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Senate narrowly rejects plan to require a warrant for Americans’ browsing data

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Re: Senate narrowly rejects plan to require a warrant for Americans’ browsing data

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get the hostility towards requiring a warrant to spy on election candidates. Even if the goal is similar protections for everybody, it's obvious that measures designed to prevent parties from abusing the surveillance apparatus for political ends is a good thing. It's difficult to imagine a better tool for ensuring one side gets muck raked harder than the other.

It violates the core principle of equal justice. What if we only required search or arrest warrants for those with more than $10M in assets? Your comment would still apply, and would be more obviously unjust.

Whether it harmonizes perfectly with the spirit of equal justice or not is irrelevant to whether or not it still represents an improvement over the status quo. Your hypothetical is similarly asanine and works mainly as a straw man because, as far as the integrity of the democratic process, there's a clear difference between shielding individuals competing in a public election and random rich people on the street. You're literally arguing against something that would improve the integrity of the system.

Re: Senate narrowly rejects plan to require a warrant for Americans’ browsing data

#122
post #72
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it is right now, it would allow access to the internet search and browser history of anyone in the world, without probable cause or a warrant. But to be clear, this is just a reduction in friction of the previous process which was to just call a judge of a secret FISA court which no one is really allowed to know the details of. So this is likely just a move to reduce some red tape, and increase data ingress.

The secret court has reviewed your criticisms, in secret, and finds them to be completely unwarranted.

Would have been more accurate to say:

The secret court has reviewed your criticisms, in secret, and finds them to be [redacted]. Govern yourself accordingly.

Re: Senate narrowly rejects plan to require a warrant for Americans’ browsing data

#123
post #73
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On these max-out-surveillance votes, Dianne Feinstein poorly represents the massive tech industry presence in her state.

Or does she represent companies like Google, Facebook, or Palantir who are more concerned with pro-privacy laws cutting into their revenue? The politics of tech industry workers are not identical to their management and the latter steer a LOT more money into politics.

It's more the entertainment industry in this case.

Re: Senate narrowly rejects plan to require a warrant for Americans’ browsing data

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they have to be viable candidates? I don't mind being in a permanent state of casual campaigning

We can even make a political party out of it where everyone in the party is a candidate.

This has a very Slack vibe to it that I can dig.

Re: Senate narrowly rejects plan to require a warrant for Americans’ browsing data

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get the hostility towards requiring a warrant to spy on election candidates. Even if the goal is similar protections for everybody, it's obvious that measures designed to prevent parties from abusing the surveillance apparatus for political ends is a good thing. It's difficult to imagine a better tool for ensuring one side gets muck raked harder than the other.

For one, we have a POTUS that may have benefited knowingly or unknowingly by means of a foreign intelligence influence campaign. This gives those entities a free pass to influence campaigns or to hide other types of spying relating to an incumbent who is running for re-election. Seems like a bad time to make such a change in the law. There’s also the whole equal protection under law issue — a core tenant of American…

You could literally say the same thing about the Steele Dossier sponsored by the Clinton Campaign, Steele was identified as connected to a foreign government influence campaign as well. A candidate literally cooperated with a foreign actor with undisclosed Russian ties to generate evidence against their opponent which they knew would be disseminated by the American IC. Not having these protections just incentivizes whoever currently controls the apparatus to strategically investigate their party's opposition.

Edit: Putting this here since I've reached my reply cap. There was a request for citations. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/report-footnotes-show-fbi-k...

Re: Senate narrowly rejects plan to require a warrant for Americans’ browsing data

#126

Short term solution: Well VPNs for all, Ghostery [1] was running a deal on their paid version with a VPN built into their add-on [1]. Long term: The State is making their panopticon ambitions overt now in the public eye, thus spurring on the need to re-design the Internet entirely to avoid this. Anyone know what Starlink is offering in terms of privacy? Details are sparse for the most part right now, but given their…

Most traffic is over HTTPS, so VPNs aren't as useful as they once were. The advice of "don't go to your bank's website on coffee shop wifi" is 10-15 years out-of-date. Yes, HTTPS has some holes, but HSTS and certificate pinning help.

If you're this level of worried, you should make sure you're either signed out go Google/Gmail or have your search history turned off. A VPN offers zero added protection. there. IIRC, Google claims your history is anonymized. Wouldn't hurt to use DDG if you're paranoid.

VPNs are hit-or-miss on how they handle DNS requests. Even using a VPN, you might leak that you're a Hacker News reader.

I guess a VPN that doesn't log might protect you against going to an IP known to host bad things.

Re: Senate narrowly rejects plan to require a warrant for Americans’ browsing data

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get the hostility towards requiring a warrant to spy on election candidates. Even if the goal is similar protections for everybody, it's obvious that measures designed to prevent parties from abusing the surveillance apparatus for political ends is a good thing. It's difficult to imagine a better tool for ensuring one side gets muck raked harder than the other.

For one, we have a POTUS that may have benefited knowingly or unknowingly by means of a foreign intelligence influence campaign. This gives those entities a free pass to influence campaigns or to hide other types of spying relating to an incumbent who is running for re-election. Seems like a bad time to make such a change in the law. There’s also the whole equal protection under law issue — a core tenant of American…

Are you referring to Biden/China?

Re: Senate narrowly rejects plan to require a warrant for Americans’ browsing data

#128
post #79
post #19

Once again the lack of media coverage on this is appalling. Rand Paul has introduced an amendment that goes up for vote tomorrow that would disallow this surveillance on American citizens, which of course is not expected to pass. McConnell is drafting language to prevent this from being used on “federal election candidates” which of course is expected to pass.

> McConnell is drafting language to prevent this from being used on “federal election candidates” which of course is expected to pass. So privacy for those in positions of power but not for us plebes.

Just use a damn VPN.

Re: Senate narrowly rejects plan to require a warrant for Americans’ browsing data

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get the hostility towards requiring a warrant to spy on election candidates. Even if the goal is similar protections for everybody, it's obvious that measures designed to prevent parties from abusing the surveillance apparatus for political ends is a good thing. It's difficult to imagine a better tool for ensuring one side gets muck raked harder than the other.

For one, we have a POTUS that may have benefited knowingly or unknowingly by means of a foreign intelligence influence campaign. This gives those entities a free pass to influence campaigns or to hide other types of spying relating to an incumbent who is running for re-election. Seems like a bad time to make such a change in the law. There’s also the whole equal protection under law issue — a core tenant of American…

> Declaring a vague category of citizen out of bounds of the law is absurd.

Yet it’s hardly new for congress to exempt themselves from the laws they pass. Political campaigns are exempt from robocalls for instance. It’s an unfortunate reality.

Re: Senate narrowly rejects plan to require a warrant for Americans’ browsing data

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm constantly so frustrated by the lack of imagination of people on this forum. employees of some company consented more or less just as much as we did - they consented by staying in the employ and we consented by voting/not voting/not emigrating. in fact we consented more because we at least had a say in representation. is that a silly argument? good i agree - those workers are just as aggrieved as we are in this c…

> i'm constantly so frustrated by the lack of imagination of people on this forum It's not a lack of imagination. I simply don't agree with your framing of the options. To quit a job is fairly low friction for most employees (except where there is a high friction complication like a pension or a medical pre-existing condition). It doesn't even require changing companies -- just finding a better boss which doesn't fee…

>To quit a job is fairly low friction for most employees

Do you live in alternate reality where jobs grow on trees? Especially right now? How could you possibly genuinely claim that there's no friction to quitting a job right now when we're almost at historically high unemployment? You can't quit your job in a frictionless fashion when there isn't another one waiting for you!

>To emigrate is fairly high friction -- it requires another country willing to accept the immigrant and usually requires physically moving and lots of time/money

That bears such a close resemblance to what it's like to look for a job for almost everyone except FAANG employees that I don't understand how you fail to acknowledge the analogy that I was drawing.

>You are being disingenuous when you speak about voting because in practice we get a small sliver of a say in electing a representative from one of two parties

You're doing exactly the thing I alluded to: passing the buck To whom? History I guess. That's not the entirety of the rights that are afforded to you as a citizen of this country. You can organize, advocate, run for office yourself, etc.

>but some of "we" are far more culpable in the current problems than others.

Who? Who are they? Is there some class of actors that I forgot?

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