Verizon & Obama: all your calls are belong to us.

[Eriol]

Bravo, Legislature.
If a law is broken, and nobody notices, is it still illegal?
Why have laws at all?

So you can selectively enforce them and punish and/or silence your enemies of course.

 

[PatrThom]

I would really, really like to see this used as a defense.
Go through someone's house, find tons of stolen goods, put homeowner on trial, have his defense be that, since nobody knew he committed the crimes before the statutes of limitations ran out, he technically didn't do anything illegal.

I'm sure that'll fly really well.

--Patrick

 

[Ravenpoe]

If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, the NSA still does.

 

[Eriol]

And now of course they're listening through your computer, or almost-certainly anyways: NSA Asked Linux Founder Linus Torvalds to install backdoor

And the MS rep couldn't answer the question. She remained silent. So we can all safely assume that if you're on Windows, you're hacked (or at the least, easily hackable) already.

I can't wait for SteamOS, and the support to games that will bring. If codeweavers/WINE worked reliably, I think I'd be making a serious push to be on there, as my productivity is fine on Linux, it's only the games for me right now.

 

[Eriol]

And it gets better today: NSA Collects Nearly 5 Billion Cell Phone Locations Per Day

Yes that is PER DAY. Do you feel safe yet?

 

[Eriol]

Wow this thread had fallen far.

John Oliver on NSA Surveillance:


Half an hour, but beyond worth it.

 

[PatrThom]

I know! And I want to watch it, but people keep coming up with stuff for me to do!
Even on our nightly chats, Kati is like, "Did you watch it yet?"
And I'm all, "No. Are you going to let me do it now?"
Kati: "That's half an hour! I'm not just gonna sit here and listen to you watch that video for half an hour."
Me: "Well, then."

--Patrick

 

[Dave]

John Oliver is the hero we need. Seriously, is he the only real journalist around any more? Fucking SNOWDEN?!? I call that an amazing get.

And he didn't just pitch softballs at him, either. It was a legitimate piece of journalism that ended up wrapped in comedy. Simply amazing.

 

[bhamv3]

John Oliver is the hero we need. Seriously, is he the only real journalist around any more? Fucking SNOWDEN?!? I call that an amazing get.

And he didn't just pitch softballs at him, either. It was a legitimate piece of journalism that ended up wrapped in comedy. Simply amazing.

He discusses real issues, while packaging them attractively with his comedy, so that people will watch. Seriously, we need more John Olivers in this world.

I'm developing a man-crush on him, and he isn't even that pretty.

 

[Thread Necromancer]

I am using this thread as an official plea to the NSA to stop collecting my dick pics. Additionally I would formally request in writing (per se) for the deletion of any and all existing pics of my dick you may be holding onto.

I figure this is as sure a place for them to read my message as any other.

 

[Gruebeard]

But you're more than welcome to collect my dick pics, NSA . . . if you promise you won't let them leak.

 

[Eriol]

Nobody cares much, but apparently the RCMP up here (they're both rural regular police, and handle stuff that in the USA your FBI would do) have had access to all BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) messages since 2010: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/rcmp-blackberry-project-clemenza-global-encryption-key-canada

If you were on a corporate account, no, as each company has their own unique key, but if you were just a private individual, the RCMP has had the key since 2010 and can read all of your messages.

And given the "5 Eyes" agreement (between Canada and the USA, Britain, and Australia and NZ? Not sure on that last one) I'd be shocked if the NSA and everybody else in those countries didn't get it too.


So that's the current events. In related media, CGPGrey again gives the best kinds of summaries:



And because apparently people didn't "get it" enough, his follow-up:


There he at least lays it out what's at stake.


And on another front of a similar fight, Microsoft is actually fighting for you! Itself too no doubt, but still good news: http://www.wsj.com/articles/microso...over-secret-customer-data-searches-1460649720


Sorry for the dump all-at-once, but it did pretty much happen all at once.

 

[PatrThom]

Dang it, I was trying to find the thread where we were discussing all this stuff so I could post that.
...but that's not as important as making sure more people see it, because the more people, the better.

--Patrick

 

[strawman]

So the Fourth US Circuit Court just yesterday ruled that location data is no longer private, and thus is available without warrant.

So the EFF and other privacy rights organizations that were worried that the 1998 E991 law requiring cellular providers to be able to locate phones would give the government unlimited access to their citizen's locations were right to be worried. Surprise, surprise!

Article about the ruling:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/appeals...ocations-not-protected-information-1464718147

Ruling:
http://isysweb.ca4.uscourts.gov/isysquery/78f219cc-eac0-4792-bbef-3ff980f3d1bc/1/doc/
(if/when link breaks, it's opinion 12-4659 released by the fourth US circuit court)

1998 article about the laws that required cell phone companies and cell phones to report location:
http://www.wired.com/1998/01/e911-turns-cell-phones-into-tracking-devices/

That article includes the now funny quote from the FBI:

While the CDT and others seek beefed-up constitutional restrictions on the ability for law enforcement to obtain court orders in such cases, the FBI says the process for obtaining such court orders is already adequate.

"We work under the strict provisions of the law with regard to our ability to obtain a court order," said Barry Smith, supervisory special agent in the FBI's office of public affairs. "Law enforcement's access to [cell phone data] falls very much within the parameters of the Fourth Amendment." He also says that under CALEA, the call data the FBI seeks does not provide the specific location of a wireless phone.

Keep in mind this is all cell phones, not just smart phones.

Also, because of this ruling, the only thing standing between your location and a third party (think - corporation) is the cellular company's terms of service agreement with you. You should check yours just in case.

 

[PatrThom]

So the Fourth US Circuit Court just yesterday ruled that location data is no longer private, and thus is available without warrant.

...but only when requested from the cell phone carrier.
So to be clear, it IS still illegal to put a tracer on your car, person, etc. without a warrant. It's just that now a court has ruled that it's ok to ask your carrier (without a warrant) to turn over where your phone has been.

I saw the article last night, and personally I don't know how the court came to this result. Compelling a private corporation (the cell phone carrier) to reveal information it holds about a third party (you) should be exactly the sort of thing that should require a warrant. It's one thing for them to volunteer the info for a 911 call, for instance. It's quite another for any entity (not just the government, mind you) to be able to just vacuum up location data and start mining it for "interesting patterns."

This factoid might even be worthy of cross-posting into @Eriol's "police state" thread.

--Patrick

 

[Eriol]

This factoid might even be worthy of cross-posting into @Eriol's "police state" thread.

--Patrick

Ya maybe! Having NO court oversight over tracking you at any time is very police-state.

 

[PatrThom]

It's something that should be easily countered. Just need to get a resolution passed that prevents carriers from maintaining a log of your location data for more than 48hrs or something. Police can have all the location data they want, just nothing older than 2 days. When it comes right down to it, I really don't know what valid business reason a carrier would have for keeping a log of your location data anyway.

--Patrick

 

[Tress]

It's something that should be easily countered. Just need to get a resolution passed that prevents carriers from maintaining a log of your location data for more than 48hrs or something. Police can have all the location data they want, just nothing older than 2 days. When it comes right down to it, I really don't know what valid business reason a carrier would have for keeping a log of your location data anyway.

--Patrick

I don't know if it's valid, but they want to track your movements for usage data to improve the appeal of their services, and for targeted advertising.

 

[AshburnerX]

I don't know if it's valid, but they want to track your movements for usage data to improve the appeal of their services, and for targeted advertising.

Basically this... but ultimately, I think providers are just going to stop carrying your information for more than a day or two. All it's going to take it one high profile government abuse of this to convince people to switch providers to someone who won't. We already have phones specially built to prevent stuff like this, like the BlackPhone.

And that's assuming the Supreme Court doesn't just overrule it when it reaches them in a year or so... which it could, no matter WHO is sitting on the bench. The conservative justices are going to want to shield business from government intrusion and the liberals will probably want to prevent the government from abusing the data to harass whom they please.

 

[strawman]

It's something that should be easily countered. Just need to get a resolution passed that prevents carriers from maintaining a log of your location data for more than 48hrs or something. Police can have all the location data they want, just nothing older than 2 days. When it comes right down to it, I really don't know what valid business reason a carrier would have for keeping a log of your location data anyway.

--Patrick

This ruling essentially means that the police could use a court order to have a live feed of all the cell phone location data all the time, without picking and choosing individuals and timeframes. They wouldn't need to prove a need for this information, nor a specific investigation.

So even with the limits you propose, it's possible for them to get your information specifically and do with it what they want.

 

[Ravenpoe]

Not even Batman should have that power.

 

[PatrThom]

I don't know if it's valid, but they want to track your movements for usage data to improve the appeal of their services, and for targeted advertising.

The first could be easily generated with a simple heatmap of traffic, absolutely no identifying data would be needed. As for the second, they shouldn't be inspecting/injecting/modifying my requested content in the first place.

This ruling essentially means that the police could use a court order to have a live feed of all the cell phone location data all the time, without picking and choosing individuals and timeframes. They wouldn't need to prove a need for this information, nor a specific investigation. So even with the limits you propose, it's possible for them to get your information specifically and do with it what they want.

I did consider that (it is, after all, the lesson taught to us in Aasimov's "The Dead Past"), but I also assumed that either a) they would be drowned under the sheer volume of data generated, or b) people in power would be unhappy about having their movements so monitored, and so would work to quash the idea.

--Patrick

 

[strawman]

Radio scanners have a blank spot on their dial right where cell phones used to transmit. This was because someone sent tapes of a politician talking with his mistress to a radio show (or something substantially similar) and so the politicians made sure that it was very hard for people to do that by legislating the blank spot on the dial, as well as making it illegal to publish such recordings.

All it would take is a small dump of the NSA's data of Hillary Clinton's cell phones to the public...

 

[PatrThom]

Radio scanners have a blank spot on their dial right where cell phones used to transmit.

American radio scanners do.
I also remember the days of 49MHz cordless phones. Fun times.

--Patrick

 

[Bubble181]

ITT: Facebook, Google and Microsoft, and a dozen app makers, can all have my exact location all the time, but Heaven Forbid the government could see where I am!

 

[Tress]

ITT: Facebook, Google and Microsoft, and a dozen app makers, can all have my exact location all the time, but Heaven Forbid the government could see where I am!

You choose to allow those companies to have that information by using their products. The government is not asking for permission, they are just taking it, so this is a false comparison.

 

[PatrThom]

ITT: Facebook, Google and Microsoft, and a dozen app makers, can all have my exact location all the time, but Heaven Forbid the government could see where I am!

It's not that.
The issue here is that the ruling allows law enforcement (NOT merely "government" but basically any law enforcement entity from the FBI all the way down to your city police) to issue a summons for the location data collected by your cell carrier without informing you, without explanation to the carrier, and without having to go through the usual "demonstrate need and get permission" process that getting a warrant usually requires. Until this thing gets overturned, now would be the worst time to be married to law enforcement personnel with any degree of paranoia.

--Patrick

 

[Eriol]

This thread isn't perfect for this, but it is kind of related: Court Says Hacking Victim Can’t Sue a Foreign Government For Hacking Him on US Soil

Bold is mine:

A court of appeals in Washington D.C. ruled that an American citizen can't sue the Ethiopian government for hacking into his computer and monitoring him with spyware.
...
In late 2012, the Ethiopian government allegedly hacked the victim, an Ethiopian-born man who goes by the pseudonym Kidane for fear for government reprisals. Ethiopian government spies from the Information Network Security Agency (INSA) allegedly used software known as FinSpy to break into Kidane's computer, and secretly record his Skype conversations and steal his emails. FinSpy was made by the infamous FinFisher, a company that has sold malware to several governments around the world, according to researchers at Citizen Lab, a digital watchdog group at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs, who studied at the malware that infected Kidane's computer.
...
"If a foreign government can send a robot via software or physical [means] into the United States," Cardozo said, paraphrasing something the EFF director Cindy Cohn said, "this opinion gives foreign governments complete immunity for whatever their robots do within the United States."
...
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that Kidane didn't have jurisdiction to sue the Ethiopian government in the United States. Kidane and his lawyers invoked an exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), which says foreign governments can be sued in the US as long as the entire tort on which the lawsuit is based occurred on American soil.
...
According to the court, however, the hacking in this case didn't occur entirely in the US.

"Ethiopia's placement of the FinSpy virus on Kidane's computer, although completed in the United States when Kidane opened the infected email attachment, began outside the United States," the decision read.

For Cardozo and the EFF, the court is simply wrong.

"Our client was in the United States the whole time. What Ethiopia did to my client, they did to him in his living room in Maryland. They didn't do it in Ethiopia, they didn't do it in London. They did it in Maryland," Cardozo said.

So if you get hacked by a foreign government, while entirely in a country you have citizenship in, you can't sue or otherwise reprise in any way against said government. Also, as they said above, if they get a drone into the country, and blow you up (or whatever), again, no recourse.

This is a terrible ruling IMO. Think of it in terms of government collaboration! "Hey Canada, we don't like this guy, can you hack him, and give us all the information?" That'd be LEGAL by one interpretation.

 

[AshburnerX]

This thread isn't perfect for this, but it is kind of related: Court Says Hacking Victim Can’t Sue a Foreign Government For Hacking Him on US Soil

Bold is mine:

So if you get hacked by a foreign government, while entirely in a country you have citizenship in, you can't sue or otherwise reprise in any way against said government. Also, as they said above, if they get a drone into the country, and blow you up (or whatever), again, no recourse.

This is a terrible ruling IMO. Think of it in terms of government collaboration! "Hey Canada, we don't like this guy, can you hack him, and give us all the information?" That'd be LEGAL by one interpretation.

It really just gives everyone a license to shoot down ANY drone at ANY time, on grounds of self defense. "The courts say I have no legal recourse if a foreign government attempts to harm me with a drone. Therefore, I get to shoot down any drone in order to defend myself from foreign governments".

 

[PatrThom]

This thread isn't perfect for this, but it is kind of related:

Likewise for this:

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) last week introduced Congressional Review Act resolutions that would overturn the Federal Communications Commission's privacy rules for Internet service providers and prevent the FCC from issuing similar regulations in the future.

If [these] FCC rules are eliminated, ISPs would not have to get consumers' explicit consent before selling or sharing Web browsing data and other private information with advertisers and other third parties.

GOP senators’ new bill would let ISPs sell all your Web browsing data

--Patrick

 

[MindDetective]

 

[Covar]

Likewise for this:

GOP senators’ new bill would let ISPs sell all your Web browsing data

--Patrick

So I would point out that this brings them more in line with what online companies are allowed to do. While I think there is good case to be made for explicit acceptance and transparency in data collection I'm not in favor of being randomly selective with regulations. There's not a very good case why you should limit your ISP and let Facebook or Google for example (and they're one of the better companies with your data) run wild.

It should have never been an FCC regulation in the first place. It should have been a bill or not at all.

 

[MindDetective]

So I would point out that this brings them more in line with what online companies are allowed to do. While I think there is good case to be made for explicit acceptance and transparency in data collection I'm not in favor of being randomly selective with regulations. There's not a very good case why you should limit your ISP and let Facebook or Google for example (and they're one of the better companies with your data) run wild.

It should have never been an FCC regulation in the first place. It should have been a bill or not at all.

Well, I think the ISP collecting my browsing data sounds more like eavesdropping on me while I am shopping, whereas Facebook or Google collecting my data is more like giving my contact info to the tire store where I am buying the tires from.

 

[PatrThom]

So I would point out that this brings them more in line with what online companies are allowed to do. While I think there is good case to be made for explicit acceptance and transparency in data collection I'm not in favor of being randomly selective with regulations. There's not a very good case why you should limit your ISP and let Facebook or Google for example (and they're one of the better companies with your data) run wild.
It should have never been an FCC regulation in the first place. It should have been a bill or not at all.

If Facebook or Google share their data, then they are sharing what you do with properties belonging to Facebook or Google*.
However, if your ISP shares its data, then they are potentially sharing everything you do online. Not just where you go online, but who you talk to, what you say, all the data you enter into web forms, all your (insecure) emails, etc. The ruling makes it sound like this is for the benefit of advertisers, or potentially as a way for ISPs to make an extra buck or two, but really it's legislation ultimately designed to immunize ISPs against being sued for their part in surveillance.

--Patrick
*Yes, I know they try their darndest to collect additional data through use of buttons/ads/etc. on other websites, but that is a separate issue.

 

[Gruebeard]

This thread isn't perfect for this, but it is kind of related: Court Says Hacking Victim Can’t Sue a Foreign Government For Hacking Him on US Soil

Bold is mine:

So if you get hacked by a foreign government, while entirely in a country you have citizenship in, you can't sue or otherwise reprise in any way against said government. Also, as they said above, if they get a drone into the country, and blow you up (or whatever), again, no recourse.

But the US pretty much has to rule this way since they continue to do exactly that sort of thing in other countries.