It really isn't on the same level at all. The fact that it's different by such a large degree is why it's not the same and shouldn't be treated as such.
Come now, both of you can't be -that- cynical. Companies are accountable only to "shareholders" and "investors", whereas a sufficiently determined public can force recall elections on unpopular politicans. Recall elections that happen and don't succeed (hello, Wisconsin) fail because not enough people vote.
The state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, and an advertising company doesn't. Accountability to the voting public should balance that out, so go over to the Ferguson thread and tell them that they have nothing to complain about.
Please explain how police officers' tendency to reach for their weapons is in any way related to the collection of metadata by a completely different agency that would require police to request for warrants to access.
The Ferguson statement makes a valid point. Do I anticipate that the federal government will act more carefully with that data than a corporation? Absolutely.
Should LOCAL governments have access to unfettered, vast quantities of data? Fuck no. The federal government is one of the only things saving southerners from the unchecked mini-theocracies that are country governments.
Federal intelligence agencies have also been seen to abuse data collection in numerous cases, though many here don't believe that it indicates a strong enough pattern to really get upset about it.
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Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
It really isn't on the same level at all. The fact that it's different by such a large degree is why it's not the same and shouldn't be treated as such.
It's not directly damaging, no, but releasing a ton of classified information absolutely reinforced a falsely negative view of our country abroad and gave a big propaganda win to our enemies, one that they're still capitalizing on today. And what Manning did was treason and breaking her oath, full stop. I'm not calling for her to be executed like the Rosenbergs, but she -is- a traitor.
It really isn't on the same level at all. The fact that it's different by such a large degree is why it's not the same and shouldn't be treated as such.
It's not directly damaging, no, but releasing a ton of classified information absolutely reinforced a falsely negative view of our country abroad and gave a big propaganda win to our enemies, one that they're still capitalizing on today. And what Manning did was treason and breaking her oath, full stop. I'm not calling for her to be executed like the Rosenbergs, but she -is- a traitor.
It was breaking her oath but hardly treason. There's a very specific definition for that and she wasn't convicted of it. And she's definitely not a traitor at all.
I'm generally one of the most critical of people like Manning but frankly I feel that you're going overboard here. She was in a bad mental state and did something she thought was good for America in a very, very foolish way. Nothing in her testimony that I've seen even hints at wanting to help the enemy or hurt America. It was an incredibly short sighted decision on her part but it wasn't treason or traitorous.
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Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
I'm generally one of the most critical of people like Manning but frankly I feel that you're going overboard here. She was in a bad mental state and did something she thought was good for America in a very, very foolish way. Nothing in her testimony that I've seen even hints at wanting to help the enemy or hurt America. It was an incredibly short sighted decision on her part but it wasn't treason or traitorous.
You're right, I probably was overreacting a bit. Every time a story comes up about Manning or Snowden it's invariably GREATEST HERO OF OUR GENERATION. Rrrrghh.
Come now, both of you can't be -that- cynical. Companies are accountable only to "shareholders" and "investors", whereas a sufficiently determined public can force recall elections on unpopular politicans. Recall elections that happen and don't succeed (hello, Wisconsin) fail because not enough people vote.
The state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, and an advertising company doesn't. Accountability to the voting public should balance that out, so go over to the Ferguson thread and tell them that they have nothing to complain about.
You don't need a monopoly on force to negatively affect or even destroy people's lives.
And while the situation in Ferguson is certainly dire the federal government is nowhere close to that level. It doesn't mean it's perfect but the comparison is silly to say the least.
That's silly. The government has a qualitatively greater ability to affect people's lives than any private organization, and it's not going to be run by democrats forever.
It has the ability to do a lot of things. It could run a tank through my home and I'd be pretty much powerless to stop it. But I opt not to go full cynic and decry the existence of a standing military simply because of what the government has the ability to do with it.
There's a long and illustrious tradition in this country of not giving the government certain powers because those powers are too easily abused, even if the current administration isn't likely to do so right this minute.
There's also a long and ignoble tradition in this country of not giving the government certain powers because those powers are too easily used to constrain abuses of the private sector in the pursuit of the Almighty Dollar.
Here's the issue - I'd like for you to point out where in the Fourth Amendment it prohibits the government from purchasing access to public databases of information acquired through perfectly legal means. Because there isn't one from what I'm seeing. And the fact is that private acquisition of data has become a major problem in the past decade - one of the better descriptions I've seen is that these data stockpiles are the toxic waste of the Information Age, and are just as hazardous.
Come now, both of you can't be -that- cynical. Companies are accountable only to "shareholders" and "investors", whereas a sufficiently determined public can force recall elections on unpopular politicans. Recall elections that happen and don't succeed (hello, Wisconsin) fail because not enough people vote.
The state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, and an advertising company doesn't. Accountability to the voting public should balance that out, so go over to the Ferguson thread and tell them that they have nothing to complain about.
You don't need a monopoly on force to negatively affect or even destroy people's lives.
And while the situation in Ferguson is certainly dire the federal government is nowhere close to that level. It doesn't mean it's perfect but the comparison is silly to say the least.
That's silly. The government has a qualitatively greater ability to affect people's lives than any private organization, and it's not going to be run by democrats forever.
It has the ability to do a lot of things. It could run a tank through my home and I'd be pretty much powerless to stop it. But I opt not to go full cynic and decry the existence of a standing military simply because of what the government has the ability to do with it.
There's a long and illustrious tradition in this country of not giving the government certain powers because those powers are too easily abused, even if the current administration isn't likely to do so right this minute.
There's also a long and ignoble tradition in this country of not giving the government certain powers because those powers are too easily used to constrain abuses of the private sector in the pursuit of the Almighty Dollar.
Here's the issue - I'd like for you to point out where in the Fourth Amendment it prohibits the government from purchasing access to public databases of information acquired through perfectly legal means. Because there isn't one from what I'm seeing. And the fact is that private acquisition of data has become a major problem in the past decade - one of the better descriptions I've seen is that these data stockpiles are the toxic waste of the Information Age, and are just as hazardous.
There is some 4th amendment jurisprudence which does somewhat limit what the government is allowed to request private agents do on its behalf, but it's pretty weak (the cops can't send someone's mom in to make them confess, for example).
That said, we definitely need universal data collection restrictions. License plates should be allowed for official uses only.
Come now, both of you can't be -that- cynical. Companies are accountable only to "shareholders" and "investors", whereas a sufficiently determined public can force recall elections on unpopular politicans. Recall elections that happen and don't succeed (hello, Wisconsin) fail because not enough people vote.
The state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, and an advertising company doesn't. Accountability to the voting public should balance that out, so go over to the Ferguson thread and tell them that they have nothing to complain about.
You don't need a monopoly on force to negatively affect or even destroy people's lives.
And while the situation in Ferguson is certainly dire the federal government is nowhere close to that level. It doesn't mean it's perfect but the comparison is silly to say the least.
That's silly. The government has a qualitatively greater ability to affect people's lives than any private organization, and it's not going to be run by democrats forever.
It has the ability to do a lot of things. It could run a tank through my home and I'd be pretty much powerless to stop it. But I opt not to go full cynic and decry the existence of a standing military simply because of what the government has the ability to do with it.
There's a long and illustrious tradition in this country of not giving the government certain powers because those powers are too easily abused, even if the current administration isn't likely to do so right this minute.
There's also a long and ignoble tradition in this country of not giving the government certain powers because those powers are too easily used to constrain abuses of the private sector in the pursuit of the Almighty Dollar.
Here's the issue - I'd like for you to point out where in the Fourth Amendment it prohibits the government from purchasing access to public databases of information acquired through perfectly legal means. Because there isn't one from what I'm seeing. And the fact is that private acquisition of data has become a major problem in the past decade - one of the better descriptions I've seen is that these data stockpiles are the toxic waste of the Information Age, and are just as hazardous.
The 4th is one of the bounds, Hedgie. There's nothing saying that law or regulation can't set a lower limit. "DHS, you are not allowed to access LPR data" could be implemented any number of ways. (ditto with "private company, you're not allowed to collect LPR data", though while a good idea that would be really really tricky to do right)
So the government mandates that every car on the road have a 'standardized' and easily identifiable license plate.
Let's suppose that these plate monitoring / tracking systems become so ubiquitous that essentially any car on the road can be tracked on a par with a GPS tracker. Where does that fall under US vs. Jones? Does the government need a warrant to obtain things like OnStar records? I would think so, but I didn't know what / if there was a strong ruling on it or if it's considered content vs. metadata or what.
Alternately, I'd prefer that the use of license plates be used only for official uses. Then again, license plates are used so frequently to control access, parking, etc for all kinds of things that it would probably cause quite a few unintended problems. Replacing plates with some sort of RFID or encrypted identifier seems like it would have a lot of consequences as well - it gets a lot harder to identify a hit and run driver when a person doesn't have something to easily reference.
Big surprise that there's no easy solutions. But once again, I would rather my government have this information that private companies. If the government can buy / use the information private companies obtain then it doesn't matter if they are collecting it themselves or not. However, a private company will sell to anyone where the government generally has more restrictions and accountability.
You could maybe restrict their ability to sell it, but I don't think it would pass a constitutional challenge to prevent people from making notes from recordings in public.
The question is whether companies can be prohibited from gathering information without a cure that is worse than the disease.
Honestly, there's not a single legitimate use case in any fashion for license plate data, outside of what it has always been used for, which is criminal identification and parking enforcement, both of which tend to be manually tracked or tracked via alternate methods anyways (parking passes, etc).
If we're talking more broadly, I still don't see any issue. It will fuck up advertising data markets and the like, but who cares? The vast majority of data collection and sharing doesn't help the average person or improve society. I don't mind Google knowing I'm a male in my 30's for advertising purposes because I'd rather see advertisements for 30's men than teen girls, but as soon as this data starts being shared, collated, etc. it gets pretty impressive.
The end result of not regulating this is a private company can know with a moderate degree of confidence the last time I visited my hypothetical mom in NYC and her address, along with perhaps what I bought her for her birthday, and do whatever they will with that information and are we really okay with that?
I think it helps to keep in mind that privacy rights as a thing people value are less about trivial matters like getting mom a gift card and more about things that can get you discriminated against, harassed, or otherwise damaged. Nobody wants a marketing company to out them before they come out of the closet.
I think it helps to keep in mind that privacy rights as a thing people value are less about trivial matters like getting mom a gift card and more about things that can get you discriminated against, harassed, or otherwise damaged. Nobody wants a marketing company to out them before they come out of the closet.
Right. Or telling your coworkers that you have herpes. Or letting your boss know what porn sites you visit. Or even what church you attend. There are a lot of things that a lot of people do, which will get you harassed at work or even damage professional relationships if they become common knowledge. We like to think we all have nothing to hide, but if my entire web browsing, posting, and email history were laid bare before my boss? That might affect how he looks at me. And, because people are irrational, this is true even if the same were true of him.
You could maybe restrict their ability to sell it, but I don't think it would pass a constitutional challenge to prevent people from making notes from recordings in public.
Commerce clause would easily make sale or possession of such data illegal the same way we can ban marijuana.
I think it helps to keep in mind that privacy rights as a thing people value are less about trivial matters like getting mom a gift card and more about things that can get you discriminated against, harassed, or otherwise damaged. Nobody wants a marketing company to out them before they come out of the closet.
The problem are those things are linked in ways that are scary. (Look at the one case where Target identified a teenager as pregnant just from purchase habits - and then outed that fact to her family by sending her targeted advertising.)
The FBI wants to make us all less safe. At least that’s the implication from FBI director Jim Comey’s push to ban unbreakable encryption and deliberately weaken everyone’s security. And it’s past time that the White House makes its position clear once and for all.
Comey was back before Congress this week - this time in front of the House Appropriations Committee - imploring Congressmen to pass a law that would force tech companies to create a backdoor in any phone or communications tool that uses encryption.
He also revealed the Obama administration may be crafting such a law right now. “One of the things that the administration is working on right now is what would a legislative response look like that would allow us … with court process to get access to that evidence”, he said.
The whole controversy stems from Apple’s decision to encrypt iPhones by default - so that only the user can unlock a phone with a pin or password and even Apple itself does not have the key. It was a huge step forward for security, and given that the US government considers cybersecurity attacks a more dire threat than terrorism, you’d think they’d be encouraging everyone to use more encryption. But Comey essentially argued to Congress that because encryption sometimes makes FBI investigations harder, it should be outlawed.
The idea that all of a sudden the FBI is “going dark” and won’t be able to investigate criminals anymore thanks to a tiny improvement of cell phone security is patently absurd. Even if the phone itself is protected by a passphrase that encrypts the device, the FBI can still go to telecom companies to get all the phone metadata they want. They can also still track anyone they choose by getting a cell phone’s location information 24 hours a day, and of course they can still wiretap the calls themselves. Let’s not forget that with a four digit passcode - like iPhones come with by default - can easily broken into by the FBI without anyone’s help anyways. So a vast majority of this debate is already moot.
Beyond a few vague hypotheticals, Comey wouldn’t give any specific examples at the hearing about where this has tripped up the FBI before, but the last time the FBI did, what they said was immediately debunked as nonsense.
If you want to understand why encryption is important for protecting your data, look no further than the FBI’s own website. Well, at least you could until last week. For years, the FBI recommended people enable encryption on their phone to protect themselves against criminals, but at some point prior to Comey’s testimony, the FBI scrubbed that information from public view. (On 27 March the FBI told the National Journal that the security tips were not intentionally deleted, but “were because of the agency’s ongoing website redesign.”)
In other words, as security expert Jonathan Zdziarski remarked, the FBI “has weakened their recommended standards [and] best practices to intentionally leave you vulnerable to security breaches.” Computer science professor Matt Blaze put it another way: “Basically, the FBI is saying that they think you’re more likely to commit a crime than need to protect yourself against crime.”
The only thing worse than Comey’s position was the know-nothing members of the Appropriations Committee, who at various times were fawning all over Comey’s proposal and displaying zero knowledge about basic technological precepts. The video of the back-and-forth is cringe worthy.
When I say “know-nothing,” I’m not being facetious or hyperbolic. Take Representative John Carter for example, who the other members of the Appropriations Committee affectionately call “Judge” and kept deferring to in the hearing for his supposed wisdom. He also happens to be chairman of the subcommittee on Homeland Security in charge of funding cybersecurity. Carter prefaced his comments about cybersecurity and encryption by literally saying “I don’t know anything about this stuff.”
Yes, you read that right. The man in charge of billions of dollars of cybersecurity funding openly admits he has no idea what he’s doing. You can imagine how much “wisdom” his three minute soliloquy on the dangers of encryption contained.
The White House, for its part, was allegedly supposed to release their official position on the issue already, given the controversy. A White House official recently said: “[Obama] actually said there is no scenario in which the US government does not support strong encryption”. But now Comey is saying they may be drafting a law that states the opposite.
So which is it, do they want to encourage people to protect their security and privacy with technology, or do they want to pass a law to make that illegal?
So the government mandates that every car on the road have a 'standardized' and easily identifiable license plate.
Let's suppose that these plate monitoring / tracking systems become so ubiquitous that essentially any car on the road can be tracked on a par with a GPS tracker. Where does that fall under US vs. Jones? Does the government need a warrant to obtain things like OnStar records? I would think so, but I didn't know what / if there was a strong ruling on it or if it's considered content vs. metadata or what.
Alternately, I'd prefer that the use of license plates be used only for official uses. Then again, license plates are used so frequently to control access, parking, etc for all kinds of things that it would probably cause quite a few unintended problems. Replacing plates with some sort of RFID or encrypted identifier seems like it would have a lot of consequences as well - it gets a lot harder to identify a hit and run driver when a person doesn't have something to easily reference.
Big surprise that there's no easy solutions. But once again, I would rather my government have this information that private companies. If the government can buy / use the information private companies obtain then it doesn't matter if they are collecting it themselves or not. However, a private company will sell to anyone where the government generally has more restrictions and accountability.
USvJones sort of copped out and used the physical intrusion of placing the device as the means to rule it unconstitutional. LPR and Ontario tracking aren't addressed by that ruling.
Sure, but people aren't getting in a huff because they have serious privacy objections and think that current law is inadequate to deal with the abuses but because its "unconstitutional"
The question is whether companies can be prohibited from gathering information without a cure that is worse than the disease.
Honestly, there's not a single legitimate use case in any fashion for license plate data, outside of what it has always been used for, which is criminal identification and parking enforcement, both of which tend to be manually tracked or tracked via alternate methods anyways (parking passes, etc).
If we're talking more broadly, I still don't see any issue. It will fuck up advertising data markets and the like, but who cares? The vast majority of data collection and sharing doesn't help the average person or improve society. I don't mind Google knowing I'm a male in my 30's for advertising purposes because I'd rather see advertisements for 30's men than teen girls, but as soon as this data starts being shared, collated, etc. it gets pretty impressive.
The end result of not regulating this is a private company can know with a moderate degree of confidence the last time I visited my hypothetical mom in NYC and her address, along with perhaps what I bought her for her birthday, and do whatever they will with that information and are we really okay with that?
So will you ban collecting the data? How do you word that law so it doesn't just ban all photography in public places? Do you ban the aggregation into a database? How to you define that in a way that doesn't cross the first amendment? The sale? What legitimate uses will be negatively impacted by these regulations?
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
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Andy JoeWe claim the land for the highlord!The AdirondacksRegistered Userregular
A new company is trying to do an end-run around that intransigence by scraping publicly available information from various sharing-economy services and compiling it into a trust score between 0 and 100. Called Karma, it works as a browser extension—any time you pull up a supported site (which currently includes Airbnb, Craigslist, Dogvacay, Ebay, Etsy, RelayRides, and Vayable) a pop-up window will ask if you want to link your account to your Karma score. That score is calculated by looking at the reviews you’ve received—both the quantitative ratings (the number of stars, for instance) as well as a textual analysis of written comments. Different services are weighted differently; intimate interactions like those powered by Airbnb and Dogvacay are deemed more relevant than relatively anonymous eBay sales, and more recent reviews also are weighted more heavily. The more services you link, the higher your potential score. (Of course, if you’ve misbehaved on one service, your score could fall—but then, you would probably choose not to link it in the first place.) When you peruse a supported service, you’ll see every user’s Karma score superimposed over their listings. It’s a little bit like the sharing-economy’s answer to Klout, that notorious Q rating for social media.
Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
Is Klout actually used outside of "social media celebrity" crap?
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Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
I killed the thread! Now I shall resurrect it!
The New Patriot Act renewal is facing some unforeseen scrutiny by Congress. Some people (cough Rand Paul cough) don't like the NSA's surveillance program, so the Obama administration took it out and presented the new-and-reduced act as the USA Freedom Act. Nu-uh, says Rand Paul, and drags away votes from the approval process. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is summoning Congress to vote on it this Sunday, "hours away from a midnight deadline".
Because those midnight deadlines always get kept.
I'm fond of the bulk data collection. I'm not a spy, terrorist, or criminal, so I have nothing to fear from the government, and private corporations practice it anyways. But then Glen Greenwald had to do the whole purse-clutching schtick, and now it's going away.
As someone who has been okay with the government programs talked here, "I'm not a spy, terrorist, or criminal, so I have nothing to fear from the government" is some very short sighted reasoning.
As someone who has been okay with the government programs talked here, "I'm not a spy, terrorist, or criminal, so I have nothing to fear from the government" is some very short sighted reasoning.
Must we pull out the "First they came..." poem?
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TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
The New Patriot Act renewal is facing some unforeseen scrutiny by Congress. Some people (cough Rand Paul cough) don't like the NSA's surveillance program, so the Obama administration took it out and presented the new-and-reduced act as the USA Freedom Act. Nu-uh, says Rand Paul, and drags away votes from the approval process. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is summoning Congress to vote on it this Sunday, "hours away from a midnight deadline".
Because those midnight deadlines always get kept.
I'm fond of the bulk data collection. I'm not a spy, terrorist, or criminal, so I have nothing to fear from the government, and private corporations practice it anyways. But then Glen Greenwald had to do the whole purse-clutching schtick, and now it's going away.
it's harmless, to us and to the terrorists. It's literally a waste of money and time and resources.
As someone who has been okay with the government programs talked here, "I'm not a spy, terrorist, or criminal, so I have nothing to fear from the government" is some very short sighted reasoning.
Must we pull out the "First they came..." poem?
No, we have been over this. If they want to come for you they will come for you and the law will not stop them. But it is a powerful tool for finding terrorists.
As someone who has been okay with the government programs talked here, "I'm not a spy, terrorist, or criminal, so I have nothing to fear from the government" is some very short sighted reasoning.
Must we pull out the "First they came..." poem?
No, we have been over this. If they want to come for you they will come for you and the law will not stop them. But it is a powerful tool for finding terrorists.
I continue to be a bit dumbfounded about this. There isn't one single case that shows bulk metadata collection preventing a terrorist attack that isn't trumped up or exaggerated or completely made up.
The researchers at the New America Foundation found that the program provided evidence to initiate only one case, involving a San Diego cabdriver, Basaaly Moalin, who was convicted of sending money to a terrorist group in Somalia. Three co-conspirators were also convicted. The cases involved no threat of attack against the United States.
One case. It provided the impetus to investigate one crime. One. And it did not involve a threat of attack against the US, simply somebody sending money to a terrorist group.
You can argue all you want about how it's necessary, because every other country's totally doing it, or whatever. But you can't say it's a powerful tool for finding terrorists. Because it isn't.
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Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
As someone who has been okay with the government programs talked here, "I'm not a spy, terrorist, or criminal, so I have nothing to fear from the government" is some very short sighted reasoning.
Eh. It helps us catch at least one out of the three, if not two, and I don't foresee us becoming 1984/The Nazis anytime soon. The average person should be more worried about what their employer (and future employers) are doing with Big Data instead of the government.
As someone who has been okay with the government programs talked here, "I'm not a spy, terrorist, or criminal, so I have nothing to fear from the government" is some very short sighted reasoning.
Must we pull out the "First they came..." poem?
No, we have been over this. If they want to come for you they will come for you and the law will not stop them. But it is a powerful tool for finding terrorists.
I continue to be a bit dumbfounded about this. There isn't one single case that shows bulk metadata collection preventing a terrorist attack that isn't trumped up or exaggerated or completely made up.
The researchers at the New America Foundation found that the program provided evidence to initiate only one case, involving a San Diego cabdriver, Basaaly Moalin, who was convicted of sending money to a terrorist group in Somalia. Three co-conspirators were also convicted. The cases involved no threat of attack against the United States.
One case. It provided the impetus to investigate one crime. One. And it did not involve a threat of attack against the US, simply somebody sending money to a terrorist group.
You can argue all you want about how it's necessary, because every other country's totally doing it, or whatever. But you can't say it's a powerful tool for finding terrorists. Because it isn't.
Being pedantic, that's how all metadata collection works - it looks for trends and patterns, not individuals. A metadata initiative by CorporateCo may increase your likelihood to buy by 5%. Big whoop, I've gone from 3% to 8% - I'm still almost certainly never going to buy your products and/or services. Suck it big data!
But apply that 5% likelihood across the entire population... a 5% increase in sales for Apple is $1.5billion dollars.
Same deal for intelligence initiatives, you may not be able to say "We caught X High Profile Person due to data" but the rate of successful friendly operations (or, conversely, the rate of unsuccessful unfriendly operations) swings in your favor. Even swings on that scale may be sufficient to cause a failure cascade, bringing down an entire arm of unfriendly operations - even if you can't point to a single definitive "silver bullet" case that was dependent on metadata.
As a tangent, humans in general suck at correctly identifying causal relationships (Confirmation Bias is a fairly well-published phenomena, as an anecdote a 1998 study by Bleak and Frederick indicated that 44% of athletes have a "lucky" garment, based on nothing apart from they wore it once when they won). Pretty much every field is littered with 1-hit-wonders who can't work out why they were so successful and haven't been able to replicate it... sadly, a lot of them end up as organization heads to continue their zealous devotion to their pet theories, being continuously saved from complete ruin by their subordinates. This goes both ways - I'd personally be wary of anyone who tried to point to a definitive case of Metadata success, and anyone who tried to point out a lack of definitive cases as evidence of failure.
The burden of proof technically rests with Metadata advocates, but without complete access to operations data (which is pretty much ruled out on the basis of national security) that's pretty much never going to happen.
As someone who has been okay with the government programs talked here, "I'm not a spy, terrorist, or criminal, so I have nothing to fear from the government" is some very short sighted reasoning.
Must we pull out the "First they came..." poem?
No, we have been over this. If they want to come for you they will come for you and the law will not stop them. But it is a powerful tool for finding terrorists.
I continue to be a bit dumbfounded about this. There isn't one single case that shows bulk metadata collection preventing a terrorist attack that isn't trumped up or exaggerated or completely made up.
The researchers at the New America Foundation found that the program provided evidence to initiate only one case, involving a San Diego cabdriver, Basaaly Moalin, who was convicted of sending money to a terrorist group in Somalia. Three co-conspirators were also convicted. The cases involved no threat of attack against the United States.
One case. It provided the impetus to investigate one crime. One. And it did not involve a threat of attack against the US, simply somebody sending money to a terrorist group.
You can argue all you want about how it's necessary, because every other country's totally doing it, or whatever. But you can't say it's a powerful tool for finding terrorists. Because it isn't.
Being pedantic, that's how all metadata collection works - it looks for trends and patterns, not individuals. A metadata initiative by CorporateCo may increase your likelihood to buy by 5%. Big whoop, I've gone from 3% to 8% - I'm still almost certainly never going to buy your products and/or services. Suck it big data!
But apply that 5% likelihood across the entire population... a 5% increase in sales for Apple is $1.5billion dollars.
Same deal for intelligence initiatives, you may not be able to say "We caught X High Profile Person due to data" but the rate of successful friendly operations (or, conversely, the rate of unsuccessful unfriendly operations) swings in your favor. Even swings on that scale may be sufficient to cause a failure cascade, bringing down an entire arm of unfriendly operations - even if you can't point to a single definitive "silver bullet" case that was dependent on metadata.
As a tangent, humans in general suck at correctly identifying causal relationships (Confirmation Bias is a fairly well-published phenomena, as an anecdote a 1998 study by Bleak and Frederick indicated that 44% of athletes have a "lucky" garment, based on nothing apart from they wore it once when they won). Pretty much every field is littered with 1-hit-wonders who can't work out why they were so successful and haven't been able to replicate it... sadly, a lot of them end up as organization heads to continue their zealous devotion to their pet theories, being continuously saved from complete ruin by their subordinates. This goes both ways - I'd personally be wary of anyone who tried to point to a definitive case of Metadata success, and anyone who tried to point out a lack of definitive cases as evidence of failure.
The burden of proof technically rests with Metadata advocates, but without complete access to operations data (which is pretty much ruled out on the basis of national security) that's pretty much never going to happen.
The claim was that bulk metadata collection is a powerful tool for detecting terrorists. That's a pretty bold claim, and one that requires proof. Now, I'm sympathetic to the diplomatic argument, and to the argument that perhaps this is necessary for counterintelligence efforts. However, saying that it's a tool for terrorist detection is pretty much wrong no matter how you look at it. Almost all of the cited cases in the study showed that regular warrants were used to make these cases and that bulk metadata collection played little or no part in the actual detection of terrorist activity. The only case that showed detection of terrorist activity with anything other than a non-instrumental role was the aforementioned terrorist funding, where American terrorism was actually not involved.
I am aware that this is a complex issue and that some nuance is necessary. I do think that if you do a lot of twists and turns in your thinking on this, though, you can pretty much reach whatever conclusion you desire, and as you said, the burden of proof is on metadata advocates here.
As someone who has been okay with the government programs talked here, "I'm not a spy, terrorist, or criminal, so I have nothing to fear from the government" is some very short sighted reasoning.
Must we pull out the "First they came..." poem?
No, we have been over this. If they want to come for you they will come for you and the law will not stop them. But it is a powerful tool for finding incompoetent terrorists.
As someone who has been okay with the government programs talked here, "I'm not a spy, terrorist, or criminal, so I have nothing to fear from the government" is some very short sighted reasoning.
Must we pull out the "First they came..." poem?
No, we have been over this. If they want to come for you they will come for you and the law will not stop them. But it is a powerful tool for finding terrorists.
I continue to be a bit dumbfounded about this. There isn't one single case that shows bulk metadata collection preventing a terrorist attack that isn't trumped up or exaggerated or completely made up.
The researchers at the New America Foundation found that the program provided evidence to initiate only one case, involving a San Diego cabdriver, Basaaly Moalin, who was convicted of sending money to a terrorist group in Somalia. Three co-conspirators were also convicted. The cases involved no threat of attack against the United States.
One case. It provided the impetus to investigate one crime. One. And it did not involve a threat of attack against the US, simply somebody sending money to a terrorist group.
You can argue all you want about how it's necessary, because every other country's totally doing it, or whatever. But you can't say it's a powerful tool for finding terrorists. Because it isn't.
Being pedantic, that's how all metadata collection works - it looks for trends and patterns, not individuals. A metadata initiative by CorporateCo may increase your likelihood to buy by 5%. Big whoop, I've gone from 3% to 8% - I'm still almost certainly never going to buy your products and/or services. Suck it big data!
But apply that 5% likelihood across the entire population... a 5% increase in sales for Apple is $1.5billion dollars.
Same deal for intelligence initiatives, you may not be able to say "We caught X High Profile Person due to data" but the rate of successful friendly operations (or, conversely, the rate of unsuccessful unfriendly operations) swings in your favor. Even swings on that scale may be sufficient to cause a failure cascade, bringing down an entire arm of unfriendly operations - even if you can't point to a single definitive "silver bullet" case that was dependent on metadata.
As a tangent, humans in general suck at correctly identifying causal relationships (Confirmation Bias is a fairly well-published phenomena, as an anecdote a 1998 study by Bleak and Frederick indicated that 44% of athletes have a "lucky" garment, based on nothing apart from they wore it once when they won). Pretty much every field is littered with 1-hit-wonders who can't work out why they were so successful and haven't been able to replicate it... sadly, a lot of them end up as organization heads to continue their zealous devotion to their pet theories, being continuously saved from complete ruin by their subordinates. This goes both ways - I'd personally be wary of anyone who tried to point to a definitive case of Metadata success, and anyone who tried to point out a lack of definitive cases as evidence of failure.
The burden of proof technically rests with Metadata advocates, but without complete access to operations data (which is pretty much ruled out on the basis of national security) that's pretty much never going to happen.
Yet you could apply the same reasoning to doing anything because the effects are either so mild that they're not visible but trust us it is an essential tool or the data proving it works is super secret so shut up and trust us
As someone who has been okay with the government programs talked here, "I'm not a spy, terrorist, or criminal, so I have nothing to fear from the government" is some very short sighted reasoning.
Eh. It helps us catch at least one out of the three, if not two, and I don't foresee us becoming 1984/The Nazis anytime soon. The average person should be more worried about what their employer (and future employers) are doing with Big Data instead of the government.
A person can be concerned about both. I don't know why you think they have to choose what to worry about.
Also it's still the reasoning that bugs me. You really shouldn't be okay with the government doing something to people with X label unless you're okay with them doing that to you. It doesn't take the government turning in to an Orwellian nightmare for something to become bad.
Also it's still the reasoning that bugs me. You really shouldn't be okay with the government doing something to people with X label unless you're okay with them doing that to you. It doesn't take the government turning in to an Orwellian nightmare for something to become bad.
What? Why should I care about how the government catches spies?
Also it's still the reasoning that bugs me. You really shouldn't be okay with the government doing something to people with X label unless you're okay with them doing that to you. It doesn't take the government turning in to an Orwellian nightmare for something to become bad.
What? Why should I care about how the government catches spies?
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Unrelated bad things happening are unrelated.
Should LOCAL governments have access to unfettered, vast quantities of data? Fuck no. The federal government is one of the only things saving southerners from the unchecked mini-theocracies that are country governments.
It's not directly damaging, no, but releasing a ton of classified information absolutely reinforced a falsely negative view of our country abroad and gave a big propaganda win to our enemies, one that they're still capitalizing on today. And what Manning did was treason and breaking her oath, full stop. I'm not calling for her to be executed like the Rosenbergs, but she -is- a traitor.
It was breaking her oath but hardly treason. There's a very specific definition for that and she wasn't convicted of it. And she's definitely not a traitor at all.
I'm generally one of the most critical of people like Manning but frankly I feel that you're going overboard here. She was in a bad mental state and did something she thought was good for America in a very, very foolish way. Nothing in her testimony that I've seen even hints at wanting to help the enemy or hurt America. It was an incredibly short sighted decision on her part but it wasn't treason or traitorous.
There's also a long and ignoble tradition in this country of not giving the government certain powers because those powers are too easily used to constrain abuses of the private sector in the pursuit of the Almighty Dollar.
Here's the issue - I'd like for you to point out where in the Fourth Amendment it prohibits the government from purchasing access to public databases of information acquired through perfectly legal means. Because there isn't one from what I'm seeing. And the fact is that private acquisition of data has become a major problem in the past decade - one of the better descriptions I've seen is that these data stockpiles are the toxic waste of the Information Age, and are just as hazardous.
There is some 4th amendment jurisprudence which does somewhat limit what the government is allowed to request private agents do on its behalf, but it's pretty weak (the cops can't send someone's mom in to make them confess, for example).
That said, we definitely need universal data collection restrictions. License plates should be allowed for official uses only.
The 4th is one of the bounds, Hedgie. There's nothing saying that law or regulation can't set a lower limit. "DHS, you are not allowed to access LPR data" could be implemented any number of ways. (ditto with "private company, you're not allowed to collect LPR data", though while a good idea that would be really really tricky to do right)
Let's suppose that these plate monitoring / tracking systems become so ubiquitous that essentially any car on the road can be tracked on a par with a GPS tracker. Where does that fall under US vs. Jones? Does the government need a warrant to obtain things like OnStar records? I would think so, but I didn't know what / if there was a strong ruling on it or if it's considered content vs. metadata or what.
Alternately, I'd prefer that the use of license plates be used only for official uses. Then again, license plates are used so frequently to control access, parking, etc for all kinds of things that it would probably cause quite a few unintended problems. Replacing plates with some sort of RFID or encrypted identifier seems like it would have a lot of consequences as well - it gets a lot harder to identify a hit and run driver when a person doesn't have something to easily reference.
Big surprise that there's no easy solutions. But once again, I would rather my government have this information that private companies. If the government can buy / use the information private companies obtain then it doesn't matter if they are collecting it themselves or not. However, a private company will sell to anyone where the government generally has more restrictions and accountability.
Honestly, there's not a single legitimate use case in any fashion for license plate data, outside of what it has always been used for, which is criminal identification and parking enforcement, both of which tend to be manually tracked or tracked via alternate methods anyways (parking passes, etc).
If we're talking more broadly, I still don't see any issue. It will fuck up advertising data markets and the like, but who cares? The vast majority of data collection and sharing doesn't help the average person or improve society. I don't mind Google knowing I'm a male in my 30's for advertising purposes because I'd rather see advertisements for 30's men than teen girls, but as soon as this data starts being shared, collated, etc. it gets pretty impressive.
The end result of not regulating this is a private company can know with a moderate degree of confidence the last time I visited my hypothetical mom in NYC and her address, along with perhaps what I bought her for her birthday, and do whatever they will with that information and are we really okay with that?
Right. Or telling your coworkers that you have herpes. Or letting your boss know what porn sites you visit. Or even what church you attend. There are a lot of things that a lot of people do, which will get you harassed at work or even damage professional relationships if they become common knowledge. We like to think we all have nothing to hide, but if my entire web browsing, posting, and email history were laid bare before my boss? That might affect how he looks at me. And, because people are irrational, this is true even if the same were true of him.
Plus dick pics.
Commerce clause would easily make sale or possession of such data illegal the same way we can ban marijuana.
The problem are those things are linked in ways that are scary. (Look at the one case where Target identified a teenager as pregnant just from purchase habits - and then outed that fact to her family by sending her targeted advertising.)
USvJones sort of copped out and used the physical intrusion of placing the device as the means to rule it unconstitutional. LPR and Ontario tracking aren't addressed by that ruling.
So will you ban collecting the data? How do you word that law so it doesn't just ban all photography in public places? Do you ban the aggregation into a database? How to you define that in a way that doesn't cross the first amendment? The sale? What legitimate uses will be negatively impacted by these regulations?
The New Patriot Act renewal is facing some unforeseen scrutiny by Congress. Some people (cough Rand Paul cough) don't like the NSA's surveillance program, so the Obama administration took it out and presented the new-and-reduced act as the USA Freedom Act. Nu-uh, says Rand Paul, and drags away votes from the approval process. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is summoning Congress to vote on it this Sunday, "hours away from a midnight deadline".
Because those midnight deadlines always get kept.
I'm fond of the bulk data collection. I'm not a spy, terrorist, or criminal, so I have nothing to fear from the government, and private corporations practice it anyways. But then Glen Greenwald had to do the whole purse-clutching schtick, and now it's going away.
Must we pull out the "First they came..." poem?
it's harmless, to us and to the terrorists. It's literally a waste of money and time and resources.
No, we have been over this. If they want to come for you they will come for you and the law will not stop them. But it is a powerful tool for finding terrorists.
It really isn't.
I continue to be a bit dumbfounded about this. There isn't one single case that shows bulk metadata collection preventing a terrorist attack that isn't trumped up or exaggerated or completely made up.
One case. It provided the impetus to investigate one crime. One. And it did not involve a threat of attack against the US, simply somebody sending money to a terrorist group.
You can argue all you want about how it's necessary, because every other country's totally doing it, or whatever. But you can't say it's a powerful tool for finding terrorists. Because it isn't.
But apply that 5% likelihood across the entire population... a 5% increase in sales for Apple is $1.5billion dollars.
Same deal for intelligence initiatives, you may not be able to say "We caught X High Profile Person due to data" but the rate of successful friendly operations (or, conversely, the rate of unsuccessful unfriendly operations) swings in your favor. Even swings on that scale may be sufficient to cause a failure cascade, bringing down an entire arm of unfriendly operations - even if you can't point to a single definitive "silver bullet" case that was dependent on metadata.
As a tangent, humans in general suck at correctly identifying causal relationships (Confirmation Bias is a fairly well-published phenomena, as an anecdote a 1998 study by Bleak and Frederick indicated that 44% of athletes have a "lucky" garment, based on nothing apart from they wore it once when they won). Pretty much every field is littered with 1-hit-wonders who can't work out why they were so successful and haven't been able to replicate it... sadly, a lot of them end up as organization heads to continue their zealous devotion to their pet theories, being continuously saved from complete ruin by their subordinates. This goes both ways - I'd personally be wary of anyone who tried to point to a definitive case of Metadata success, and anyone who tried to point out a lack of definitive cases as evidence of failure.
The burden of proof technically rests with Metadata advocates, but without complete access to operations data (which is pretty much ruled out on the basis of national security) that's pretty much never going to happen.
The claim was that bulk metadata collection is a powerful tool for detecting terrorists. That's a pretty bold claim, and one that requires proof. Now, I'm sympathetic to the diplomatic argument, and to the argument that perhaps this is necessary for counterintelligence efforts. However, saying that it's a tool for terrorist detection is pretty much wrong no matter how you look at it. Almost all of the cited cases in the study showed that regular warrants were used to make these cases and that bulk metadata collection played little or no part in the actual detection of terrorist activity. The only case that showed detection of terrorist activity with anything other than a non-instrumental role was the aforementioned terrorist funding, where American terrorism was actually not involved.
I am aware that this is a complex issue and that some nuance is necessary. I do think that if you do a lot of twists and turns in your thinking on this, though, you can pretty much reach whatever conclusion you desire, and as you said, the burden of proof is on metadata advocates here.
Yet you could apply the same reasoning to doing anything because the effects are either so mild that they're not visible but trust us it is an essential tool or the data proving it works is super secret so shut up and trust us
A person can be concerned about both. I don't know why you think they have to choose what to worry about.
Also it's still the reasoning that bugs me. You really shouldn't be okay with the government doing something to people with X label unless you're okay with them doing that to you. It doesn't take the government turning in to an Orwellian nightmare for something to become bad.
Because nothing ever only affects the guilty.