FBI wants access to browser history without a warrant in terrorism, spy cases(washingtonpost.com) |
FBI wants access to browser history without a warrant in terrorism, spy cases(washingtonpost.com) |
Then within the last few years, a black kid who takes his life savings -- $10,000 cash -- and moves across the country to start a new life is (apparently entirely legally) relieved of it by two police officers and has no means to get it back, despite never being arrested nor charged with any crime.
History shows that it's impossible to trust the government's promise that they'll restrict any new capabilities to the worst bad guys.
1. Does the United States Constitution permit the government to do this?
2. What would this power look like if it were expanded dramatically in scope or in time?
3. What would this obligation look like if exercised indifferently by unaccountable people?
4. What would your worst enemy do with this power?
The list goes on, but points 2, 3, and 4 should be sufficient to cause pause for even the most aggressive supporter of expanding government powers.
[0] https://popehat.com/2016/06/02/libertarianism-as-ten-questio...
Individual liberty is something that we need to defend actively from the government and that can not happen unless we take a diametrically opposite stance and do not concede even and inch of ground.
Example: People who supported civil forfeiture essentially thought that its okay to take things away from crime lords even if the charges are not proved. Now CF is coming after everyone.
I think the right solution here is to starve the beast. Force the government to lower taxes and leave them with substantially less money for needless wars, enforcing idiotic laws and other welfare schemes.
You also can't lower taxes without hurting employment and nobody wants higher unemployment.
>What is to be done
A people that doesn't pay attention to the government gets screwed by the government every time, no matter what rules are in place. That's why Lawrence Lessig is trying to change the rules to encourage people to take part.
Because in non-corrupt situations it's not your responsibility to explain yourself to not be robbed by the police.
It wasn't even 2 years after the 2001 PATRIOT act that the DOJ was using the provisions for drug cases.
A probably non-exhaustive list is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_invocations_of_t...
> Adam McGaughey, the webmaster of a fan site for the television show Stargate SG-1, was charged with copyright infringement and computer fraud. During the investigation, the FBI invoked a provision of the Act to obtain financial records from the site's Internet Service Provider.
I never heard this one before. Using terrorism laws to investigate copyright infringment on a scifi TV show fan site.
A running theme in these cases:
> Millions of phone records were harvested, fed into a database and were searched for patterns of calling to and from numbers of known terrorists. To date, there have been no announced arrests from this program. [..] Furthermore, this information is databased and maintained indefinitely by the FBI.
Why not require a warrant? The more checks and balances the better.
Is there a way to make obtaining warrants more transparent and straightforward?
It honestly seems like they could design a better system that doesn't get rid of the checks, increases citizen trust, and solves their issues.
But of course it doesn't do that, because the FBI doesn't operate in "good faith", and because it would prefer as little oversight as possible - which is what this request is really about anyway: the removal of judicial oversight, even beyond its rapidly growing abuse of NSLs [2].
[1] - https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160605/09111034626/appea...
[2] - https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2016/04/14/keeping...
Also: make a prominent "clear last hour" option for mobile; I hate following a link from someone and finding a ton of tracking cookies have just been added.
So restoring this option wouldn't help, maybe only using TOR or some VPN proxy would.
Edit: While I'm here, Firefox should also provide an Android URL intent that opens links in a private tab.
So... basically a warrant.
I can see the attack ad now:
"Judge Soandso thinks that terrorists deserve a greater right to privacy than you do. Judge Soandso protects terrorists. Vote Judge Otherguy."
Kinda turns this into a rubber stamp.
"Judge Otherguy's tough-on-crime strategy led to a $1500 DUI charge for an innocent grandmother on SSI who was poisoned by her doctor. Vote Judge Soandso to protect the elderly."
You're repeating a common fallacy, namely that warrants are a sine qua non condition for search and seizure. This is false. In the United States, one enjoys constitutional protection from unreasonable search and seizure.
While a warrant goes a very long way towards making a search or seizure reasonable, the two are not to be equated.
A few notable exceptions where warrants are not required:
- The so-called motor-vehicle exception
- The so-called "in hot pursuit" exception
I think we share the same feeling towards this particular case, but it's important to understand the legal arguments being made. The FBI is essentially claiming that it is reasonable to search browser history without a warrant.
Looking at browser history might not hurt most people, but getting a warrant isn't hard, and it's the proper way to do things.
Lately?
I think the fact that they completely invented a fictitious science to prosecute cases should have brought serious investigation and televised congressional hearings with daily news coverage...
...but nope.
Scrap it and start over.
> By Ellen Nakashima
Meanwhile, maybe it's an effort by this media outlet to downplay, and run interference in favor of government entities, so that people roll their eyes at the misinformation and simply presume the government as incompetant.
"Ya caaaan't have it!"
As far as I am concerned, they can do whatever they want with people who accept that. Concerning myself, I am always on the outlook for some kind of counter-veiling power, the most interesting of which is Islam. It really retaliates. So, I am positive about it.
There has been, and always will be, some type of terrorists. So its a perfect opportunity to use this threat (whether real in some cases and not in some cases) to get something approved that you could not normally.
At least with the end of of the USSR, most of the old Cold War communism scare tactics went away. Unfortunately, I don't really foresee and end in the use of terrorism threats to get funding for some new technology or bill to erode more rights.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_%28Negri_and_Hardt_book...
--Hermann Göring
mine has been turned up to 11 for about 15 years now.
-- Rahm Emanuel
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-destruct...
BetterPrivacy completely destroys Flash localstorage on close, which is important because SDC doesn't get them.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/betterprivacy...
"self-destructing cookies", on the desktop, lets you choose to destroy cookies 1) when you close the tab, 2) when you close the browser or 3) never. On android it's a toggle; presumably 1 and 3.
The android version of noscript is inexplicably named "noscript nsa". It has a bunch of options but I never fiddle with them. You can't install it via the usual firefox plugin system for reasons I don't understand, so instead you have to get it here:
You want the link "Download NSA++ (NoScript 3.5 alpha)". It's been alpha for as long as I've been using it. A recent change to firefox means you probably have to use about:config to temporarily enable the installation of plugins from outside the official firefox plugin store thing.
Perhaps the developers are trying to demonstrate that you can't have security AND convenience.
> "There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars." [0]
It is funny how quickly Congress delegated that power to the executive.
This is counter to virtually everything I've seen asserted about economics, as well as the raw world data on hours worked compared to tax rates.
There is a "leisure effect" whereby getting more money for the same amount of work (the effect of lowering taxes) means that people choose additional leisure over additional work, because they don't need the extra money from additional work as badly. It is much less strong than the effect whereby raising the returns on work leads people to do more of it, because they're getting more out of the extra work than they used to.
What are you thinking of when you make this claim?
>The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.
For example my house was not connected by road. When we tried to build our own private road we realized we had to take clearance from 8 departments which would have taken us 2 years and several $$$ in bribes. We paid money to a contractor who build the road without any clearance and no government person ever showed up because they had more important job to do.
The problem is if you are going to have a higher number of cops per capita, they need to catch someone to justify their existence. The only reason we have "War against drugs" because there aren't any other wars that politicians are fighting with. Almost all problems are solved (compared to say India).
If gov. shuts down war against drugs they will start war against sex. American women enjoy freedom and safety that Indian women can only dream of and yet our government is busy passing all sort of laws to "protect woman". This is because these are empty minds working as devils workshop.
Insightful comment.
I hope for a future where we focus on using government to govern ourselves in a way in which we reward people for doing bad things, and punish people for doing good things. Right now it seems to be a tool that is mostly focused to benefit those in power, at the expense of others. One cost of this is that the definition of what is unacceptably unjust is becoming increasingly inane. Our liberties are eroding.
If you can't do any of that - you may be a drug dealer or drug/cash runner.
I'm fine with you having some kind of moral outrage at asset forefiture, but while it is currently the law, there are ways of going about getting your money back. Again, feel free to argue that you shouldn't need to prove where it came from, but, while you do need to prove it, you have those options available to you in pretty much any circumstance where you can save up $11k.
There are plenty of good reasons to conduct search and seizures without warrants. Simple example: a cop hears someone screaming for help inside of an apartment.
With respect (really!), I think you have a bit of an ideological blind-spot. I can relate, as I used to have the same one (and probably still do in some cases).
This is why we have a court system. There is (in principle) remedy for the latter, but not for a failure to help someone in immediate distress.
Most people don't care about X (civil forfeiture, whistleblowers, Controversial invocations of the Patriot Act, etc.)
> Pay more attention to the election and government processes.
Yes but this completely ignores the fact that most Americans are apathetic to these issues.
What I learned this year was that (as another poster put it) "Gerrymandering, fraud, bribery, voter suppression" were visible, they would also be tolerated.
Also, if you're under investigation by the FBI for espionage, most Americans will STILL vote for you. And the other major half will vote for someone who is clearly racist and (imho) dumb as nails.
My interactions with people after reaching adulthood have also taught me that people have different inclinations, ethics, intentions and internal reward systems. Some people gain satisfaction by helping others, or doing 'good;' while some others, gain satisfaction from hurting others, or feeling superior to them. Unfortunately I've met a lot of terrible people, and that makes me wonder what we should reasonably come to expect in who we collectively elect?
We might do better drafting from a pool of otherwise qualified people who really don't want the job!
if you're under investigation by the FBI for espionage
--John Kiriakou (He was the first CIA officer to be convicted for passing classified information to a reporter) [1]
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.
[1] http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/all_whistleblowers_shoul...
All of these things are the direct result of the Bush Administration taking advantage of post-9/11 fears to push the PATRIOT Act, and the "new normal" that terrorism posed such a grave and existential threat that nothing, not even the Constitution or the rule of law, should be allowed to get in the way of fighting it.
Yep. The "Bush Administration".
It's named after the former Governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry, who redrew the districts to ensure his party would win the senate. Apparently, he had to draw the districts in rather unusual shapes to achieve this, and they kind of ended up looking like a salamander. Hence, Gerrymandering.
By what principle do you think districts should be drawn--they must be redrawn due to shifting population--so do you intend to draw exaggerated patterns to spread out minority opinions, or to clump them together? Or are you suggesting that you flip coins topologically? What if flipping coins results in a salamander of some sort, you want to use soap films to find the minimum enclosing surfaces? "Mathematically neutral" methods of drawing districts will result in some parts of the country randomly enhancing minority opinions while other parts of the country will randomly diffuse them, with results that will lead partisans to complain bitterly.
My point is, there IS NO RIGHT ANSWER. There is only your preference.
It can be clearly recognized where it occurs, and there are plenty of examples in the Wikipedia article. I don't have the skills or knowledge to say exactly how it should be done, only that it shouldn't have extreme obvious political bias.
I contend that the system we use, the gerrymandering system, is the most defensible, it's democratic. Don't like it, vote for somebody else.
I've just never really solved how to apply it to politics. I've long felt that if you're going to have 2 "houses", one ought to be appointed by ballot as a check/balance on the elected members (a variation of hereditary peers in many ways but without the same bias).
While these may all be true, on your way to be right you've discarded everyone who doesn't get media spotlight, is innocent, and still has their assets forfeited.
No one was disputing your original point anyway - yes, there are ways to get your money back - which you shouldn't have lost in the first place. That's the whole problem with these half-assed, poorly thought-through laws - they are intended to only be applied to criminals, so by assumption the person they are applied to is a criminal, so it's no big deal if they have to jump through ridiculous, possibly life-ruining hoops to go back to their normal life.
Another point that isn't really discussed - after sacrificing the civil liberties of people who have to go through civil forfeiture, is there a worthwhile effect on the drug lords and drug runners, or is this a case like DRM?
The explicit goal of gerrymandering is to render this remedy ineffectual.
however, I feel you are so convinced you are right that you are not looking at the actual issue and you intellectually impoverish yourself as a result. Gerrymander is an accusation you hurl at opponents in the majority who don't do what you want (like calling them uncivil even if they have not been, eh!?). However, when your party is in you do the same thing... not because you are a hypocrite (like the hypocritical games played over Supreme Court nominations) but because there is no way to draw redistricting boundaries that is actually fair; many factions will be disadvantaged by aggregating votes in districts, there is no way to avoid it.
Instead of downvoting me more, google a supposed gerrymander map and try it on a city you know, you'll see that you'll be making political choices that you favor. You might be "fair" in your mind because you consider yourself an independent so you will favor neither Democrats nor Republicans, but instead your gerrymander will favor some other metrics that you prefer.
You might even go so far as try to create a very evenly divided legislature that will have difficulty passing any laws, and you'll look at me and say "see, I did it"... then immediately after that I'll have to listen to your unsophisticated drivel about how gridlock is destroying our country and if only everybody was "civil" like you, beautiful compromises would emerge.
Even if true, this is surely the least civil way, and one of the least convincing ways, to state the fact.
> My point is, there IS NO RIGHT ANSWER. There is only your preference.
That seems to be a different claim to:
> any creation of voting districts is a Gerrymander
(which you said above). Two reasons why:
1. As slavik points out, a gerrymander is, by definition, intentionally (not incidentally, accidentally, or unavoidably) unfair.
2. More importantly, "all district-drawing schemes are unfair", while probably true, does not mean that they are all equally unfair, or that we should give up on seeking fairness. It seems rather like http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm .
Let's say we make the whole nation into a single constituent district. Now, every voter will cast one vote for one representative and the top N candidates with the most votes win.
This is a terrible solution but even this is better than what we have today which i hope goes far too show how bad the system we have today is...
Systems design should strive to make it resistant to corruption and try to not rely on the goodness of people making correct/impartial choices.
(I am fully aware of my hypocrisy when I claim to support democracy around the world except obviously {{}} can't be in government. I hope that this just shows that I can't even trust myself to be correct/consistent/impartial.)
Bottom line is that every vote within a jurisdiction should be equally equal regardless of geographical location. It might lead to people we don't like getting elected but that shouldn't dissuade us. However, I have to agree with President Obama in this -- the only way to effect any change here is to get people involved in very large numbers. Get people to move to these safe districts. I can't see how we can accomplish change here with the levels of apathy we have...
To try to forge a simple example to illustrate it to you (and yes, this is spoonfeeding to an HN audience who refuses to do the work themselves when downvoting is so much simpler): people interact with their neighbors and they squabble with their neighbors and there are many more factions on a myriad of issues than even a multiparty system can allow for. But neighbors unite over many issues, like "we don't want a sewage treatment plant here", or "we need more parking".
If you have a "system" that does not give local people a loud voice on local issues, your system will be overturned in favor of one that does. For instance, the American Revolution and the Brexit are the same basic issue: people far away should not be deciding our local affairs.
So now that your system's been overturned, we have a system of local districts... but local districts are filled with people who do not agree on all issues...
It's all gerrymandering, there is no such thing as not gerrymandering, including in the mathematically degenerate cases of Athenian (or New England town meeting) democracies. Factorial of 0 has to be 1, because...because... "gerrymander"
But to your point(less), considering the world population, I've looked, I've googled the gerrymander topic hard; and I've tried to engage the wikipedia "talk" community in hopes of finding birds of a feather, people actively interested in the issue. (You give it a try, I am the only one saying it... Oh wait, it's much easier for you to avoid learning anything and just to drop a tart comment.)
I am certain that many others (still a tiny minority of the planet) have noticed that when you draw district boundaries that you must inherently advantage some and disadvantage others; a subset of those notice more sophisticated political things about it, and a tiny subset probably notice that it is a deeper d(N-color geographic map projection onto a hyperdimensional Venn diagram problem)/dt.
But that notion does not filter out. The concept of a "gerrymander" is very dear to the hearts of relatively sophisticated people (unsophisticated people don't know the word). I imagine it's not taught properly in political science curricula.
My claim is, there is no way to draw legislative districts that is not a gerrymander (unless you adopt the non-standard definition that a gerrymander is any drawing that is not geometrically compact/convex)
The original Gerrymander political cartoon: it was a clever rhetorical point, I'm in favor of cleverness and rhetorical flourish.
Further noticing that all districting is political, ideological, or doomed to be rejected by an outraged populatce, I don't know how clever that is, but I can't find anybody other than me who has noticed it and stands up and says it.
In terms of your suggestion about not drawing district lines at all, I can (seriously) see no merit to it at all. That could be because while you could have made an actual argument for your point, instead you simply stated it as I did in my post... I guess according to your comment calculus I should accuse you of not following the tone that we prefer and downvote you?