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Patriot Act amendment needing a warrant for browsing history fails

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Patriot Act amendment needing a warrant for browsing history fails

#31

Post by brenden2 »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #29
brenden2 wrote: post #4

I do most of my browsing in private mode anyway. I'm usually pretty careful to never put things onto websites that I don't want people to find publicly as well. The US has no strong privacy protections, so you should just assume that nobody has your best interest in mind. This includes HN, Reddit, and the FAANG giants. Although Apple is probably the only one that isn't strongly incentivized to violate your privacy.

> Although Apple is probably the only one that isn't strongly incentivized to violate your privacy. With their transition from selling widgets to services I wonder how much longer that will be true. And considering their attempt at iAds the privacy incentive is more historical accident than an unchangeable, core culture.

Yes it could certainly change. I for one am not interested in their services products, I stick to the hardware.

Re: Patriot Act amendment needing a warrant for browsing history fails

#32

Post by brenden2 »

gnulinux wrote: post #30
brenden2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may be overestimating the technical proficiency of the government. When they talk about browsing history, they're probably quite literally referring to looking at your web browser history. Yes, they might also subpoena your ISP for data, but if the ISP isn't collecting it in a way that is 100% correlated with your computer and browser (which is pretty hard with a NAT), then they only have a weak case at b…

I don't think you understand what's going on. Private browser has no visible difference to server or the party listening to your communication in the middle. The only effect it has is that it doesn't persist your browser history upon closing it.

There's a big difference between what's possible in theory and the reality of current practices. I think many people in this thread are missing that point.

Re: Patriot Act amendment needing a warrant for browsing history fails

#33

Post by tialaramex »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #12
brenden2 wrote: post #4

I do most of my browsing in private mode anyway. I'm usually pretty careful to never put things onto websites that I don't want people to find publicly as well. The US has no strong privacy protections, so you should just assume that nobody has your best interest in mind. This includes HN, Reddit, and the FAANG giants. Although Apple is probably the only one that isn't strongly incentivized to violate your privacy.

All private mode does is prevent family friends from knowing what porn you watch. It's useless for real "privacy"

Systems intended to "learn" your preferences won't accumulate preferences in the private window. Could they? Probably yeah, but they don't, and that's valuable. If someone asks me about a sovereign citizen video on Youtube I can watch it in a Private window without filling my YT suggestions with sov cit crap for the next week.

It's also really useful for testing. For example building my WebAuthn implementation I hit "Cancel" a lot. In your ordinary session the browser soon remembers this site tried a WebAuthn registration, the user hit "Cancel" so let's suppress that because it'd be annoying if sites harass you with such requests over and over. Subsequent attempts soon just silently fail - that makes it really annoying to debug the backend. Maybe a refresh will fix it? Maybe I should wait five minutes? Who knows.

But the browser intentionally doesn't remember what happens in a Private window. I can hit Cancel to check that works as expected, then open a fresh Private window and registration still works fine there instead of silently failing.

Likewise I had a Cookie bug, where a typo meant enduring session cookies that were supposed to be cleared sometimes weren't. Private windows don't preserve cookies, so I could walk through all the steps to reproduce from a "fresh start", try something, then just throw that Private window away and make a new one for the next experiment.

None of this is impossible without Private windows of course, but it was more inconvenient when we didn't have them.

Re: Patriot Act amendment needing a warrant for browsing history fails

#35

Post by billme »

quit32 wrote: post #28
woofcat wrote: post #2

I'm curious at how the article implies that DoH is going do anything. I'd imagine CloudFlare, etc. would comply with FBI requests just as much as your local ISP. Factor in co-operation from CDN's and really that covers a vast array of data that the US Government could access.

For one cloudflare is a lot more reputable than most US ISPs. Cloudflare explicitly says "We committed to never writing the querying IP addresses to disk and wiping all logs within 24 hours." https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-1111/ If gov tried to force CF to change that they would likely put up a huge public legal fight to prevent it whereas ATT / Verizon and Comcast would bend over backwards to secretly comply…

Cloudflare is neither magically protected from secret US court orders, nor is there any reason to believe that data is not saved by the US.

Re: Patriot Act amendment needing a warrant for browsing history fails

#38

Post by lonelappde »

_8j50 wrote: post #3

Actual terrorists(like 9/11 type, well funded) know better than to even touch anything digital for comms. They literally get a drone strike for having called a known terrorist or for going to a wedding other terrorists with cell phones go to. For home grown terrorism, how many school shootings happen when the people who know the shooter literally tell police/fbi beforehand about the state of the shooter. Are school s…

Terrorism has been removed of its meaning since 2001. Terrorism means using violence or threat of violence to influence social or political decisions.

Not everything bad is terrorism. A mentally ill person going on a murder-suicide rampage after beijg ignored by a girl is not a terrorist. A person acting in their self-interest in a way that contributes to systemic racism or oppression is not a terrorist. Hunting or threatening people of a certain race or gender or orientation or hobby to scare them and others away is terrorism. Blowing up buildings to pressure decision makers into a policy change is terrorism.

Maybe manipulating a single individual via threats or minor violence could be considered small scale terrorism (but their are better words, like harassment or abuse or stalking or assault).

Re: Patriot Act amendment needing a warrant for browsing history fails

#39

Post by iNate2000 »

brenden2 wrote: post #32
gnulinux wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you understand what's going on. Private browser has no visible difference to server or the party listening to your communication in the middle. The only effect it has is that it doesn't persist your browser history upon closing it.

There's a big difference between what's possible in theory and the reality of current practices. I think many people in this thread are missing that point.

Missing the point that this is already going on? Or missing the point that the amendment to the patriot act didn't pass and that this will keep going on?

Re: Patriot Act amendment needing a warrant for browsing history fails

#40

Post by lonelappde »

quit32 wrote: post #28
woofcat wrote: post #2

I'm curious at how the article implies that DoH is going do anything. I'd imagine CloudFlare, etc. would comply with FBI requests just as much as your local ISP. Factor in co-operation from CDN's and really that covers a vast array of data that the US Government could access.

For one cloudflare is a lot more reputable than most US ISPs. Cloudflare explicitly says "We committed to never writing the querying IP addresses to disk and wiping all logs within 24 hours." https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-1111/ If gov tried to force CF to change that they would likely put up a huge public legal fight to prevent it whereas ATT / Verizon and Comcast would bend over backwards to secretly comply…

Does CloudFlare have multiple external auditors verifying their claims?
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