
FBI Surveillance Vendor Threatens to Sue Tech Reporters for Crime of Journalism - mindgam3
https://gizmodo.com/fbi-surveillance-vendor-threatens-to-sue-tech-reporters-1840913576
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rahuldottech
> In warning the site not to disclose the brochure, SSG’s attorney reportedly
> claimed the document is protected under the International Traffic in Arms
> Regulations (ITAR), though the notice did not point to any specific section
> of the law, which was enacted to regulate arms exports at the height of the
> Cold War.

We _really_ need an overhaul of all these old laws that were enacted for a
completely different era, which are now being misused. Another example is 200
year old laws being used to get companies to break encryption.

~~~
ryanlol
Your comment violates the FCRA, delete it immediately.

It’s easy to make claims like this, but is it really a problem with the law if
someone is making frivolous claims?

~~~
mschuster91
The general problem is power imbalance. Imagine I'm a journalist and want to
report on crimes committed by a big company, or the government. Then I get a
letter "you're on our radar, notice that we have a decently financed legal
team and believe reporting to be a violation of <long list>". Do I continue or
do I drop the case?

The only ones that can actually pull through now are media powerhouses with
their own legal team (WaPo, NYT) - but small operations like local papers,
small radio stations, bloggers, they rather retreat than to lose their
existence.

And it's not just about the money for lawyers that the losing party ends up
with - it's also a huge loss of time and in case of actual criminal
accusations (e.g. libel, or fraud if I go undercover as a journalist) the risk
of jail time or a criminal record.

Journalists need better financing and the legal system a reform. As long as
the standards of decent journalism are adhered it should _not_ be a crime in
any way or even carry the risk of that.

~~~
ryanlol
I fully appreciate that it can be very hard for smaller operations to deal
with legal threats, but is this really a legislative problem as rahuldottech
suggests?

I have a really hard time imagining any reasonable legislative solution to
this problem.

~~~
mschuster91
I have actually proposed just that in my last sentence: blanket whitelist
journalist work, similar to whistleblower protection.

Combined with real punitive fines (for corporations, let's say 10% of gross
yearly income before any deductions and for government bodies removal from
office and loss of electability for ten years for the person at the top) fot
intimidating journalists this should work out pretty well.

Additionally the amount of lawyer fees that can be awarded to the losing side
should be capped. In Germany you're free to charge your client whatever you
want as a lawyer (there are minimums to prevent dumping though)... but if your
client wins, your client will only get a (highly capped) amount of these costs
from the losing side and be on the hook for the rest.

~~~
barry-cotter
Journalists aren’t special. They’re not a protected class and their job isn’t
sacred. Freedom of the press meant freedom to use a printing press, not
membership of a profession.

Whistleblower protection doesn’t exist in practice.

[https://www.theguardian.com/us-
news/2015/mar/16/whistleblowe...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-
news/2015/mar/16/whistleblowers-double-standard-obama-david-petraeus-chelsea-
manning)

> Since Barack Obama entered the White House in 2009, his government has waged
> a war against whistleblowers and official leakers. On his watch, there have
> been eight prosecutions under the 1917 Espionage Act – more than double
> those under all previous presidents combined.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_whistleblowers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_whistleblowers)

> Joshua Wilson

> Wilson and Major Jeremy Gordon exposed the malfunctioning oxygen system on
> board the F-22 Raptor systems that were causing pilots to become
> disoriented, first to superior officers and then to CBS 60 Minutes. As a
> result, Wilson's superiors cancelled his promotion to Major, took him off
> flying duty and threatened to take away his wings. Wilson was also forced
> out of his desk job at Air Combat Command. No such actions faced Major
> Gordon.

> Carmen Segarra

> Carmen Segarra discovered that Goldman Sachs did not have a conflict of
> interest policy when it advised El Paso Corp. on selling itself to Kinder
> Morgan, a company which Goldman Sachs owned a $4 billion stake. She was
> forced by her superiors at the Federal Reserve to falsify her report, but
> stated that her professional view of the situation had not changed. She was
> shortly thereafter fired.[216] The New York Federal Reserve disputes that
> she was fired in retaliation.

> John Crane

> Crane built up the DoD IG office over his 25 years there to become the "gold
> standard" within the government but had his career destroyed for his support
> of government whistleblowers. Edward Snowden went public rather than
> reporting within the system due to severe reprisal against earlier NSA
> whistleblowers.

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rahuldottech
I don't know how I feel about hidden surveillance cameras in public. I know I
shouldn't have any expectation of privacy in public and all that, but CCTV
cameras in plain view are a different matter.

Are we going to live in a world where we're constantly being recorded and
analysed by hidden cameras? This makes me _very_ uneasy. Whatever happened to
the idea that democratic governments should be _for_ the people?

I'm sure there's no way that this can ever possibly be misused /s.

If agencies are using these for surveillance on specific targets then that's
maybe okay, but as far as I'm aware, there is not much regulation regarding
hidden cameras in public - at least, not in many parts of the world.

~~~
cmdshiftf4
>Are we going to live in a world where we're constantly being recorded and
analysed by hidden cameras?

Yes. Worse - the governments don't even have to spend the time and money
setting up these cameras, the consumer is buying and setting up more and more
surveillance devices on themselves and those around them (Cellphones, Google
Home, Alexa, Nest cameras, Ring cameras, etc. etc.) than ever.

All of it piped into communications networks we know they have untapped access
to. All of it being stored and analyzed in places like the NSA's data
warehouses, the output of which gets added to things like our XKeyscore
profiles. Rise high enough on their undefined terms and they'll make extra
effort to analyze _your_ appearance in that network traffic.

Might sound dystopian but that's how it is. It's for our own good, don't you
know?

~~~
bilbo0s
That's the thing that perplexes me?

People buy internet connected cameras and microphones for everything from
their phones, to their tv's, to their door bells, and then they get upset that
their activities are law enforcement accessible on whatever company's servers?
I mean, what did people think would happen? That's just the natural way to use
that data. How else would such data be used? Maybe to find workman comp
fraudsters? Could be used pretty liberally in family courts? Once non
technical people begin to realize the data is out there and family court
accessible. But it's not like it's gonna be used to get you your next
promotion. (Maybe to prevent you getting your next promotion, but that's
another thing entirely.)

For me, it just sounds like a really good reason not to be buying cameras and
microphones and slapping them up all over the place. When people come to your
home, they should feel they can speak and act freely. Especially since they
won't be able to do so in public much longer.

~~~
cmdshiftf4
>For me, it just sounds like a really good reason not to be buying cameras and
microphones and slapping them up all over the place.

It's being sold as convenience and we can expect a lot more of it. The last
decade has shown that the general populace will trade almost anything for the
perception of convenience.

~~~
sitkack
As as I was driving, yelling at Google Maps because too many reasons to list,
I realized that many people I know have a megacorp that intermediates their
lives, it chooses the music, the movies, the news, the restaurants, it knows
the music we like, when we eat, what we like to eat, when we get home, how hot
we like to keep the house and what books we are reading.

Knowing what I am doing is one thing, but subtly guiding what we do and see
throughout the day is kinda wrong.

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hoistbypetard
SLAPP normally means a strategic lawsuit against public participation.

In a significantly less expensive variant here, it means strategic letter
against public participation.

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mirimir
It's not like they compromised SSG's website to get it. It was produced in
response to at least two FOIA requests. So if anyone's culpable, it's arguably
whoever produced it.

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DailyHN
Time for the Streisand effect
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect)

~~~
rahuldottech
Eh. Does it even matter? The way news cycles work right now, and with just how
much information gets put out there daily, this will barely reach any
percentage of the population, and those who do read the article will forget
about it in a day or two.

~~~
uuhsuduuej2
Calling Gizmodo a part of the news cycle is pretty generous. If the story was
coming from somewhere mainstream like the AP, Reuters, or even CNN or Fox it'd
likely stick around for a bit. Gizmodo is mostly niche articles for tech
enthusiasts that like bite sized intrigue articles.

~~~
rahuldottech
What I meant was that even if it gets picked up by more mainstream media
outlets, it still won't have any impact.

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hvo
Seriously, what kind of a company will design "Tombstone Cam" for surveillance
in cemetery ? To catch a pervert or predator or human-eater? This is bizarre.

~~~
cat199
Funerals of 'bad guys' are a good way to learn about who is affiliated and has
connections, and probably to also pick up on juicy gossip of one form or
another

