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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

#91

Post by socks »

mindslight wrote: post #84
ryanlol wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Europe “I’m sorry, I didn’t take my passport with me, but I remember my passport number” has had a 100% success rate for me.

So then you're committing fraud or whatever. Once again, law abiding people bear the burden while bogeyman-with-beard just gives a false number. One of the general difficulties with the government threat actor is that law abiding people have to thread the needle of both technical protection and legal requirements.

Quoting your own true passport number is not fraud. Fraud would be supplying a fake passport number / fake passport / doctored photocopy.

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

#92

Post by Nasrudith »

JoeSmithson wrote: post #70
StreamBright wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know many terrorists who use digital communication to back your claim? What the above is talking about well known, even privacy-aware people tend to not use digital communication that much, no facebook, or other social media, no smartphones. In the post-Snowden era, I am not sure why somebody thinks otherwise. 3 letter agencies have the means, the reason, the legitimacy, and the resources to penetrate every ty…

> Do you know many terrorists who use digital communication to back your claim? Yes. In fact I don't know of a single terrorist who doesn't use digital communication of some kind. I'm slightly confused because you seem to be justifying your belief that no terrorists use digital communication on the back of examples of terrorists identified and killed via surveillance of their digital communication use

I think the distinction isn't generally don't use it all - they are perfectly fine with recruiting and claiming responsibility with it. Instead it is in op sec. The San Bernadino shooters shot their personal phones beyond recovery and the FBI precedent fishing expedition was to theie work phones which they started with access to.

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

#93

Post by hedora »

taneq wrote: post #56
isoskeles wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are school shooters not terrorists? They are not. Terrorism is supposed to be a political tool. Whereas school shooters are often just deranged or troubled people lashing out.

Terrorism is violence with the intention of creating fear to further a political goal. If a kid feels victimized and wants to hurt the people they feel responsible, that's not terrorism. If a kid wants to hurt bullies with the intention that it will make other bullies afraid and so reduce the overall amount of bullying in schools then that would fit the definition.

By your definition (which I think is overly broad), most police officers are terrorists, and so is anyone that engages in self defense, or even jurors that vote “guilty” in the hope of deferring future crimes.

You either need to narrow the definition or carve out explicit exceptions. If you are carving out exceptions, the definition is just “people we don’t like”.

I guess that is pretty close to the definition prosecutors like to use in the US.

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

#94

Post by jschwartzi »

isoskeles wrote: post #46
_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…

> Are school shooters not terrorists? They are not. Terrorism is supposed to be a political tool. Whereas school shooters are often just deranged or troubled people lashing out.

Which is one of the reasons for the shift in US politics from treating combatants as combatants. Terrorism is now just a word for anyone who disagrees with us. Whereas acknowledging the organization as a hostile state within an established state means that we have to actually treat it like a war, or treat the combatants like criminals and put them on trial. The term "terrorist" is now just a label that gets applied to anyone who is too inconvenient to treat as a criminal.

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

#95

Post by logicchains »

malloryerik wrote: post #86

So, this amendment lost by one vote, and Bernie Sanders didn't vote. Does anyone know what happened? I've understood him as having been against most of the Patriot Act since its inception.

Maybe the NSA showed up at his doorstep and made him an offer he couldn't refuse?

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

#96

Post by hansthehorse »

foob4r wrote: post #60

I would be surprised if many of the common public believed that warrantless searches of anyone are reasonable, while exempting federal elected officials from the same law. Now's a good time to call you senator (if they voted against this) and tell them that they fucked up by weakening your rights and freedoms. Then, get a VPN or better use Tor as much as you can.

But political candidates are not exempted. That leaves a huge area for abuse.

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

#97

Post by faitswulff »

JoeSmithson wrote: post #48
_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…

> Actual terrorists(like 9/11 type, well funded) know better than to even touch anything digital for comms Shit like this is said all the time on HN with absolutely nothing to substantiate it.

The Boston marathon bombing was carried out through plain text messages if I recall correctly. They weren’t even encrypted and no one caught them.

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

#98

Post by komali2 »

nelaboras wrote: post #76
notthemessiah wrote: post #23

When we look at the kinds of things these surveillance powers are used for, it's a glimpse of how it's abused. Thanks to FOIA requests, we found that the Boston Regional Intelligence Center was using their surveillance capabilities to spy on Occupy Boston during the Boston Marathon that was bombed, despite the ostensible aim of the center being to coordinate local and federal intelligence capabilities and despite the…

There is probably also an issue of too much information. All these massive efforts generate data that is barely ever used as the time and resources just aren't there.

Reminds me of how back in 2003 we were cracking jokes about how the FBI was still making their way through the 2000's 4chan posts.

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

#99

Post by komali2 »

mindslight wrote: post #84
ryanlol wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Europe “I’m sorry, I didn’t take my passport with me, but I remember my passport number” has had a 100% success rate for me.

So then you're committing fraud or whatever. Once again, law abiding people bear the burden while bogeyman-with-beard just gives a false number. One of the general difficulties with the government threat actor is that law abiding people have to thread the needle of both technical protection and legal requirements.

> So then you're committing fraud or whatever.

But how would they ever catch you?

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

#100

Post by atomi »

KittenInABox wrote: post #59
lonelappde wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> Terrorism means using violence or threat of violence to influence social or political decisions. So like the shooting of a black church by a white supremacist explicitly for the purposes of espousing white supremacy? > Hunting or threatening people of a certain race or gender or orientation or hobby to scare them and others away is terrorism. So like the lgbtq club shooting, or the black church, or the 1989 shootin…

Or the El Paso shooting targeting Hispanics.
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