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

theregister.com

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

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a world where democracies have enemies, how do you not have govt secrets?

Security through obscurity is inferior to security through transparency. Imagine if every interaction with the government; every contract, negotiation, communication was a matter of easily searchable public record. Try sneaking a little graft in there and get laughed at in public. It'd be great.

So if a foreign agent is providing us information about their government, that relationship should be in the public record? That seems like a really good way to ensure you have no human intelligence sources at all.

We should reveal every detail about our military's weapons systems so our adversaries can more easily build countermeasures against them?

It seems exceedingly unrealistic that any government, even a democracy, could keep no secrets at all and survive.

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

#172
You could say that I'm a "Republican", but I love reading articles where it's a Democrat doing things that are obviously correct. It shatters the divide that politics and media try to create.

That's why, while party platforms are vastly different in core values, I don't care to be grouped into any party but my own beliefs, judging actions and people individually, not collectively.

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

#173
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am American, and 10000000% support the right to private gun ownership. I believe we should have less not more gun control >> also implies that U.S. law in all other respects should apply globally. No it does not imply that at all, again you are reversing the position I am talking about. In fact US Law probably applies too much to other nations via International Trade Agreements to other nations already.

Why doesn't it?

Because my comments were about limiting the US Government, not other governments.

If the US Constitution would bar the NSA from spying with out probable cause on everyone, not just US Citizens, then that has absolutely zero bearing on if the EU wants to have gun control. I am not even sure how there is a connection to the 2 at all

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

#174
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean both. I feel like Trump's flaws, crimes and Project 2025 [0,1] should exclude him from discussion. Like, he should be politically radioactive at this point. Set all of that lunacy aside and Trump is just a mainstream Republican. Not that I like Biden, mind you, I just hate him less than Trump. They're both imperialist, capitalist bastards but Biden is at least less fascism-adjacent. The problem is that our fir…

> The project seeks to revive a Trump administration effort to include a question of whether an individual counted in the decennial Census is a U.S. citizen. The census population count is used to reapportion congressional seats and the Electoral College. This is incredibly based. Letting tens of millions of illegal immigrants be counted towards appropriating congressional seats/electoral votes is literal insanity.

>Letting tens of millions of illegal immigrants be counted towards appropriating congressional seats/electoral votes is literal insanity.

No, it isn't. Those people hold residence in the US, they work and they pay taxes, they exist as the persistent underclass in the American economy. If we're going to allow and maintain that underclass - which, despite rhetoric to the contrary, we clearly will, then they deserve to be represented.

Also, the allocation and funding of government services - which undocumented immigrants also take advantage of - depends on a count of actual persons, not just citizens.

Insanity would be pretending those tens of millions of people simply don't exist.

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

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, it can. Fruitlessly, but it can. U.S. law covers all U.S. citizens, regardless of physical location. Just because you're in Mexico doesn't mean you have carte blanche to bribe or commit crimes. This is an explicit point ground into all Federal employees yearly. It's just that the operations in question will invoke "National Security" and "sovereign immunity" arguments sufficient to ensure the judiciary will eithe…

I can understand a federal employee being placed under this considering they are representing the US and said crimes are committed while acting on behalf of the US government. But does it extend to private citizens? If you commit crimes outside the US I don't think you can be tried for it in the US. You could be extradited to the place where you committed the crime. But I don't think the government can prosecute you…

>> If you commit crimes outside the US I don't think you can be tried for it in the US.

You can, on common example is Sex crimes, a US Citizen can (and have been) charged with violations of various sex crime laws for actives that occurred outside the US in courts INSIDE the US, even if the activity was not a crime in the nation the activity took place in. aka "Sex Tourism" [1]

You can also be tried for Foreign crimes such as bribery in the US if you were bribing a Foreign official this applies to business as well as government.

[1] https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ice-homeland-security-inve...

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

#176

> CUI is not classified information, as its name indicates, but it should, generally speaking, be protected with access controls and not widely disseminated. Wyden is clearly not a fan of this labeling, which he described as a "made up designation with no basis in law." CUI was created by an executive order from President Obama in 2010. This is the bigger problem. Classified documents have a mandatory declassificatio…

Classification doesn’t derive it’s legal existence from statute. It’s the POTUS’s inherent authority to maintain (and disclose) state secrets under the constitution and separation of powers doctrine. Congress has limited authority to regulate this executive power.

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

#177

You could say that I'm a "Republican", but I love reading articles where it's a Democrat doing things that are obviously correct. It shatters the divide that politics and media try to create. That's why, while party platforms are vastly different in core values, I don't care to be grouped into any party but my own beliefs, judging actions and people individually, not collectively.

As a European in a country with complex multi-party coalitions and most people voting across the party system every couple of years. This comment is just so weird.

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

#178
post #132
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's not the same? The online retailer is /giving/ my address to the courier. Without it the retailer nor the courier will be able to give me the service/product I'm paying for. I think it's perfectly fine to make ‐reselling‐ of personal data blanket illegal. Since it's my data, I might have consented to giving the data to someone for some purpose. However, they absolutely have no implied consent that they can…

So, take any service that connects buyers to sellers: eBay, Craigslist, AirBnB, realtors, etc... They are essentially in the business of trading personal data, so that the buyer and seller can get in contact and complete the transaction. It is even more obvious in dating sites/apps. ...but that's not the same you might say. That's right, but how do you put that into law? You need actual rules, "don't be evil" is not…

These examples are no good. It's unnecessary to put into law that if someone explicitly hires you to share particular information with some set of people, you're allowed to. You're not only allowed to, you're required to, because that's the business arrangement you've made.

You're making an "it's all so complicated" argument, but not pointing out any actual occasion in which it might be complicated.

> There are hundreds of cases where sharing personal data is "right" and expected, and hundreds of cases where it is "wrong".

This is as close to a direct citation of the law of averages that I've seen in a long time.

> And then you have lobbies trying to explain why they are on the right side and their opponents are on the wrong side,

"Everybody is going to complain anyway..."

> lawyers who are really good at finding loopholes

The problem is lobbyists that are very good at adding loopholes.

> in the end, what you get is something like GDPR with all its complexities. You can't really escape it.

When you want to pass a law limiting what companies can do with data without the user's consent, but don't really want to limit what companies are doing in any way, you end up with weird, baroque definitions of data and consent.

If you're never willing to risk profits, or to make certain businesses completely unsustainable, then every regulation must come accompanied with either a trivial method for large enough companies to ignore it, or must be paired with a completely unrelated regulatory giveaway.

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

#179
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NSA has literally broken laws, lied about it, and gotten away with it.

Technically not, they just had secret courts rubber stamp for them. In the most technical sense it's legal though of course it subverts the entire idea of the justice system by having a court in your pocket.

Wrong.[1][2] And what law and court do you believe authorized James Clapper to lie to Congress?

[1] https://www.vox.com/2015/5/7/8567089/nsa-patriot-act-ruling

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-b...

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

#180

You could say that I'm a "Republican", but I love reading articles where it's a Democrat doing things that are obviously correct. It shatters the divide that politics and media try to create. That's why, while party platforms are vastly different in core values, I don't care to be grouped into any party but my own beliefs, judging actions and people individually, not collectively.

As a European in a country with complex multi-party coalitions and most people voting across the party system every couple of years. This comment is just so weird.

We don’t have that luxury in the US. It’s not that voters don’t want it, it’s that there is no feasible way to get there (without structural change to our voting system). Sure, US voters like the above comment have generally developed strong political identities to one of the two parties. But there is no chance for any third party under the current system. It allows for overwhelmingly entrenched party lines.

Should you as a voter choose to vote for a third party candidate, you’re basically voting against your second choice and for your last choice. “Voting for a third party is throwing away your vote” is a very real phenomenon, to the point here it is an actively exploited political strategy to promote third party candidates with overlapping views to your opponent to siphon off votes. See Russian interference promoting the Green Party in 2016 as an example.

And sure you could wave your ideals around and say “but you absolutely must vote for what you think is right, that is how change happens”. But in reality, under the US system that’s how you end up ensuring the least palatable party (to you) ends up in power. There are thousands of elections every cycle, and we have overwhelming empirical evidence that third party candidates are completely inviable at basically all levels of government.

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