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Court Order told Yahoo that Prism does not require a warrant [pdf]

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Re: Court Order told Yahoo that Prism does not require a warrant [pdf]

#31

Post by steveklabnik »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #26
mayneack wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because everyone "knew" doesn't make this less useful to be released. Last month if you went on CNN and claimed that the NSA had free reign to access whatever they wanted, you'd be considered a conspiracy theorist. Now you are at least just considered to be aiding the terrorists. This type of thing is also useful for groups like the ACLU filing lawsuits because they need more proof than "everyone knows already"

You're right. I don't know why I was being such a pessimist about it. More ammo, more attention, it's probably good unless or until we reach the max attention span of people who need to become more informed. Or if we encounter the 'disaster porn/fatigue' effect of this stuff. I guess that's pretty much exactly what I'm experiencing. "Why bother trying if no one is listening". Not exactly the concept of 'disaster porn…

> I don't know why I was being such a pessimist about it.

Almost everyone I know that's involved in some kind of activism has this happen to them; I know that I feel it almost all the time. I'm not saying you're actually _doing_ any activism, but I think it's a side effect of paying so much attention to the letter of the law: law is a messy, sloppy thing, or at least it appears that way to this non-lawyer. It doesn't mesh well with my 'computers are deterministic' general mindset.

And really, _especially_ on this privacy front, it's terribly hard to see that these things are going to happen, get called 'crazy' and 'paranoid,' see them happen, and then sigh: "I told you so."

Re: Court Order told Yahoo that Prism does not require a warrant [pdf]

#32

Post by drivebyacct2 »

steveklabnik wrote: post #31
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. I don't know why I was being such a pessimist about it. More ammo, more attention, it's probably good unless or until we reach the max attention span of people who need to become more informed. Or if we encounter the 'disaster porn/fatigue' effect of this stuff. I guess that's pretty much exactly what I'm experiencing. "Why bother trying if no one is listening". Not exactly the concept of 'disaster porn…

> I don't know why I was being such a pessimist about it. Almost everyone I know that's involved in some kind of activism has this happen to them; I know that I feel it almost all the time. I'm not saying you're actually _doing_ any activism, but I think it's a side effect of paying so much attention to the letter of the law: law is a messy, sloppy thing, or at least it appears that way to this non-lawyer. It doesn't…

>I'm not saying you're actually _doing_ any activism

You mightn't have meant it but that was a polite way of provoking a bit of self evaluating. I don't really know what more to do outside of donate to the EFF, write my Congresspersons, etc. But I haven't made nearly an exhaustive effort of investigating what I could be doing.

>It doesn't mesh well with my 'computers are deterministic' general mindset. And really, _especially_ on this privacy front, it's terribly hard to see that these things are going to happen, get called 'crazy' and 'paranoid,' see them happen, and then sigh: "I told you so."

Are both very insightful statements.

Re: Court Order told Yahoo that Prism does not require a warrant [pdf]

#33

Post by csoghoian »

justinschuh wrote: post #27
csoghoian wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Justin, have you read the recently leaked NSA rules outlining how they define a non-US person for the purpose of FAA surveillance? See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/20/exhi... , page 4, paragraph 1. If the NSA does not know whether someone is a US person or a foreigner, the agency assumes that the person is a foreigner. That matters a lot if, for example, you're using Tor. You might also want…

Chris, that's one paragraph absent the surrounding context. Targeting must be validated and verified as outside the US, but beyond that it can be very hard to authoritatively guarantee what the nationality of the parties is. The best I can add is that I've done the job, and I know the cardinal rule is you do not collect on US persons except in the rare case that you have a FISA order. And the people I know still doin…

There appears to be a bit of a conflict between the cardinal rule you were taught when you worked at NSA of not collecting information on US persons with the current practices of the NSA.

The Section 215 program in which the NSA has been collecting metadata about every domestic telephone call would appear to violate that rule, even if, as we are told, only a couple dozen NSA employees can query the database, and even if they only use it for investigations related to terrorism.

Likewise, the non-us persons targeting rules leaked last week suggest that the NSA has ongoing access to GSM Home Location Register data for the entire United States. While this doesn't pinpoint someone's location to a house or street, we're still talking about the NSA getting city-level location data for hundreds of millions of innocent Americans.

See page 6 of: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/20/exhi...

Given how compartmentalized NSA is, it seems quite reasonable that your former team (which, I assume, penetrated the computers of foreign targets) would have no contact at all with the teams tasked with collecting domestic communications.

Re: Court Order told Yahoo that Prism does not require a warrant [pdf]

#34

Post by steveklabnik »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #32
steveklabnik wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know why I was being such a pessimist about it. Almost everyone I know that's involved in some kind of activism has this happen to them; I know that I feel it almost all the time. I'm not saying you're actually _doing_ any activism, but I think it's a side effect of paying so much attention to the letter of the law: law is a messy, sloppy thing, or at least it appears that way to this non-lawyer. It doesn't…

>I'm not saying you're actually _doing_ any activism You mightn't have meant it but that was a polite way of provoking a bit of self evaluating. I don't really know what more to do outside of donate to the EFF, write my Congresspersons, etc. But I haven't made nearly an exhaustive effort of investigating what I could be doing. >It doesn't mesh well with my 'computers are deterministic' general mindset. And really, _e…

:) I think something that's sorely needed is easy-to-use crypto for 'normal' people, and by 'normal,' of course, I mean most of us. I recently set up PGP for all of my email, but it wasn't exactly something that I'd recommend to a non-technical person.

If you're looking for something you could do.

Re: Court Order told Yahoo that Prism does not require a warrant [pdf]

#35

Post by drivebyacct2 »

steveklabnik wrote: post #34
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm not saying you're actually _doing_ any activism You mightn't have meant it but that was a polite way of provoking a bit of self evaluating. I don't really know what more to do outside of donate to the EFF, write my Congresspersons, etc. But I haven't made nearly an exhaustive effort of investigating what I could be doing. >It doesn't mesh well with my 'computers are deterministic' general mindset. And really, _e…

:) I think something that's sorely needed is easy-to-use crypto for 'normal' people, and by 'normal,' of course, I mean most of us. I recently set up PGP for all of my email, but it wasn't exactly something that I'd recommend to a non-technical person. If you're looking for something you could do.

koush is kind of kicking ass on this front: https://plus.google.com/110558071969009568835/posts/gVt8SWRR...

From his comments it sounds like he's working with other app makers who are making independent apps so this could target everyone, effectively.

I do have a side project that would, at least personally, greatly decrease my dependence/reliance/usage of GMail...

Re: Court Order told Yahoo that Prism does not require a warrant [pdf]

#36

Post by nitrogen »

mehwoot wrote: post #17

Because these are FISA requests for individuals "reasonably suspected to be residing outside the U.S.". Those have never required warrants. Before FISA existed they just did it to whomever they pleased; now it requires a FISA request which is not the same thing as a warrant. Nowhere in that document does it say anything about not needing a warrant to get information on U.S. citizens residing in the U.S. What it does…

Was the Verizon FISC order that was leaked, requiring daily dumps on all calls even with both endpoints inside the US, targeting individuals reasonably believed to be outside the US?

Re: Court Order told Yahoo that Prism does not require a warrant [pdf]

#37

Post by btilly »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #29
justinschuh wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You genuinely have no idea what you're talking about and you're adding nothing to the discussion. I'll leave it to you to look up the definition of a warrant if you want to verify my statement.

A "warrant", "FISA warrant" and "National Security Letters" are all distinct things that are used to circumvent the Fourth Amendment. By definition only the FIRST of those three are allowed for by the Constitution; the others do NOT meet the same standards and probably or at least fortunately maqy exist primarily for that reason. Literally hand picking any of these keywords pretty much leads to the same Wikipedia pag…

Let me channel our resident conservative lawyer, raynier.

The 4th only applies to US citizens. Therefore a FISA warrant targeting people outside of the USA who are not believed to be US citizens does not have to meet the standard of the 4th.

A National Security Letter targets third parties (your email provider, your library, etc) and fails to search, seize, or directly affect any of you, your house, person, papers or effects. It therefore does not violate the 4th.

Channeling myself for a moment, this is not how I personally understand the clear intent of the 4th. I'm sure you agree with me. However I am forced to admit that multiple courts have sided with the interpretation that I just described.

Under common law, I don't get to decide what the law is. Judges do. Since they seem to be consistently accepting this line of argument, the 4th simply doesn't mean what I want it to mean. (I'm all for a better amendment, but that does not seem to be happening.)

Re: Court Order told Yahoo that Prism does not require a warrant [pdf]

#39

Post by twoodfin »

mtgx wrote: post #30
justinschuh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's a single factually accurate statement in your comment. A FISA order really is a warrant in the legal sense, so it's not a misnomer. There's no substantiated evidence that the government is failing to comply with its legal obligations under FISA and other relevant laws here. The Supreme court has consistently upheld that constitutional protections do not apply to non US persons. The general trend…

FISA warrant = "general warrant" = misnomer According to the 4th amendment, "warrants" must be used in specific investigations and for specific individuals. There's nothing specific about a FISA warrant. They just get data en masse from a lot of people. And they use this paper that they are calling a "warrant" from the FISA court, that says they can get the data on everyone. Also, FISA warrants completely ignores suc…

FISA warrants are not the same thing as search warrants, in the same sense that an arrest warrant is not the same thing as a search warrant.

FISA "warrants" are really an oversight mechanism to the executive's generally accepted authority to conduct national security operations targeted at foreign powers. They're specifically to "warrant" that the Fourth Amendment is not being violated by a particular search, intercept, or program because the activity is appropriately targeted.

Re: Court Order told Yahoo that Prism does not require a warrant [pdf]

#40

Post by prawks »

sampsonjs wrote: post #2

'Yonatan Zunger, the chief architect of Google+, wrote in a Google+ post today that: "I can tell you that the only way in which Google reveals information about users are when we receive lawful, specific orders about individuals -- things like search warrants."' From the court order: "We add, moreover, that there is a high degree of probability that requiring a warrant wound hinder the government's ability to collect…

"things like search warrants", where "things" may be, for example, a FISA order.
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