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Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

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Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#71

Post by arkem »

noir_lord wrote: post #57
arkem wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this a lot, what is the basis of considering the FISA court merely a rubber stamp? Is it the approval rate? Is it the lack of transparency? If it's the approval rate, in my experience the reason why court warrant approvals are so high is because intelligence / law enforcement are very risk adverse and will not submit requests that are likely to be rejected. Anecdotally, the officers I talked to considered it c…

In 35,000 requests, they denied 12. Either the NSA is really accurate or something smells.

I think it shows that they have an excellent understanding of their authorizing legislation.

It also reflects that unlike other types of warrants the court can request revisions or additional information before making a decision and requests can be withdrawn before a formal rejection can take place.

Some estimates put the reject/withdrawal rate closer to 25%

Some more information: https://newrepublic.com/article/115257/fisa-warrants-court-t...

https://web.archive.org/web/20140402093319/http://www.uscour...

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#72

Post by epicureanideal »

shitgoose wrote: post #46

so they tell us that we have to arrange our private lives in such way that it would be easier for them to investigate/persecute us, if sometime in the future they decide that we are guilty of breaking their laws. [with great sadness]: how low have we fallen if we seriously discussing this instead of grabbing pitchforks.

I think what it takes is a visible critical mass gathering with "pitchforks" and all the relatively-awake people in society would join in. Nobody wants to be part of the 10 or 100 or 1000 person "movement" that gets squashed and futures ruined. But if it seemed like most of (active) society was going to pile on too, people would.

However, most of society is simply not active. Most of society would never pick up any pitchforks one way or the other, without things getting REALLY bad. At some point a highly motivated minority of the population (but still a lot of people) basically needs to make the change for everyone. I'm not saying that's right or wrong, just saying what seems to be the case.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#73

Post by ross-life »

mozumder wrote: post #62
JoshTriplett wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're suggesting that the sole legitimate check on governmental power is the government itself? And that anyone outside the government attempting to challenge abuses of power is by definition unfit for society?

The ultimate oversight is the voter. And the voters have decided that the courts should be trusted.

But the voters are being purposefully misinformed by that very same government. It's literally circular reasoning.

Your argument would hold more weight if the people voting were actually well informed and educated about what the implications of their votes would be. If the government came out and said "everything you do, say, click and load will be saved for latter analysis" do you think they would vote the same way?

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#74

Post by tomlongson »

bigiain wrote: post #38
SwimAway wrote: post #19

Obama, our manipulating word artisan of a president yet again attempting to use strong language (i.e "fetishizing") to polarize our view.

Interesting choice too - there's clearly a demographic who go to the Folsom Street Fair who definitely don't have negative connotations to "fetishizing", and I suspect any porn site operator could give you some numbers that some people would not believe about the number of people for whom fetishes are a real thing. I wonder if Obama and his speechwriters have research about how many people (and from which demographic…

If they are not harnessing big data for writing speeches then the White House is less savvy than Netflix and House of Cards writer, Beau Willimon.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#75

Post by mozumder »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #58
mozumder wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're monitoring meta-data, not private communications. And for private comms, they have filters that filter them out for US citizens, as the Snowden leaks show. LOL when people find out that the Snowden leaks actually show the NSA protecting privacy rights of US citizens, in a top-secret program.

Metadata has critical value. And private communications are being monitored, recorded, and searched as well. (Many people, myself included, also reject the notion that unauthorized collection and recording is fine as long as the subsequent searches and filters are authorized.) You seem to be taking government descriptions at face value, despite documented evidence to the contrary. Consider the possibility that the go…

Well I certainly don't trust you and your private army's oversight of me, and I'm sure you don't trust me and my army's oversight of you.

So we make an agreement and build a third-party that has oversight over both of us.

Or do you expect me to trust you?

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#76

Post by ibejoeb »

mozumder wrote: post #12
tehwebguy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Communications are already being monitored by random government employees with no judicial review. The FISA court is already a rubber stamp. Encryption is one of the only ways to non-passively protest. Edit: Can't reply to my replies, likely because of the down votes on my parent's comment. Re: FISA, yes to both. That anecdote may be truth but I am still hung up on NSA employee looking up ex-girlfriends' emails the d…

Again, good luck building your own army. My army can beat your army. As a citizen, you are expected to trust the FISA court.

That's entirely antithetical to a system of checks a balances. Distrust has always been a key part of the framework.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#77

Post by BWStearns »

ecma wrote: post #9

This is incredibly naive bordering on puerile. To suggest that POTUS' view on this is without nuance is to miss his point. POTUS went on to cite existing warrant mechanisms and their underlying principle: "And we agree on that, because we recognize that just like all of our other rights ... that there are going to be some constraints we impose so we are safe, secure and can live in a civilized society." I'm not sugge…

I don't believe that Obama himself has an blunt understanding of this issue, but I can't know what is truly in his heart or head and the view promoted in his statements here is utterly oversimplified and purposely lacking in nuance. Glossing over the impossibility of providing security only against "bad guys" while leaving you open to "good guys" is an intentionally low resolution view of the issue intended to make refutations based on that impossibility sound like nerds nitpicking the implementation details.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#78

Post by khedoros »

afarrell wrote: post #30
rdlecler1 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. government has already shown that it is willing to abuse the law and create loopholes. Maybe the FBI will need a court order, but once the back door exists, what's to stop the NSA, or North Korea, from using it and finding ways to exploit that vulnerability. Freedom has a cost and we need to accept that. There are no free lunches here.

But without a valid court order, the evidence collected by the NSA cannot be used against a defendant in a trial. If a defendant feels a court order was improperly issued, he can appeal his conviction on those procedural grounds. If the data is not used in a criminal case, then there is no mechanism for 4th amendment protection and the spied-upon has no recourse.

1. Data is collected without a court order, by an otherwise trustworthy government (for the sake of argument).

2. Time passes and government policies change

3. Information that was previously inadmissible, and which should have never been collected in the first place, is now admissible.

When we talk about law, we can't just consider how the current government will use it. We need to restrict how a future government could abuse it. You see the same pattern all the time in software: Some assumption is made in an earlier version. The basis of that assumption becomes invalid after further development. Now the thing that didn't matter before gets a bug added to your queue.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#79

Post by learc83 »

afarrell wrote: post #30
rdlecler1 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. government has already shown that it is willing to abuse the law and create loopholes. Maybe the FBI will need a court order, but once the back door exists, what's to stop the NSA, or North Korea, from using it and finding ways to exploit that vulnerability. Freedom has a cost and we need to accept that. There are no free lunches here.

But without a valid court order, the evidence collected by the NSA cannot be used against a defendant in a trial. If a defendant feels a court order was improperly issued, he can appeal his conviction on those procedural grounds. If the data is not used in a criminal case, then there is no mechanism for 4th amendment protection and the spied-upon has no recourse.

>But without a valid court order, the evidence collected by the NSA cannot be used against a defendant in a trial.

Ostensibly, but in reality the FBI or local agency will use parallel construction to find another way to introduce evidence without even mentioning the NSA.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#80

Post by SwimAway »

rubbingalcohol wrote: post #55
tomlongson wrote: post #42

A key promise of Obama's campaign for the presidency was to run the “most transparent” government- however the only person to really deliver on that promise was a whistleblower. Secret courts, secret domestic spying, and now calls for weakening of the digital equivalent of the safe shows that he either was not honest about transparency, or has radically changed his opinion since becoming POTUS. Maybe it's that he dec…

Speaking of transparency, Obama also secretly lobbied to kill FOIA transparency reform: https://freedom.press/blog/2016/03/new-documents-show-obama-...

Wow.
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