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NSA Buys Americans' Internet Data Without Warrants, Unclassified Letter Says

nytimes.com

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Re: NSA Buys Americans' Internet Data Without Warrants, Unclassified Letter Says

#21

Post by luckettpat »

legitster wrote: post #8

I'm trying to think through this from a legal perspective. If I'm going from store-to-store around town, my understanding is that police are allowed to watch me and even go into the businesses and ask questions or pull security footage without a warrant. The information they gather is circumstantial and probably would not hold up in court, but they can use it as grounds to get a warrant. Let's imagine a different cas…

I think it comes down to quantitative differences resulting in qualitative differences.

It's not unreasonable for anyone (public or police) to notice when I am out in public, and what I do in public. But at some point an accumulation of these OK interaction becomes not OK, in the same way we already recognize that an individual simply seeing somebody in public is a protected right but stalking is not.

When the technology exists to track everything I do in the public sphere, catalog, summarize it, and sell it for profit, we are dealing with a qualitatively different animal that has entirely different implications morally and with respect to our rights as individuals.

Re: NSA Buys Americans' Internet Data Without Warrants, Unclassified Letter Says

#23

Post by Zanni »

happytiger wrote: post #18
edgyquant wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fourth amendment is not about buying things everyone else is able to buy

You should consider reading the article.

I've read the article, and it addresses the point vaguely at best:

"The standard argument in favor of unfettered government purchases of private data is that such data is commercially available, and so anyone should be able to purchase it, including government officers."

Agreed.

"... while government officials can generally purchase items available to the public without constitutional restriction, sensitive private data about cell phone users isn’t actually available to the public."

What? I may be misunderstanding, but this looks like a deliberate attempt to conflate two concerns: publicly available data for sale and sensitive private data. I don't see any argument here against the government buying publicly available data.

Re: NSA Buys Americans' Internet Data Without Warrants, Unclassified Letter Says

#26

Post by mu53 »

legitster wrote: post #8

I'm trying to think through this from a legal perspective. If I'm going from store-to-store around town, my understanding is that police are allowed to watch me and even go into the businesses and ask questions or pull security footage without a warrant. The information they gather is circumstantial and probably would not hold up in court, but they can use it as grounds to get a warrant. Let's imagine a different cas…

I think this gets down to a fundamental problem with tech that society is ignoring like a pink elephant in the room.

Society fundamentally changed with the introduction of computers. Things have become possible that were never possible before. This is obvious if you consider the tech of 1900, 1950, and today.

The elephant in the room is that the more complete the dataset the more dangerous it is. Its like gunpowder. Firecrackers are sold without license, small amount of gunpowder. Dynamite and other explosives with larger amounts of gunpowder are heavily restricted because of the damage that can be done. Today, there are laws against re-packaging explosives to protect people.

I believe the damage that these datasets are doing to society are covert and second-order effects that are hard to track. Most datasets like what the NSA are doing are kept secret precisely because they don't want transparency. If there was transparency, the damage would become obvious that regulations would swiftly come.

Re: NSA Buys Americans' Internet Data Without Warrants, Unclassified Letter Says

#27

Post by nobodyandproud »

pixl97 wrote: post #13
h-c-c wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not freely available, it's for sale. And just because private data is for sale does make it public.

It's private property that happens to be data. The fact it's allowed to be collected and sold to anyone much less the government.

Which means that private consent in contract for data collection here is meaningless.

Similar to how one cannot sign away one’s constitutional rights in a contract.

Re: NSA Buys Americans' Internet Data Without Warrants, Unclassified Letter Says

#30

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

leoh wrote: post #28
EA-3167 wrote: post #3

Maybe this is a naive question, but if the information is for sale, why would the government need a warrant?

The fact that this data is available at all is such a fail.

Right, but raising a panic by saying the government has this data or China gets this data is a distraction from the real issue, that such a vast marketplace exists openly for anyone to shop.
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