Senate narrowly rejects plan to require a warrant for Americans’ browsing data
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Rand Paul has introduced an amendment that goes up for vote tomorrow that would disallow this surveillance on American citizens, which of course is not expected to pass.
McConnell is drafting language to prevent this from being used on “federal election candidates” which of course is expected to pass.
But to be clear, this is just a reduction in friction of the previous process which was to just call a judge of a secret FISA court which no one is really allowed to know the details of.
So this is likely just a move to reduce some red tape, and increase data ingress.
This is simplifying the process to imply it’s nothing more than just a phone call away. I do not think any court works like that. They still have to argue their case before a judge of the court which also allows third parties to submit material in the case.
Simply saying “no one” is suppose to know about these courts is portraying this process as something unconstitutional and nothing more than a secret society of government friends. If by no one you actually mean the public, then you have a point. There’s national security concerns around these type of things that you’re ignorantly ignoring.
You act as if this court has no existed for over 40 years and under multiple administrations from both side of the aisles.
I’d wager a phone call or email is likely all that was needed in many cases.
By “no one” I mean some sort of counter-balancing entity.
I’m not sure why you think I’m acting like this didn’t exist under multiple administrations. I’m aware of that, and not OK with any of it.
I was not OK with original passing of the patriot act, or the continued renewal by both parties.
Look elsewhere for partisanship, I’m an equal opportunity dissenter.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...
From Senator Mike Lee's webpage[0]:
The Lee-Leahy amendment will strengthen third-party oversight of the FISA process. Specifically, it requires FISA court judges to appoint an amicus curae (a neutral third-party observer) in any case involving a “sensitive investigative matter” so long as the FISA court does not determine it to be inappropriate.
The amendment will also empower the amicus to raise any issue with the court at any time and give both the amicus and the FISA court access to all documents and information related to the surveillance application.
0: https://www.lee.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2020/5/senate-pa...
Even calling it a rubber stamp is an exceedingly generous definition of probable cause.
The secret court has reviewed your criticisms, in secret, and finds them to be [redacted]. Govern yourself accordingly.
The secret court has [redacted].
This week on Fox News, [...].
Some districts can lead initially, the rest can catch on
You can generally only sign for one candidate per election.
Or one guy going to court and losing to screw everyone.
edit: I apologize for the inflammatory tone, but I think this is concerning enough of a step forward to warrant a bit of hyperbole.
So privacy for those in positions of power but not for us plebes.
For those curious:
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Pirate_Party
It would be a great act of civil disobedience.
One generally needs a certain number of petition signatures to appear on a ballot, but apparently not needed just to legally be a candidate.
https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/registeri...
I like the enthusiasm, but this would get you slapped by the IRS (eventually). Any other ideas?
Maybe if we just pay each other in a ring through a legal escrow? Everyone puts in $5,001, the escrow pays everyone back $5000.
Some are more collective.
I would like to add, just think of the chaos at the primaries if the act of declaring candidacy one also declares they are running for the R|D nomination. The voting machines can barely deal with 20 presidential candidates. Imagine what would happen if you had to thousands of people running for a congressional seat!
Admittedly that's a high bar, the next best choice is one that claims to keep no logs and has successfully defended such a claim to law enforcement. Not a long list here, but there are some.
E.g. one connection each in China, Russia and USA, and three more in the opposite direction of geopolitical allegiance if you’re super paranoid.
More generally, as long as you're not interacting with domestic Chinese people, authorities don't care much about what you're doing. That's what I've seen providers claim in darknet forums. And that was my experience when I leased VPS in Hong Kong. Once I made it clear that I wouldn't be interacting with domestic Chinese people, all was cool.
I have used one Russian VPN service, Insorg. They're one of the oldest. I've read about others, but don't recall names. And it's my impression that Russian authorities also mostly care about interactions with citizens.
So anyway, I typically start with a mainstream VPN service. Then I chain one or two notoriously hard to coerce ones. And for Mirimir, IVPN is the final one. Because I've written stuff for them, basically, so using IVPN earlier in chains would be stupid.
No, but their use is extremely common anyway.
Although Tor is better, because the connection reroutes dynamically. And worse, because anyone can volunteer to be an entrypoint or endpoint - this matters because a very well-resourced adversary could conceivably control both your entrypoint and your endpoint, and use a timing correlation attack to de-anonymize you. But I don't know that nested VPNs are immune to that either, given the level of invasive surveillance 5-eyes has over the entire internet.
And re dynamic circuits, I did a crude hack: https://github.com/mirimir/vpnchains
I only use Tor via nested VPN chains. The VPNs mainly provide backup anonymity, in case Tor circuits are compromised. And they also anonymize me vs Tor use, which may avoid attention.
When I don't care so much about anonymity, I just use nested VPN chains. Throughput is 5-10 times that for Tor, latency is lower, and I'm not limited to TCP.
These programs are all or nothing by design.
What media do you think should cover this? FOX News? CNN? MSNBC? Do you think Rachel Maddow should report on this? Who is going to report on this kind of stuff?
It should be on the 5PM, 7PM and 11PM local news, and every cable org.
There are plenty of stories being written, but not about this. Pretty much at all. That is the problem, and I don't know how assigning blame certain outlets would change that. We don't know if pitches are getting rejected, or the money is in other topics, or anything, but the simple fact is that it's not happening and it's something that affects everybody in the US (and beyond, I'm sure).
Looks like you're getting the usual HN anti-intellectual downvotes and my upvote wasn't enough to drag you out of the gray.
Your point might hold true if the people being exempted from surveillance weren't also the people deciding who can be exempted from surveillance. But since they are, it is counterproductive to the privacy cause to allow Congress to give itself these kinds of special rules.
Force everyone in society to play by the same rules, and everyone in society will get the benefits. Allow Congress to get into the habit of exempting themselves from social systems or problems, and those problems will continue to exist.
In other words, when setting up incentives you have to think pragmatically about the entire system in the long term; you can't always just focus on short-term goals to the exclusion of everything else. Local optimums[0] aren't just a problem in AI, they're also a problem in real life. Because of the long term consequences, we're not interested in forming privacy castes in scenarios where doing so will make it harder for us to improve the system in the future.
Collectively the two are Congress.
There’s also the whole equal protection under law issue — a core tenant of American law is that everyone is nominally the same. Declaring a vague category of citizen out of bounds of the law is absurd.
Edit: Putting this here since I've reached my reply cap. There was a request for citations. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/report-footnotes-show-fbi-k...
Maybe I’m just out of the loop, but this needs a source.
However, it's also fact that Steele himself was well known to Russian intelligence, and while it's clear he was no friend to them he was a known enemy - They were specifically trying to feed him disinformation[1][2]
Did he bite bad bait? That's the question that doubters bring up. The "pee tape" thing is so bizarre I think it's likely true, but on the other hand I think that at this point Trump could just own it.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/16/politics/christopher-steele-f... [2]https://www.wsj.com/articles/steele-dossier-disinformation-u...
It isn't about POTUS, it's about the notion that preventing US counter intelligence from doing their jobs with respect to illegal influence on political campaigns. If what you say is true, and the Clinton campaign was seeking foreign assistance, shouldn't we know about and prevent that?
It is not a party a vs. party b issue.
Yet it’s hardly new for congress to exempt themselves from the laws they pass. Political campaigns are exempt from robocalls for instance. It’s an unfortunate reality.
Prohibiting law enforcement/intelligence used in national defense is very different.
If you're tasked with the public welfare you should get greater scrutiny, not be granted special privileges from it.
It's the classic case of those writing the law carving out an exception for themselves.
Someone's borrowing history at a public library has strong federal protections. Shouldn't someone's browsing history get the same treatment?
It passed by one vote. He missed it.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2020/05/12/congress-...
I often encourage (and practice myself) looking for a tip email address to your favorite outlets and sending them...well a tip when there’s a story going on they haven’t yet reported, but one feels especially is need of wider dissemination.
Feels almost civic.
Strongly encouraging it here, too :)
Based on how Patty Murray (D) has said she would have voted YES but wasn't able to get to DC in time, it's clear it was never going to pass to begin with. This happens often – someone like Mitch McConnell might whip the votes, realize they're ahead, and allow a few Republicans that are at-risk to vote YES to provide cover for them in the future. Remember, even if you count the two Independents as Democrats, there's still 6 more Republicans. We've seen this with Susan Collins a lot; if Republicans don't need her vote she'll vote against them. But when they need it, she votes with the party like clockwork.
So, now we get to be mad at Sanders and Murray (the Democrats who weren't in DC), and nobody blames the 37 Republicans who actually killed it. Remember that McConnell decides what is voted on, and he always knows the votes. Maybe the one exception ever was McCain saving Obamacare.
I feel certain Sanders would have voted YES. He's historically been mostly pro-Snowden, anti-surveillance, and pro-whistleblowers (it's nuanced; for example he thinks Snowden should be prosecuted but also thinks what he did was right and that he should get a plea deal).
(Not the point, but it's insane Senators have to be physically present, especially given the situation. At least one Senator missed the vote due to quarantine. Why are we making a 78 year old man physically fly to DC to vote, and do so in a chamber full of at least one person who has had COVID-19 recently?)
Like I said, I'm still disappointed we haven't even gotten a statement from Sanders yet. But this whole thing has been on my mind a lot today.
That being said, this puts Bernie's incompetence at politicking in the spotlight. Any half decent politician would've been able to deflect, Murray is a perfect example of how easy it is.
Hillary and Biden snaring the nomination ahead of Bernie show how thoroughly the establishment Democrats can school him on politics. His appeal to certain voters is great, but he still has to play the game to some degree.
It's not remotely a coincidence that all of those candidates dropped out and endorsed Biden near-simultaneously -- meanwhile the best Bernie could get was de Blasio and Williamson. Failing to even get Warren to endorse him isn't a failure of his ideology, it's a case of political incompetence.
I hope someone (Warren? others?) echoes a lot of what he has to say and then actually executes within the political system we have today to accomplish those things. Within my lifetime would be nice.
That is not hard when they benefit from a multiple year media blackout against Bernie. Playing the game sounds a lot like compromising on values; something which would have also led to voters losing interest. I would argue he did play the game, and that's why he lost. He did not try to draw enough distinctions between himself and Biden for fear of hurting the Democrats, and in the process missed many opportunities to call Biden out on his inconsistencies.
> Failing to even get Warren to endorse him isn't a failure of his ideology, it's a case of political incompetence.
Failing to get Warren to endorse him is not a case of political incompetence, but rather desire to gain more power by Warren. The political machine built by the establishment Democrats was always going to be put to work against a candidate like Bernie, or if you prefer, to "facilitate the gatekeepers."
> I hope someone (Warren? others?) echoes a lot of what he has to say and then actually executes within the political system we have today to accomplish those things.
Warren already executed exactly what she wanted to execute within the political system; to ensure the gatekeepers maintain order. She will be rewarded accordingly, probably with a cabinet position, if Biden somehow manages to win the Presidency.
If Bernie can't "compromise his values" enough to make political deals to get the nomination, then he would be completely ineffective as president -- where getting your policy enacted requires constant deal making with Congress.
I think we _do_ blame the 37 Republicans, it's just that that's not a particularly new emotion to feel at this point. It's no secret that the GOP pulls this stuff (as, like you noted, with Collins).
Currently, though, Bernie (and Murray, who at least commented) have the image of not being present for what, even if only optically, feels like an incredibly important job. I've had to say this to a few people today: you can be equally annoyed with with the people who voted for it, the GOP who brought it, and those who weren't there to try and stop it to begin with.
Everyone on this forum knows what's at stake here, so it's frustrating to see the "one vote missing" here.
Edit: a word.
As noted up thread, the GOP would've just moved the goalposts by turning one of their swing votes if there was any danger of him putting a vote in for this. But he was batting .000 on the month going into today, so it was an easy bet.
1: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/bernard_sanders/400...
That's exactly why he should've showed up. The swing votes are swing votes because voting that way is unpopular in their district. It makes it hurt more to do the wrong thing. "Meh, it would've passed anyway" lets the people doing wrong get off too easy.
So make them vote yes. If they think it is a weakness to vote yes, all the more reason to force them to do so.
- The Dem/GOP split swung from nearly even to 45-25 over her tenure, so there's no longer any credible Republican competition to force her back toward her original left-of-center leanings
- She can outraise even the most serious Democratic challenger by more than 10-to-1
- She appeals more to pro-business, homeowner, and technocrat Democrats and independents than any other group, who in turn power that fundraising and also are responsible for Democratic plurality in the voter base
So we wind up with this dichotomy of her winning every election and getting booed out of nearly every town hall. The question going forward is whether she can hang on to her seat as easily in a recession California as in a booming one, especially if her constituency shifts away from her under economic stress just as quickly as it shifted in her favor.
1: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/california-has-left-dia...
She has been very, very consistently pro-authoritarian her entire career. The hate for her is truly bipartisan.
The reason she's still in office isn't because pro-business types like her and give her money. It's because she has so much influence over the democratic party in her state that she can make sure nobody worth voting for every gets enough funding to mount a successful primary against her.
While I would be willing to accept your suggestion that is basically just Kabuki theatre, it seems even more cynical than I am willing to contemplate now.
I am saying this, because Wyden visibly pushed Clapper ( apparently knowing that he was lying ).
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwiUVUJmGjs
edit: Come to think of it, if Wyden was a genuine threat, I am sure security apparatus would have tried to take him down by now. But no dead hookers, no unsavory hobbies, no character assassination.. your suggestion makes more sense than I initially thought it had.
https://therealnews.com/stories/patriot-act-renewal-sneaks-t...
People in power should always have to justify their actions to us. Always. They should always be questioned. This (in theory) is how we ensure their power isn’t abused.
We should have privacy while they do not. A lack of privacy should be a cost to the power they’re entrusted with.
If it’s legal for them to sift through our lives while they refuse to be questioned, and they act insulted that we dare question their actions, we have gone off the rails.
100% agree that the tradeoff of power should be a loss of privacy.
We have hit a wall where our leaders react with vitriol when asked what they’re doing; mcconnell’s pushing for an exemption for those in power, pushing for them to have privacy while actively voting laws into place which drastically reduce ours should concern every single one of us–at least as much as Snowden’s docs revealed to us.
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_...
Dear Representative $NAY_VOTER,
I'm writing you to express my disappointment in your recent vote on May 13 to reject Wyden amendment no. 1583. This amendment would have required law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before accessing American's web browsing data. Despite bipartisan support, the amendment failed to garner the required 3/5 majority by only one vote.
The controversial language of section 215 of the Patriot Act provides the government with broad powers to collect information related to federal investigations. Unfortunately, that power extends to the warrant-less collection of American's private information. This even includes innocent and law-abiding citizens who's only relation to an investigation is that their records are considered "relevant" in some manner.
Privacy reform is important now more than ever with the increasing role of technology in our daily lives. Please give me your support in creating meaningful oversight for our country's surveillance programs.
Sincerely,
Djaque
[1] https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_...
For once, I don't have to be embarrassed about Duckworth.
Years ago, when the Slashdot/Reddit crowd got up in arms about some other terrible law, I actually took the time to look up my Senators' numbers, and call their offices. The aides I talked to acted like I was an insurance telemarketer, and wouldn't/couldn't even tell me their positions on the bill. Needless to say, I became disillusioned with the process.
I've heard a lot of people say that "if enough people bug them," but it's simply not true. Unless you're a campaign donor, and writing checks large enough to stick out from the crowd, you literally don't exist in the US law-making process. I'm sorry, but you just don't.
Too bad he couldn't quite get all the necessary votes.
happy since 1996
Congress.gov article for the same bill[2]
I'm thoroughly confused about the current process. It looks like HR6172 is the House "version" of the extension on the "USA FREEDOM Act" thru 2023 and S3421[3] is the Senate attempt to do the same. I can't find any references on Congress.gov which references Ron Wyden's proposed amendment.
[1] https://www.popvox.com/us/federal/bills/116/hr6172
[2] https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/6172
[3] https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/342...
Long term: The State is making their panopticon ambitions overt now in the public eye, thus spurring on the need to re-design the Internet entirely to avoid this.
Anyone know what Starlink is offering in terms of privacy? Details are sparse for the most part right now, but given their ties to DoD I'm not sure how this will play out. Sounds like a product release presentation is needed to clarify some things.
Edit: I plan on buying Ghostery Midnight but it's Windows/Mac only, so no Linux! I guess these Bitcoin accepting ones will have to do [2].
1: https://www.ghostery.com/midnight/
2: https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/vpn-bitcoin/
"You are on a known-hostile network (eg. a public airport WiFi access point, or an ISP that is known to use MITM), and you want to work around that."
An internet connection from an ISP operating under a government that logs your browsing history is a "known-hostile network".
0: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/03/atts-...
They can see searching history, but generally not browsing history (unless someone uses something like synchronizing browser history through Google account).
You start on your computer and jump to the VPN instead of the destination website. Is the VPN hosted in a different country that refuses to work the US? Do you trust them to not do anything else shady? Do you trust that the encryption you are using will not be broken before your death, because the NSA is logging traffic to other countries, especially ones that won't cooperate with the US.
Then you have to hop from the VPN to the destination website anyway, is that jump really more secure than the jump from your device directly to the destination? Is the destination site tracking you?
VPNs are for moving your traffic off the airport network or Starbucks wifi, not defeating a nation state.
The web as we know it and the handful of corporations that dominate it are known to be compromised and no amount of work arounds will change that.
The real answer is the complete boycott of the major providers, more independent ISPs, E2EE, and embracing alternative protocols.
If you're this level of worried, you should make sure you're either signed out go Google/Gmail or have your search history turned off. A VPN offers zero added protection. there. IIRC, Google claims your history is anonymized. Wouldn't hurt to use DDG if you're paranoid.
VPNs are hit-or-miss on how they handle DNS requests. Even using a VPN, you might leak that you're a Hacker News reader.
I guess a VPN that doesn't log might protect you against going to an IP known to host bad things.
Meanwhile, on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23164887
A lot of traffic is over HTTPS, and that does help a lot. But a lot of that traffic isn't doing an adequate job of protecting the domain names, there are general attacks around page size that can be used to identify static resources, and people underestimate the vocal subgroups of developers that refuse to use HTTPS in the first place.
Encrypting DNS is a good reason to use a VPN. DNS over HTTPS theoretically solves those problems, but last time I checked unless you configure it right it would fall back to normal DNS whenever it couldn't find a domain, and that still doesn't solve the problem that SNI isn't universally adopted yet.
> If you're this level of worried, you should make sure you're either signed out go Google/Gmail or have your search history turned off.
Strongly agreed. For most people, using Firefox containers and/or uMatrix would result in a bigger privacy gain than a VPN. That's not to say a VPN wouldn't help on top of that, but if you're using a VPN and not using uMatrix to block cross-site cookies from sites like Google, your priorities are probably wrong.
Have you disabled Chrome sync for your browsing history? You should be worried about stuff like that long before you consider either subscribing to or running your own VPN.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/6172
—— or better yet, read what the EFF wrote recently on it:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/yes-section-215-expire...
AFAIK Mullvad is a non-US VPN service that does not require personal info for sign up and accepts cryptocurrency payments. Though I haven't used them myself so I can't speak for service quality. For DoH, I'm only aware of Google and Cloudflare offering that. However they are both US companies so if anyone has a non-US recommendation I would appreciate it. At least using them is one step removed from your ISP, making it a little harder to get your records.
Please correct me if I have anything wrong.
An absent vote is the same thing as a nay vote in the Senate. To pass this amendment it requires 60 affirmative votes, of which there were 59.
It's "yea" for requiring warrants, and "nay" for warrantless surveillance (which is somehow the law of the land now? When did I miss this??)
I suspect Bernie's abstention is because he thinks reauthorization is equally unacceptable with or without the condition.
Procedurally, he could vote yes on the amendment and still vote on the bill, and there's an argument that not doing so is making the perfect the enemy of the good (or at least the barely decent the enemy of the mildly less oppressive of two oppressive options), but it's kind of hard for me to get mad at Sanders for not collaborating in putting lipstick on this particular totalitarian pig of law. One can maybe rationalize the USA Patriot Act in the context of it's time, it's much harder to rationalize the USA Freedom Act’s deliberate after-the-fact authorization of much of the illegal blanket surveillance that went beyond what the original Patriot Act authorized, and it's far harder to rationalize the current reauthorization of the combination, with or without minor tweaks.
Assuming Bernie would have voted YEA on this, we're all wondering why he didn't vote at all.
In this context, it wasn't as critical of a vote. I wouldn't be surprised if Schumer allowed the vote to happen today while Sanders was absent to drum up some extra support for Biden.
The real voting is often done at the party whip level. If McConnell knew Bernie was going to show up and vote, it's possible that another Republican would have voted nay.
https://projects.propublica.org/represent/members/S000033/vo...
If we treat the absences as very wimpy nay votes, and lump the 2 independents in with the party they caucus with (both Democrat), then the party breakdown looks like this:
Democrats: 35 yea, 12 nay, so ~75% in favor. Republicans, 24 yea, 29 nay, so ~45% in favor.
The 59 yea votes consisted of 35 Democrats (King is independent but caucuses with the Democrats), and 24 Republicans. I'm much more interested in why it failed to pass, so I'll refrain from listing the yea votes for brevity.
The 4 absent senators were 2 Democrats (Sanders is independent but caucuses with the Democrats), and 2 Republicans:
Alexander (R-TN) Murray (D-WA) Sanders (I-VT) Sasse (R-NE)
The 37 nay votes were from 10 Democrat and 27 Republican senators:
Barrasso (R-WY) Blackburn (R-TN) Blunt (R-MO) Boozman (R-AR) Burr (R-NC) Capito (R-WV) Carper (D-DE) Casey (D-PA) Collins (R-ME) Cornyn (R-TX) Cotton (R-AR) Feinstein (D-CA) Fischer (R-NE) Graham (R-SC) Hassan (D-NH) Hyde-Smith (R-MS) Inhofe (R-OK) Johnson (R-WI) Jones (D-AL) Kaine (D-VA) Lankford (R-OK) Manchin (D-WV) McConnell (R-KY) Perdue (R-GA) Portman (R-OH) Roberts (R-KS) Romney (R-UT) Rubio (R-FL) Shaheen (D-NH) Shelby (R-AL) Thune (R-SD) Tillis (R-NC) Toomey (R-PA) Warner (D-VA) Whitehouse (D-RI) Wicker (R-MS) Young (R-IN)
The minimum to override in the Senate would be 2/3 * 51 = 34 votes.
51 is the minimum for a Senate quorum [1] (the VP isn't a member and wouldn't count) and you need 2/3s of members present after the Senate is quorate to vote for an override. The vote itself has to be quorate since it will require a roll call to establish the count. There are a lot of procedural rules+hurdles. You don't just need 2/3s of 100.
[1] https://www.senate.gov/reference/glossary_term/quorum.htm
The veto override requires a 2/3 majority. The 60-vote threshold is required to end a filibuster.
"But the amendment fell short by one vote of the required 60 votes to pass the chamber."
No, it needed 60 for cloture, to stop debate. Pass/fail requires a simple majority in a subsequent vote.
"Assuming none of the amendments pass, the final bill is likely to skip the House — which passed its version of the bill earlier this year — and await the president’s (sic) signature."
Uh, that's not how it works. A bill isn't enrolled (sent to the President) until the identical contents pass both houses. So, if the House has a distinct version with any difference whatsoever, it can't proceed.
What has changed is how either civilians or the military could withdraw their consent which gives a government legitimacy. Society thought it would be a good idea to log our thoughts and lives on computers and the internet,now rulers can monitor the ruled and adopt before they can organize any effort to withdraw their consent.
Suddenly all the weapons,money and elections are futile against rulers that monitor and manipulate thoughts and social relationships.
You can imagine why they feel like americans must be spied on. Their ability to maintain rule depends on it. Not all citizens are created equals in their minds. Deep divisions and addiction to power.
Begining of the end, or end of the begining?
Do members of the intelligence community have a history of wanting less information than they can get?
No, the idea is to limit the scope of what requires a warrant.
The thing at question was an amendment to add additional proof for access to "internet browsing and search history" data, so if the "intelligence community" defines that term as narrowly as possible, (assuming the "USA FREEDOM Act", the bill which was to be amended, is renewed) then the potential future restriction is applied to fewer data points.
The amendment would add a new burden for whitelisted data points. Your parent was saying that the "intelligence community" would likely play legal definition games to retain the most data points which don't have a new higher burden of proof.
It’s supposed that knowing you went to “amazon.com” would be metadata. Knowing you went to “PornHub.com/v/id=Xyz” (or whatever URL would link to a specific video) would be considered content.
Today they are allowed to collect just “metadata” without a warrant. This amendment would have explicitly required a warrant for metadata.
McConnell is proposing another amendment which would clarify the distinction that content can not be obtained without a warrant, but basically maintains the status quo, while also exempting specific types of people or entities.
IANAL, but reading the McConnell amendment almost makes me think there’s a secret court interpretation of the existing law where they decided they could collect “content” as well without a warrant.
I think it would be a good idea to require a warrant in such cases. But it’s not a 4th amendment issue.
The obvious issue with this is that (for example) it seems to treat a Google Docs spreadsheet differently than one stored locally. The way the law is currently worded simply isn't sufficient (IMO) now that the internet exists.
Yes, there is a bunch of fancy technology that makes it look and feel like the two things are the same. But why should a technological illusion trump physical reality? In reality, you can tell where the bits are and who owns the physical thing that the bits are on. The fourth amendment very neatly and cleanly delineates between the two scenarios based on who owns the relevant “papers and effects.”
Reflecting a bit more on my Google Docs example (which differs from the original browsing history topic) I believe it was faulty. It would be a bit odd to treat bits I own as not mine simply because they're stored on hardware owned by someone else. In fact on it's face it appears to go against existing precedent that the 4th amendment applies to a rented storage unit.
When it comes to sensitive data like browsing history though, regardless of legal ownership it certainly feels like a form of unreasonable search. I really can't blame the original authors for failing to anticipate the existence of the internet though.
-Robert Oppenheimer
we did this to ourselves. we built these tools that are now at the disposal of people with malicious intentions. in another thread about surveillance of WFH employees everyone is aghast that managers would use such tools. again: we did this to ourselves.
you can shift the blame any number of times around the loop of responsibilities
it's not my fault it's my boss's fault -> it's not my fault it's the government's fault -> it's not my fault it's the constituency's fault -> it's not my fault it's the business's fault
and so on. someone has to admit fault and break the loop. for my part this year i left a dod funded project even though the money was easy.
The rationale for the Manhattan Project (the impetus for your quote by Oppenheimer) was that the US government thought that if we got the atomic bomb before our national enemies, we would be more virtuous in its usage. That is always the blind faith that US government workers, military, and contractors use to justify working on military/surveillance technology. Until all of those government workers stop deluding themselves into the "exceptionalism" fallacy, the technology used against Americans will continue to outpace our ability to protect against it or perhaps to even know about it.
employees of some company consented more or less just as much as we did - they consented by staying in the employ and we consented by voting/not voting/not emigrating. in fact we consented more because we at least had a say in representation. is that a silly argument? good i agree - those workers are just as aggrieved as we are in this case.
>more virtuous in its usage
we technologists are deluded in the exact same way. something along the lines of "our code doesn't hurt people who didn't deserve it/consent to it".
It's not a lack of imagination. I simply don't agree with your framing of the options.
To quit a job is fairly low friction for most employees (except where there is a high friction complication like a pension or a medical pre-existing condition). It doesn't even require changing companies -- just finding a better boss which doesn't feel the need to surveil their employees is a lower friction way to accomplish the same ends.
To emigrate is fairly high friction -- it requires another country willing to accept the immigrant and usually requires physically moving and lots of time/money (I've heard the IRS demands 10 years of future income taxes for US citizens to give up American citizenship). I personally think the "love America or leave it" is an intellectually crippled argument -- America exports its bad drug / foreign policies around the world, so just leaving the country isn't enough to get away from the bad policies.
You are being disingenuous when you speak about voting because in practice we get a small sliver of a say in electing a representative from one of two parties (if that many) and no guarantee that the people we vote for will vote the way they promise (if they even give us a straightforward promise).
I don't disagree that "we" should take far more responsibility for the sad state of surveillance policy in the USA, but some of "we" are far more culpable in the current problems than others.
Do you live in alternate reality where jobs grow on trees? Especially right now? How could you possibly genuinely claim that there's no friction to quitting a job right now when we're almost at historically high unemployment? You can't quit your job in a frictionless fashion when there isn't another one waiting for you!
>To emigrate is fairly high friction -- it requires another country willing to accept the immigrant and usually requires physically moving and lots of time/money
That bears such a close resemblance to what it's like to look for a job for almost everyone except FAANG employees that I don't understand how you fail to acknowledge the analogy that I was drawing.
>You are being disingenuous when you speak about voting because in practice we get a small sliver of a say in electing a representative from one of two parties
You're doing exactly the thing I alluded to: passing the buck To whom? History I guess. That's not the entirety of the rights that are afforded to you as a citizen of this country. You can organize, advocate, run for office yourself, etc.
>but some of "we" are far more culpable in the current problems than others.
Who? Who are they? Is there some class of actors that I forgot?
Finding fault isn’t useful here. Our mental energy is better spent finding ways to fix the process and/or technologies.
But this kind of egalitarian desire, well intentioned as it is, should not be mistaken for an effective mechanism. It does not take very much comparison to see the night and day difference between a low level IC employee at the DoD or a subcontractor, and a high level military chief capable of making executive decisions for a $700B/year war machine. Nor does it take that much thinking to consider that for a lot of poor folks, the military is one of the few options remaining for them to be able to afford an education, a calling, a social circle, and a sense of structure and purpose in the modern world. If you want to more insightfully analyze what enables this Leviathan to perpetuate, perhaps you should take a look at the nonlinear systemic factors involved rather than reducing things to a naive linear sum of individual actions.
~ John Steinbeck
If you are interested in collaborating or learning more:
It’s a thing being searched and seized...what’s the argument?
Keep that in mind next time someone riles about how Bernie is a champion for the average American. I, for one, am glad he will never be President.
Now in the House they'll have an opportunity to reject the bill with McConnell's original amendment, which is obviously dispicable. This all seems like political theater, like Senator Schumer allowed a vote on this today knowing Sanders would be out. This way, the GOP looks slimy and the House has more reason to simply reject the bill as is and Bernie Sanders can be the scapegoat --> more support for Biden. If this amendment had passed, it'd have been harder for the House to reject the bill.
(Sanders was out today with Ilhan Omar advocating for international debt relief for indebted countries. )