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No new boss at NSA until it answers questions on buying location, browsing data

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Re: No new boss at NSA until it answers questions on buying location, browsing data

#61

Post by TacticalCoder »

GuB-42 wrote: post #57
tomohawk wrote: post #4

How about passing a law explicitly covering the kind of information being collected and sold as actually being private, and against the law to share with anyone without a warrant?

These data are probably legally collected and sold, as mentioned in page 573 of the terms and conditions users have agreed with.

> ... as mentioned in page 573 of the terms and conditions users have agreed with

Except that it's not how EULA do work. If it's made illegal by law (which GP suggess), then lawyers writing these EULAs can write anything they want in fineprint: it's not superseding the law.

Re: No new boss at NSA until it answers questions on buying location, browsing data

#63

Post by generic92034 »

master-lincoln wrote: post #39
api wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that would mean going against companies and we can't have that now, can we? Exactly. Surveillance capitalism is orders of magnitude more invasive than the NSA and does not answer to anyone. Regulations don’t even really work because they can just offshore anything shady or do it through fly by night data brokers.

But private companies do not have the legal option to invade your home or use physical force on you.

Yet.

Re: No new boss at NSA until it answers questions on buying location, browsing data

#64

Post by suoduandao2 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #47
master-lincoln wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what makes you think so?

The United States is this limited government, with strict limits on what it's allowed to do. Yeah, I know. It hasn't worked out that way. But do you think other governments, starting with fewer restraints, are doing less than the US? Or more? I could see saying that the US is doing it in higher volume, because it's got more money to spend on government excess.

Incentives are a factor too though. The us needs to hold a mostly voluntary empire together, that requires a lot more intrigue than the average country.

Re: No new boss at NSA until it answers questions on buying location, browsing data

#65

Post by notpushkin »

gordian-mind wrote: post #49
goblinux wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The INSANE thing to me about naming your company Palantir after the artifact from Middle Earth is the story behind the seeing stones. By the Third Age - when the events of the Lord of the Rings take place - several of the Palantiri (plural) are lost. The danger of using the stones was twofold: 1) not all the stones were accounted for, you couldn’t know who was listening in and 2) Sauron had one of the stones. A dark…

This is just a nerdy reference to the activity of gathering intelligence. > But again, to me this shows the danger of making decisions based on spying technology. Having more information is rarely a bad thing for making decisions. So that was probably not the point.

> Having more information is rarely a bad thing for making decisions

In some cases it leads to pretty bad things though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdiagnosis

And more generally, the more information you gather, the more extraordinary processing you have to put in place to get anything useful out of it.

Re: No new boss at NSA until it answers questions on buying location, browsing data

#67

Post by ericmay »

injeolmi_love wrote: post #60
master-lincoln wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But private companies do not have the legal option to invade your home or use physical force on you.

The big tech companies are not private; they are public companies that rely on state force to maintain their monopolies. Just as an example, intellectual property laws rely on the state for enforcement.

Idk. I like having property rights and so naturally that will extend to others and their homes and businesses else they won’t respect my property rights.

Leveling such a broad criticism against “big tech companies” isn’t helpful, especially when you personally (along with every American) is categorically guilty of the same.

Re: No new boss at NSA until it answers questions on buying location, browsing data

#68

Post by wazer5 »

skummetmaelk wrote: post #48
georgeg23 wrote: post #26

The main source that sells a continuous cross-platform civilian tracking dragnet (probably to the NSA) is Peter Thiel's company Palantir. Thiel is at the center of so much other sci-fi military industrial complex stuff, it's scary.

Thiel is the closest we have to a comic book villain honestly. I find it incredible that he mostly manages to stay under the radar. Maybe it's just because all Musk's antics are easier to cover.

Also under-covered are that both Musk and Thiel are deeply involved in the Republican's plans for a new Strategic Defense Initiative.

Re: No new boss at NSA until it answers questions on buying location, browsing data

#70

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

tempodox wrote: post #18
School-Cotton wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NSA doesn’t follow the law, so why would that matter?

And when questioned, they lie to courts and Congress with impunity.

Clapper and Brennan should absolutely be in jail. Instead, they are still treated as respectable authorities by our media.
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