5 ms·

How about passing a law explicitly covering the kind of information being collected and sold as actually being private, and against the law to share with anyone

How about passing a law explicitly covering the kind of information being collected and sold as actually being private, and against the law to share with anyone without a warrant?

cm2187 3y ago
Intelligence agencies' very role is to break laws.
- konschubert 3y ago
  I think they are explicitly exempt from certain laws. This doesn’t mean they are above the law. And maybe they break the law and keep getting away with it. But this doesn’t mean that’s how they are meant to work.
- 9dev 3y ago
  An intelligence agency’s role is gathering intelligence on malevolent entities that threaten a country in some way. Not more, not less—but their role certainly isn’t breaking laws per se, or amassing data on the general public to engage in pre-policing. No matter how much certain parties may advocate for that, a democracy cannot exist in a surveillance state, and anyone convinced of that has lost democratic legitimacy.
  - cm2187 3y ago
    They equally gather information on friendly democracies, bribe or blackmail people, hack computers, they are involved in trade negotiations, watch what all the parties are doing in civil wars, etc. It's not a good guys vs bad guys, good vs evil thing. They are a limited exception to democratic governments abiding to the rule of law. They are hired thugs, "our thugs". And I am not disputing that they are necessary. Just that it is a bit naive to think people whose job it is to break laws all day long will abide to another law. That's why they tend to be scandals rich organisations.
    - 9dev 3y ago
      What is considered malevolent is obviously dependent on the perspective, but we cannot accept agencies without any oversight or control, that will always lead to a shadow government. Which leads me to my point: we need to be extra vigilant when it comes to the mandate of intelligence agencies.
    - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
      Gathering information on friendly democracies, or watching what all the parties are doing in civil wars, is not a violation of US law. Espionage between states is rarely a violation of the law of the state that is doing the espionage. The “friendly democracies” on which the US spies, are in turn gathering information on the states they consider friendly democracies.
- insickness 3y ago
  That's not true at all. Intelligence agencies can't just do whatever they want. They are beholden to the people just like every other government agency. They can be granted power to do things that ordinary people can't, but that doesn't mean they are above the law.
  - School-Cotton 3y ago
    Yes they can do whatever they want and no they’re not beholden to anyone. When has the NSA ever been held accountable for their illegal spying on US citizens?
    - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
      They're beholden to Congress funding them, if nothing else.
    - insickness 3y ago
      Right, I'm not saying that they don't break the law. They do. But technically, their role is not to break the law. There ostensibly is oversight but it obviously doesn't work well enough.
  - adhesive_wombat 3y ago
    Indeed. Being granted exclusive powers that would otherwise be illegal must always be given the respect it deserves: use of powers only when and as far absolutely necessary and reporting of and punishment of transgressions, intentional or not. There is nothing more morally corrosive than a law enforcement agency betraying the trust represented by their powers.
  - cedws 3y ago
    The NSA has literally broken laws, lied about it, and gotten away with it.
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      Technically not, they just had secret courts rubber stamp for them. In the most technical sense it's legal though of course it subverts the entire idea of the justice system by having a court in your pocket.
- phkahler 3y ago
  To the extent that maybe it is, it should be other countries laws. Nobody has the authority to grant such law breaking permission (without a warrant). When you break the rules establishing a system, you no longer have that system, but a free for all. The US constitution in particular aims to protect the people from government overreach. See the original amendments and read them in that light.
  - cm2187 3y ago
    Even from a pure legalistic point of view, US laws have extraordinary extra territorial reach. I believe if a bribe occurs between two foreigners in a foreign country, the mere fact that they used USD for payment brings it within US jurisdiction. And certainly if a US citizen is involved.
gred 3y ago
My guess is that this will probably require a Constitutional Amendment to shore up the fourth amendment (call it 4A++).
- insickness 3y ago
  It won't. There are already laws in place, like the California Consumer Privacy Act, which governs how user data is handled.
  - stjohnswarts 3y ago
    California law never supercedes federal law unless it's even more strict.
  - phkahler 3y ago
    And HIPPA.
    - nathanaldensr 3y ago
      *HIPAA
School-Cotton 3y ago
The NSA doesn’t follow the law, so why would that matter?
- tempodox 3y ago
  And when questioned, they lie to courts and Congress with impunity.
  - SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
    Clapper and Brennan should absolutely be in jail. Instead, they are still treated as respectable authorities by our media.
    - creer 3y ago
      Which most likely is part of the problem. There is no major outcry about any of this. It's a mere inconvenience to agencies, congress, courts, press, etc - nobody seems to care much about it.
- rtpg 3y ago
  People say this but probably underestimate how much the NSA at least pretends to follow the letter of the law compared to intelligence services in almost any other nation on the planet. Them following the law is entirely downstream from Congress doing things like what Wyden is doing. Their existence is predicated on congressional satisfaction, and many congresspeople are at least fellow travellers to the practical frustrations many people on this site have with the NSA. It's never enough, but it's _something_. Meanwhile plenty of countries just have their intelligence services tucked away, out of the spotlight, and with barely any legal framework to bind them.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    > Them following the law is entirely downstream from Congress doing things like what Wyden is doing. Their existence is predicated on congressional satisfaction The director of the NSA outright lied to congress while under oath and has faced zero consequences for it. There is zero meaningful oversight in the US and congress is absolutely powerless to do anything but bitch and moan about it publicly just like the rest of the American people. That was what drove Snowden to finally leak what he knew. He saw that congress had no means of knowing what was happening and therefore they couldn't do anything to stop it. Not even the president can do anything about the NSA. Obama campaigned on ending the mass surveillance of the American people. Presidential candidates tell a lot of lies while trying to get elected, and Obama was an effective orator, but he was also a civil rights attorney and taught constitutional law. I believed he meant what he was saying when he said that the NSA was ignoring the law whenever it was convent for them, and that he would oppose any bill that included retroactive immunity for telecom companies that were handing over American's data to the NSA illegally. Of course, once he got into office everything changed and he very quickly spoke out in favor in the NSA, he vastly expanded their powers to spy on Americans, and he granted immunity to those same telecom companies. I figure that means that once he was elected the NSA showed Obama some super secret information that convinced him that violating the constitution was necessary or perhaps he was shown exactly how much dirt they had on him and his family and he was threatened to fall in line. Either way, it doesn't appear that anyone at any level of government can oppose the NSA in a meaningful way.
GuB-42 3y ago
These data are probably legally collected and sold, as mentioned in page 573 of the terms and conditions users have agreed with.
- TacticalCoder 3y ago
  > ... as mentioned in page 573 of the terms and conditions users have agreed with Except that it's not how EULA do work. If it's made illegal by law (which GP suggess), then lawyers writing these EULAs can write anything they want in fineprint: it's not superseding the law.
  - GuB-42 3y ago
    You can't make this blanket illegal. For example, if you buy something online, the seller will need to share your address with the delivery company, unless they do the delivery themselves, with is impractical most of the times. So you can make laws regarding the transfer of personal information, but these are bound to be really complicated, just look at GDPR.
    - beAbU 3y ago
      But that's not the same? The online retailer is /giving/ my address to the courier. Without it the retailer nor the courier will be able to give me the service/product I'm paying for. I think it's perfectly fine to make ‐reselling‐ of personal data blanket illegal. Since it's my data, I might have consented to giving the data to someone for some purpose. However, they absolutely have no implied consent that they can sell that data to someone else, no matter what their EULA says. If they want to sell it, then I need to get a dividend of that sale revenue, since it's my data. This is not a physical good that's changing owners. It will always be irrevocably linked to /me/. That's what makes it valuable. So the owner of that data will forever and always be me, no matter who "bought" it. Exactly the same way that buying a digital game does not make me an owner of that copy, but merely the owner of a perpetual-yet-revokable license to play the game on my sanctioned console.
      - 3y ago

How about passing a law explicitly covering the kind of information being collected and sold as actually being private, and against the law to share with anyone without a warrant?

cm2187 3y ago

Intelligence agencies' very role is to break laws.

konschubert 3y ago
I think they are explicitly exempt from certain laws. This doesn’t mean they are above the law. And maybe they break the law and keep getting away with it. But this doesn’t mean that’s how they are meant to work.
9dev 3y ago
An intelligence agency’s role is gathering intelligence on malevolent entities that threaten a country in some way. Not more, not less—but their role certainly isn’t breaking laws per se, or amassing data on the general public to engage in pre-policing. No matter how much certain parties may advocate for that, a democracy cannot exist in a surveillance state, and anyone convinced of that has lost democratic legitimacy.
- cm2187 3y ago
  They equally gather information on friendly democracies, bribe or blackmail people, hack computers, they are involved in trade negotiations, watch what all the parties are doing in civil wars, etc. It's not a good guys vs bad guys, good vs evil thing. They are a limited exception to democratic governments abiding to the rule of law. They are hired thugs, "our thugs". And I am not disputing that they are necessary. Just that it is a bit naive to think people whose job it is to break laws all day long will abide to another law. That's why they tend to be scandals rich organisations.
  - 9dev 3y ago
    What is considered malevolent is obviously dependent on the perspective, but we cannot accept agencies without any oversight or control, that will always lead to a shadow government. Which leads me to my point: we need to be extra vigilant when it comes to the mandate of intelligence agencies.
  - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
    Gathering information on friendly democracies, or watching what all the parties are doing in civil wars, is not a violation of US law. Espionage between states is rarely a violation of the law of the state that is doing the espionage. The “friendly democracies” on which the US spies, are in turn gathering information on the states they consider friendly democracies.
insickness 3y ago
That's not true at all. Intelligence agencies can't just do whatever they want. They are beholden to the people just like every other government agency. They can be granted power to do things that ordinary people can't, but that doesn't mean they are above the law.
- School-Cotton 3y ago
  Yes they can do whatever they want and no they’re not beholden to anyone. When has the NSA ever been held accountable for their illegal spying on US citizens?
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    They're beholden to Congress funding them, if nothing else.
  - insickness 3y ago
    Right, I'm not saying that they don't break the law. They do. But technically, their role is not to break the law. There ostensibly is oversight but it obviously doesn't work well enough.
- adhesive_wombat 3y ago
  Indeed. Being granted exclusive powers that would otherwise be illegal must always be given the respect it deserves: use of powers only when and as far absolutely necessary and reporting of and punishment of transgressions, intentional or not. There is nothing more morally corrosive than a law enforcement agency betraying the trust represented by their powers.
- cedws 3y ago
  The NSA has literally broken laws, lied about it, and gotten away with it.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Technically not, they just had secret courts rubber stamp for them. In the most technical sense it's legal though of course it subverts the entire idea of the justice system by having a court in your pocket.
phkahler 3y ago
To the extent that maybe it is, it should be other countries laws. Nobody has the authority to grant such law breaking permission (without a warrant). When you break the rules establishing a system, you no longer have that system, but a free for all. The US constitution in particular aims to protect the people from government overreach. See the original amendments and read them in that light.
- cm2187 3y ago
  Even from a pure legalistic point of view, US laws have extraordinary extra territorial reach. I believe if a bribe occurs between two foreigners in a foreign country, the mere fact that they used USD for payment brings it within US jurisdiction. And certainly if a US citizen is involved.

gred 3y ago

My guess is that this will probably require a Constitutional Amendment to shore up the fourth amendment (call it 4A++).

insickness 3y ago
It won't. There are already laws in place, like the California Consumer Privacy Act, which governs how user data is handled.
- stjohnswarts 3y ago
  California law never supercedes federal law unless it's even more strict.
- phkahler 3y ago
  And HIPPA.
  - nathanaldensr 3y ago
    *HIPAA

School-Cotton 3y ago

The NSA doesn’t follow the law, so why would that matter?

tempodox 3y ago
And when questioned, they lie to courts and Congress with impunity.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
  Clapper and Brennan should absolutely be in jail. Instead, they are still treated as respectable authorities by our media.
  - creer 3y ago
    Which most likely is part of the problem. There is no major outcry about any of this. It's a mere inconvenience to agencies, congress, courts, press, etc - nobody seems to care much about it.
rtpg 3y ago
People say this but probably underestimate how much the NSA at least pretends to follow the letter of the law compared to intelligence services in almost any other nation on the planet. Them following the law is entirely downstream from Congress doing things like what Wyden is doing. Their existence is predicated on congressional satisfaction, and many congresspeople are at least fellow travellers to the practical frustrations many people on this site have with the NSA. It's never enough, but it's _something_. Meanwhile plenty of countries just have their intelligence services tucked away, out of the spotlight, and with barely any legal framework to bind them.
- autoexec 3y ago
  > Them following the law is entirely downstream from Congress doing things like what Wyden is doing. Their existence is predicated on congressional satisfaction The director of the NSA outright lied to congress while under oath and has faced zero consequences for it. There is zero meaningful oversight in the US and congress is absolutely powerless to do anything but bitch and moan about it publicly just like the rest of the American people. That was what drove Snowden to finally leak what he knew. He saw that congress had no means of knowing what was happening and therefore they couldn't do anything to stop it. Not even the president can do anything about the NSA. Obama campaigned on ending the mass surveillance of the American people. Presidential candidates tell a lot of lies while trying to get elected, and Obama was an effective orator, but he was also a civil rights attorney and taught constitutional law. I believed he meant what he was saying when he said that the NSA was ignoring the law whenever it was convent for them, and that he would oppose any bill that included retroactive immunity for telecom companies that were handing over American's data to the NSA illegally. Of course, once he got into office everything changed and he very quickly spoke out in favor in the NSA, he vastly expanded their powers to spy on Americans, and he granted immunity to those same telecom companies. I figure that means that once he was elected the NSA showed Obama some super secret information that convinced him that violating the constitution was necessary or perhaps he was shown exactly how much dirt they had on him and his family and he was threatened to fall in line. Either way, it doesn't appear that anyone at any level of government can oppose the NSA in a meaningful way.

GuB-42 3y ago

These data are probably legally collected and sold, as mentioned in page 573 of the terms and conditions users have agreed with.

TacticalCoder 3y ago
> ... as mentioned in page 573 of the terms and conditions users have agreed with Except that it's not how EULA do work. If it's made illegal by law (which GP suggess), then lawyers writing these EULAs can write anything they want in fineprint: it's not superseding the law.
- GuB-42 3y ago
  You can't make this blanket illegal. For example, if you buy something online, the seller will need to share your address with the delivery company, unless they do the delivery themselves, with is impractical most of the times. So you can make laws regarding the transfer of personal information, but these are bound to be really complicated, just look at GDPR.
  - beAbU 3y ago
    But that's not the same? The online retailer is /giving/ my address to the courier. Without it the retailer nor the courier will be able to give me the service/product I'm paying for. I think it's perfectly fine to make ‐reselling‐ of personal data blanket illegal. Since it's my data, I might have consented to giving the data to someone for some purpose. However, they absolutely have no implied consent that they can sell that data to someone else, no matter what their EULA says. If they want to sell it, then I need to get a dividend of that sale revenue, since it's my data. This is not a physical good that's changing owners. It will always be irrevocably linked to /me/. That's what makes it valuable. So the owner of that data will forever and always be me, no matter who "bought" it. Exactly the same way that buying a digital game does not make me an owner of that copy, but merely the owner of a perpetual-yet-revokable license to play the game on my sanctioned console.
    - 3y ago