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Comment by jlarocco | Hacker News Reader

The question seems to totally miss the point.

Whether the code is open or not is irrelevant. They shouldn't be spying in the first place.

They shouldn't be spying on American citizens in the first place. That protection could possibly be extended to civilians in other countries as well, but there's nothing in the Constitution about the rights of non-citizens.

However, spying on foriegn governments and militaries is okay. Non-governmental terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda are also fair game for spying. However, if the Al-Qaeda members that you are spying on are American citizens, then you need a warrant, preferrably one granted by a reputable court and not a secret rubber-stamp court.

"there's nothing in the Constitution about the rights of non-citizens." - you are wrong. Just read the text of the Fourth Amendment and try to find the word "citizen" there.

You're right about the citizens thing, but multiple court cases over the years have asserted that constitutional protections only apply to "US persons". So, citizens, legal residents, non-legal residents, visitors, anyone physically in the US.

Visitors will be kind of a stretch, as they might not have any substantial ties with the US "community" to be protected by the Fourth. The opposite thing goes for the legal temporary worker who went to visit home country for a couple of weeks - he should be protected. In any case I do not think NSA takes all those things into account when they figure out who is a "US person" and who is not, if they ever do that, of course.

Does it apply to diplomats visiting the US? What about their families?

> They shouldn't be spying on American citizens in the first place.

Neither should they be spying on citizens and industries of friendly states and allies.

Maybe my question was a little indirect. I was wondering if there was a criteria we could agree upon and publicly uphold to make data collection OK. For example, immediately throwing out any piece of data collected unless the public agrees that that piece of data is likely to help counter-terrorism. Of course the NSA would then lose the history of data that would be useful after a known terrorist was found, but the system would greatly help with privacy concerns.

No.

I'm not convinced "terrorism" cases should be handled any differently than any other criminal cases.

It's such a vague term, I'm not even sure it should be possible to prosecute it. What does it even mean for a person to "be a terrorist"? Clearly if a person has blown up a building or plane they should be prosecuted for that. But trying to prosecute before the fact in the name of counter-terrorism seems a little too much like thought crime, IMO.

> They shouldn't be spying in the first place.

Should the U.S. spy agency (one of them, anyway) stop spying?

Should the U.S. disband its spy agencies?

Is there a role for "spying" in this age?

Should the U.S. spy agency (one of them, anyway) stop spying?

Should the U.S. disband its spy agencies?

Is there a role for "spying" in this age?

Absolutely

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The questions are: "Should a U.S. spy agency be allowed to violate our constitution?"

"Should a US Spy agency destroy the future competitive nature of US internet companies abroad to save a few lives via stopped terrorist attacks?"

Probably not, but the implications of such a discussion are extremely complex and definitely not black and white.

"If this technology was preventing terrorist attacks, how do we replace it with something less invasive which follows the constitution?"

I have no idea.

The reality is, for those of us on HN who are American Citizens, we probably benefit from our nation having global power. For those who are not American citizens, it is almost definite that you do not benefit from the US government from having global power.

How the US exercises its power could potentially lead to negative butterfly effects. I don't agree with the NSA spy program, but I also have no idea how to stop people from coming here and causing terrorist attacks.

Those that say we can stop them via being nice to other countries have no way of truly knowing that, and those that say we can stop them with the NSA spy program are just as clueless.

The wide net that they wish to cast isn't necessary. They didn't have agents investigating every person in the US, looking for spies prior to the Internet.

Playing the devil's advocate. What if all the data collected was also publicly available?

It think that this is, on balance, a good idea.

It would even out the information imbalance and provide equality-at-arms between the individual and the state (which is an unabashedly good thing).

On the other hand, it would entail a huge cultural shift, which many people would be uncomfortable with, and would take a while to get used to. However, once the shift is complete, I think we would be more honest about ourselves, more at home in our skins, with all of our flaws and weaknesses made public. We might expect a little less (false) perfection from each other as well, which can only be a good thing.

No. From a corporate perspective there would be a ton of IP, potentially.

From a personal prospective, no. I consider who I call and when I call them private and not public.

And I consider who you call and when you call them my private property. You can consider all you want, until your elected official changes the law, your consideration has no bearing on reality. Who owns calls made over a telephone network subsidized by the public?

Let's walk through this: if you send a letter in the mail from you to me, USPS can reasonably be expected to scan the envelope and record this fact.

If you go out into a public place and have a conversation with me while shouting, you can reasonably expect other people, some of whom might be working for the NSA to overhear.

Why are those things not problems, but listening in on phone conversations is? Because of the difference between a public and a private place. You "consider" phone networks to be private places and they are not. We often tell people that the internet is not private and that anything that ever touches the web will stay on the web. We just learned that that is true for the phone networks as well. It seems that you cannot have a private conversation with another person other then in a physical private place... Except even then you cannot. There exists technology that will allow someone with enough money and will power to listen in on the most private conversation (either by placing a mic near you or by listening in remotely). What happens with our society when we discover the technology that allows someone to listen in on your thoughts?

The problem is that anything that can be wiretapped, will be wiretapped. The solution to this problem is technological. The laws around it need to simply state two things: (1) you cannot use anything you obtain without a proper warrant against the suspect and (2) you cannot prevent someone from using encryption.

>The problem is that anything that can be wiretapped, will be wiretapped. The solution to this problem is technological.

I was against you the whole time until the point where you said

>The laws around it need to simply state two things: (1) you cannot use anything you obtain without a proper warrant against the suspect and (2) you cannot prevent someone from using encryption.

I wholeheartedly agree with (2). (1) needs further elaboration. Can you use what you've collected to get a "proper" warrant? Can you go on a fishing expedition to assassinate someone's public image? What protection will we have against that?

I do not think this is a technological problem. I find it very scary how much leeway prosecution has in whether or not to press charges.

It is also very sad to see the people who I'd consider on my side to cheer for the IRS to go after tea party groups.

Many laws are formed around the basis of "just in case," for example marijuana prohibition exists because there's a threat that criminal organizations might be beneficiaries from marijuana sales. What if we knew which sellers were contributing to crime and, more importantly, which weren't?

If we have the opportunity to reduce friction in society, then why not?

Insurance -- of all kinds -- is another area dominated by "just in case" policies. What if we really knew which insurance claims were fraudulent?

oh how the black hats would love this!

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