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The government has always been able to do that though, albeit with a warrant. Of course, a warrant is exactly what was needed for companies to hand over inform
by mpyne 13y ago
The government has always been able to do that though, albeit with a warrant.
Of course, a warrant is exactly what was needed for companies to hand over information even on non-U.S. citizens into NSA's Prism system in the first place.
Whatever else you might say about recorded phone calls and emails, Prism itself was shown to require the company to buy off on the logic used in the NSA NSL in order to obtain data, so Prism was hardly the problem people made it out to be.
In fact, a little itty bitty tweak here and there and Prism would apply directly to the FBI, who could then use it for normal warrant compliance for U.S. citizens. All the data just sitting there in their pretty little cloud silos, and pretty little hosted email solutions begging you to use IMAP, just waiting for the government to get a warrant (or not, unless ECPA gets revised). It would all be completely legal, and that problem has been around in some form for decades now.
- Joeri 13y agoCollecting information prior to the delivery of a warrant is unreasonably invasive. If you extend the reasoning then they could post a video camera in your home, filming everything you do, and then get a warrant to obtain the material at any point in the future. Our digital homes should have the same safeguards in place that our physical homes have: nobody has access before a warrant, and with a warrant they can only find out what's there now, not what's been there in the past.
- mpyne 13y agoAre you referring to Prism or the "beam splitting"? Prism sends over data that was already generated; it's not the government's fault that the company bothered to generate it but if they get a warrant why should they pretend like it didn't exist? I'm not sure how you would even begin to investigate things like 9/11 if you weren't allowed to collect evidence from actions that occurred before the crime came to the attention of the government. If you're talking about beam-splitting then, well, I see your argument. But that's not what I was talking about in my parent comment.
- pjmlp 13y agoI never been to the US, but I would say it is a matter of which type of agency we are talking about. I pretty much doubt secret services in most countries would need any kind of warrant to do whatever they want.