TIA returns

[Partha]

http://online.wsj.com/public/article_pr ... 23845.html

Five years ago, Congress killed an experimental Pentagon antiterrorism program meant to vacuum up electronic data about people in the U.S. to search for suspicious patterns. Opponents called it too broad an intrusion on Americans' privacy, even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But the data-sifting effort didn't disappear. The National Security Agency, once confined to foreign surveillance, has been building essentially the same system.

The central role the NSA has come to occupy in domestic intelligence gathering has never been publicly disclosed. But an inquiry reveals that its efforts have evolved to reach more broadly into data about people's communications, travel and finances in the U.S. than the domestic surveillance programs brought to light since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

In response to the Sept. 11 attacks, then NSA-chief Gen. Michael Hayden has said he used his authority to expand the NSA's capabilities under a 1981 executive order governing the agency. Another presidential order issued shortly after the attacks, the text of which is classified, opened the door for the NSA to incorporate more domestic data in its searches, one senior intelligence official said.

Get this!

The political debate over the telecom information comes as intelligence agencies seek to change traditional definitions of how to balance privacy rights against investigative needs. Donald Kerr, the deputy director of national intelligence, told a conference of intelligence officials in October that the government needs new rules. Since many people routinely post details of their lives on social-networking sites such as MySpace, he said, their identity shouldn't need the same protection as in the past. Instead, only their "essential privacy," or "what they would wish to protect about their lives and affairs," should be veiled, he said, without providing examples.

Yes, because when you go on the web, you give up your rights to privacy.

[Rsak]

Yes, because when you go on the web, you give up your rights to privacy.

DUhhh!

You give your privacy every time you call someone on the phone , send an email, or hit the IP address of hot_underage_teens_website_1732. There are varying degrees of privacy for each, but you never had a right to keep that fact that you communicated private.

Complete privacy is not a constitutionally guaranteed right.

[Partha]

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

[Rsak]

Dear lord could you make a bigger ass out of yourself?

Where do you figure that a phone call, email, or poll of an IP address is included in persons, houses, papers, or effects?

You leave the security of your house every time you perform one of those acts and are in the public realm where you do not have the right of privacy. Or are you willing to declare that everyone that sees you when you cross the road is violating your rights of privacy because they knew you were there?

[Partha]

http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1170

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday, in Warshak v. U.S., that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their email, so that the government needs a search warrant or similar process to access it. The Court’s decision was swayed by amicus briefs submitted by EFF and a group of law professors.

When Alice sends an email to Bob, the email will be stored, for a while at least, on an email server run by Bob’s email provider. Depending on how Bob uses email, the message may sit on the server just until Bob’s computer picks up mail (which happens every few minutes when Bob is online), or Bob may store his long-term email archive on the server. Either way the server, which is typically run by Bob’s ISP, will have a copy of the email and will have the ability to access its contents.

The key question in Warshak was whether, notwithstanding the ISP’s ability to read his mail, Bob still has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the email. This matters because certain Fourth Amendment protections apply where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. The government had used a certain kind of order authorized by the Stored Communications Act to compel Warshak’s ISP to turn over Warshak’s email without notifying Warshak. Warshak argued that that was improper and the government should have been required to get a search warrant.

The key to the Court’s ruling is an analogy, offered by the amici, between email and phone calls. The phone company has the ability to listen to your calls, but courts ruled long ago that there is a reasonable expectation of privacy in the content of phone calls, so that the government cannot eavesdrop on the content of calls without a warrant. The Court accepted that email is like a phone call, for privacy purposes at least, and the ruling essentially followed from this analogy.

Would you like to detail your ignorance in constitutional law some more? Maybe you could read, say, US v. Maxwell or Katz v. US first, just so that you could pretend to understand what you're talking about?

[Rsak]

You really need to learn to fucking read:

There are varying degrees of privacy for each, but you never had a right to keep that fact that you communicated private.

Just like how the contents of a phone call can be protected but the fact that the call was made is a matter of non-private record, an email has certain expectations of privacy when it comes to the contents of the email but the existence of the email, the sender, and the recipients are non-private records.

You leave the castle where all your protection exists and cross on to the privately owed by corporation or publicly owed wires that transfer your call, message, or web browser query over a distance, through routers, through switches, and other equipment that is logging the source, destination, and type of communication of everything you do.

It is also horribly ironic that your link does not support your privacy complaints about the NSA:

Interestingly, the Court drew a line between inspection of email by computer programs, such as virus or spam checkers, versus inspection by a person. The Court found that automated analysis of email did not erode the reasonable expectation of privacy, but routine manual inspection of email would erode it.

Were you trying to hurt your own case?

[Embar Angylwrath]

Rsak.. you're the only chimp I know that is checkmated before the first move.

[Rsak]

Are you saying I am wrong Embar or do you just want to confess your obsession with me further?

[Partha]

Well, you're wrong. He knows you're wrong; I know you're wrong; I suspect as soon as Dd reads this and stops snorting beer from his nose that he'll tell you you're wrong, too.

See, this is a prime case of you just defending the government without any examination of the critical facts of the case.

Now, it's been law for decades that phone calls have certain privacy rights attached to them. You can tell that someone called someone else, but you can't listen in on calls without a warrant. The way the courts are inexorably moving, decision to decision to decision, is to treat email the same way you treat phone calls and sealed mail.

The government as it stands now claims that it can read that email and listen to those phone calls based on (I'll quote it again from the original)

Another presidential order issued shortly after the attacks, the text of which is classified

Unfortunately for Bushbots like you, the President does not get to make the law, only to follow it.

It's a shame that all this will get simply sucked into the Einstein-Rosen tunnel known coloquially as 'the space between Rsak's ears', therein to be deposited in the black hole currently residing where a normal human would have a brain, and thereby being ejected at some unknown point on the back end as random atoms.

[Rsak]

Holy fucking shit... You just agreed with my whole position.

You can tell that someone called someone else, but you can't listen in on calls without a warrant.

The fact that you were communicating (making a call, sending an email, or pinging an IP address) was all that I ever said was non-private, not the contents of the phone call or email. When you get on to the web you are in a public domain that does not give you complete privacy because you are not in private.

Had you read the quote that I was objecting to, you would know that was all I was talking about. Apparently the critical thinking of a chimpanzee is above and beyond that of of the troglodyte Partha.

[Partha]

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Even then - you need a warrant. A reason for the law to be set aside for you to gain that information. If you don't have a compelling reason, you don't get to look.

That too hard for you?

[Rsak]

The point you don't seem to understand is that regardless of governments its not private data and you have zero expectation of privacy that your call occurred.

[superwalrus]

awwww, this discussion about the 4th amendment is cute.

Walrus

[Rsak]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,337173,00.html

In January 2007, Tulsa County District Judge Tom Gillert ordered Ferrante's felony charge dismissed. That was based upon a determination that "the person photographed was not in a place where she had a reasonable expectation of privacy," according to the appellate ruling issued last week.

Apparently its a shocking concept to some people that when you are not in private you give up certain privacy rights.

[Croinc]

Unfortunately for Bushbots like you, the President does not get to make the law, only to follow it.

Actually, he is suppose to enforce/execute the law.

[Partha]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,337173,00.html

In January 2007, Tulsa County District Judge Tom Gillert ordered Ferrante's felony charge dismissed. That was based upon a determination that "the person photographed was not in a place where she had a reasonable expectation of privacy," according to the appellate ruling issued last week.

Apparently its a shocking concept to some people that when you are not in private you give up certain privacy rights.

At which point was she on the phone or sending an email again? Dipshit.

[Rsak]

You really don't understand the concept of public and private do you?

When you get on the internet you are on a public network. When you are on an intranet you are in a private network.

[Ddrak]

It's an interesting question. Phone calls are a theoretical point-to-point communication and have been ruled private for a long time, as an analogy to the post. I believe you need a warrant to pull *any* records on either for police purposes, but I'm not really an expert in that.

The real question on the internet is it *isn't* a point-to-point communication and never has been. From the original days of DARPA it's always been packet switched, and so thousands of machines routinely store and forward the data, and need to inspect it in all sorts of ways to do so. That information is routinely logged by companies you have no direct relationship with. Exactly what level the police forces have access to *that* is really an unanswered question.

Honestly, if you care about privacy use encryption over tor from a machine you don't own that preferably is in a nation unfriendly to the US but still has a relatively high degree of technological advancement.

Dd

[Partha]

Packet switching means little, Dd. After all, a phone call goes through several routers on it's way across the country, and a letter hits several postal stops while it's in transit, too. The key is can the government look inside a communication that has a reasonable expectation of privacy without a warrant?

[Kulaf]

Packet switching means little, Dd. After all, a phone call goes through several routers on it's way across the country, and a letter hits several postal stops while it's in transit, too. The key is can the government look inside a communication that has a reasonable expectation of privacy without a warrant?

The difference of course being that it is a federal crime to open a letter........and it's not for anyone working for any phone company to listen in on your conversation or hook a sniffer up to a switch and monitor your internet traffic.