181–190 of 649 posts
I noted that Apple says the governments in question are allies of the United States. I wonder if this is a case of American intelligence outsourcing the surveillance of American citizens to foreign intelligence. If that is indeed the case, I’d expect a quid pro quo.
*And/or other Five Eyes members.
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They mention metadata in the article. Imagine sending a message to a Signal account at time X, then asking Apple a list of all users that received a Signal notification at that specific time.
This ^. approach and modified forms of it can bu used to track lots of things, and have be done so for decades by some goverment agencies. You can use a method like this even if people are using encryption and lot of anonymous tunnels. You simply shape the traffic and watch where the shape of that traffic stops. Can track people realtime across almost any link, including things like Tor, etc.
Anyway, these "trees" were effectively user behavior across all our products. I was shocked that simply knowing *when* (to within a second or two) a person did two or more things, you could narrow it down to *one single person* out of hundreds of millions.
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An interesting point in Glenn Greenwald’s book is that metadata is often more informative than the “real” data. Consider: 1. A phone call in which Mrs. Smith talks to a receptionist to set an appointment with a doctor for 9:30 next Wednesday. Vs. 2. Knowing that Mrs. Smith called an abortion clinic. #2 seems like a bigger violation of privacy. Metadata is the real data.
God forbid if you are just going on a date with someone who works at an abortion clinic.
It can simultaneously be true that metadata contains less information than real data and that metadata is still dangerous. But when one is known for breathless hyperbole, should we be surprised when that’s what we get?
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Congress has so little power its becoming a vestigial organ. Only there to placate the masses who believe their vote makes any impact.
This is some wacko BS. Congress has tons of power which can impact your daily lives. If you think it doesn't have that power, you're just not well read on the subject. If you think modern day politics of us vs them divisiveness gives the impression that they cannot do any thing is a dangerous interpretation. It's also a bit sophomoric of an interpretation as well.
Repeatedly Congress has shown that it's checks and balances have more power than others. If Congress picks the supreme court and there are multiple ways for a massed power to keep it's power then nobody else has any real power. The US system is actually rather poorly designed in that form.
Would be great to see an example of notification metadata that can supposedly link it to real users. Seems like this is what is being implied: Given: - users with notifications enabled - have X app installed - targeted user(s) reside in USA - targeted users(s) following “foo” on X app When: - issue FISA warrant for all smartphone users that received notifications in regards to “foo” user Then: - able to pull all Appl…
So, don’t have Twitter account and/or app installed and you should be good?
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There were huge downsides for battery life before, and privacy is somewhat orthogonal since you’d be at risk from more companies and they’d all be subject to the same legal demands, so I think the answer has to be regulatory. In the EU, that seems possible but I’m not sure the U.S. government is currently functional enough to do anything about this.
Allowing third-party notification systems (such as UnifiedPush) would have practically no negative effect on battery life Not to mention that people might prefer to use some more battery in exchange for more privacy
It’s possible that a better interface could be developed but it wouldn’t help privacy unless the implementers were in different legal jurisdictions: the same government which can subpoena or NSL Apple or Google could’ve asked e.g. Urban Airship for the same details. There’s also a challenge in that each implementation is a chance to make mistakes or fail to deliver promised privacy protections, and someone in a country which isn’t the United States might have stronger privacy laws but is also a legitimate NSA target. This kind of problem just doesn’t have simple solutions.
Would be great to see an example of notification metadata that can supposedly link it to real users. Seems like this is what is being implied: Given: - users with notifications enabled - have X app installed - targeted user(s) reside in USA - targeted users(s) following “foo” on X app When: - issue FISA warrant for all smartphone users that received notifications in regards to “foo” user Then: - able to pull all Appl…
So, don’t have Twitter account and/or app installed and you should be good?
One notable corollary is, the shittier the mobile browser webapp implementation is, the more they want to push people onto their app. See: Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc.
This, to me, is the more disturbing part of the article: > In this case, the federal government prohibited us from sharing any information," the company said in a statement. "Now that this method has become public we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these kinds of requests. What is the point of transparency reports if they don't include major vectors of government surveillance? IMO such gag orders sh…
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Given the US has a 4th Amendment-free zone within 100 miles of all national borders in the name of national security, I expect the same justification and level of oversight here. https://www.aclu.org/documents/constitution-100-mile-border-...
This is a common misconception. The 100 mile radius does not waive 4th Amendment protection. A reasonable suspicion of immigration law violation is still required to detain, search and ultimately arrest individuals. To wit: please name a single instance of someone having their rights abused by this so-called "zone".
As far as "reasonable suspicion" goes, I'm increasingly unwilling to support the right of law enforcement to independently, without oversight, determine what is "reasonable".
[0] https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/02/border-patrol-warrant...
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perhaps that democracy is not effective when the state organs are unelected bureacrats with guns
Nine times out of ten, the person saying this will turn around and complain about all the "political hacks" running things, referring to political appointees with no experience or background in the area of government they are tasked to run. The term "unelected bureaucrats" applies to people like...I dunno, the director of the NIH and field office managers. Heck, even a police captain is an "unelected bureaucrat". She…