The really smart cops get the tips using “less than legal” means, then walk back and reconstruct using legal evidence.

I'm just glad you're here to stick up for your friends without any corroboration or linking story. It's just a good thing to do.

Good luck with that. In my case there was a ton of violations of the SCA. Violations of the SCA are only actionable if they are "constitutional" in nature. (That essentially means that if the government indict you based on information they illegally gathered through violating the SCA but the information did not belong to you - say it belonged your wife or business partner - then you can't get the information suppressed/excluded in court)

In my case the government did violate the SCA and my constitutional rights, but two judges have looked at it and both stated the same answer - the police must be allowed to commit crimes to gather evidence. Next stop: appeal courts.

Imagine a world where the entire law enforcement complex followed the law. What a world.

"Sounds like an easy way to have your case tossed out in court."

This is terribly naive in my experience.

Let's be honest, how often do people share with their pals about how they commit crimes, or are less than scrupulous, at work, assuming their pals aren't criminals, as well? People tend to keep things like that a secret, even from people that are close to them.

You have to generally assume that the FBI and other government agencies are competent. My baseline, starting assumption is that if everyone in the US was too scared to use programs like PRISM, they wouldn't have been built.

So these kinds of claims just don't make any sense in a world where we know that government has conducted surveillance without a warrant, and where we know that the FBI has built entire programs designed to make it easier for them to conduct surveillance without a warrant.

From the article posted that you're replying to:

> What Administration officials tend to obscure is that what they seek is not immunity for future cooperation with lawful surveillance, but rather telecom immunity for assisting with unlawful surveillance conducted from October 2001 through January 17, 2007, as part of the warrantless wiretap program initiated by the White House.

I'm not sure I understand what your implication is. I don't understand how it's possible to respond to an article that is about telecoms seeking immunity for previous unlawful actions by saying, "the government/businesses would be way too scared to do anything unlawful." I mean... obviously not, they sought immunity for it. They wouldn't just randomly do that, the most likely explanation is that they made immunity a pressing issue because they thought they needed it.

It does not seem to me that the optimistic world you describe and the observable actions and lobbying efforts of companies/administrations line up with each other.

I mean, this whole discussion is moot since nobody will enforce things like this, especially against themselves.

That is little consolation in the court of public opinion, where FBI management and the Justice Department have demonstrated willingness and capability to hold mob court and manipulate public opinion outside the formal legal system. They will SWAT you themselves if they like, on live TV.

Parallel Construction makes this a technicality/nuisance, not a show stopper.

Generally only if you have the means to hire a good lawyer.

That's not really how it works. Sure, it is also a way to circumvent such local legislature, but for that to work American allies would need to run actual surveillance structures in the US mainland proper out in the open..

You know, like the US does in the countries of it's "allies" like Germany [0]

Do you really think the US would allow German intelligence agencies to build whole complexes, plugged right into the US's largest IPX?

That's why this situation is not nearly as "symbiotic" as it's often made out to be. At best that applies to Five Eyes countries, and even there only to a very limited degree as no Five Eyes member as as much foreign presence as the US.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Examples_of_industrial...