1st 121 million Verizon phone records, now web giants comply

[wayfriend]

IMO, everyone is chasing the wrong rabbit if they are debating what is legal.

Someone inordinately worried about legal is really interested in assigning blame for political gain. They don't like the current administration. "Illegal" means hay.

Someone concerned about reform wants it all to stop, regardless of legality. Where it's legal, make it illegal. Where it's too easy, make it harder. Where there are loopholes, close them. Where the law is flouted, police it. Where we need regulation, regulate, and where we need freedom, work for freedom.

Legal or illegal, make it stop.

[TheFallen]

3. Why can the government not purchase the data it wants from a willing provider in the private sector?

RR, in answer to your question 3 above, there is absolutely nothing to legally prevent the government from buying metadata in the way you describe. OK, many would argue that such practice is unethical, but it's not illegal (sadly).

Frankly I have to disagree with your response. You gave up your data to private firms voluntarily. Unless the UA states that the information will never be sold or given away to third parties, then whom they sell it to not a legal issue. Uncle Sam is just another customer.

RR, re-read my quoted answer above. I think you'll find you actually just agreed with me - unsurprising since I agreed with you in the first place.

I'll state it again - there is nothing legally wrong with the State purchasing metadata to which I have already waived my rights. As you correctly say, the Government is "just another customer". Okay, I may find the Government's desire to source such data both odd and dubious, but it is not illegal. Period.

Now our Esteemed Uncle collecting that data separately is another kettle of fish.............., I didn't volunteer necessarily to give it to them without a warrant.

No shit that it's another kettle of fish. Plus it's not "that data" I'm so incensed about... the State is separately and entirely illegally collecting private communications content. That's a huge leap beyond the legal collection of metadata. People may - and indeed do - waive their rights to metadata - the "where, when and who" of communication, BUT nobody signs away their right to privacy on the "what", the content of their personal communications. That's the part that the Government is meant to need to obtain a warrant in order to access it. And it's not bothering with warrants.

IMO, everyone is chasing the wrong rabbit if they are debating what is legal.

Someone inordinately worried about legal is really interested in assigning blame for political gain. They don't like the current administration. "Illegal" means hay.

Someone concerned about reform wants it all to stop, regardless of legality. Where it's legal, make it illegal. Where it's too easy, make it harder. Where there are loopholes, close them. Where the law is flouted, police it. Where we need regulation, regulate, and where we need freedom, work for freedom.

Legal or illegal, make it stop.

Nice soundbite, but you're entirely missing my point, WF.

There is no doubt that part of what the State is doing - and here I'm referring solely to those activities relating to collecting private communications content as detailed in the two Snowden Powerpoint slides I posted upthread - is absolutely illegal when measured against current and existing legislation. HOWEVER, please note that this isn't about assigning blame for political gain, this is about trying to stop govermental illegal activities and abuses, irrelevant of who's in charge.

So, to work through your reformer's charter step by step:-

1. "Where it's legal, make it illegal" - already in place. Zero effect. Clearly pointless.

2. "Where it's too easy, make it harder" - it's kinda hard for individuals and indeed service-providing corporations to go up against the financial muscle and technological resources of the State. Plus I find it a little odd that people should have to go out of their way to protect themselves against abuse by their own "elected servants".

3. "Where there are loopholes, close them" - there are none, when it comes to private communications content (the State's meant to need a warrant, but doesn't bother), so clearly pointless... see 1 above.

4. "Where the law is flouted, police it" - okay... how? Impeach Obama, or whoever's in the White House whenever existing law is so flagrantly breached? Plus of course let's not forget that the organisations entrusted to police things on behalf of the citizenry also work for the State.

5. "Where we need regulation, regulate" - there are regulations already in place that are being ignored, so clearly pointless... see 1 above.

6. "Where we need freedom, work for freedom" - that's a very woolly and generalised statement, so again I ask, how?

7. "Legal or illegal, make it stop" - HOW??? How, when the State won't obey relevant laws?

HOW - that's the damn question. This is not about assigning blame for politically partisan reasons. I couldn't give a crap who's in the White House... I simply want to know what can realistically be done to prevent ongoing and obvious illegal abuse by the State, regardless of who's nominally at the helm - because the mechanism of law is demonstrably meaningless and ineffectual. The State takes no notice if it doesn't want to and thus abuse continues.

[wayfriend]

Nice soundbite, but you're entirely missing my point, WF.

Don't tell me that. I'm just making my own point.

There is no doubt that part of what the State is doing - and here I'm referring solely to those activities relating to collecting private communications content as detailed in the two Snowden Powerpoint slides I posted upthread - is absolutely illegal when measured against current and existing legislation.

Actually, there's doubt all over that. Which makes the rest of your points moot.

Impeach Obama, or whoever's in the White House whenever existing law is so flagrantly breached?

And there it is.

History suggests that when a Republican is in the white house, there's far less concern exhibited, from the people now so very concerned.

We can go on and on and on about how it's not partisan, golly gee honest! ... but we can't go back in time to make those complaints about George that we forgot to make, can we?

[TheFallen]

Nice soundbite, but you're entirely missing my point, WF.

Don't tell me that. I'm just making my own point.

Well actually, you're seemingly being deliberately evasive for the umpteenth time. You bizarrely stated that people are unduly concerned if they are worried about the Government's actions in this being illegal... they're "chasing the wrong rabbit", according to you...

HUH??? Excuse me for being a stickler here, but I find it a matter of extreme importance if the government is acting in a totalitarian manner and disregarding the rule of law by which it is meant to run.

There is no doubt that part of what the State is doing - and here I'm referring solely to those activities relating to collecting private communications content as detailed in the two Snowden Powerpoint slides I posted upthread - is absolutely illegal when measured against current and existing legislation.

Actually, there's doubt all over that. Which makes the rest of your points moot.

Really? Please explain just where and how the Government has been given the legal right to perform the activities detailed in the two Powerpoint slides I posted up-thread - namely a) the Government clandestinely getting private communications content en masse from Microsoft, Google etc and b) the Government clandestinely wire-tapping directly into Internet infrastructure to copy 75% of all US domestic Internet traffic, including private communications content - how do these not violate the Constitution/BoR. To my understanding - and to paraphrase Cail - there is nothing in the 4th Amendment which empowers the government to seize or collect the private communications of any citizen who is not under suspicion of a crime, let alone do this en masse. Thus I await your answer with utter fascination.

As it seems to be strangely necessary to remind you of the content of your own sources, let me requote from the article that you yourself posted:-

US surveillance law provides different levels of legal protection to different types of data. Communications content, the “what” you say, generally receives a greater deal of protection than associated “metadata” records, which is the “who” you say it to (as well as the when and where you say it). Although there are many things to dislike about our out-of-date surveillance laws, there is something to be said for the fact that the law is largely neutral with respect to particular technologies.

Thus emails, Facebook messages, private Twitter Direct Messages, and SnapChat photos sent between loved ones are all considered communications content, and receive the same degree of legal protection. This is how it should be.

Your own cited article clearly specifies that the content of private communications is indeed legally protected - ergo, if the government is acquiring it en masse - as Snowden's and later revelations have all shown that they are - the government is choosing to ignore the 4th Amendment and due process and thus is acting with a complete disregard to the law.

Impeach Obama, or whoever's in the White House whenever existing law is so flagrantly breached?

And there it is.

There's what? I'm suggesting that any sitting president should be impeached if his administration is knowingly and continuously flouting the law. I thought I'd made that so brutally clear that not even you could mistake it for partisan. Psst! The clue's in when I said "whoever's in..."

History suggests that when a Republican is in the white house, there's far less concern exhibited, from the people now so very concerned.

We can go on and on and on about how it's not partisan, golly gee honest! ... but we can't go back in time to make those complaints about George that we forgot to make, can we?

Two teeny points...

1. The Snowden revelations occurred during the current POTUS's tenure. It's on his watch, so he's catching my flak. I couldn't give a rat's ass which party he's from. I personally have always thought that Dubya is a semi-sentient jug-eared buffoon, but that's an entire irrelevance, since he's not got his hand on the tiller any more. Plus, need I remind you again that I have never voted (nor ever will vote) either GOP or Dem.

2. In terms of retconning history, the unwitting irony of your comment is staggering. I think that everyone here is well-aware which regular poster has undergone the most massive and brazen of u-turns in opinion, since the election of the current POTUS - as has been demonstrated on more than one occasion with verbatim evidence. Frankly, it's laughable - and makes me want to add a quote to my sig.

[Zarathustra]

WF: sure, we all should have been more concerned under Bush's watch. Point taken, and I agree. However, the level of concern has grown in proportion to the scope of the problem, which has been expanded and made worse under Obama's watch. Many more companies have been forced to comply since 2008. While Bush was president, the issue was metadata. Now we're talking about much more, i.e. content. Don't you think it's perfectly natural for people to be more concerned in light of a major leak from a whistleblower exposing things the public didn't previously know??

It is true what TheFallen says about the government capturing the content of the Internet. Whether or not this is illegal, I don't know. It should be. But as you say, that's not the point. The government is hacking into the Internet infrastructure itself.

From the Wired magazine article I mentioned on the last page (print version, no link):

...Gellman and his Post team revealed documents detailing how the NSA, working with its British counterpart, GCHQ, had hacked into the traffic that moved exclusively on the private fiber connections linking the respective data centers of Google and Yahoo. The codename for this upstream program was Muscular.

In one sense, the news cleared up a mystery that had been baffling the companies. "It provided us a key to finally understanding what was going on," says Microsoft's general counsel, Brad Smith. "We had been reading about the NSA reportedly having a massive amount of data. We felt that we and the others in the industry had been providing a small amount of data. It was hard to reconcile, and this was a very logical explanation."

Still, the news of the government raid on data-center traffic hit the industry with the visceral shock of having one's home robbed. The betrayal was most strikingly illustrated in a PowerPoint slide that showed how the NSA had bypassed Google's encryption, inserting a probe as data moved from its servers across the open Internet. Between two big clouds,--one representing the public Internet, the other labeled "Google Cloud"--there was a little hand-drawn smiley face, a blithe emoji gotcha never meant to be seen by its victim. Google's Drummond wrote an indignant statement to the Post, describing the company as "outraged." Yahoo's director of security, Ramses Martinez, endorses the sentiment. "It was news to us," he says of Muscular. "We put a lot of work into securing our data."

It's one thing to object to a legal process that one believes is unconstitutional. It's quite another to be working for an American company, charged with protecting the privacy of customers, and find that the eyes staring across from you on the virtual Maginot Line of cyber-defense are those of the United States of America.

"At first we were in an arms race with sophisticated criminals," says Eric Grosse, Google's head of security. "Then we found ourselves in an arms race with certain nation-state actors [with a reputation for cyberattacks]. And now we're in an arms race with the best nation-state actors." Primarily, the US government.

Nice soundbite, but you're entirely missing my point, WF.

Don't tell me that. I'm just making my own point.

Why should others not say, "You're missing my point," but it's perfectly fine for you to say:

"IMO, everyone is chasing the wrong rabbit if they are debating what is legal.

Is there really any difference between telling everyone they're "chasing the wrong rabbit," and telling you that you've missed one's point? What does "chasing the wrong rabbit" mean other than people missing the point?

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Our government has become the largest, most sophisticated hacker in the world. There is even some speculation (which the NSA denies) that America has set our industry standards for encryption to a lower level which the NSA is able to crack--with the naive belief that only the NSA could crack it, making us more vulnerable to hackers around the world.

If you think that your (not you personally, I am using the generic third-party "your") encryption is secure and cannot be hacked then you are asking for trouble. No matter how supposedly secure you think your system is eventually someone smarter than you will find a way to break it, whether that person is the new hot-shot at the NSA or some hot-shot in an apartment in Moscow, Beijing, or Brooklyn. The only thing really holding back so-called "collectives" like Anonymous is that they may know each other as members but they don't know each other--they cannot be absolutely certain that one of them won't talk, isn't a plant, or will sell out for the right amount of money.

Don't rely on someone else's encryption to secure your data. If you want to be certain then invent your own system like I did. Encrypt your data at the user level and then let the normal encryption take effect when/if you transmit data. The NSA can intercept and crack the third-party encryption but what they get will be your encryption, which will take considerably more time and ingenuity to crack.

[wayfriend]

2. In terms of retconning history, the unwitting irony of your comment is staggering.

Your reverting back to your default form of unremitting antagonism, and claiming it makes an argument. I win.

Really? Please explain in what way the activities detailed in the two Powerpoint slides I posted up-thread

I am not going to be fooled into supporting the position that they are legal. I am only making an observation that the point isn't settled.

Your post upthread is remarkably vague with respect to having any details. Was it ever made clear if these operations were involved with spying on foreign persons, or domestic? If it's used for spying on targets outside the US, it's not illegal AFAIK. A rebuttal I made to your fine post previously.

[Avatar]

Don't rely on someone else's encryption to secure your data. If you want to be certain then invent your own system like I did. Encrypt your data at the user level and then let the normal encryption take effect when/if you transmit data. The NSA can intercept and crack the third-party encryption but what they get will be your encryption, which will take considerably more time and ingenuity to crack.[/color]

'Cause there's nothing easier than developing and coding your own encryption algorithm, right?

--A

[TheFallen]

2. In terms of retconning history, the unwitting irony of your comment is staggering.

Your reverting back to your default form of unremitting antagonism, and claiming it makes an argument. I win.

WF, you mistake rebuttal for antagonism. Let me make myself clear.

Suffice it to say that I admire both your perceptiveness and your prescience when it came to your stringent criticism of the Bush administration for implementing the pernicious Patriot Act and in so doing, eroding civil liberties. So, when there was a Republican in the White House, you particularly were indeed "so very concerned". And rightfully so, as it's turned out - I'm sure that, with the benefit of hindsight, far more would have been of like mind with yourself.

However, what's surprising given the above is that, now there's no longer a 'Pub in the White House, you've dramatically altered your position and are apparently no longer "so very concerned" about State erosion of civil liberties - even in the light of the abuses made possible by Bush having been so drastically expanded and accelerated by the current administration and even against the backdrop of the Snowden revelations now revealing just how far State abuses of the 4th Amendment have now gone.

IMO, everyone is chasing the wrong rabbit if they are debating what is legal.

Someone inordinately worried about legal is really interested in assigning blame for political gain. They don't like the current administration. "Illegal" means hay.

And as neatly shown above, you accuse others of partisan behaviour and imply that anyone criticising the current admin on grounds of legality can only be doing so for political reasons. Really??? I personally would have thought that the high likelihood of any administration acting continuously and knowingly illegally would be a matter for huge concern for the electorate... but since late 2008, you apparently don't any more - curiouser and curiouser.

'Nuff said, I think.

[Zarathustra]

TheFallen, there is certainly ample evidence in the archives of this forum that a President's administration doing illegal activities used to matter. It certainly wasn't viewed as "making hay" to accuse the President or his administration of doing illegal activities prior to 2008.

This is utter bullshit. This is what's wrong with our country, and precisely why this shit keeps happening. The party in power will always have people who make excuses for it, even when the two sides should agree (if you can believe the opposition rhetoric directed at the previous admin).

The one thing that's abundantly clear is that the Left didn't really give a damn about all those things they seemed to care about while Bush was in office, because now that Obama is doing the very same things (or even worse), it's a completely different political climate in both the media and in places like here in our message board. Obama cannot be blamed! The irony is that this proves that the righteous indignation during the Bush years WAS truely political hay making, and nothing more. It was merely a way to get a Democrat elected, and then business as usual. We've seen this with the drying up of the anti-war movement, the indifference toward Gitmo being left open (and yet another Gitmo being built that no one but me ever mentions), the erosion of due process, the assassination of American citizens, the escalation of war on many fronts, the renewal of the Patriot Act, and spying on Americans.

Hell, I even remember when Dems criticized Bush over the deficit. You sure as shit don't hear them complain about that anymore. And that's because they only ever cared about it in as much as it could be a Bush criticism.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

'Cause there's nothing easier than developing and coding your own encryption algorithm, right?

--A

I didn't have much trouble with it but then I am an exception to many rules. (and humble, too)

[wayfriend]

Look ... I didn't make it partisan, I just pointed out how partisan it is.

Pointing out how partisan it is isn't "making excuses for the current administration". Whether I am right or wrong about how partisan it is, nothing would be excused.

This isn't even making logical sense any more. It's just a visceral need to bash any poster who points out the man behind the curtain.

Which itself is more partisan argument. Well, you can't really call it "argument" any more. It's an ad hominem festival at this point.

[Avatar]

'Cause there's nothing easier than developing and coding your own encryption algorithm, right?

--A

I didn't have much trouble with it but then I am an exception to many rules. (and humble, too)

Oh Lord, it's hard to be humble...

--A

[TheFallen]

Look ... I didn't make it partisan, I just pointed out how partisan it is.

Pointing out how partisan it is isn't "making excuses for the current administration".

Far FAR more accurate is the following statement:-

"Criticizing the current administration isn't necessarily partisan".

I think Z hit on something important when he said

This is utter bullshit. This is what's wrong with our country, and precisely why this shit keeps happening. The party in power will always have people who make excuses for it, even when the two sides should agree (if you can believe the opposition rhetoric directed at the previous admin).

This seems to be the very essence of everything that is wrong with a bipartite system... every time there's a change of party in the White House, all that seems to happen is that the vast majority of the electorate do nothing more than swap over their "unjustifiably critical" and "unjustifiably tolerant" t-shirts. It's like there's a massive prevalence of a totally polarised and completely unrealistic mindset that is only capable of dealing in the most depressingly simplistic black and white. That really is an entirely futile environment which doesn't lend itself at all to the desire to actually reform anything.

As I've stated before, I don't give a rat's ass about the party of the man occupying the White House, provided that he's not screwing things up and/or making matters worse. And I have an extra reason not to give said rat's ass, since I don't even have a vote on the issue. But it strikes me that all you've done is lurch from an intellectually challenged simpleton in Dubya to a sly and slickly spun hypocrite in Obama - with the net result being that nothing's got any better and a good deal has got worse.

Which leads me to think - if whoever the man allegedly in charge actually is has seemed repeatedly unable to effect any change, perhaps, despite long-set belief to the contrary, he actually can't. What seems to grind inexorably onwards, increasing in power and funding is the behemoth that is the apparatus of the State - the huge collection of alphabet soup agencies covering all fields, of which the NSA and its spook-like brethren are only one part. Maybe that's what really needs reform and deconstruction - though God knows how this'd be achieved.

[wayfriend]

Far FAR more accurate is the following statement:-

"Criticizing the current administration isn't necessarily partisan".

An excellent example of a straw man argument. Of course, my argument went nothing like that at all.

I think Z hit on something important when he said

Agreed. Zarathustra can nail uttering bullshit. As it's also a strawman argument.

I said nothing that excuses the president.

So of course you agree.

HOWEVER, when I claimed that some things deemed illegal aren't actually illegal (although still bad), I was criticized by partisan bullshit artists because it doesn't help them bash the president.

AND when I claimed that there is more than the government involved (but never excluding the gov't), I was criticized by partisan bullshit artists because it doesn't help them bash the president.

AND when I suggested that its not helping solve the real issue with all this focus on bashing the president (because every other line of debate gets excluded), I was criticized by partisan bullshit artists because all they really want to do is bash the president.

Stop bitching just because you're so not proud of what you actually do you can't tolerate someone describing it.

[Cail]

Can someone PM me when the topic gets off of Wayfriend and back on the government spying on us?


Thanks in advance.

[TheFallen]

Dear oh dear, WF.. calm down. You'll have a conniption.

Far FAR more accurate is the following statement:-

"Criticizing the current administration isn't necessarily partisan".

An excellent example of a straw man argument. Of course, my argument went nothing like that at all.

And not once did I say it did - as I made very clear, I posted what I believed to be a far more accurate statement - that's far more accurate than your own, so clearly I wasn't attributing it to you, I'd respectfully suggest you read posts a little more carefully, rather than reacting so knee-jerkily and getting it so very, very wrong.

I said nothing that excuses the president.

A classic example of the WF usage of the negative - a tactic that became banal a long, long time ago. However...

HOWEVER, when I claimed that some things deemed illegal aren't actually illegal (although still bad), I was criticized by partisan bullshit artists because it doesn't help them bash the president.

Throughout I have stated categorically that the collection of metadata that one has waived one's rights to is not illegal, so I'm in agreement with you. However, focussing solely on the government's garnering of metadata is - again as I have said throughout - a distraction away from its separate and direct acquisition of personal communications content, which is a far more pernicious matter.

AND when I claimed that there is more than the government involved (but never excluding the gov't), I was criticized by partisan bullshit artists because it doesn't help them bash the president.

See above. Banging on about the private sector's quite legal harvesting of metadata and the government's equally quite legal acquisition of such is a distraction away from the far more serious issue.

AND when I suggested that its not helping solve the real issue with all this focus on bashing the president (because every other line of debate gets excluded), I was criticized by partisan bullshit artists because all they really want to do is bash the president.

If you actually bother reading my post above, you'll see that I'm suggesting that the issue may lie in the inexorable apparatus of the State, rather than at the door of the Oval Office. This is of course to presume that in reality, the POTUS has no power to stop it.

And as for others criticizing the POTUS? Well, maybe they believe that he's the man in control - so when bad shit happens, he's the man to criticize. Let me draw a simplistic analogy in a no doubt vain attempt to help you towards understanding - say there's a rental car that was rented out back on Jan 1 to some guy for a month and during that period was seen to be driven really badly, endangering other motorists and pedestrians alike - obviously not a good thing. Now, say the same rental car was returned and rented to another different guy for a month on Feb 1 this year... and let's say it's being seen again to be driven just as badly and dangerously, if not more so. Who are you gonna criticize for today's problem on the roads... the January driver, or the February driver? ...And you think that's partisan???

Stop bitching just because you're so not proud of what you actually do you can't tolerate someone describing it.

Do try describing it accurately then.

[wayfriend]

TF, are we done sidestepping the question I asked you as to whether those obviously illegal activities you posted about were related to domestic or foreign surveillance?

[Zarathustra]

There is absolutely no difference between these two:

a) accusing someone of making an argument in order to bash the President.

b) accusing someone of making an argument to excuse or protect the President from receiving any blame.

Both are statements of someone's motivation for making an argument, and both are accusations of party loyalty being the dominating factor. However, as a statement of someone's motivation, it may not be true, in as much as it's a guess into their inner thoughts and dispositions. However, when these inner thoughts manifest in a post that can be shown to be either critical or dismissive of the President's culpability, then perhaps there is more weight to this guess into someone's motivations. However, that is still not conclusive, because the person may be critical or dismissive of the President's culpability while simultaneously making a larger point about presidents in general, such as their authority and power, and merely using this particular instance as an example.

As long as someone is denying the accusation of a purely partisan motivaton, I suggest we give them the benefit of the doubt, unless there exist direct quotes from that person which clearly leave no doubt that they will change their tune depending on the party of the President, and thus aren't talking about general points of any president, but tailor their arguments for purely partisan reasons.

Therefore, Wayfriend, you're doing EXACTLY what you're accusing the other side of doing, and yet there exists less evidence for you to make your case against us, and more evidence to make exactly the same case against you.

Why don't you stop making these accusations of us in the first place? There's no need to even bring up our motivations; it's off-topic.

[wayfriend]

There is zero evidence that I excused the president of any culpability. You all have made it all up.

I realize as I say this that now we're going to pull out a lot of statements that DON'T excuse the president, and make the claim that they do. After all, that's what many of you have been doing all along. Saying something is legal is "excusing the president"; saying corporations are involved is "excusing the president". Noticing how no one is actually interested in protecting privacy, but only bashing the president, is "excusing the president".

So what else is there? If I say the sky is blue, am I excusing the president as well?

Gee... if you don't want this thread going in that direction, you can stop making up the lies and return to the topic any time.

As for there being no proof that there's no evidence that others aren't partisan ... well, claiming that discussing anything BUT bashing the president is EXCUSING the president is damn well partisan. So that's about ten pages of posts, for starters.

I swear to god, this is what you guys want political discussion to be:

• "The president is a jerk"
  "Yeah, a big jerk."
  "Yeah".
  "Yeah too".

That's just masturbation if you ask me.