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Also, just because there isn't a "human" that does the search manually, doesn't mean the human doesn't benefit from the search (exactly as if he would if he did
by higherpurpose 12y ago
Also, just because there isn't a "human" that does the search manually, doesn't mean the human doesn't benefit from the search (exactly as if he would if he did the search himself).
And another thing: the 4th Amendment clearly talks about searches and seizures, so saying "we're only collecting it, but not searching it" shouldn't work as an excuse either.
EFF should also make a case for how searching into your online Facebook accounts, Google accounts, chat accounts and so on, is the "searching through your home without a warrant and fishing for crimes of the 21st century" - or something along those lines.
A third party may hold the data for you, but people think of those accounts as "theirs", and they have an expectation of privacy for them. If you keep something in a bank deposit box, does the bank own your deposit box and everything in it? Or is that "yours", and you expect nobody but you to access that? Right now, the government much prefers to go to these companies and just ask them for what you have in those accounts, because it's so much easier for them to do that, than ask you. But I feel they are skirting an important right humans should be having here.
The "physical" protections seem to be so much better than the "digital" protections in the US law right now. It's time to change that, and make it clear that digital protections should be at least as strong as the kind of protections we benefit from in the real world.
For example, it makes no sense for email to be considered under a much lower standard than real mail. They are both exactly the same type of communication. It's just the medium that's different, but that shouldn't matter at all.
- fluidcruft 12y ago> the 4th Amendment clearly talks about searches and seizures Not to nitpick, but how exactly is making a copy of something a seizure?
- mikegioia 12y agoWouldn't you need to take something first before copying it?
- geekamongus 12y agoNot if I use a camera to take a picture of it, from which I can look at it to make a copy.
- fluidcruft 12y agoIf by "take" you mean deny or restrict access and use by the "owner" then, no, of course not. You don't need exclusive access to copy something (or record information about it). For example, taking a picture of the Washington Monument isn't remotely anything that comes to mind when I consider what "seizing the Washington Monument" would entail.
- ethbro 12y agoSince the principles of photography post-dated the Constitution, I'd say it's a fair assumption that in its time the expectation was that exclusive access would be needed to (laboriously) copy something. But it's kind of pedantic to argue over a single word. The pertinent question is 'Do the views espoused by the Constitution as a whole (and subsequent case law) offer an opinion on the rightness of mass copying-without-exclusive access?' Which is pretty thorny indeed. IANAL, but from what I've read it seems as though the Supreme Court is steadily trending more towards supporting an inherent right to privacy as a buttress against decisions that would otherwise feel wrong.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- refurb 12y agoThis is actually a great point. For all those folks who say violating copyright is not "stealing", I guess you could use the same argument that the gov't copying private records is not "seizing".
- bholzer 12y ago> seizure: the action of capturing someone or something using force They first have to capture the data before copying. Fits the definition, in my opinion
- fluidcruft 12y agoYou don't have to capture anything to make observations or replicas. It just has to be observable. Which gets back to "search". The nit I'm picking is what exactly the post finds special about "searches and seizures" vs "searches"
- splawn 12y agoHow can you observe data without loading it into memory first?
- fluidcruft 12y agoHow can you make a phone call or send an email without stuffing it into someone else's memory?
- saeguaiga 12y agoA little FIPS, a little AES, all-optical Bayesian framing, and some formal plotholes measured in thousands of hectares.
- acveilleux 12y agoIn this action, AT&T was compelled to fork their traffic to an NSA monitoring room. This was a step that added overhead that, I would think, exceeded mere observation. It's not like they posted a man on a hill to watch the traffic go by (or a pair of blimps in MD...) They required AT&T's coöperation to proceed here. Like putting a checkpoint on the road.
- higherpurpose 12y agoI think I understand what you're saying, you're saying that a search automatically implies a "seizure" as well, right? Unfortunately, I don't think the US gov thinks the same way. Right now they are trying to make a clear distinction between "collecting" and "searching". I was just trying to point out that even if those terms were separated, the 4th amendment specifically refers to collecting (seizing) the data as well. So they can't get away with the mass collection just by saying collection != searching.
- Laremere 12y agoThere is a level of interpretation required here. The 4th amendment wasn't written in an age where it was conceivable that information could be copied for free or intercepted without taking something from a carrier. What's important is the intent of the protections. NSA has decided to interpret these wordings in a way which lets them intercept and copy communications, and it's the job of the courts to interpret the constitution and tell them that they aren't allowed to do that.
- fluidcruft 12y agoSurely even back in the technological dark ages of the 1700's it was possible for agents to make observations and report on "metadata"? After all, what about Paul Revere? So, I don't easily buy the flippant "times have changed" hand waiving.
- unreal37 12y agoPaul Revere's observation of events happening and reporting back in his own words isn't a great analogy. A better one would be to intercept all stagecoaches at their midway points across the entire United States, and manually copy verbatim the letters they carry in case one day we want to know what Jack said to Joe. Yes, the passing of "information" is not new. But I believe the intercepting of mail, copying and then letting the original letter through to its destination without a warrant is illegal. (Isn't it?)
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- rosser 12y agoA much better analogy would be for the postmaster to be noting the sender and recipient of every letter that came through his station in a log that was then passed along to King George's agents in the colonies, allowing them to draw whatever inference they might like — while somehow also having a copy of every letter to hand for further perusal in the event any of the corresponding parties were deemed "suspicious." I'm no scholar of Revolutionary era America, but I'm pretty sure that if shit of that sort were going down, it would have gotten specific mention in the Declaration.
- mhurron 12y agoThe full text is: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." A plain English interpretation would seem to make the NSA slurping illegal, but a legal interpretation could be completely different.
- TylerJay 12y agoI think an important point here is that at the time the Bill of Rights was written, the language you quoted would protect you from having your private information copied. Because without photographs, video, or digital information, you had to actually physically "search" or "seize" a document in order to make a copy of it. There would be no way of copying a document without first getting access to it which, unless the government had a specific warrant, would have been prohibited by the 4th amendment.
- mhurron 12y agoTherein lies the problem. The government gets to approach the issue from "It's not explicitly in the Constitution, therefore we can do anything we want," when it is doubtful that the spirit of the document intended peoples digital communications to be handled differently than their physical communication.
- jaekwon 12y agoIANAL, but here's my interpretation. There are two concerns here: (1) The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated and (2) no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. (1) being the protection, and (2) mentioning the loophole of warrants and protections on that as well. Searching digital information without a warrant violates (1). The legal way to do it is via warrants, and limitations on warrants are prescribed in (2).
- acveilleux 12y agoIf the government opened your mail and made a copy while it was in the possession of the USPS would that count as seizure? search? What if they automated the process?
- higherpurpose 12y agoBoth search (they looked at it) and seizure (they took/copied the information). And as I already said, whether it's manual or automated should be irrelevant, if the end result is the same (authorities taking that data without a warrant to fish for crimes - which is what the selectors and alerts do anyway).
- pyrocat 12y agoThe same way making a copy of something is theft.
- ndesaulniers 12y agoInteresting; when I make a copy of a song file I do not own, it's stealing. When the gov't makes a copy of my search records, it's not?
- pyrocat 12y agoThat's the hypocrisy I was getting at, yeah.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]