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Federal Court (Finally) Rules Backdoor Searches of Data Unconstitutional
- josefritzishere 2y agoThis should not have been so hard.
- jmclnx 2y agoWell I guess of the the US Supreme Court. They seem to get every case these days :(
- perihelions 2y agoNo, just a district court (Eastern District of New York).
- treetalker 2y agoDon't worry: SCOTUS will determine that the Framers did not have a history and tradition of protecting metadata, so the Fourth Amendment has no application here; and, furthermore, the Court's recent jurisprudence regarding the Executive (dieu et mon droit) necessarily implies that the Government has an extremely compelling interest sufficient to overcome the Fourth Amendment and permit warrantless searches of everyone in the United States and elsewhere.
- zdragnar 2y agoMy understanding of this case has nothing to do with metadata. The communications were captured in full because one party was not a citizen in the US (under national security reasons). Those communications were then stored and made available in full via keyword based search interfaces, and those later searches were made without first securing a warrant. I'm not going to bother reading the tea leaves too closely on this one, but I'd put it at least at even odds the supreme court would say the 4th amendment does apply here.
- idrathernot 2y agoI think “metadata” is meant as an example of Barnum statement in the context of the original comment. It is very common for courts to reinterpret language as a means of getting to a specific end. Same reason that “Interstate Commerce” actually means all commerce in the 10th amendment.
- Retric 2y agoNo, a background of interstate commerce is considered to be meaningful. It’s why the Texas power grid being so isolating has meaning. However the court views a commodity as influencing and being influenced by interstate trade even if that specific gallon of oil never crossed state lines. From a purely economic standpoint it’s a reasonable take. Even Europe’s use of oil influences US oil prices let alone what happens in another state. It’s both an upside and downside of the judicial system that they take things in context.
- AnthonyMouse 2y agoThere are two problems with that. The first is that the purpose of giving "interstate commerce" to the federal government was to address the problems incident to interstate commerce, e.g. someone in New York buys something from someone in Florida and there is a dispute, but New York doesn't have jurisdiction over the seller and Florida isn't interested in protecting New York buyers from Florida sellers. The sort of general purpose economic regulations at issue in Wickard weren't intended to be in scope to begin with. And the second is that as soon as you let go of that limiting principle, you don't have a limiting principle. "Texas has its own power grid" but if Texas has lower or higher power costs then customers might be more or less inclined to locate in Texas rather than some other state and affect demand for power in some other state, so the distinction is lost and there is a practical erasure of any line at all.
- Retric 2y ago> a practical erasure of any line at all Not really the Texas power grid is hardly the only example. Banning products like say Fireworks is a much broader exception. If there’s no marker to regulate then the feds can’t get involved. This applies to more than just total bans, it’s also why California can have such influence on automobiles and Texas influences textbooks etc. You may feel there’s not enough things that fall into the exclusion, but that’s not the same thing as the exclusion not existing. > address the problems incident to interstate commerce Trademark infringement on trademarks held by an out of state entity breaks the principle you’re talking about without any sale directly crossing state lines. Same deal if some state decides to subsidize growing broccoli, and that’s ultimately what decided the issue.
- landryraccoon 2y agoCan you explain why? That doesn’t seem like sound reasoning to me. If you believe the reason is corruption, what personal incentive would the courts have to rule this way? Judges can easily be the victim of government overreach as well.
- svachalek 2y agoData is wealth and power, and today's Supreme Court will always side with wealth and power.
- Aloisius 2y agoI'm not sure what this means. The Supreme Court will side with data because it is wealth and power? What side is an inanimate object on?
- RiverCrochet 2y agoData in this case is on the side of wealth and power. You're also wrong about it being an inanimate object for two reasons. Reason A: Data is not an object but a pattern of objects or attributes of object(s) wherein the arrangement forms symbols according to a standard or protocol. Reason B: Data is quite animated when moving e.g. in response to searches or otherwise (re)-transmitted.
- Aloisius 2y agoWe have more than one wealthy and powerful person. They're rarely all on the same side. So regardless of how courts rule on most issues, one could almost always argue they're taking the side of wealth and power and against the side of wealth and power. And data is inanimate in the dictionary definition sense of it not being alive. That other things can move it doesn't make it animate.
- idrathernot 2y agoAnd having a log of every conversation and keystroke that any outspoken judge has ever made gives you all sorts of ways to align their opinions with the above all importance of “National Security”
- reverendsteveii 2y agoThe people whose job it is to interpret the law have abandoned any pretense of doing that in favor of shoving words into the mouths of men who died before humans discovered dinosaurs. The court is openly, brazenly corrupt.
- rayiner 2y agoIn a democracy, what method would you propose judges use to impose restrictions on the actions of the democratically elected government based on a written constitution?
- AyyEye 2y ago> what method would you propose judges use to impose restrictions Judges are appointed (or voted in) by the very people you think they "impose restriction" on. Any ruling against the ruling class in our favor is nothing more than a happy accident.
- tptacek 2y agoDo you have an argument that would be persuasive to someone who doesn't believe that representative democracy is fundamentally flawed or somehow inoperative in the US?
- rayiner 2y agoOkay, but, in your view, how should they go about determining when to impose restrictions on the government?
- rayiner 2y agoYou mean like in Riley, which was authored by Chief Justice Roberts and was a 9-0 decision? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riley_v._California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riley_v._California > Riley has been widely praised as “a sweeping victory for privacy rights”[5] with legal scholars describing the decision as "the privacy gift that keeps on giving." Since then the Court has picked up another privacy hawk (Justice Gorsuch), and another Justice (Barrett) that's also pretty strong on privacy: https://www.protectprivacynow.org/news/how-will-a-justice-amy-coney-barrett-rule-on-surveillance-and-privacy-issues https://www.protectprivacynow.org/news/how-will-a-justice-am....
- dgfitz 2y ago[flagged]
- 1oooqooq 2y agothe 2001 upgrade to FISA made the suppreme court irrelevant in matters of citizen privacy. what they are deciding now is how to dress the mechanics of it.
- cherry_tree 2y agoTo be fair the current court in 2025 is a different court than 2018, and in 2024 they overruled a long standing precedent in the chevron doctrine. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that this court would disregard Riley. I do agree that it currently like the court is broadly pro-privacy but I also think it entirely depends on the case and its specifics.
- rayiner 2y agoFive of the Riley justices are still on the court. Of the four that aren’t, there’s two that seem stronger on privacy than his or her predecessor (Gorsuch, KBJ), one that seems like a wash (Kavanaugh), and maybe one that’s less strong on privacy (Barrett). You can point to Roe and Chevron, but those didn’t come out of nowhere. The first, conservatives vowed to overturn 50 years ago—and its expansive notion of judicially declaring rights is not embraced even among liberals on the court today. The second was a judge created interpretive doctrine anyway, and proved unworkable over time. But it also didn’t come out of nowhere. Gorsuch has been writing about it since before I was in law school, and that was 15 years ago.
- Terr_ 2y ago> that the Framers Relevant, even though he's not a "framer": "Using Metadata to find Paul Revere" - https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/ https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metad... > But I say again, if a mere scribe such as I—one who knows nearly nothing—can use the very simplest of these methods to pick the name of a traitor like Paul Revere from those of two hundred and fifty four other men, using nothing but a list of memberships and a portable calculating engine, then just think what weapons we might wield in the defense of liberty one or two centuries from now.
- matthewdgreen 2y agoThe new administration just ordered the resignation of every Democratic-appointed member on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight - this is the body that oversees the intelligence agencies and makes sure they don't abuse their power to spy on Americans. So much for dismantling the deep state.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- superkuh 2y agoIt's funny that even though the court ruled it is against the law to do so the federal agencies will continue to commit this crime (FBI) and pass illegal legislation (congress) until each specific agency changes it's internal regulations. If they do. The EFF seems to imply continued pressure is needed to convince them to do so.
- kittikitti 2y agoWe should go even further and abolish the FBI. They all believe they're above the law and have consistently been the enemy of Americans. What success can they even point to?
- cyanydeez 2y agoYes, its totally the FBI ans not every large tech firm invading and trading youe privacy.
- idrathernot 2y agoPlausible deniability is key pillar of ensuring National Security
- cyanydeez 2y agoOr, its just an oligarchy established for plausibly deniability of.minority slavery
- datavirtue 2y agoThe FBI hunts down and removes extremely violent criminals from society every day. They certainly operate right on the edge of the law, as they should. Furthermore, they never stop and never quit and no distance is too far--they will prevail no matter what. Extremely important to the stability of society.
- idrathernot 2y agoEven if congress ends their blatantly unconstitutional endorsement of Section 702 spying, I still don’t see why anyone would believe that the government is going to do anything other than massively expand their ability surveil every living moment of our lives. I don’t see the point in them trying to play it off like the system has any integrity whatsoever.
- duxup 2y agoCongress has been woefully short of curiosity or oversight that doesn't involve partisan politics ... let alone leadership.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- impossiblefork 2y agoWhy do you think section 702 seems unconstitutional? It looks pretty legal to me at least.
- rurban 2y agoThe federal court ruled otherwise.
- impossiblefork 2y agoI feel that it just forced them to actually folllow section 702 rather than letting them go about things as they liked.
- rurban 2y agosection 702 applies different unconstitutional rules for citizens and foreigners. foreigners have no privacy rights there. which is per-se unconstitutional, violating postal secrecy. they still think they are in war-times since the 30ies, and can store all meta-data and content in full. they are in war actually with all citizens.
- npvrite 2y agoCan we all stop pretending that they don't abuse of their power and hold your deepest darkest secrets indefinitely? Even though most of us are law abiding citizens. Can we please start making open hardware without Apple/google backdoors and stop pretending our systems are "secure". Can we please write all software in Rust and stop using languages that weren't designed for security. Yes C is beautiful. Yes it also lets you shoot yourself in the foot. Can we please use distributed systems to avoid censorship or holding our private information in the hands of the rich?
- johnnyanmac 2y agoAndroid, sure. There's still AOSP and there are a few niche devices dedicated to being as close to Open Hardware as we could be. >Can we please write all software in Rust and stop using languages that weren't designed for security. I'm all for it. But very few people want to pay for talent that can properly rewrite that legacy C/++ codebase into proper Rust.
- ethin 2y agoI can't tell if your being sarcastic or actually serious, because nobody is rewriting everything in Rust.
- ycombinatrix 2y agoGP said "write" not "rewrite"...
- dmz73 2y ago>Can we all stop pretending that they don't abuse of their power and hold your deepest darkest secrets indefinitely? Even though most of us are law abiding citizens. I don't anyone know who thinks powerful don't abuse their power. It is the nature of the beast. And it seems none of us are law abiding citizens: https://www.saponelaw.com/blog/2019/10/professor-says-that-everyone-commits-federal-crimes/ https://www.saponelaw.com/blog/2019/10/professor-says-that-e... >Can we please start making open hardware without Apple/google backdoors and stop pretending our systems are "secure". Few try...and either fail or languish in obscurity. You comment in itself is the proof that open hw cannot compete since you don't know of these open hw platforms and don't use them even tough you seem to advocate their creation here. >Can we please write all software in Rust... Rust only eliminates memory safety issues of C/C++. There are large number of languages, some decades older than Rust, that provide various aspects of Rust memory safety without imposing the same limits...and some are being used but people always flock to either new and flashy or the most widely used. Besides, Rust still provides ample foot guns and pushes reliance on 3rd party libraries which replaces memory safety issues with supply chain issues. Not to mention the the very poor ergonomics of the language that purposefully shies away from a lot of syntax sugar that makes writing and reading (understanding) code easier. >Can we please use distributed systems to avoid censorship or holding our private information in the hands of the rich? Even if you managed to persuade a lot of people to use these, some nodes will become popular/trusted and be targeted for censorship and propaganda and that will achieve the same result as the current model. Again, it is the nature of the beast. What can be done? I don't know, probably nothing...things have to get to the point where most people are compelled to act because the alternative is death or worse, until such time there will just not be enough support for action to matter. Just how people are.
- ARandomerDude 2y ago> We expect any lawmaker worthy of that title to listen to what this federal court is saying and create a legislative warrant requirement so that the intelligence community does not continue to trample on the constitutionally protected rights to private communications. Sad to say it, but I find it laughable that the intel agencies would suddenly stop if it were illegal (though of course it should be illegal). They operate in secret and anyone in the government who opposes them will commit suicide or suddenly be in possession of child pornography. As New York Sen. Chuck Schumer once told Rachel Maddow on air, “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you.” [1] 1. https://youtu.be/-gZidZfUoMU https://youtu.be/-gZidZfUoMU
- danju 2y ago[dead]
- SpliffnCola 2y agoIs this because they have full access now to the front door?