4 ms·

One of the points that I hope will be fully put to the sword is the tortured definition that the NSA & Govt. uses of spying. That argument is phrased approximat

One of the points that I hope will be fully put to the sword is the tortured definition that the NSA & Govt. uses of spying. That argument is phrased approximately as: We are making limited digital copies of stuff (-possibly all internet traffic) that is stored in encrypted form and not actually "reading" it. It is only accessed in a much more limited & narrow context for investigations using "minimization" techniques that respect the fourth amendment. So we are not really spying in an unconstitutional manner... This is almost sure to come up if the case proceeds without being torpedoed by the national secrets defense..and I hope the EFF absolutely prevails in crushing this malarkey.

pdkl95 12y ago
https://www.eff.org/files/2014/07/24/backbone-3c-color.jpg https://www.eff.org/files/2014/07/24/backbone-3c-color.jpg Given this graphic in the article, I would guess this the main topic the EFF is pursuing. While I can see how the NSA's word games can confuse the issue regarding searching, what I've never understood is how nobody seems to notice that those same word games admit to seizing evidence. It's as if everybody forgot the 4th Amendment said "...unreasonable searches and seizures..." or something.
- suprgeek 12y ago
  Same tortured definition: Copying(but not depriving you of it) without accessing (reading) is technically not seizing
  - swombat 12y ago
    Right, so let's agree to a system when the government will open every letter, scan the contents, save them to a database, but not read them until after they've run some analysis and determined that your specific letter is of interest. That is precisely what they're doing here, except on a much larger scale than the post office could ever fathom. It is shocking to compare this to the past. I've just finished reading "Team of Rivals", a biography of Lincoln, and the amount of deeply sensitive stuff that these high-level politicians shared in personal letters to their loved ones and colleagues is astonishing. No politician today would ever put such stuff in writing - if it got into the wrong hands, it could cause incalculable damage to their reputations, relationships, etc. Those guys were being entirely honest in hand-written letters that were delivered days away in different states by a very rudimentary postal system. They clearly had complete trust in the sanctity of the privacy of their letters. This level of trust in the US government (or any, in fact) is pretty much unthinkable today. We (the people) have lost a lot of valuable ground here.
    - AlyssaRowan 12y ago
      I've got bad news for you: that is happening, to some extent, already. It's part of how they caught Ulbricht. They find it far more practical to use collected metadata from addresses to identify postal traffic flows, however, and target their interception based on that.
  - AlyssaRowan 12y ago
    Fibre taps, in splitting light, deprive you of some of it. Take that, loophole.
    - rosser 12y ago
      You're not wrong, but that's the kind of hair-splitting (beam-splitting?) that the arguments promulgated by the NSA, et al, depend upon.
      - aragot 12y ago
        That's why I'm doubtful about checking "what the constitution intended". Maybe the US just needs a 28th Amendment stating new rights about the numeric world. We've gone through 2 technological revolutions since 1980, of course the constitution is outdated. For starters, clusters of data are dangerous in terms of privacy and theft, exponentially with their size. Is it allowed to have a firecracker at home? Is it allowed to have several thousand of them? Same goes for data, whether you're a corporation or a state.
  - mhurron 12y ago
    > Copying(but not depriving you of it) without accessing (reading) is technically not seizing If that is a tortured definition, then it's the same tortured definition used here (as well as many other places) to justify music and movie piracy.
    - sp332 12y ago
      It's different. It's illegal for the government to have this data, even if they bought it. I don't need a court order to be allowed to listen to some music.
DanBC 12y ago
How would you explain it to them? Or to the wider public? Because while you say it is a tortured definition many people wouldn't be able to see it like that. To those people it doesn't make much difference if the data is on the Internet or in a black box, so long as limited specific searches are used and they only happen after warrants.

pdkl95 12y ago

https://www.eff.org/files/2014/07/24/backbone-3c-color.jpg https://www.eff.org/files/2014/07/24/backbone-3c-color.jpg Given this graphic in the article, I would guess this the main topic the EFF is pursuing. While I can see how the NSA's word games can confuse the issue regarding searching, what I've never understood is how nobody seems to notice that those same word games admit to seizing evidence. It's as if everybody forgot the 4th Amendment said "...unreasonable searches and seizures..." or something.

suprgeek 12y ago
Same tortured definition: Copying(but not depriving you of it) without accessing (reading) is technically not seizing
- swombat 12y ago
  Right, so let's agree to a system when the government will open every letter, scan the contents, save them to a database, but not read them until after they've run some analysis and determined that your specific letter is of interest. That is precisely what they're doing here, except on a much larger scale than the post office could ever fathom. It is shocking to compare this to the past. I've just finished reading "Team of Rivals", a biography of Lincoln, and the amount of deeply sensitive stuff that these high-level politicians shared in personal letters to their loved ones and colleagues is astonishing. No politician today would ever put such stuff in writing - if it got into the wrong hands, it could cause incalculable damage to their reputations, relationships, etc. Those guys were being entirely honest in hand-written letters that were delivered days away in different states by a very rudimentary postal system. They clearly had complete trust in the sanctity of the privacy of their letters. This level of trust in the US government (or any, in fact) is pretty much unthinkable today. We (the people) have lost a lot of valuable ground here.
  - AlyssaRowan 12y ago
    I've got bad news for you: that is happening, to some extent, already. It's part of how they caught Ulbricht. They find it far more practical to use collected metadata from addresses to identify postal traffic flows, however, and target their interception based on that.
- AlyssaRowan 12y ago
  Fibre taps, in splitting light, deprive you of some of it. Take that, loophole.
  - rosser 12y ago
    You're not wrong, but that's the kind of hair-splitting (beam-splitting?) that the arguments promulgated by the NSA, et al, depend upon.
    - aragot 12y ago
      That's why I'm doubtful about checking "what the constitution intended". Maybe the US just needs a 28th Amendment stating new rights about the numeric world. We've gone through 2 technological revolutions since 1980, of course the constitution is outdated. For starters, clusters of data are dangerous in terms of privacy and theft, exponentially with their size. Is it allowed to have a firecracker at home? Is it allowed to have several thousand of them? Same goes for data, whether you're a corporation or a state.
- mhurron 12y ago
  > Copying(but not depriving you of it) without accessing (reading) is technically not seizing If that is a tortured definition, then it's the same tortured definition used here (as well as many other places) to justify music and movie piracy.
  - sp332 12y ago
    It's different. It's illegal for the government to have this data, even if they bought it. I don't need a court order to be allowed to listen to some music.

DanBC 12y ago

How would you explain it to them? Or to the wider public? Because while you say it is a tortured definition many people wouldn't be able to see it like that. To those people it doesn't make much difference if the data is on the Internet or in a black box, so long as limited specific searches are used and they only happen after warrants.