6 ms·

Good ole' fear, uncertainty and doubt.

dragontamer 12y ago
What? Swatting is a serious concern. How do you think we should solve the issue? Have the police sit around doing nothing because they don't have the legal tools to look at business metadata? I'm trying to bring up an actual issue here. For a hundred years, the "metadata" standard has applied to mail, telephone records, business records and so forth as "free game" for the Police. What makes the modern era so different that Police aren't allowed to look at metadata anymore?
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  1. It was not free game. They could not take copies preemptively. 2. There is vastly more metadata being stored now, and the police don't need access to most of it. We might even be better off with laws against storing it.
  - dragontamer 12y ago
    > 1. It was not free game. They could not take copies preemptively. Wrong. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mai... It's been free-game for a hundred years. Keep up with the law dude. USPS "metadata" has been copied and tracked. Such information was used for the Anthrax cases of early 2000s... and other such crimes. It is illegal for police to read the contents of an envelope, but they can (and have been) scanning the outside of envelopes and storing that metadata for police use for decades. The difference between snail-mail and the business records provision is... terrorism was added to the words. But I'd bet what they were doing was legal before the Patriot Act was made. > 2. There is vastly more metadata being stored now, and the police don't need access to most of it. We might even be better off with laws against storing it. That doesn't answer the question. How do you expect to track down a Swatter without using metadata?
    - Dylan16807 12y ago
      Okay, doing it for decades doesn't mean they need it. It wasn't there from the start. >How do you expect to track down a Swatter without using metadata? As I said in my other post, you don't actually need call records to find a swatter. They called the police, the police have the number, tada. I'm not arguing against deleting everything that could possibly classify as metadata, I'm saying we should cut down the types of metadata available. And we need to stop the government from making copies of private data 'just in case' and declaring it not to be a search/seizure until some later stage.
      - dragontamer 12y ago
        > As I said in my other post, you don't actually need call records to find a swatter. They called the police, the police have the number, tada. And if the Swatter used another phone to call a Google Voice number to create a local line in another city, they will need Metadata to figure out what that _OTHER_ telephone number is. Otherwise, they have a phone number to a fake google-account created in TOR. That's not very useful. Phone Number 555-0000 called Google-Voice 555-9991, which THEN called the Police. Only having "555-9991" is completely worthless. You need metadata analysis to unravel the proxies. Furthermore, executing a warrant generally requires a name and a case. You don't got a name yet, you're trying to build a case without warrant powers at this point of the Police game. Do you think these Swatters are dumb or something? They aren't using their personal phone numbers to call the police, they're actually redirecting themselves a little bit. > I'm not arguing against deleting everything that could possibly classify as metadata, I'm saying we should cut down the types of metadata available. And we need to stop the government from making copies of private data 'just in case' and declaring it not to be a search/seizure until some later stage. The legal standard between 1940s (since the closure of the Office of Censorship, which straight up allowed the US Agents to read mail and censor them), and now has been that metadata collection doesn't need a warrant. Metadata collection is NOT search/seizure in Smith v. Maryland. Its how things have operated for literally decades. Now if you don't like it, that's fine. But know that you're moving from the status-quo. This is how the government has operated since the 1970s at very least (see again... Smith v. Maryland). Going back to the cases before that was Olmstead v. United States, 1928, which collection of straight-up data was considered not search/seizure btw. (So we've actually cut back upon collection from a historical perspective. Police powers were greater in the 1920s than today)
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
  >How do you think we should solve the issue? Step 1. Police don't kick a person's door down and shoot everyone based upon a single unconfirmed report. >What makes the modern era so different that Police aren't allowed to look at metadata anymore? The volume of available metadata.
  - dragontamer 12y ago
    > Step 1. Police don't kick a person's door down and shoot everyone based upon a single unconfirmed report. No one has died to Swatting yet, (thank goodness). But the success rate at catching swatters has been less than stellar. I'm more concerned about the "catching swatters" part. Why the general police forces of the US seem unable to catch them bothers me greatly.

What? Swatting is a serious concern. How do you think we should solve the issue? Have the police sit around doing nothing because they don't have the legal tools to look at business metadata? I'm trying to bring up an actual issue here. For a hundred years, the "metadata" standard has applied to mail, telephone records, business records and so forth as "free game" for the Police. What makes the modern era so different that Police aren't allowed to look at metadata anymore?

Dylan16807 12y ago
1. It was not free game. They could not take copies preemptively. 2. There is vastly more metadata being stored now, and the police don't need access to most of it. We might even be better off with laws against storing it.
- dragontamer 12y ago
  > 1. It was not free game. They could not take copies preemptively. Wrong. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mai... It's been free-game for a hundred years. Keep up with the law dude. USPS "metadata" has been copied and tracked. Such information was used for the Anthrax cases of early 2000s... and other such crimes. It is illegal for police to read the contents of an envelope, but they can (and have been) scanning the outside of envelopes and storing that metadata for police use for decades. The difference between snail-mail and the business records provision is... terrorism was added to the words. But I'd bet what they were doing was legal before the Patriot Act was made. > 2. There is vastly more metadata being stored now, and the police don't need access to most of it. We might even be better off with laws against storing it. That doesn't answer the question. How do you expect to track down a Swatter without using metadata?
  - Dylan16807 12y ago
    Okay, doing it for decades doesn't mean they need it. It wasn't there from the start. >How do you expect to track down a Swatter without using metadata? As I said in my other post, you don't actually need call records to find a swatter. They called the police, the police have the number, tada. I'm not arguing against deleting everything that could possibly classify as metadata, I'm saying we should cut down the types of metadata available. And we need to stop the government from making copies of private data 'just in case' and declaring it not to be a search/seizure until some later stage.
    - dragontamer 12y ago
      > As I said in my other post, you don't actually need call records to find a swatter. They called the police, the police have the number, tada. And if the Swatter used another phone to call a Google Voice number to create a local line in another city, they will need Metadata to figure out what that _OTHER_ telephone number is. Otherwise, they have a phone number to a fake google-account created in TOR. That's not very useful. Phone Number 555-0000 called Google-Voice 555-9991, which THEN called the Police. Only having "555-9991" is completely worthless. You need metadata analysis to unravel the proxies. Furthermore, executing a warrant generally requires a name and a case. You don't got a name yet, you're trying to build a case without warrant powers at this point of the Police game. Do you think these Swatters are dumb or something? They aren't using their personal phone numbers to call the police, they're actually redirecting themselves a little bit. > I'm not arguing against deleting everything that could possibly classify as metadata, I'm saying we should cut down the types of metadata available. And we need to stop the government from making copies of private data 'just in case' and declaring it not to be a search/seizure until some later stage. The legal standard between 1940s (since the closure of the Office of Censorship, which straight up allowed the US Agents to read mail and censor them), and now has been that metadata collection doesn't need a warrant. Metadata collection is NOT search/seizure in Smith v. Maryland. Its how things have operated for literally decades. Now if you don't like it, that's fine. But know that you're moving from the status-quo. This is how the government has operated since the 1970s at very least (see again... Smith v. Maryland). Going back to the cases before that was Olmstead v. United States, 1928, which collection of straight-up data was considered not search/seizure btw. (So we've actually cut back upon collection from a historical perspective. Police powers were greater in the 1920s than today)
fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
>How do you think we should solve the issue? Step 1. Police don't kick a person's door down and shoot everyone based upon a single unconfirmed report. >What makes the modern era so different that Police aren't allowed to look at metadata anymore? The volume of available metadata.
- dragontamer 12y ago
  > Step 1. Police don't kick a person's door down and shoot everyone based upon a single unconfirmed report. No one has died to Swatting yet, (thank goodness). But the success rate at catching swatters has been less than stellar. I'm more concerned about the "catching swatters" part. Why the general police forces of the US seem unable to catch them bothers me greatly.