5 ms·

What i don't understand is why if it's illegal and forbidden for the government to directly indiscriminately collect information and data on citizens, they can

by mc32 3y ago

What i don't understand is why if it's illegal and forbidden for the government to directly indiscriminately collect information and data on citizens, they can buy the same information from data brokers without an issue? Surely this violates the intent of the law.

shadowgovt 3y ago
The intent of the law was to limit government power specifically. Not unlike the law requiring most of the information on firearm sales at the federal level be kept in paper format so that it can't easily be mass-indexed and mass-crawled.
- Sai_ 3y ago
  Maybe the world needs an NRA type agency for privacy - strident and extremist in scope so that the government invariably wilts before it.
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    The NRA is backed by an ardent following of funders who sincerely believe curtailment of their ownership of firearms is an immediate and direct existential threat. That's what privacy is missing. But get the right ad agencies on it to put together some good scare campaigns and maybe.
number6 3y ago
Maybe they just want to check if it is dangerous for the security of the US? Someone could blackmail the president or a senator with this data
- autoexec 3y ago
  I'm sure that's already happening. Nixon would have killed for the kind of data our government is collecting and when this data is turned against citizens the Neo-McCarthyist witch-hunts will be devastating.
aidenn0 3y ago
In theory, the data was provided willingly when collected. If you rent a locker, and the terms of the rental agreement say that the person you're renting from has access to the locker for any reason, then the cops do not need a warrant to ask the lessor to open the locker, only a warrant to coerce the lessor to open the locker. If the lessor is willing to let anybody take a picture of what is in the locker for $5, then the government doing so isn't abusing its special privilege. In practice, most people do not understand the ramifications of the things they agreed to that put this data out there (if they even read it!) and in many cases did not have reasonable alternatives to the services that they signed up for.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  In Europe it doesn't work like that. There you give consent to collect for a specific purpose and for any other purpose you need to go back to the source for another round of consent. This is something that many companies haven't implemented properly yet (but a surprisingly large number actually do).
  - isaacremuant 3y ago
    And in reality, every process is a kafkean bureocratic nightmare were you end up having to say yes in order to advance and they milk your data anyway while also using privacy rethoric to prevent citizens from getting gov transparency. The typical powerful west European countries are corrupt to the core and when people feel we are better off than in the US (self congratulatory posts are common) it's generally lack of political awareness and involvement more than anything.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      In reality, it just mostly works. Source: ample experience with European (no idea why you added 'West') companies that deal with my data. Since the GDPR has gone 'live' (as in: fines are being issued for non-compliance) the situation is improving every day.
      - 3y ago
jacquesm 3y ago
There are a ton of 'workarounds' like that in play, parallel construction being one of the most extreme ones. It's interesting how these invariably work very well when it is the government in the position of the plaintiff but citizens will never ever see the benefit of any of this. Cameras everywhere, but good luck if your car gets stolen. Meanwhile all of your movements are tracked with abandon, ANPR on every second street and so on. Privacy is very hard to come by. At the same time: I sympathize with LE and intelligence service operators that have their heart in the right place and that would just like to be able to do their jobs in a hostile and hard to navigate digital environment. Tech moves so much faster than they can keep up with.
- mc32 3y ago
  If law enforcement has a reason to obtain data, they should be able to get a warrant to obtain data for people of direct interest. But especially the federal gov should not be able to have data that they cannot legally obtain directly from the population. What good is a law and right of the population, if it can be trivially circumvented? Having data on everyone and then only using it against people they want to use it against is exactly what the Stasi did. Obviously this is their dream come true --just a little to late for them.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Agreed, but this is something that has been going on for decades. Their excuse - believe it or not, I can dig up the source if you want - is that as long as nobody looks at the data it is ok to have it. I thought that was being incredibly economical with words, clearly that is not the intent of the law.
    - mc32 3y ago
      It's ironic that this is what all repressive governments do. They hold data and when they need it they spring it. But I guess this escapes them -or maybe not.
      - 3y ago
freefaler 3y ago
The government has the monopoly to violence, Google does not. The cops can arrest you, Netflix can't. That's why information in government hands can be more dangerous than in corporate. A good example is when Nazis occupied Holland they used governmental data on religion (collected to properly allocate funds for places of worship) to track jews and send them to the camps. So data in corporate hands is bad, but governmental data can be even worse.
- cmilton 3y ago
  And this is why the constitution is in place. To prevent the government from overstepping.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    It needs to start doing a better job then, cause it looks like it's asleep on the job
    - cmilton 3y ago
      The people have to wield its power. It won’t act on its own.
  - isaacremuant 3y ago
    Constitutions around the world were absolutely trampled under the guise of an axiomatically defined emergency that trumped fundamental freedoms and civil rights. Freedom of movement, association, speech, religion, bodily autonomy and more... All down the drain. All you need is a bit of collision between government media and tech and you're golden.
  - thumbuddy 3y ago
    The constitution was written a long time ago and really says nothing about information technology for obvious reasons. The fact that we don't have amendments for a lot of modern issues is a scary thing for the general population.
- dejavuthrowaway 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
coldtea 3y ago
The intents of those enforcing the law is more powerful predictive of what will happen in practice than any intent of the law itself...
nonethewiser 3y ago
It absolutely does. Hopefully this gets brought to court.
majormajor 3y ago
You "agree" to give cnn.com (or whoever) the information when you visit their site through stupid TOS BS. You also "agree" that they can sell it. Law says don't collect the data through surveillance. Law doesn't say "don't buy it from people selling it willingly" - probably nobody anticipated that, because... it sounds kinda stupid if you don't know how we got here... yet here we are. So instead of trying to lawyerball it to make courts declare that it somehow falls under current restrictions, based on intent vs the actual words, we just need to update the damn laws.

by mc32 3y ago

shadowgovt 3y ago

The intent of the law was to limit government power specifically. Not unlike the law requiring most of the information on firearm sales at the federal level be kept in paper format so that it can't easily be mass-indexed and mass-crawled.

Sai_ 3y ago
Maybe the world needs an NRA type agency for privacy - strident and extremist in scope so that the government invariably wilts before it.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  The NRA is backed by an ardent following of funders who sincerely believe curtailment of their ownership of firearms is an immediate and direct existential threat. That's what privacy is missing. But get the right ad agencies on it to put together some good scare campaigns and maybe.

number6 3y ago

Maybe they just want to check if it is dangerous for the security of the US? Someone could blackmail the president or a senator with this data

autoexec 3y ago
I'm sure that's already happening. Nixon would have killed for the kind of data our government is collecting and when this data is turned against citizens the Neo-McCarthyist witch-hunts will be devastating.

aidenn0 3y ago

In theory, the data was provided willingly when collected. If you rent a locker, and the terms of the rental agreement say that the person you're renting from has access to the locker for any reason, then the cops do not need a warrant to ask the lessor to open the locker, only a warrant to coerce the lessor to open the locker. If the lessor is willing to let anybody take a picture of what is in the locker for $5, then the government doing so isn't abusing its special privilege. In practice, most people do not understand the ramifications of the things they agreed to that put this data out there (if they even read it!) and in many cases did not have reasonable alternatives to the services that they signed up for.

jacquesm 3y ago
In Europe it doesn't work like that. There you give consent to collect for a specific purpose and for any other purpose you need to go back to the source for another round of consent. This is something that many companies haven't implemented properly yet (but a surprisingly large number actually do).
- isaacremuant 3y ago
  And in reality, every process is a kafkean bureocratic nightmare were you end up having to say yes in order to advance and they milk your data anyway while also using privacy rethoric to prevent citizens from getting gov transparency. The typical powerful west European countries are corrupt to the core and when people feel we are better off than in the US (self congratulatory posts are common) it's generally lack of political awareness and involvement more than anything.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    In reality, it just mostly works. Source: ample experience with European (no idea why you added 'West') companies that deal with my data. Since the GDPR has gone 'live' (as in: fines are being issued for non-compliance) the situation is improving every day.
    - 3y ago

jacquesm 3y ago

There are a ton of 'workarounds' like that in play, parallel construction being one of the most extreme ones. It's interesting how these invariably work very well when it is the government in the position of the plaintiff but citizens will never ever see the benefit of any of this. Cameras everywhere, but good luck if your car gets stolen. Meanwhile all of your movements are tracked with abandon, ANPR on every second street and so on. Privacy is very hard to come by. At the same time: I sympathize with LE and intelligence service operators that have their heart in the right place and that would just like to be able to do their jobs in a hostile and hard to navigate digital environment. Tech moves so much faster than they can keep up with.

mc32 3y ago
If law enforcement has a reason to obtain data, they should be able to get a warrant to obtain data for people of direct interest. But especially the federal gov should not be able to have data that they cannot legally obtain directly from the population. What good is a law and right of the population, if it can be trivially circumvented? Having data on everyone and then only using it against people they want to use it against is exactly what the Stasi did. Obviously this is their dream come true --just a little to late for them.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Agreed, but this is something that has been going on for decades. Their excuse - believe it or not, I can dig up the source if you want - is that as long as nobody looks at the data it is ok to have it. I thought that was being incredibly economical with words, clearly that is not the intent of the law.
  - mc32 3y ago
    It's ironic that this is what all repressive governments do. They hold data and when they need it they spring it. But I guess this escapes them -or maybe not.
    - 3y ago

freefaler 3y ago

The government has the monopoly to violence, Google does not. The cops can arrest you, Netflix can't. That's why information in government hands can be more dangerous than in corporate. A good example is when Nazis occupied Holland they used governmental data on religion (collected to properly allocate funds for places of worship) to track jews and send them to the camps. So data in corporate hands is bad, but governmental data can be even worse.

cmilton 3y ago
And this is why the constitution is in place. To prevent the government from overstepping.
- dylan604 3y ago
  It needs to start doing a better job then, cause it looks like it's asleep on the job
  - cmilton 3y ago
    The people have to wield its power. It won’t act on its own.
- isaacremuant 3y ago
  Constitutions around the world were absolutely trampled under the guise of an axiomatically defined emergency that trumped fundamental freedoms and civil rights. Freedom of movement, association, speech, religion, bodily autonomy and more... All down the drain. All you need is a bit of collision between government media and tech and you're golden.
- thumbuddy 3y ago
  The constitution was written a long time ago and really says nothing about information technology for obvious reasons. The fact that we don't have amendments for a lot of modern issues is a scary thing for the general population.
dejavuthrowaway 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

coldtea 3y ago

The intents of those enforcing the law is more powerful predictive of what will happen in practice than any intent of the law itself...

nonethewiser 3y ago

It absolutely does. Hopefully this gets brought to court.

majormajor 3y ago

You "agree" to give cnn.com (or whoever) the information when you visit their site through stupid TOS BS. You also "agree" that they can sell it. Law says don't collect the data through surveillance. Law doesn't say "don't buy it from people selling it willingly" - probably nobody anticipated that, because... it sounds kinda stupid if you don't know how we got here... yet here we are. So instead of trying to lawyerball it to make courts declare that it somehow falls under current restrictions, based on intent vs the actual words, we just need to update the damn laws.