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The U.S. Treasury is buying private app data to target and investigate people

theintercept.com

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Re: The U.S. Treasury is buying private app data to target and investigate people

#181

Post by whimsicalism »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #106
whimsicalism wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The requirement of a subpoena doesn't prevent the government from taking actions that private actors could legally do, it compels private actors to act according to state whims. If someone volunteers information, it is not a "circumvention" of the subpoena. Breaking into Google and stealing information for a criminal investigation would be circumventing it.

> The requirement of a subpoena doesn't prevent the government from taking actions that private actors could legally do Irrelevant. Gov wants data, Gov gets a narrowly targeted warrant first. Beyond this lies 4A violations.

> Irrelevant. Gov wants data, Gov gets a narrowly targeted warrant first. Beyond this lies 4A violations.

No? What are you basing this off of?

Re: The U.S. Treasury is buying private app data to target and investigate people

#182

Post by ineedasername »

Unfortunately, this isn't really the Fed's buying their way around the 4th amendment as the article states: it's people selling away their 4th amendment rights by giving their personal data & right to resell it to companies that will sell to anyone with the cash to buy it.

Re: The U.S. Treasury is buying private app data to target and investigate people

#183

Post by Goety »

ineedasername wrote: post #182

Unfortunately, this isn't really the Fed's buying their way around the 4th amendment as the article states: it's people selling away their 4th amendment rights by giving their personal data & right to resell it to companies that will sell to anyone with the cash to buy it.

Regulation could easily reverse the flow of data

Re: The U.S. Treasury is buying private app data to target and investigate people

#184

Post by ineedasername »

nostromo wrote: post #8

We need a Supreme Court ruling or law that says if the government doesn’t have a warrant to collect your data, they also can’t buy it from third parties. We also need privacy protections so these companies wouldn’t exist in the first place.

I think instead we need people to not give away their personal information.

Re: The U.S. Treasury is buying private app data to target and investigate people

#185

Post by yupper32 »

JasonFruit wrote: post #172
nostromo wrote: post #8

We need a Supreme Court ruling or law that says if the government doesn’t have a warrant to collect your data, they also can’t buy it from third parties. We also need privacy protections so these companies wouldn’t exist in the first place.

Not a Supreme Court ruling: if there's no law outlawing it, there's no basis for them to rule against it. Do you really want five unelected, unaccountable lawyers deciding this matter?

This falls under the 4th amendment. Certainly under the purview of the Supreme Court.

I'm not going to pretend to know what the ruling would/should be according to the 4th amendment, though.

> Do you really want five unelected, unaccountable lawyers deciding this matter?

No but that's what happens when Congress is so split right now.

Re: The U.S. Treasury is buying private app data to target and investigate people

#186

Post by dd36 »

Goety wrote: post #183
ineedasername wrote: post #182

Unfortunately, this isn't really the Fed's buying their way around the 4th amendment as the article states: it's people selling away their 4th amendment rights by giving their personal data & right to resell it to companies that will sell to anyone with the cash to buy it.

Regulation could easily reverse the flow of data

We need an FCRA for data. We need the ability to rescind the data if it’s a third-party.

Re: The U.S. Treasury is buying private app data to target and investigate people

#187

Post by pempem »

cma wrote: post #45
jdhn wrote: post #2

I'm curious what the overall take will be on this. Normally, this action would be frowned upon if it was a private company, but I'm assuming that people may be more open to it being done by Treasury because it's "for the societal good".

Imagine the government wanted to know who "deepthroat" was during Watergate: just buy the location data of the journalists and anyone nearby.

And then they are violently removed from the populous like the single journalist who reported on the Panama Papers

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/16/malta-car-bomb...

Re: The U.S. Treasury is buying private app data to target and investigate people

#188

Post by [deleted] »

nostromo wrote: post #179
JasonFruit wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a Supreme Court ruling: if there's no law outlawing it, there's no basis for them to rule against it. Do you really want five unelected, unaccountable lawyers deciding this matter?

Here you go: "Amendment IV: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

[deleted]

Re: The U.S. Treasury is buying private app data to target and investigate people

#189

Post by mrobot »

Does anyone know what day Tech Inquiry provided these documents to The Intercept?

Seems kinda convenient we get our nice exciting "adversarial" article about this four days /after/ the infrastructure bill passes and we are locked in to have tons of new bank surveillance and like 80,000 new IRS agents...

Re: The U.S. Treasury is buying private app data to target and investigate people

#190

Post by mmcdermott »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #102
mmcdermott wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feels like it would be more airtight to amend the Constitution. Why hope that precedence falls a certain way instead of removing any ambiguity from the law?

There's a good chance the Constitution covers this now. What we need are uncompromised courts to hear and rule on 4A violations.

I'd agree that the 4th Amendment ought to cover it.

It isn't unambiguous, though. It isn't hard to see how a lawyer could point out that "and to forever secure the people, their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against all unreasonable searches and seizures under the guise of law" says nothing about purchasing data from a 3rd party. This wasn't really something that would have come up in the 18th century.

Extending the letter to match the spirit is why reflection is built into the runtime of the current constitution.

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