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Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?

guardian.co.uk

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Re: Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?

#31

Post by gojomo »

flogic wrote: post #20
moxie wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, I don't actually think it's worth trying to influence what is or isn't the legal interpretation that we might desire. We can't blame power for establishing systems of control, just as we can't blame a tiger for mauling a zoo keeper: it's the nature of the thing. It's what we should expect, no matter how much time we spend coaxing or training it. I'd much rather invest energy into developing solutions tha…

The critical difference is one is a tiger with limited reasoning ability and the other is a human being. So, I can and should be pissed at people in power when they overstep their bounds.

And this being "pissed" achieves what exactly? Does your level of pissitude work as leverage to affect the reasoned-out behavior of these other human beings? If so, through what mechanism?

Re: Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?

#32

Post by unclebucknasty »

moxie wrote: post #14
rayiner wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a completely ridiculous legal interpretation. The 4th amendment is implemented via the exclusionary rule, which excludes evidence from a court case obtained from an unreasonable search. As a matter of history and practice (the exclusionary rule predates the Constitution), the 4th amendment is in many ways a rule governing criminal procedure more than it is a privacy rule per se. Now, today the prevailing vie…

To be clear, I don't actually think it's worth trying to influence what is or isn't the legal interpretation that we might desire. We can't blame power for establishing systems of control, just as we can't blame a tiger for mauling a zoo keeper: it's the nature of the thing. It's what we should expect, no matter how much time we spend coaxing or training it. I'd much rather invest energy into developing solutions tha…

But the thing is that this power of which you speak is supposed to be ours, per our form of government.

We are so far off the reservation that we have given up on trying to reclaim our government and instead, must now find ways to protect ourselves from our government.

That's a powerful statement about the plight of our nation.

Re: Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?

#33

Post by vyrotek »

moxie wrote: post #3

My recollection of the NSA's legal interpretation is that they feel they don't need a warrant to record everyone's traffic; they only need a warrant for a human to subsequently access those recordings. The twist this puts on "having nothing to hide" is that it means you have to trust everything you say now will forever be considered benign, rather than just at this particular moment in history. Open Whisper Systems i…

If you'd like to see where your phone calls will likely be stored analyzed then check out the new NSA Data Center currently under construction in Utah. This thing is going to be huge! And I live just down the street...

http://binged.it/116pwHR (Yes, Bing has more recent arial shot of the construction)

Edit - Ha, I see someone else here mentioned this place already. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5656751

Re: Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?

#34

Post by djKianoosh »

gwgarry wrote: post #27
dalke wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that you do deal with them, you just don't know about it. You also have to factor in the odds that there will be a false positive affecting you. Your name might be on a no-fly list, even though you aren't "crossing them." There might be "100% verified" data which links you to some event, as there was with Brandon Mayfield's fingerprints, even though that connection is 100% wrong. These are all low-probab…

And that's why I have not traveled in years. You're going to harass me, I am not going to play. It's going to hurt the economy, but that's your fault, not mine.

but then you're not really free are you? free in the sense that you self-impose restrictions on travel. do you feel free? (honest question, cause your stance is intriguing)

Re: Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?

#35

Post by wiml »

baddox wrote: post #30
rayiner wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a completely ridiculous legal interpretation. The 4th amendment is implemented via the exclusionary rule, which excludes evidence from a court case obtained from an unreasonable search. As a matter of history and practice (the exclusionary rule predates the Constitution), the 4th amendment is in many ways a rule governing criminal procedure more than it is a privacy rule per se. Now, today the prevailing vie…

> It's not a completely ridiculous legal interpretation. Legal or otherwise, I'd rather not have money deducted from my paycheck and spent on data centers to store all of my phone calls and email.

Or if I have to pay for it, the NSA should at least be willing to send me a copy if I lose my own backups.

Re: Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?

#36

Post by wskinner »

acabal wrote: post #29

I've said it before and I'll say it again: anonymity online and encrypted communications are one of the most important problems we're going to going to face in the coming decades. Hackers should be working on those, not clever ways to serve ads or geolocating your latest locally-sourced coffee. If you don't believe the US is already permanently archiving vast swaths of communication, it's not a big leap of imaginatio…

Strongly agree. Aside from the first-order benefits of encryption becoming ubiquitous (government can't read my) stuff, there are side effects that may be even more important.

If everyone is using Tor, for example, there is a lower probability that any given Tor user is engaging in activity the government does not approve of. And the more "legitimate" users there are, the harder it is to criminalize users.

Re: Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?

#37

Post by flogic »

gojomo wrote: post #31
flogic wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The critical difference is one is a tiger with limited reasoning ability and the other is a human being. So, I can and should be pissed at people in power when they overstep their bounds.

And this being "pissed" achieves what exactly? Does your level of pissitude work as leverage to affect the reasoned-out behavior of these other human beings? If so, through what mechanism?

Being pissed leads to me donating money to the ACLU, voting, and voicing my opinions.

Re: Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?

#38

Post by moxie »

acabal wrote: post #29

I've said it before and I'll say it again: anonymity online and encrypted communications are one of the most important problems we're going to going to face in the coming decades. Hackers should be working on those, not clever ways to serve ads or geolocating your latest locally-sourced coffee. If you don't believe the US is already permanently archiving vast swaths of communication, it's not a big leap of imaginatio…

> I've said it before and I'll say it again: anonymity online and encrypted communications are one of the most important problems we're going to going to face in the coming decades. Hackers should be working on those, not clever ways to serve ads or geolocating your latest locally-sourced coffee.

Are you currently putting code behind that yourself? We could always use contributions and help with new and ongoing OSS projects at Open Whisper Systems.

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