Military intelligence buys location data instead of getting warrants

More to the point, the government has the socially assigned role of deciding whether anyone’s use of said guns is legal or not.

I _wish_ guns were required to cause harm to others.

I love the presence of this talking point here because its usefulness is self-refuting in this case.

1. To guard against tyranny, always focus more on government overreach than corporate overreach because the government is the one with the guns.

2. Corporations scooping up endless streams of data don't get the same level of scrutiny and pithy talking points from libertarians as the entity with the guns.

3. Class of data-mining corporations collect so much data that it's functionally equivalent to a tyrannical government demanding direct access to everyone's location data.

4. The government-- the entity with the guns that we want to protect ourselves against-- simply buys access to the data from corporations to get around the law.

5. We've done a poor job of guarding against tyranny!

Edit: clarification

So then why do so many seem to want to start by constraining the organization with the highest level of trust?

Right now, individuals, businesses, and the US military can obtain this data without a warrant or due process. How can you look at this and say "let's start by reigning in the military"? Who, I might add, have a far more limited scope than businesses since the military only cares about information related to whatever mission they're tasked with.

I cannot push back against the idea that ordinary people consent to collection when they use free services enough. This is an utterly transparent myth that data collectors, aggregators, and consumers tell themselves and others to justify their actions.

People do not understand what is being collected. I and probably everyone here has heard speculation that phones are constantly monitoring for keywords which are used in ads. It's an incredibly common idea that (afaik) isn't true, but shows just how little people understand how data collection works and again, what is actually being collected.

People do not understand how this data is used. The best example I can think of is with pregnant women. Every ad on every platform suddenly revolving around pregnancy and caring for a newborn is not the expected outcome of just googling for some mayoclinic articles. And of course if they're trying to conceal their pregnancy or worse, have a miscarriage, this has resulted in real world harm.

Finally, people cannot possibly consent to how this data will be used in the future. This should be pretty self explanatory.

Those who work for organizations that sell data or information gained from data such as Google or Facebook have to convince themselves the above is not true. In which case, it makes complete sense to insist that the US military needs to have a warrant in order to collect, since obviously a warrant is needed if the target for collection doesn't consent.

Of course, we need to give the common stalker and cutthroat corporations a chance to make up the gap.

Oh, I'm not sure that's true. That's a very modern take.

Have you met the British East India Company [3] and the Dutch East India Company (VOC) [4]? The VOC even has a genocide to it's name [1]. [edit] Make that two. [2]

A lot of colonialism was actually carried out by private enterprise. Substantially all of slavery. Once you reach a certain size and scale, is there really even a difference between government and enterprise - except that the voters control one and shareholders the other?

[1] https://historibersama.com/the-voc-genocide-historia/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amboyna_massacre

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company

Big tech just keeps greasing the politicians with donations and political favors.

The contents of your Gmail inbox or Facebook DMs are neither.

Because of this:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

If the government would need a warrant to collect that data it should be illegal for any company to collect, sell, or in any other way utilize that same data.

That is basic consumer protection common sense; but even without the pandemic and the other four horseman of the apocalypse crisis of democracy facing the US, and most if not all other nations on the planet right now, don't expect any such consumer goods to be on the agenda.

It's not public. I can't go to Microsoft and pay them to send me your emails.

It seem to be quite obvious. If law enforcement need a warrant to do something or get something but can circumvent the law by paying someone else they are, well, circumventing the law which obviously is or at least should be illegal. I can't see why it is even a discussion.

Minor nitpick, selling the data probably isn't a service. It would be an action taken to help support the actual service via better monetization.

I didn't know about that. It seems like there is much less public attention on what these companies are doing compared to tech companies.

"Your wireless device can determine its (and your) physical, geographical location (“Location Based Services” or LBS) and can associate your device’s physical location with other data. You have the ability to enable or disable access to such services. By enabling location settings on your device, you are permitting applications on your device to use LBS through software, widgets or peripheral components you choose to download, add or attach to your wireless device or through web access, messaging capabilities or other means, and you are authorizing Verizon Wireless to collect, use and disclose your Location Information as appropriate to provide you with any location services that you enabled. To limit potential unauthorized access to your Location Information, Verizon Wireless offers various mechanisms and settings to manage access to location data. You should review each application’s settings to determine whether you want to enable LBS for that application." [1]

From 2018. The wording says "as appropriate" to provide you with services. I'm not seeing anything here about collecting your location to resell. Does anyone have an explicit wording in a contract they can refer me to?

[1] https://www.verizonwireless.com/dam/support/pdf/collateral/C...

Interesting. So this is not cell phone tower data coming from ATT, T-Mobile, Verizon.

Does iOS grant apps access to your phone number or do these third party aggregators need another mechanism to link devices to phone numbers?

> The fourth amendment applies to the state, not just law enforcement

In principle, yes.

In practice, due to the absence of meaningful remedies other than the exclusionary rule, not so much.

Rules are only as strong as the consequences for breaking them.

(But this doesn't seem to be a violation, anyway; data in a custody of a third party that is legally permitted to sell it publicly is neither being searched nor seized when it is purchased in a mutually-voluntary exchange by the state.)

The fourth amendment is to protect you against being arrested and deprived of life, liberty or property without due process. A warrant is part of the process in making sure that an arrest is justified.

Intelligence agencies have no authority to arrest you, nor would they have any interest in doing so. Their job is to gather information about what other countries are doing that might be harmful to the US.

Even then, I think warrants generally aren't required for publicly available information.

It is not so much as spying for law enforcement, but spying to protect their power. The military industrial complex invented the boogeyman and use their intelligence arm to promote it.