Now the FBI is tapping that vast trove of e-mail in unrelated investigations.
That says pretty much all about their methods.
Any evidence derived from or linked to this trove can AND SHOULD be tossed out of court.
I'm not sure what to think of it; it's just an observation.
Among the reasons I argue so strongly against it is because I've seen how very similar methods work, myself, direct personal experience. Oh, and I was the party benefiting from the disclosure. Turns out that virtually all of what we had was in fact legitimately obtained.
As for the insurance argument: what state do you live in? Do you have your car smogged? Are you aware that your smog data, which comprises a rather detailed data record, is sold in several large states (California and Washington, off the top of my head, along with a few others) to ISO, the Insurance Services Office (descriptive name, no?), a division of Verisk, to rate your auto insurance. See:
http://www.verisk.com/underwriting/
http://www.iso.com/Products/QPC/Quality-Planning-Corporation...
So, the question is: were you made aware of this when you brought your vehicle in for smogging? Did you realize that the dataset was 1) being collected, 2) being sold, and 3) could materially impact your insurance costs?
Moreover: what's the equity here? Yes, as it turns out, miles driven is a significant statistically correlated risk factor in insurance costs. But what is the social purpose of insurance, how should those costs be allocated (often it's the less financially able who drive further to work because they cannot afford to live nearer their jobs), and what are the social equity effects of a hidden pricing and rating factor?
Yes, insurance companies can perform useful functions. They're among the leading business voices for climate change risks, as the underwriting costs directly affect them. Insurance underwriting has either directly or indirectly supported huge improvements in workplace and product safety. Where it used to be possible for companies to argue that negative outcomes were "accidents" and "acts of God", comprehensively compiled incident statistics correlated with causal factors showed that specific patterns of behavior, design, use, etc., were predictably associated with accidents, damage, injury, and/or death.
But gathering that information in a covert fashion strikes me as fundamentally unjust.
So here is a question: the last time I had my car's emissions checked in Washington state, my car reported that it was not ready to report its status because I had disconnected the battery a week before, apparently resetting the stuff that it needed to report. I had to drive around for two hours on the highway before going back to the emissions place to have it re-tested.
Is there any value in unplugging the battery shortly before getting your emissions checked?
http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Psalms-130-3/
> If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?
Also this, from a somewhat similar source, Cardinal Richlieu:
http://quotationsbook.com/quote/19331/
> If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
And finally, this:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405274870447150...
> The average citizen commits three felonies a day.
... I'm not sure anyone can survive perfect application of the law.
I'd deleted my initial account after only a couple of weeks.
I'm now winding down my pseudonymous account and most Google activity.
We don't want a government and law enforcement that route around the Constitution.
Law enforcement is not an end in itself, it is only one of the tools a government has available. There's nothing in the constitution that says "you must prosecute as many people as possible".
For instance, if a friend on Facebooks cross-site posts a photo that they don't have a license to, you've broken copyright law by downloading it too. Again, nominally, convicting you requires "criminal intent", but this has been getting weaker lately too. This is just an easy example; there's a lot more and many worse ways they can get you, but this is an example where probably everybody on the Internet has a record of many of this sort of violation on file somewhere in the government right now.
"Law enforcement is not an end in itself, it is only one of the tools a government has available."
And it was never meant to be a tool that the government had at hand against all of its citizens, but if we aren't there now, we will soon.
US of A already officially admitted that they've lost track of all the federal laws they have, so it's pretty sure at this point that everyone would be found guilty of breaking some obscure, forgotten rule that happens to be in force, if prosecutors would look hard enough.
Citation needed.
- John Oliver