6 ms·

Could you just PGP encrypt all your email?

fixxer 13y ago
I think you're missing the point: the metadata alone is an invasion of your privacy. Something that people don't understand is that metadata is extremely revealing, both in what it tell you about the target's activity (social habits, networks) and how it allows the analyst to build a picture of "what is normal for John Doe". None of that is the government's business according to our founders, and I'm not keen to give up more of my rights to this administration or the next one. I guess I'm a stickler, but if you study history enough, you'll be a stickler too.
- rayiner 13y ago
  The founders had zilch to say about monitoring activity or networks. You could tail people in 1789 too, and it didn't require a warrant then.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    But you couldn't tail everyone.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      And?
      - dllthomas 13y ago
        And there is a substantive difference between surveillance and mass surveillance. It's not just a matter of degree; it's a matter of kind.
        rayiner 13y ago
        And the 4th amendment doesn't say anything about either. The fact that something is bad doesn't mean that the Constitution provides some means to make that thing illegal.
      - fixxer 13y ago
        I think that is actually very relevant. For example, if I scrape email in an automated manner and send messages to those emails for purpose of profit (say, advertising my business), then I am subject to very different laws regarding spam than if I manually gathered the emails. I'm sure, given your legal prowess, you could expand a very interesting argument here. Ok, your turn ;)
    - pekk 13y ago
      That isn't a legal constraint, it's a physical one.
      - dllthomas 13y ago
        Sure, but the founders didn't bother clearly deliniating all the physically impossible ways the government shouldn't be permitted to violate our rights. It is quite possible that something newly possible is a violation of rights we were supposed to have, whether specified implicitly, explicitly, or not at all. At an extreme, the constitution says nothing explicit about brain control rays, but if we invent them I am quite confident in asserting that use should be deemed unconstitutional because of rights we should be assumed to have.
  - fixxer 13y ago
    I'll presume you are not in favor of the surveillance state (I don't know you, so correct me if I'm wrong -- perhaps you're a fan). If you don't want to use the Constitutional argument (which I believe holds given the 4th amendment, but hey, that's me), then how would you base the argument? Please advise. I'd really appreciate some insight into how better to communicate with people such as yourself. Thanks! EDIT: I see you've got a law-talker email, so I'm expecting something really awesome! Lawyers are the best!
    - rayiner 13y ago
      I'm not in favor of the surveillance state. But I don't think the 4th amendment is the right vehicle for what you want to achieve. First, the 4th amendment is about searches and not monitoring. In 1789, the police could have followed you around, asked all your neighbors who you talked too, gotten lists of everything you bought from the stores you went to, gotten information about your finances from your bank and accountant, etc, and they could have done all that without a warrant. Second, the "third party doctrine" makes the 4th amendment mostly inapplicable to online privacy. It basically says that if you expose information voluntarily to a third party, you can't claim 4th amendment protections for it. Under this doctrine, your bank records are not protected. It hasn't been decided in court yet, but arguably your Facebook posts aren't protected either, or the contents of your Google Drive, etc. This is all information you're voluntarily exposing to Google, Facebook, etc, as opposed to keeping it "private." Someone in a sibling post to yours pointed out: but in 1789 it wasn't possible to tail everyone. That's true. In 1789, if you wanted to watch someone's comings and goings, you had to post a policeman outside their house. Today, you can put cameras everywhere. Similarly, in 1789, people didn't regularly update third parties with their exact location every few seconds. But today people do just that with their cell phones. But there is no legal principle that says that police investigatory powers that were previously legal become illegal as soon as they can automate the process. And moreover, especially in front of a conservative Supreme Court like the one we have, "results oriented" arguments aren't going to fly. You can't start from the position of saying: "we want to make the surveillance state illegal" and try to figure out how to re-purpose the 4th amendment to make it so. Basically, I think Constitutional challenges to NSA surveillance are not really going to have much impact other than chipping away at the edges. I can imagine a future in which a Supreme Court reevaluates things like the third party doctrine in light of how people communicate in the modern world. But: 1) conservative jurists don't like to do that at all (they're "original intent" kind of people); and 2) even liberal jurists don't like to do it until there is a critical mass of public thought on the side of that interpretation. The Supreme Court could pull a Roe v. Wade and find a far-reaching protection of privacy and communications in the 4th amendment. That could invalidate large parts of the surveillance state, including things like drone surveillance of public areas. But they're not going to do that until at least a large minority of people in the public and in academia think that way. And that's the problem with people who oppose the surveillance state. They're a tiny minority. They can't get Congress to act, they can't get the President to Act, and they can't even convince enough of liberal academia to support their position to get "living Constitution" judges to act. So the policy position is basically dead in the water.
  - apalmer 13y ago
    I don't know that this analogy is valid or not.
cypherpunks01 13y ago
Yes, you could. But not every, nor very many, U.S. citizens have the knowledge or skill to do this.
- redblacktree 13y ago
  Right. So who do you email if no one can read it?
- trestles 13y ago
  Sounds like a new product; just integrate your pgp public key into your facebook profile or something. It'll be here in like a year or something. Geez, why the constant downvoting?
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    Distributing your public key with your facebook profile is fine, but that won't teach (much less convince) your friends to use it. Perhaps you could wire up some sort of "facebook app" that would have people talking to you encrypt their messages to you with your public key, but I doubt you could really implement that in a way that would prevent facebook from getting the plaintext (or at least make me confident that they could not). You would also need some sort of browser-side extension to decrypt, or have to copy-paste the messages to decrypt.

I think you're missing the point: the metadata alone is an invasion of your privacy. Something that people don't understand is that metadata is extremely revealing, both in what it tell you about the target's activity (social habits, networks) and how it allows the analyst to build a picture of "what is normal for John Doe". None of that is the government's business according to our founders, and I'm not keen to give up more of my rights to this administration or the next one. I guess I'm a stickler, but if you study history enough, you'll be a stickler too.

rayiner 13y ago
The founders had zilch to say about monitoring activity or networks. You could tail people in 1789 too, and it didn't require a warrant then.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  But you couldn't tail everyone.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    And?
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      And there is a substantive difference between surveillance and mass surveillance. It's not just a matter of degree; it's a matter of kind.
      - rayiner 13y ago
        And the 4th amendment doesn't say anything about either. The fact that something is bad doesn't mean that the Constitution provides some means to make that thing illegal.
    - fixxer 13y ago
      I think that is actually very relevant. For example, if I scrape email in an automated manner and send messages to those emails for purpose of profit (say, advertising my business), then I am subject to very different laws regarding spam than if I manually gathered the emails. I'm sure, given your legal prowess, you could expand a very interesting argument here. Ok, your turn ;)
  - pekk 13y ago
    That isn't a legal constraint, it's a physical one.
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      Sure, but the founders didn't bother clearly deliniating all the physically impossible ways the government shouldn't be permitted to violate our rights. It is quite possible that something newly possible is a violation of rights we were supposed to have, whether specified implicitly, explicitly, or not at all. At an extreme, the constitution says nothing explicit about brain control rays, but if we invent them I am quite confident in asserting that use should be deemed unconstitutional because of rights we should be assumed to have.
- fixxer 13y ago
  I'll presume you are not in favor of the surveillance state (I don't know you, so correct me if I'm wrong -- perhaps you're a fan). If you don't want to use the Constitutional argument (which I believe holds given the 4th amendment, but hey, that's me), then how would you base the argument? Please advise. I'd really appreciate some insight into how better to communicate with people such as yourself. Thanks! EDIT: I see you've got a law-talker email, so I'm expecting something really awesome! Lawyers are the best!
  - rayiner 13y ago
    I'm not in favor of the surveillance state. But I don't think the 4th amendment is the right vehicle for what you want to achieve. First, the 4th amendment is about searches and not monitoring. In 1789, the police could have followed you around, asked all your neighbors who you talked too, gotten lists of everything you bought from the stores you went to, gotten information about your finances from your bank and accountant, etc, and they could have done all that without a warrant. Second, the "third party doctrine" makes the 4th amendment mostly inapplicable to online privacy. It basically says that if you expose information voluntarily to a third party, you can't claim 4th amendment protections for it. Under this doctrine, your bank records are not protected. It hasn't been decided in court yet, but arguably your Facebook posts aren't protected either, or the contents of your Google Drive, etc. This is all information you're voluntarily exposing to Google, Facebook, etc, as opposed to keeping it "private." Someone in a sibling post to yours pointed out: but in 1789 it wasn't possible to tail everyone. That's true. In 1789, if you wanted to watch someone's comings and goings, you had to post a policeman outside their house. Today, you can put cameras everywhere. Similarly, in 1789, people didn't regularly update third parties with their exact location every few seconds. But today people do just that with their cell phones. But there is no legal principle that says that police investigatory powers that were previously legal become illegal as soon as they can automate the process. And moreover, especially in front of a conservative Supreme Court like the one we have, "results oriented" arguments aren't going to fly. You can't start from the position of saying: "we want to make the surveillance state illegal" and try to figure out how to re-purpose the 4th amendment to make it so. Basically, I think Constitutional challenges to NSA surveillance are not really going to have much impact other than chipping away at the edges. I can imagine a future in which a Supreme Court reevaluates things like the third party doctrine in light of how people communicate in the modern world. But: 1) conservative jurists don't like to do that at all (they're "original intent" kind of people); and 2) even liberal jurists don't like to do it until there is a critical mass of public thought on the side of that interpretation. The Supreme Court could pull a Roe v. Wade and find a far-reaching protection of privacy and communications in the 4th amendment. That could invalidate large parts of the surveillance state, including things like drone surveillance of public areas. But they're not going to do that until at least a large minority of people in the public and in academia think that way. And that's the problem with people who oppose the surveillance state. They're a tiny minority. They can't get Congress to act, they can't get the President to Act, and they can't even convince enough of liberal academia to support their position to get "living Constitution" judges to act. So the policy position is basically dead in the water.
- apalmer 13y ago
  I don't know that this analogy is valid or not.

cypherpunks01 13y ago

Yes, you could. But not every, nor very many, U.S. citizens have the knowledge or skill to do this.

redblacktree 13y ago
Right. So who do you email if no one can read it?
trestles 13y ago
Sounds like a new product; just integrate your pgp public key into your facebook profile or something. It'll be here in like a year or something. Geez, why the constant downvoting?
- jlgreco 13y ago
  Distributing your public key with your facebook profile is fine, but that won't teach (much less convince) your friends to use it. Perhaps you could wire up some sort of "facebook app" that would have people talking to you encrypt their messages to you with your public key, but I doubt you could really implement that in a way that would prevent facebook from getting the plaintext (or at least make me confident that they could not). You would also need some sort of browser-side extension to decrypt, or have to copy-paste the messages to decrypt.