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Comment by oatmeal1 | Hacker News Reader

It should be obvious. The government can use information to prosecute people. Corporations can't. The government is much less accountable than corporations for malicious behavior due to sovereign and qualified immunity.

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> Credit report crashes 400pts due to them finding what you said on a forum when you were 14

> no judge, jury or trial

> try to live in America

I'd argue corporations persecute people far more often than the government does. e.g. when credit bureaus find out you have cancer your credit score drops at least 100pts.

Examples can go back and forth. Government can unilaterally confiscate your property via civil asset forfeiture and make you prove it was obtained legally.

Government has been evicting people as collective punishment for crimes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FMZFwnBCbU

Not to mention the government is the one licensing the banks to create money through fractional reserves/the reserve ratio. That's why you're on an inflation treadmill where assets are constantly inflating in price to the point where you need a loan to make big purchases.

The simple fact is the Constitution is there to protect you from the Government. I personally think the government can basically shoot you in the face without repercussions and not face much of an issue with the right coverup; it's a lot harder for corporations to get away with that in any legal way. Sure they can ruin your reputation via credit or whatever, but they can't pitch you in a dark cell for forever, nor do they really have much incentive to do that, unlike the government. Corporations are not the government, if you want to limit their powers then get laws passed that are a mirror of the constitution except for corps instead of the government; until then you can't say corporations and the government are the same or that corporations are as bad as the government.

>e.g. when credit bureaus find out you have cancer your credit score drops at least 100pts.

source?

> The government is much less accountable than corporations for malicious behavior

I disagree with this assessment. I think it's the other way around -- corporations are held much less accountable than the government.

But neither are being good actors here.

NSA is not law enforcement, neither is the Census Bureau and they do not require a warrant either even though they collect far more data.

It is the government though and the law makes no distinction.

It does. If a person’s rights are not violated there is no cause to limit government access, at least according to the fourth amendment.

Rights are being violated simply by the government accessing the information

Let me rephrase what you said in a way that makes it clearer:

The government can do anything that is legal.

I people believe purchasing data is a violation of the 4th amendment and it may not yet be illegal but it should be.

> The government can do anything that is legal.

That's true, but the federal government has a limited number of things it can do, as specified in our memorandum of understanding between the people of the united states and the federal government. That ought to be the framing under which all federal actions are seen.

To put it another way, for individuals, unless something is illegal, you are entitled to do it. Whereas for the federal government, everything is illegal except that which was made legal.

Congress necessarily delegates some tactical authority to the agencies it creates and funds under the executive branch. Once we find out one of those agencies is doing nasty shit , like purchasing citizen’s data, the question for me is who do I complain to? The current president isn’t going to side against his IC otherwise he’ll get figuratively or literally Dallas-ed. Congress 503s after midterms. The courts are going to say “whatever LOL! what standing do you have?” If I dislike what the IC is doing, what should I do?

History does not agree: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/04/03...

Sort of

> CONCEALING A TIP

> One current federal prosecutor learned how agents were using SOD tips after a drug agent misled him, the prosecutor told Reuters. In a Florida drug case he was handling, the prosecutor said, a DEA agent told him the investigation of a U.S. citizen began with a tip from an informant. When the prosecutor pressed for more information, he said, a DEA supervisor intervened and revealed that the tip had actually come through the SOD and from an NSA intercept.

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE97409S/

The problem did not occur at the NSA, because the NSA is not law enforcement, but at the DEA which is law enforcement. The DEA should have applied for a warrant and immediately notified their attorneys of the evidence source.

That is expecting the fox to watch the hen house.

It is expecting the DEA to do their jobs so that a half competent defense attorney does not invalidate the evidence.

While you've been expecting that, they've been doing this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

Already responded to that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39190257

> A good defense attorney would get that tossed.

Sure. Easy to object to something secret, which has a carefully crafted cover story. My defense attorney is psychic too. /s

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