5 ms·

That's a little disingenuous here -- "compliance" in this context means "able to comply." Currently, if a company is "unable to comply," that means they can't f

by toki5 13y ago

That's a little disingenuous here -- "compliance" in this context means "able to comply." Currently, if a company is "unable to comply," that means they can't forward along whatever information is required by the warrant, and usually law enforcement backs off. The change here is that now they're starting to say "too bad, make it happen." Law enforcement doesn't have a hand in the tech stacks of private companies. This isn't "making their job easier" -- in a lot of cases it's making their job possible.

abecedarius 13y ago
Their job is to catch criminals, not to snoop, maybe it's worth mentioning. These are necessarily linked only when the talk itself is the crime.
- toki5 13y ago
  That's a fairly extreme and frankly unrealistic generalization. Warrants (of any form) exist because of the need to gather evidence in cases; the existence of evidence isn't always a crime in and of itself but is used to support a case that a crime has occurred (or is going to occur).
  - betterunix 13y ago
    The police do not need the cooperation of tech companies to gather evidence. Yes, CALEA made it easier to gather evidence, but the police did a fine enough job beforehand. What you are ignoring is that this proposal, like CALEA, is really part of a very long chain of events that have led to ever greater police power. If you look at the history of law enforcement for the past 50 years, you see monotonic increases in the power of the police: the power to arrest people, the power to kill people (including the weapons the police carry), the power to conduct surveillance, the power to seize assets, etc. The reason we have the largest prison population on the planet is that we have ceded such vast power to the power to the police (and to prosecutors). Unfortunately, there are a lot of ring-wing, law-and-order types in this country who see nothing wrong with this picture: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/San_Bernardino_police_swat_team.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/San_Bern...
    - toki5 13y ago
      I'll reply to you and 'abecedarius in the same spot: The problem arises when critical evidence exists only in the infrastructure of some private company. If a case hinges on a fact that is proven only by information that is in the hands of, e.g., Verizon, then yes, law enforcement requires the cooperation of that tech company to gather evidence. >but the police did a fine enough job beforehand Beforehand? The police did a fine enough job gathering evidence before technology leapfrogged ahead of them? Sure, they did. Then they sought to adapt our laws to the advancements that we've made. You see power creep in law enforcement; I see power creep in everybody.
      - betterunix 13y ago
        "If a case hinges on a fact that is proven only by information that is in the hands of, e.g., Verizon, then yes, law enforcement requires the cooperation of that tech company to gather evidence." ...and if the company lacks that evidence because the police took too long to ask for it, then the case falls apart. So what? Our justice system is not meant to minimize the number of false negatives, it is meant to minimize the number of false positives. "The police did a fine enough job gathering evidence before technology leapfrogged ahead of them?" Read the context; the police did a fine enough job of gathering wiretap evidence before CALEA. The phone had been around and in common use for decades before CALEA, and even in the years leading up to CALEA the police had gathered enormous amounts of evidence from wiretaps and pen registers. It was just harder, because prior to CALEA the police had to actually step away from their desks and install a machine to perform a wiretap -- how terribly inconvenient! "You see power creep in law enforcement; I see power creep in everybody." Only if you ignore the fact that the police are more powerful today than they were when our parents were growing up. You are not witnessing power creep, you are witnessing a possible minute change in the balance of power between people and the government. Instead of calling up a phone company and demanding a wiretap, the police might have to show up in a data center with a rack-mountable interception device, in the worst case.
        wmf 13y ago
        It was just harder, because prior to CALEA the police had to ... install a machine to perform a wiretap Good point. Let's say you're a company like Facebook and the feds come to you with a warrant; would you rather service that warrant yourself (CALEA style) or have them install a Carnivore inside your data center? Which one do you think is going to do more damage?
  - abecedarius 13y ago
    I agree that snooping can support a case; I denied your claim that it's necessary.
    - dobbsbob 13y ago
      Snooping without a warrant is definitely not needed in most criminal cases I've read about. Seems to me law enforcement will just approach these people in person as informants and sell them fake bombs, or get them to talk about importing drugs or something else illegal and it's game over. No wiretap needed
cinquemb 13y ago
"Law enforcement doesn't have a hand in the tech stacks of private companies." For good reason, because if a private company was busy bending over backwards for law enforcement through mounds of code that already works for their needs with their investor/own capital taking time away of providing/improving something useful to their target users, they wouldn't be in business for long.
- rdtsc 13y ago
  Aha, bingo, that is why big companies love that. It kills the smaller, more agile competitors. Big monopolies will just pass this right through to the customers. As long as customers don't have an option to use a non-American carrier they have not choice.

by toki5 13y ago

abecedarius 13y ago

Their job is to catch criminals, not to snoop, maybe it's worth mentioning. These are necessarily linked only when the talk itself is the crime.

toki5 13y ago
That's a fairly extreme and frankly unrealistic generalization. Warrants (of any form) exist because of the need to gather evidence in cases; the existence of evidence isn't always a crime in and of itself but is used to support a case that a crime has occurred (or is going to occur).
- betterunix 13y ago
  The police do not need the cooperation of tech companies to gather evidence. Yes, CALEA made it easier to gather evidence, but the police did a fine enough job beforehand. What you are ignoring is that this proposal, like CALEA, is really part of a very long chain of events that have led to ever greater police power. If you look at the history of law enforcement for the past 50 years, you see monotonic increases in the power of the police: the power to arrest people, the power to kill people (including the weapons the police carry), the power to conduct surveillance, the power to seize assets, etc. The reason we have the largest prison population on the planet is that we have ceded such vast power to the power to the police (and to prosecutors). Unfortunately, there are a lot of ring-wing, law-and-order types in this country who see nothing wrong with this picture: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/San_Bernardino_police_swat_team.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/San_Bern...
  - toki5 13y ago
    I'll reply to you and 'abecedarius in the same spot: The problem arises when critical evidence exists only in the infrastructure of some private company. If a case hinges on a fact that is proven only by information that is in the hands of, e.g., Verizon, then yes, law enforcement requires the cooperation of that tech company to gather evidence. >but the police did a fine enough job beforehand Beforehand? The police did a fine enough job gathering evidence before technology leapfrogged ahead of them? Sure, they did. Then they sought to adapt our laws to the advancements that we've made. You see power creep in law enforcement; I see power creep in everybody.
    - betterunix 13y ago
      "If a case hinges on a fact that is proven only by information that is in the hands of, e.g., Verizon, then yes, law enforcement requires the cooperation of that tech company to gather evidence." ...and if the company lacks that evidence because the police took too long to ask for it, then the case falls apart. So what? Our justice system is not meant to minimize the number of false negatives, it is meant to minimize the number of false positives. "The police did a fine enough job gathering evidence before technology leapfrogged ahead of them?" Read the context; the police did a fine enough job of gathering wiretap evidence before CALEA. The phone had been around and in common use for decades before CALEA, and even in the years leading up to CALEA the police had gathered enormous amounts of evidence from wiretaps and pen registers. It was just harder, because prior to CALEA the police had to actually step away from their desks and install a machine to perform a wiretap -- how terribly inconvenient! "You see power creep in law enforcement; I see power creep in everybody." Only if you ignore the fact that the police are more powerful today than they were when our parents were growing up. You are not witnessing power creep, you are witnessing a possible minute change in the balance of power between people and the government. Instead of calling up a phone company and demanding a wiretap, the police might have to show up in a data center with a rack-mountable interception device, in the worst case.
      - wmf 13y ago
        It was just harder, because prior to CALEA the police had to ... install a machine to perform a wiretap Good point. Let's say you're a company like Facebook and the feds come to you with a warrant; would you rather service that warrant yourself (CALEA style) or have them install a Carnivore inside your data center? Which one do you think is going to do more damage?
- abecedarius 13y ago
  I agree that snooping can support a case; I denied your claim that it's necessary.
  - dobbsbob 13y ago
    Snooping without a warrant is definitely not needed in most criminal cases I've read about. Seems to me law enforcement will just approach these people in person as informants and sell them fake bombs, or get them to talk about importing drugs or something else illegal and it's game over. No wiretap needed

cinquemb 13y ago

"Law enforcement doesn't have a hand in the tech stacks of private companies." For good reason, because if a private company was busy bending over backwards for law enforcement through mounds of code that already works for their needs with their investor/own capital taking time away of providing/improving something useful to their target users, they wouldn't be in business for long.

rdtsc 13y ago
Aha, bingo, that is why big companies love that. It kills the smaller, more agile competitors. Big monopolies will just pass this right through to the customers. As long as customers don't have an option to use a non-American carrier they have not choice.