I think we need to reform the way telecom data is recorded by evolving the technology...

[Gravitycollapse]

Okay, so pen registers and other metadata collection is legal and much of this data is not subject to a concern for reasonable privacy.

The courts may actually have gotten this ruling correct. Although I can never be certain. What is at issue here isn't really the legality of such metadata collection (although this could be important) but instead brings into question the communications technology utilized by private and public telecommunication firms.

Here's the best analogy I can come up with: Let's say a police officer comes to your door and you open it up. You have now, in essence, given the officer permission to observe anything he can see through the door you've opened. He's logging all of that information and waiting for something illegal to pop up.

If we don't want officers looking through the door, don't open it.

The wandering eye of state surveillance agencies is constantly scanning data that we willingly divulge to telecommunication firms. There may not actually be any legal recourse to this observation precisely because it is not considered private.

Maybe the answer to this issue is not to focus all of our energy on contesting the legality of state data-mining (although if we believe such challenges could be successful, we should absolutely try) but instead we must try to revise the way telecom firms collect and store metadata. This may require a truly meaningful evolution of relevant technologies. And I am by no means an expert on such things. But I, unfortunately, do not expect us to gain much traction out of these legal challenges. Even if we won, how can we be so sure the state isn't simply continuing collection in secret? We cannot. Not at all. So the best option seems to be ending metadata far before it reaches the all-seeing eye of state surveillance.

Just my 2 cents.

[Amonester]

1. Encryption exists.

Many different forms of encryption.

[Gravitycollapse]

2. No doubt. But are telecom companies encrypting our metadata? Probably not.

And that is the point.

[Amonester]

4. To take your scenario, if you open the door after you've shut down

the second door inside your home lobby (given that you've taken the time to work on building one), then the cop can't see anything but that second door.

IOW, if you're so paranoïd about your privacy, work for it...

[Gravitycollapse]

6. Paranoia implies that my fears are unfounded. They are absolutely founded.

[Fumesucker]

3. And using encryption increases your standing in the threat suspicion matrix substantially

Or at least if you use encryption that doesn't have an NSA back door.

[Gravitycollapse]

5. Of course, encryption is useless if courts demand the decryption key.

The only conclusion I can come to is that telecom firms must only hold metadata information for a very, very short period of time. Minutes, possibly even seconds. We have to reduce the amount of time to fall below the threshold of state apprehension.

[ceonupe]

26. By law

They must maintain those records. That is one problem there.

I assume they have the ability to crack all modem encryption maybe not some in real time but for that they archive and crack later. Or just use other methods to steal the keys. Heck on most operating systems they could hack the video card firmware and strip encrypt and send back screen shots with your normal traffic and you would prob never know.

[Amonester]

7. So every time I pay my bills online, I increase my standing in the what??

[Fumesucker]

8. I guess you missed the part about not having an NSA back door key?

[Amonester]

9. I'm posting from abroad, so I guess every post is 'collected' somewhere.

And DU has no https encryption keys....

uh....

[Fumesucker]

10. Ah, so you're not directly subject to US law

Now I can understand your lack of concern.

[Amonester]

11. Uh. The 'collection' is worldwide (since at least the end of WWII).

Do you think I live in a lawless place?

[Fumesucker]

13. Reading really is fundamental

Is US law the only law in the entire world?

Do you think I even remotely implied that?

[Amonester]

14. Well, the point is, I don't break any laws, online or in RL.

So I'm not concerned, nor paranoïd about the whole damn thing.

At least many jobless graduates can hope to get a good-paying job...

[Gravitycollapse]

15. Don't kid yourself. We all break laws.

[Amonester]

17. Maybe you do, but I don't.

And be careful in your next reply...

[Gravitycollapse]

22. You almost certainly broke a law just today. Everyone does. Most of the time we don't notice.

Is that careful enough for you?

[Fumesucker]

16. So you're saying since you haven't done anything wrong then you have nothing to worry about?

It seems to me I've heard something like that before.

[Amonester]

18. A cartoon?

Oh, my.

I prefer Hollywood-made CTs...

[Fumesucker]

19. No matter where else you are on the planet the incarceration rate is lower than the land of the free

More than likely substantially lower in fact, like a small fraction.

Which was the point I was making about you not being directly subject to US law.

[Amonester]

20. Look, this whole thing is never going to go away, no matter who does it.

Spying is as old as organized societies (or disorganized societies, depending of the viewer's POV).

Never going away anytime (unless climate change dooms us all).

[Fumesucker]

21. So you've gone from mocking me for something I never said to just relax and enjoy the inevitable?

[Tace]

12. I Can Concur About Using High Encryption

When I tried out a super-duper encryption system for communications between team members on the World News Trust project about 10 years ago, I got slammed, hard, from sovereign governments, not necessarily only U.S.

All of our hard drives were wiped, and those of our associates. Emails vanished.

So, my practice since then has been to avoid high encryption systems for that very reason.

--Tace

[PowerToThePeople]

23. If everyone uses encryption, then what?

Ok, everyone gets their standing increased. They can't track everyone, so Gov threshold goes up to compensate.

[Fumesucker]

24. They don't and they won't

I just cleaned up a borked laptop for a neighbor, a lot nicer machine than anything I have but it was so loaded down with spyware and things like annoying and unnecessary menu bars on the browser that it was all but unusable, he practically begged me to fix his computer for him once he found out I knew a bit about doing that.

Lot of people like that out there, this guy is no dummy but he's never going to be using encryption software in the foreseeable future.

[PowerToThePeople]

25. make it transparent to end user

rewrite or write a new tcp/ip with end-to-end encryption. Just make it standard. Oh, ipv6 has it already spec'd in. So we, the informed public, need to pressure vendors to start supplying it.

[cthulu2016]

27. Oddly enough, it works out the same either way

To end up not using the data, government could either:

1) simply stop collecting telcom meta-data,

or

2) wait for changes in the world to take place that would have the same practical effect as if the government had simply stopped collecting telcom meta-data, unilaterally, and thenceforth doing nothing to keep up.

The second seems needlessly complicated.


It may be that some technology will allow a great leap forward in privacy, but if that effect is desired, why not achieve the desired effect right now by ceasing collection while waiting for the new tech?

And if that effect is NOT desired then the new tech would be unwelcome.


_____ _____ _____ _____ New Tech Developed ... New Tech Not Developed


Collection Stopped
GovDoesNotGetNow / GovDoesNotGetTomorrow -- GovDoesNotGetNow / GovDoesNotGetTomorrow

Collection Continued
GovGetsNow / GovDoesNotGetTomorrow -- GovGetsNow / GovGetsTomorrow

[Waiting For Everyman]

28. To continue your analogy...

Just because we open the door to a repair man or other company rep (from the company we have the business relationship with), doesn't mean we open the door to a cop.

I would have much less of a problem (even though I don't trust corporations of course) with the telecoms holding my data, and the intels having to get a personal warrant for it "for cause", than with the NSA having control of all of it to see and use at will. I don't think the providers should be told they have to hold it for a specified time either, it should be up to them entirely. The providers shouldn't be allowed to snoop into it either.

There is no reason the NSA can't go about its job the way it used to be. If need be, it could trade in some of its thousands of computer pros for more office workers to process all the individual warrants. There simply aren't enough terrorists to justify all this -- making the metaphorical "haystack" orders of magnitude bigger before looking for the few needles within it.

[randome]

29. Terrorists are not the NSA's only target.

Child pornographers. International smuggling, organ markets, money laundering, etc.

The OP's analogy was about opening the door to a cop. If that cop sees something illegal through your doorway, should he/she not act upon that knowledge?

I think there is something to be said for the OP's point of view. The Information Age has made it so much easier to not only store data but to collate it. We need to both recognize that unalterable fact and find new ways to deal with it.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

[Waiting For Everyman]

30. The NSA is not allowed to have domestic targets.

Just because someone two or three "hops" away is or may be a foreigner, that doesn't allow for wholesale snooping on Americans, and then sifting that to find domestic cases of law.

[randome]

31. I think you have it backwards.

The 'two or three hops' starts with someone under suspicion. Either a foreign individual or someone the NSA reasonably believes is foreign.

And the NSA can't know ahead of time if that target is communicating with an American citizen or not until they have made those hops.

From what we've seen in the PowerPoint slides, once an American citizen is determined to be communicating with a foreign individual, that information is turned over to the FBI.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

[Waiting For Everyman]

32. I am aware of that, and that is what's wrong with it. nt

[bemildred]

33. Just encrypt everything, end to end. By law. End of problem.

If everybody does it, if it's the norm, nobody gets their threat profile raised by it either.

[snooper2]

34. by nice if there were more folks here who actually knew how a class5 switch works