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NSA Boss Asks Congress For Blanket Immunity For Companies That Help NSA Spy

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Re: NSA Boss Asks Congress For Blanket Immunity For Companies That Help NSA Spy

#31

Post by emiliobumachar »

zhemao wrote: post #19
Yaa101 wrote: post #4

As if that will help public perception of these companies, I think after these outings of the companies in question, nothing stays the same, ever. I personally will never ever trust any company with putting stuff into their systems. For me the cloud as offered by them is dead and buried forever, even though I know that the NSA can capture anything with their split network rooms, the companies just lost my trust by ly…

First of all, we don't know whether they were lying. Second of all, if they were, they may have been forced by the government to lie. The FISA requests they were getting also came with gag orders.

I have not read the law, but I think a gag order can't force you to lie. Lie to a directly asked question, gray area; issue a lying press release or blog post, not mandatory.

I am not a lawyer.

Re: NSA Boss Asks Congress For Blanket Immunity For Companies That Help NSA Spy

#35

Post by jtome »

criley2 wrote: post #26
malandrew wrote: post #16

I'm honestly shocked that many of these companies aren't being sued in European courts. There is more than enough evidence now to support this. Hit every company on their bottom line. Europeans need to present the following dichotomous choice to every American tech company: (1) Operate in Europe and make money here, but no spying on any EU citizen. (2) Continue spying, but don't operate in Europe. Alternatively, elim…

If the NSA is tapping fiber at providers, a la Room 641A, then the companies behavior is completely irrelevant to the spying, and the NSA watches all traffic in and out of their networks anyway. So your choice, as a European, seems to be utilize networks that don't pass through America at all, or have the NSA spy on you. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Wrong, if they are tapping at the wires they only see that your using gmail, not the content of your email or who you are speaking to (Unless you turn off ssl for some strange reason).

Re: NSA Boss Asks Congress For Blanket Immunity For Companies That Help NSA Spy

#36

Post by anigbrowl »

marcell wrote: post #30
rayiner wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be an end-run around the 4th amendment if the government was ordering companies to do mass surveillance (though we can argue about whether the 4th amendment has anything to do with surveillance at all). But the government doesn't need to do that. The companies already do all the surveillance, and people happily hand over to those companies their data. Is it an end-run around the 4th amendment for the governm…

> It's not like the subpoena is a new and novel legal instrument. Subpoenas are intended to recover specific pieces of evidence to prove guilt in a trial. They are not meant for blanket vacuuming of data, or for discovery.

Not true. Discovery subpoenas are well-established legal instruments; the term 'subpoena' just means 'under penalty,' in other words it carries the authority of the court or issuing agency to impose punishment for non-compliance with the terms. See for example http://www.weil.com/files/Publication/9f7ab3cd-f7d4-4eb5-b98...

The term 'discovery' has a specific legal meaning, and I'm not sure if that was what you actually meant.

Re: NSA Boss Asks Congress For Blanket Immunity For Companies That Help NSA Spy

#37

Post by anigbrowl »

namank wrote: post #17

The implications are more serious than immunity for NSA actions. This law could circumvent the breaking of ALL and ANY laws by these companies. After such a law is passed, companies may not have to be accountable to anyone. When questioned, they can lie about it and say the NSA said so. They don't need to release transparency reports cuz the NSA said so. Any tech company can lie to the Privacy Commissioner cuz the NS…

Except that they'd have to do so in court, and the NSA would have the option of filing an amicus curiae brief saying 'oh no we didn't.'

Re: NSA Boss Asks Congress For Blanket Immunity For Companies That Help NSA Spy

#38

Post by MisterWebz »

malandrew wrote: post #16

I'm honestly shocked that many of these companies aren't being sued in European courts. There is more than enough evidence now to support this. Hit every company on their bottom line. Europeans need to present the following dichotomous choice to every American tech company: (1) Operate in Europe and make money here, but no spying on any EU citizen. (2) Continue spying, but don't operate in Europe. Alternatively, elim…

According to the General Data Protection Regulation(GDPR) which is an expansion of the current Data Protection Directive and is planned to take effect in 2016, companies that are located outside the EU and that process EU citizen's data are supposed to be compliant with the GDPR. The GDPR allows much greater control over one's own data.

The current Data Protection Directive apparently does not take into account many of the foreign online services, but the new GDPR does.

On wikipedia:

The proposed new European Union Data Protection Regulation (a draft for which was unveiled in January 2012) extends the scope of the EU data protection law to all foreign companies processing data of European Union residents.[1]

I'm wondering if and how the EU will enforce this law?

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulat...

Re: NSA Boss Asks Congress For Blanket Immunity For Companies That Help NSA Spy

#39

Post by csirac2 »

jtome wrote: post #35
criley2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the NSA is tapping fiber at providers, a la Room 641A, then the companies behavior is completely irrelevant to the spying, and the NSA watches all traffic in and out of their networks anyway. So your choice, as a European, seems to be utilize networks that don't pass through America at all, or have the NSA spy on you. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Wrong, if they are tapping at the wires they only see that your using gmail, not the content of your email or who you are speaking to (Unless you turn off ssl for some strange reason).

Isn't the whole point of all this outrage that NSA have equipment or data exchange arrangements with GMail etc. so that SSL is irrelevant?
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