, so long as it is targeting individuals located outside the U.S. for foreign intelligence purposes. Section 702 will expire later this year unless it is reauthorized by Congress. It's also important to point out what's actually being challenged. Either section 702 needs to be made a lot more complicated, or they just continue business as usual. Not surprising which path they want to take.
- zapataband1 4y agoi'm guessing they don't want their users surveilled
- __MatrixMan__ 4y agoIf I ran a platform like theirs I'd also do everything I can to prevent misbehaving governments from targeting my users based on which pages they've viewed.
- jesboat 4y agoFrom TFA: > This government surveillance has had a measurable chilling effect on Wikipedia users, with research documenting a drop in traffic to Wikipedia articles on sensitive topics, following public revelations about the NSA’s mass surveillance in 2013.
- powera 4y agoThis is ridiculous. I'm getting downvoted for this, despite the various comments demonstrating that they aren't sure why WMF is involved either. My recollection from reading about this way back in 2016 was that it was about communication between WMF employees, not user data. And to have standing, they should be demonstrating harm, not just saying "the technical ability to spy on our communications exists".
- ff317 4y agoIt was and is about user traffic, not employees. WMF was at least implied to be one of the specific targets, because NSA had the Wikipedia logo on some slides about this program which were leaked by Snowden. Also, there was research showing the "chilling effect" - controversial articles saw less traffic in the wake of said leaks.