
Troubling Arguments from the Government in Smith v. Obama - sinak
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/10/troubling-arguments-government-smith-v-obama
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rayiner
> The district court said it felt bound to dismiss her claims because of a
> 1979 Supreme Court case, _Smith v. Maryland_. That case involved the
> collection of the phone numbers dialed by a criminal suspect over the course
> of three days. It’s one of the cornerstones of the so-called “third party
> doctrine,” the idea that people have no expectation of privacy in
> information they entrust to others—and _it’s outdated to say the least._

Post "the Fappening" and the realization that there are essentially no
enforceable protections for information you store in the cloud, I'd say _Smith
v. Maryland_ makes as much sense as it ever did. After all, back in 1979, call
records were stored in a dusty database somewhere, used only for billing
purposes. Today, the corresponding data stored by Facebook, Google, etc, are
mined, processed, and correlated across time and space for advertising and
marketing purposes. If _Smith_ stands for the proposition that the government
has at least as much right to access your data for law enforcement purposes as
AT&T does for billing purposes, then replacing "AT&T" with "Google" and
"Facebook" and "billing" with "advertising" doesn't undermine the rationale of
the case one bit.

Obviously you can argue that it was wrongly decided in the first instance, but
that's a different argument.

~~~
fiatmoney
There's also a delightful two-step whereby the government can

1) require the disclosure or retention of data for some regulatory purpose
(taxing, telecom regs, "just because", etc.), and then

2) require warrantless access to the data, since after all it was turned over
to a third party.

~~~
anigbrowl
Some kinds of data have to be recorded, eg for certain sorts of financial
transactions in excess of a certain amount. But you could operate an anonymous
email service or some other sort of service where you don't retain any
records. Government entities have been aware of/monitored 4chan for years, for
example, but I've never heard of any attempt to compel Moot to engage in
harvesting or storage of data (by compel I mean via litigation or legislation,
not some politician saying 'there oughta be a law' on the nightly news).

By all means correct me if I'm wrong.

~~~
musername
In this line of argument, the host that houses the servers is also a third
party. So, there's no need to contact the opperator, when they could just
access the machines.

~~~
chii
I think the logical absurdity of this argument shows when you start saying
that the server room is a "third party".

I say a third party is who ever that is involved, but isn't monetarily
involved with a 2nd party (which is the party you paid to do the task).

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_nullandnull_
> Call Detail Records Don’t Actually Identify People

This is one of the best videos I have ever seen countering this argument.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM0PmwOlifE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM0PmwOlifE)

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a3n
We have an expectation of privacy _from the government_ if we the people say
that _the government_ is simply not allowed to look for or look at something,
regardless of who else may or may not have access to the something.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among
these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That _to secure these
rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from
the consent of the governed_ , ...

[http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transc...](http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html)

Our government was created to serve us, as we see fit, not the other way
around.

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junto
Whilst the direction of the USG and its Big Brother attitude makes me fear for
our collective future, it is worth pointing out that it is warming to see that
there is a legal framework to challenge these actions.

In the UK... there is no hope. We have no constitution. EU laws that would
prevent such actions are overridden with emergency security laws that almost
nobody challenges, whilst the 'Liberal Party' don't just stand by, they
partake.

Your constitution is unbelievably valuable. I hope you can hang on to it.

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EGreg
[http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169)

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stretchwithme
With neither party giving a damn, I shudder to think where we are heading.

