PRISM

[Griff]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

In case you haven't heard...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/invest...7_story_1.html

... the US government is (allegedly) doing massive (allegedly) illegal data mining through some of the biggest internet companies (allegedly) including google, facebook and apple.

Well, when I signed up for Gmail, I just assumed that Uncle Sam would be snooping through the data one way or another, and always treated it accordingly.

I think you can drop the (allegedly).

[Griff]

"Horror at Their Capabilities" Drove Leak of NSA Spying Program

He's going to get the Bradley Manning treatment.

[Lamplighter]

What do Google and Allied Waste have in common ?
We give them our raw materials for free, they claim absolute ownership, sort it, and sell it for profit.

Bloomberg
Christopher Flavelle
Jun 8, 2013

Does Google Have an Ethical Obligation Not to Spy?

Many Americans are outraged at the government for mining
user data from Apple, Google, Facebook and other Silicon Valley giants.
What about the actions of the companies themselves
-- have they met their ethical obligations to their customers and society as a whole?
Do they even have any?

The Washington Post reported that the National Security Agency collects data
"directly from the servers" of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple.
While some companies issued carefully worded denials of involvement,
it's hard to imagine they were unaware of the arrangement, however they choose to describe it.<snip>

The surveillance debate raises the question of whether our expectations
of these companies and their leaders should also extend to the defense of our civil rights.
Imagine, for an instant, that Steve Jobs, Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg had
held a press conference in 2007, when the government first
began seeking this access, and said to the public,
"The government has asked for your information,
and we don't think that's right." <snip>

This week's revelations demonstrate the centrality of
Silicon Valley to American life, in ways we never imagined.

In the face of that expanded role, maybe it's time to revisit what it means
for a company to be a good corporate citizen, and whether that includes
acting as a check on the government when no one else can.

[Griff]

Now that national elections are meaningless maybe the right approach is stockholder pressure. At least its a front that can be fought.

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by Griff

I think you can drop the (allegedly).

It actually seems that PRISM is not illegal and has been approved by pretty much all three branches of government. This data mining is a definitely a true slippery slope and it can be strongly argued to violate the 4th amendment, but this seems to be a bi-partisan move that is well known among all elected officials.

In fact, it's a near certainty that the legal theory behind orders of this sort has been carefully examined by all three branches of the government and by both political parties. As the Guardian story makes clear, Sen. Ron Wyden has been agitating for years about what he calls an interpretation of national security law that seems to go beyond anything the American people understand or would support. He could easily have been talking about orders like this. So it's highly likely that the law behind this order was carefully vetted by both intelligence committees, Democrat-led in the Senate and Republican-led in the House. (Indeed, today the leaders of both committees gave interviews defending the order.) And in the executive branch, any legal interpretations adopted by George W. Bush's administration would have been carefully scrubbed by President Barack Obama's Justice Department.

Ah, you say, but the scandal here isn't what has been done illegally -- it's what has been done legally. Even if it's lawful, how can the government justify spying on every American's phone calls?

It can't. No one has repealed the laws that prohibit the National Security Agency (NSA) from targeting Americans unless it has probable cause to believe that they are spies or terrorists. So under the law, the NSA remains prohibited from collecting information on Americans.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...calls?page=0,0


Note: That article is an obvious defense of PRISM and there will likely be a lot of political spin on this in the next few weeks but I think it is important to try to look at PRISM for what it really is (in a factual sense).

[xoxoxoBruce]

You put your whole fucking life online and are worried about someone finding out what you've been up to?

[Griff]

I can't tell you what privacy means in the electronic age. I do know that I choose to share on the cellar but I don't name a lot of names and am vague when I feel its warranted. My company forces me to use gmail so I keep that account pretty sterile. I don't fazebook but I have an unused lunkedin account with minimal info and few connections... The English version of privacy has government cameras rolling the Merican has private cameras rolling... Corporations spend a lot on collecting data to sell or to sell us stuff. The same data that sells me a subscription to Mother Earth News could put me on a nutter survivalist watch list. If we look at the drug war folks are killed by their government by accident all the time so what would make the WOT any different? I ask because I don't know. The fascination with secrecy displayed by our government is interesting, individuals have no expectation of privacy but the government that serves us has become extremely opaque.

[Lamplighter]

The hypothetical example in PH45's link is far too tenuous to carry much weight at all.
It basically tries to argue that the phone companies can not manage the author's imaginary problem,
therefore only the government is capable, and therefore must do it.

"must" ? Why "must" ?

Even the author's final paragraph pre-supposes the "must"

But for those who don't like the alternative model, the real question is "compared to what"?
Those who want to push the government back into the standard law enforcement approach
of identifying terrorists only by name and not by conduct will have to explain
how it will allow us to catch terrorists who use halfway decent tradecraft
-- or why sticking with that model is so fundamentally important that
we should do so even if it means more acts of terrorism at home.

My hypothetical would be to change only the timing in his example.
Instead of urgency, the terrorists use the postal services of each country.
So now, would that justify a government database of the addresses
and return addresses on every piece of mail handled by the post office ?
Who knows, maybe such already exists.

Although some aspects of physics posits an infinite number of parallel universes,
we don't build our lives around that possibility.
The Boston Marathon bombing shows that a program that has been
in operation for at least 7 years failed to do what it is supposed to do.

Sometimes, absolute safety is not possible for all the possible hypothetical or imaginary situations.

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

The hypothetical example in PH45's link is far too tenuous to carry much weight at all.

Regarding PRISM's legality, there are many other sources that suggest the same thing. Whether someone agrees or disagrees with it, it does seem to be legal.

Regarding the argument, it hold just as much weight as your argument as well.

Originally Posted by LampLighter

The Boston Marathon bombing shows that a program that has been in operation for at least 7 years failed to do what it is supposed to do.

This has no perspective because it doesn't state how many attacks have been prevented because of PRISM. If PRISM has only stopped a single, small attack while not preventing the Boston Marathon bombing then I would agree with you. IF PRISM has stopped 1,000 attacks and the Boston Marathon bombing was someone who slipped through the cracks (this will always occur), then I would disagree with you. Reality is likely going to be somewhere in-between.

[Lamplighter]

@PH45: Yes, we are in agreement
... my example was intended to be trivial and carries no weight.

The problems are that with secrecy and "not on my watch",
we (the public) will only know what we are told and/or what
is leaked by insiders-with-their-own-motives and whistle blowers.

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

The problems are that with secrecy and "not on my watch", we (the public) will only know what we are told and/or what is leaked by insiders-with-their-own-motives and whistle blowers.

Yup. In an ideal sense, the issue with security versus privacy is sort of like quantum physics. The public cannot know of the security practices without compromising those security practices. On the other hand, if the public does not know of the security practices, there is no accountability and much risk of these security practices being misused. In my opinion, there is no is no perfect way of dealing with the security versus privacy problem but informed representatives (congress) and occasional whistleblowers may be a decent equilibrium…

I am pretty agnostic on the current practices but I do think this is a true slippery slope. Here is a good perspective on this slippery slope (I’m emphasizing certain parts):

And yet, Jenkins thinks that the U.S. government’s counterterrorism policies—which he’s helped influence over the decades—have gone too far. “What we have put in place,” he said, “is the foundation of a very oppressive state.”

The oppressive state doesn’t yet exist, he said, but if a president wanted to move in that direction, “the tools are in place now.” The choice to do so “could be made under circumstances that appear perfectly reasonable,” he went on, noting, “Democracy does not preclude voluntary submission to despotism. Given a frightened population, Congress can legislate away liberties just as easily as tyrants can seize power. That seems to be what has started to happen.”

…

“We are driven,” he continued, “by fears of what might happen, not by things that havehappened.” He noted that since Sept. 11, 2001, there have been 42 terrorist plots in the United States. All but four of them were halted. Three of those succeeded and killed a total of 17 people. “Not that this isn’t a tragedy,” he said, “but, really, in a society that has 15–16,000 homicides every year, it isn’t a lot.

…

Jenkins thinks the occasions should be mandated. It appears that these programs are renewed periodically. After the Guardian reprinted a court document allowing the NSA to mine data from Verizon, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, revealed that this was a routine renewal of a long-standing program. But Jenkins is bothered that the renewal is so routine. “I don’t know if it’s every year or five years or seven years,” he said, “but somebody should have to come back and say, ‘These are the measures in place, they were useful in the following circumstances.’ Then a choice should be made on whether to keep them in place. The government will always argue that they should be, but at least they should have to make the argument, again and again.”

This means Congress should take its oversight responsibilities more seriously—and the debate should be conducted more broadly, as much of it as possible in public.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...ernment.2.html

[Lamplighter]

My question was supposed to be rhetorical.

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

<snip>
My hypothetical would be to change only the timing in his example.
Instead of urgency, the terrorists use the postal services of each country.

So now, would that justify a government database of the addresses
and return addresses on every piece of mail handled by the post office ?
Who knows, maybe such already exists.
<snip>