House Votes to Extend–and Expand–A Major US Spy Program
wired.com
wired.com
> “They’re buying data. That’s what they’re doing,” says Warren Davidson, a Republican congressperson from Ohio. “They’re structuring markets to collect the data and they’re circumventing the Fourth Amendment. We need to turn that off.”
This is also a big part of the problem, imo. It is too easy for apps to request a cocktail of permissions (including location data) when an app is installed; then users never revisit those permissions after the app is used once.
Meanwhile the app is constantly tracking users locations. And selling it to third parties, which sell it to gov’t orgs.
How can mobile devices be updated to make users more aware of these problems? Maybe iOS and Android can, once a month, pull up a dossier of you on an app-by-app basis or something.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2301770/eww-copilot-might-au...
Personally, I'd prefer to see us fight for successively smaller and smaller blast radii than simply hoping and praying the blasts disappeared entirely.
Unless you're somehow claiming that your browsing history was used to train an AI for identifying tanks or terror connections, in which case for the former that makes no sense and for the latter the data is so emulsified that it can't really be considered your data any more than you could lay claim to a cat recognizer that was trained on a billion cat photos, some of which happen to be from your blog.
(And that's even assuming one accepts the premise that Google's cache of browsing data was used to train the AI that the Israeli government is using. In reality, that information is deeply firewalled and doesn't see the light of day for other applications).
I don't think I'm arguing in bad faith, but I am trying to argue with someone who seems to be operating from a source of facts I don't have access to. You seem to be upset that Google makes cellphones? What am I missing here?
Yes, they give you a warning to scare off normal users and you have to enable installing from 3rd party sources. My point isn't that they're "protecting" you at all, my point is it's security theater.
>Nor is Google (AFAIK; if there's evidence to the contrary I'd be interested to see it) providing cellphone data to nations that are targeting them for death
Various subsystems on android are controlled by Google and they enable Google to collect and consolidate all of the telemetry/usage data etc (effectively google is root on your phone).
Google is also part of PRISM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM#Media_disclosure_of_PRIS...
This information is used to select targets and kill people:
"Since 2002, and routinely since 2009, the U.S. government has carried out deliberate and premeditated killings of suspected terrorists overseas. In some cases, including that of Anwar Al-Aulaqi, the targets were placed on “kill lists” maintained by the CIA and the Pentagon. According to news accounts, the targeted killing program has expanded to include “signature strikes” in which the government does not know the identity of individuals, but targets them based on “patterns” of behavior that have never been made public. The New York Times has reported that the government counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent."
https://www.aclu.org/cases/al-aulaqi-v-panetta-constitutiona...
I'm upset that google is basically just the data collection arm of giant murder machine and it's being automated.
You seem to be alleging that Google is brokering third-party access to data stored on the phone or generated by the phone (beyond the telemetry that's natural to every cellphone), but there's no evidence to support that hypothesis. Have I misunderstood what you're alleging?
Then they give it for free.
Google's value in tracking is in providing services to users with the tracked data and (in the ads arm) linking advertisements to potential interested users (which is a system they broker internally).
They don't hand data to third-parties; third-parties hand data to Google, and Google might kick out answers to questions, but it does not kick out answers to questions like "Hey, is this person a terrorist?" There's no program for that. Hell, Google doesn't even kick out answers to questions like "Would Bob like to buy my shoes," the entire ad network is architected to minimize the ways an advertiser could glean the identity of a specific user who saw their ad.
Is this inaccurate? I would be very interested to know. Obv this won’t prevent Apple from tracking you, which is important if they are part of your threat model.
I don't think everyone should take my approach but there are circumstances I deem extreme enough that it's worth mentioning so that other people can investigate and make informed decisions. I specifically didn't go into detail so that people who don't care don't have to think as much about it.
Think about how different the world could be if we shut off the spigot to companies that acted like asshats.
Just a totally absurd statement. Drug traffickers pour across the border in droves, daily. Anybody who supported this && does not support securing the border is a corrupt weasel and an enemy of Americans.
How do people like you not realize the ONLY solution is to let adults have bodily autonomy and stop trying to police what they do in the privacy of their own home.
> stop trying to police what they do in the privacy of their own home
I think if most folks used in their own home Portland's experiment would have been a smashing success. Yet nobody really uses fentanyl, meth, etc, without their life and home situation falling apart. Thus the idea of hard-drug users doing so in the privacy of their own home feels a bit unrealistic.
*Mental health care / services are among the worst here, and there are insufficient treatment centers and methods of enforcement, on top of the general lack of quality execution plans the local gov't has demonstrated as of late. The complete lack of any enforcement has led to predictable droves of addicts wondering the streets.
Equally, the notion of "just stop doing it because it's banned" clearly, empirically does not work. It is and will forever be easy to score drugs.
Prohibition is a money burning pit, funneling money to organizations that are built to torment the lower classes that use substances while everyone here knows that the wealthy don't ever have to follow the same rules.
Even the proponents of prohibition agree with me. Maybe look in to the real reason prohibition even exists as a """solution""". Here's a quote for you:
"We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.
Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” - Nixon's aide John Ehrlichman
>Mental health care / services are among the worst here, and there are insufficient treatment centers and methods of enforcement, on top of the general lack of quality execution plans the local gov't has demonstrated as of late. The complete lack of any enforcement has led to predictable droves of addicts wondering the streets.
Yeah, because as you note it was a half measure where a full one was needed.
Generally I agree with the notion that hard drug use is not tenable with being functional in society, we just disagree on the solution.
As you note, mental health care, rehab, treatment facilities all need to be revamped. This is not a problem solved by prohibition.
We need to tackle inequality and a large majority of the suffering that leads to serious drug use is fixed, way up stream of the users.
We have worse than gilded age inequality. 3 people own more wealth than half the US combined. Maybe if so many weren't forced to work or starve, there would be reduced demand for unhealthy coping mechanisms like we both probably agree harder drugs generally are.
My whole point is best demonstrated by one throwaway line in the wire, "you think i sleep under a fucking bridge sober?"
Poverty is the real issue here. Not drugs. It never was drugs.
Fentanyl, heroin and a handful of other drugs are too addictive and too deadly to be acceptable.
On topic, though, I have to wonder why warrantless searches are needed to stem the distribution layer of fentanyl.
>"We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.
Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” - Nixon's aide John Ehrlichman
Spoiler alert: They don't give a fuck about drugs or those dying from drugs.
They use the specter of "drugs" just like child abuse and terrorism - as eternal battles that need to be fought. How? By ameliorating the conditions that lead to drug abuse and child abuse and terrorism, like poverty and war?
Of course not, they use them to erode our rights under the guise of protection.
Distribution is the crime.
Distribution certainly impacts more than one person and heavy handed punishment is the best way to deter it.
Possession is voting for distribution and while not as destructive as the scalability of high profit margin black market businesses.
Should individuals have the freedom to vote for something that harms other individuals and society as a whole?
That sounds like an empirical statement. Evidence?
> Should individuals have the freedom to vote for something that harms other individuals and society as a whole?
Arguably the legitimacy of a government derives from the consent of the governed. It sounds like you have your premises backwards.
> That sounds like an empirical statement. Evidence?
Singapore and Japan.
Our country's drug use continues to go up despite having the most draconian punishments for drug dealing of western nations. Perhaps the problem has zero to do with punishment and is moreso a reflection of our very unhealthy society, physically and mentally.. just a though.
Don't worry the reddit and HN experts (morons) calling for public executions for drug dealers will get their way eventually and we will finally have our drug free Utopia!!!!
I made an argument. If you disagree, make one yourself. When democracy works, that's how.
Here is the roll call on the 212-212 tie vote on the Biggs Amendment which would require a warrant:
https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2024114
Thirteen members did not vote on that roll call.
There is a Motion to Reconsider on Monday. Details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40017830
I made a submission and comment about it with a few more links.
This sort of surveillance power (the ability to peer into Microsoft, Google, Apple, Yahoo, AWS, Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T in realtime without a warrant) is the sort of thing that allows them to blackmail or extort every member of congress, every member of law enforcement, prosecutor, judge, or general in the country.
There is no amount of political organizing that can usefully be brought to bear against the most powerful organization in the country (the CIA/IC) once they have obtained this capability (and they have, for years now).
It's dumb defeatist attitude that causes nothing to be done.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconsideration_of_a_motion#Le...
Here is the roll call on the 212-212 tie vote on the Biggs Amendment which would require a warrant:
https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2024114
Thirteen members did not vote on that roll call. Any one of them could tip the balance:
Babin Republican Texas Not Voting
Gallego Democratic Arizona Not Voting
González-Colón Republican Puerto Rico Not Voting
Grijalva Democratic Arizona Not Voting
Lesko Republican Arizona Not Voting
Luetkemeyer Republican Missouri Not Voting
Mooney Republican West Virginia Not Voting
Payne Democratic New Jersey Not Voting
Perez Democratic Washington Not Voting
Plaskett Democratic Virgin Islands Not Voting
Radewagen Republican American Samoa Not Voting
Strickland Democratic Washington Not Voting
Wittman Republican Virginia Not Voting
The exception is Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who was on the floor today and voted on every measure except the Biggs Amendment. This means she effectively voted against it. Her district covers the southwestern part of Washington State (Pacific, Chehailis, Lewis, Clark, Skamania, Wahkiakum, and Cowlitz Counties). If you live there, give her a call at (202) 225-3536 (from here: https://clerk.house.gov/Members/G000600 )
I consider dropping the warrant requirement from the last attempt as not much of a loss, since the previous FISA applications were being rubber-stamped anyway.
Forcing another vote in two years is better than the original 8, and better than the failed compromise of 5 in my book. Not as good as it should have been (not reauthorizing at all), better than it could have been.
2) Cowardice. Being personally punished (say, by losing an election) for problems caused by too much spying or too much military spending or too much surveillance is vanishingly unlikely. Being punished because something bad happens and maybe that thing you voted against would have prevented it? That’s possible.
3) Probably blackmail campaigns by various law enforcement and spy agencies, aimed at politicians. I very much doubt that sort of thing stopped after Hoover was gone, or that the FBI was the only agency to engage in it. I guess the “how we got here” for this part is failing to aggressively dismantle the whole tainted edifice and start from scratch back when that was feasible, and failure to keep those agencies on an extremely tight leash.
Do you have any examples of this? Nobody was politically punished for allowing 9/11 to happen. There are countless examples of bad things happening for which nobody was politically punished. As far as I see, there's an almost complete lack of consequences in politics.
Wouldn't the point of an "intelligence" service be to _prevent_ terrorist attacks? Then again, that would apparently frustrate their efforts at increasing their budget and access to American's data without a warrant. Well, as long as we're keeping pace with China, I guess.
What an absurdly ridiculous bullying narrative.
Your frustration is clouding your judgment. The purpose of an intelligence service is to gather intelligence. Preventing acts of terrorism would be the mission of the Bureau of Counterterrorism, among others.
People bitch here on a constant basis about US 3-letter agencies. Which is fine I suppose, but the amount of bullshit FUD surrounding the bitching is almost embarrassing.
If you think this is a thing that happens, I’m apparently too stupid to understand what the issue is here?
"Britain is at its greatest risk of naval attack in more than a century following the devastating December 7th attack by Germany, and the intelligence community must focus attention and resources on that threat while continuing to stay ahead of Japan."
"France is at its greatest risk of revolution in more than a century following the tumultuous July 14th attack by the people, and the intelligence community must focus attention and resources on that threat while continuing to stay ahead of Britain."
"Russia is at its greatest risk of internal upheaval in more than a century following the dramatic October 25th attack by the Bolsheviks, and the intelligence community must focus attention and resources on that threat while continuing to stay ahead of Germany."
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/04/bad-amendments-section...
Many regard it as plainly unconstitutional.
How in the fuck does this ever pass Constitutional muster? Yet another reminder that the whole system is made of people (who are fallable). Doesn't matter what the Constitution says if the Congress/courts don't enforce it.
> But in a major victory for the Biden administration, House members voted down an amendment earlier in the day that would’ve imposed new warrant requirements on federal agencies accessing Americans’ 702 data.
Yet another reason it's unfortunate that our choices this year are going to be the same awful ones as 2020.
Too many people act like politics is a team sport. They're proud to vote for this guy's charisma/skin color or against that guy's impulsive nonsense, and then look past the very real problems of the guy they voted for.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity.
I hope I'm not on the wrong side of this one. I don't know what the appropriate amount of "political" is on a clearly political post.
I'm not here to argue for/against any particular candidate, but I would like to see a world where politics are approached with curiosity about solving individual issues and politicians are judged on their abilities to solve them, not which letter comes in the parenthesis after their names. The present cultishness is truly scary.
I'm in Australia and unfortunately where ever the US goes in this stuff we (and many others) follow behind.
Democracy, socialism, ideas are seductive in the minds of the collective until it becomes warped overtime to resemble the minds of whoever is running it. In America's case its those with the most to lose or those with lot of capital. Why are they so paranoid? What do they fear?
We live in a "free democratic country" yet we need to be watched all the time and not have rights that was written up long time ago as fundamental ideological tenets to prevent becoming exactly as those countries that we blame and label on mainstream media as "unfree non-democratic inhumane country"?
"When you do business with authoritarian countries, you end up resembling them" quote has been realized. Sad situation for America but also the West.
The representatives and such courts as could restrain the popular will are the dangerous bit.
The culture is about how much we actually care about democracy / believe it can actually work. I think this is still pretty strong in the US, compared to say Russia where everyone is pretty blackpilled on it, as their its completely illegitimately, whereas ours is highly flawed at the nat'l level and decent at the local level.
However, we've been in a civic engagement decline since the 1970's. See the book: "Bowling Alone" on the waning participation in gov't, civil society, and community organizations / clubs since then. Also Putman's latest "The Upswing"
Part of this is entropy: the post WWII solidarity was never going to last a few generations, and all orgs (US gov't) and codebase (constitution, US Code) get shittier over time.
However, a large part of it has also been deliberate. Since the days of FDR, there was been a revolt from the leaders of American business (once literally planning a coup against FDR [3]), but usually in a more systematic way of a diverse influence campaign led by many of the same American business oligarchs [4], who created / funded the expansion of entire philosophies of neoliberalism, libertarianism, etc. to justify their positions.[5]
The point being to create an elaborate social and philosophic system that morphed "don't tax / regulate us" into a kind of pro-social philosophy that was more political palatable, which remaining inherently anti-democratic, as their main period of operations in the 1930-1970s went strongly against the electorate's interests.
The 80's Reagan Revolution and the Democratic Party's reaction to it in 1985, the DLC (Democratic Leadership Council)[6], essentially were the institutionalization of this philosophy into both parties, as the neoliberals had won.
The Koch's, etc. then started a new era of even more blatant anti-democratic efforts [7] that gave us Citizens United [8], etc., which of course has changed the game in unlocking infinite money into politics, which now has essentially disenfranchised the country at the national level so thoroughly, that research by Princeton [9] clearly shows that politicians' actions are not at all correlated to the average person, whereas they are significantly correlated to wealth people / interest groups.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Commu...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Upswing-America-Together-Century-Agai...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
[4] https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Hands-Kim-Phillips-Fein-aud...
[5] https://www.amazon.com/Road-Mont-P%C3%A8lerin-Neoliberal-Col...
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Leadership_Council
[7] https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-Jane-Mayer-audiobook/dp/B0...
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
[9] https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-...