
Congress Must Act After US Government Admits To Warrantless Wiretapping  - mtgx
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/07/congress-must-act-after-us-government-admits-unconstitutional-warrantless
======
kevinalexbrown
There are two disconcerting trends I see in the NSA wiretapping fiasco
independent of whether wiretapping is a good idea, a necessary evil, or a bad
idea.

The first is the amount of effort it takes to get very basic level of
information regarding NSA activities, even when those activities are known to
exist. A "secret national security court"[0] determines whether the laws voted
on by Congress are constitutional? Good information is paramount in developing
good opinions. It would certainly be unwise to inform parties that have been
wiretapped, but ballpark estimates of how many people are wiretapped and with
what level of intrusiveness are necessary to really form an opinion.

Second, there is a surprising level of apathy on both sides. Of course most
people would object to a secret court to resolve questions of government
power, if asked, but no one seems to consider this a question worth debating.
I see some editorials explaining that warrantless wire taps are an
unfortunately necessary tool in modern law enforcement, but these seem to
focus on explaining why the taps really aren't a huge deal, or why the airport
scanners are not really invasive, but never why they are positive steps in the
right direction, actions to be applauded.

These two properties combine in an unfortunate feedback loop: it takes an
inordinate amount of effort to obtain reliable information on programs such as
this, and without enough initial paranoia, few delve deeper. But without easy
access to what's actually happening, it's hard for the non-paranoid to get
upset: there's little to do other than to say "hey! the NSA might be
wiretapping, we think, but we don't know who, and we don't know when and we
don't know how many."

[0] WSJ:
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044409790457753...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444097904577539413137490028.html)

~~~
charonn0
Do you have an alternative source? The WSJ article is behind a paywall. :\

~~~
spicyj
Try this:

[http://www.google.com/url?q=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB...](http://www.google.com/url?q=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444097904577539413137490028.html)

~~~
charonn0
Just redirects to the paywall for me.

~~~
spicyj
Weird, I've always had going through Google work.

------
DanBC
In the past they sidestepped the law about spying on their own citizens by
partnering with other nations, then swapping lists of people to monitor.

This was ECHELON. There were 5 nations involved: The US, Canada, the UK,
Australia, and New Zealand.

(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON>)

That was before 9/11. Why are people surprised that warrantless wire-tapping
happens now?

~~~
chaostheory
This is because traditional media doesn't police this stuff for us anymore and
the average person is too busy to keep up with these issues on their own. Most
people have trouble just keeping up with their hobbies let alone politics.

~~~
wheelerwj
This has been a weird week for personal privacy.

NSA insider reveals NSA has a file on ALL us citizens.

NSA admits to warrantless wiretapping.

NYTimes admits that all news orgs allow government censorship of media.

I mean, what kind of world do people think we really live in?

~~~
meric
Once those things come true, stories like
[http://www.stewwebb.com/GOP_using_Echelon_software_to_spy_on...](http://www.stewwebb.com/GOP_using_Echelon_software_to_spy_on_Americans_Nsa_bribing_media.htm)
no longer seem so loony after all.

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BrentRitterbeck
What is the probability of Congress actually doing something regarding this?
Close to zero! Remember, these are the same fools that brought the US
Government within days of not being able to pay its bills. These are the same
fools who thought is was okay to have laws that banned trading off of insider
information while effectively carving out a loophole for themselves. These are
the same fools who will stand amongst union workers in a GM plant and
villianize the banking system for taking bailout money so that the financial
system doesn't fall apart but never mention that GM is one of those who also
took money but has yet to pay it back. These people are nothing but self-
serving swine. Don't expect them to do what is in the best interest of the
American public.

EDIT: I am aware that certain provisions regarding Congressional insider
trading have been closed; however, this did not occur until 60 Minutes raised
the issue nationally.

------
SlyShy
In the past I've felt cynical about these sorts of issues. Recently I went to
Hackers on Planet Earth, a hacktivist conference, and left it with a sense of
optimism: there are very, very smart people working on protecting our privacy,
and recently their efforts are starting to come to fruition.

~~~
wheelerwj
too little to late. We could take all the smart people and fund their work and
give them minions for years and we would never get back what we have already
lost.

~~~
Ralith
But we might just manage to keep some of what we still have.

------
PotatoEngineer
The cynical side of me says that, while warrantless wiretapping is bad and the
NSA will get a strongly-worded condemnation, not much else will come from this
once the furor dies down.

------
16s
Every American citizen should know the 4th by heart. It protects us from
"unreasonable search and seizure". When a government agent stops you (a police
officer), you have the right to not consent to search. You should always
exercise this right. It may seem like a harmless question when the agent asks,
"If you have nothing to hide, then you won't mind if I look, right?", but it
is not a harmless question, he is asking you to consent to a search and to
give-up your constitutional right against such searches. Always say, "I do not
consent to searches" and be polite to the agent. The agent may not place his
hands in your pockets. He may not open your purse, and if he does these
things, he's breaking the law as you have not consented.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"The agent may not place his hands in your pockets"_

Unless you live in NYC, in which case it's an explicitly condoned policy of
the NYPD and the city government.

Most definitely unconstitutional, but since it's targeted exclusively at poor
minorities, the odds of it ever it getting enough legal playtime is slim.

~~~
chimeracoder
> The odds of it ever it getting enough legal playtime is slim.

I have some hope, since people have been fighting for years to repeal the
heavily racially-biased 'open to public view' loophole in New York's marijuana
laws, and Cuomo and Bloomberg recently voiced support for it (though it was
right before the end of the session, so take that for what it's worth).

(For those not familiar with the loophole: in New York, possession of less
than 25 grams of marijuana is a civil citation (think speeding ticket) and not
a criminal offense. Despite this, NYC arrests more people per capita _and_ by
volume for marijuana possession than any other city _in the entire world._

Why? Because having marijuana _either_ burning _or_ 'open to public view' is a
Class B misdemeanor. So when the policeman says 'Empty your pockets for me; I
know what's in there', he's essentially giving the victim an opportunity to
incriminate himself for a misdemeanor that gets 90 days in jail, as opposed to
a $100 fine with no arrest record[1].)

[1] Disclaimer: I'm actually not 100% sure how public the records for
possession citations are; New York does this differently from Massachusetts,
which passed a much more sensible law in 2008.

~~~
koenigdavidmj
Holy entrapment, Batman!

------
conradev
There is only one guaranteed solution to the problem of government
wiretapping, and that is the concept of "privacy by design".

~~~
trekkin
Which more or less translates into client-side encryption. Which some people
here don't like, weirdly.

~~~
ihsw
It's not weird, in fact it's perfectly logical. They have a vested interest in
the proliferation of private information into the public space (the Internet),
and -- more particularly -- that interest is financial.

If such private information were encrypted by default it would put a sizeable
dent into their pocket book.

------
andreyf
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but if most of your communication is over
GMail/Google talk/Skype/Facetime/etc, there isn't a way the feds could wiretap
that without the cooperation of Google/Microsoft/Apple, and AFAIK, they will
require a warrant.

~~~
dangrossman
You're more or less wrong.

1) You do not need cooperation of those services if you sit on the network in
between the end-user and the service. We know that the NSA does.

2) Securing cooperation does not require a warrant. Information can be
requested by the FBI using a National Security Letter, without a warrant,
simultaneously collecting information while gagging the service provider from
informing the customer their information was collected.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter>

3) Any person's communications can be wiretapped by court order from the FISA
court, separate from our normal court system. The FISA court judges see only
evidence from the Department of Justice, and no information about their
hearings is ever released or even recorded. Between 1979 and 2009, the FISA
court has only declined to issue a court order for surveillance 11 times out
of thousands.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillan...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act)

~~~
andreyf
1) Facetime seems to be vulnerable to MITM wiretaps, but none of Google's
services are transmitted in the clear anymore. Skype, afaik, is encrypted, as
well.

2) Wikipedia says that "from 2003 to 2006 the bureau issued 192,499 national
security letter requests". That's a long shot from the mass surveillance
affecting "millions of Americans" (from this article), or the NSA having "a
dossier on every citizen" (recently here, as well).

3) Good point.

~~~
legutierr
Each national security letter can request the records of thousands or even
millions of customers. 200,000 requests can certainly encompass all Americans.

------
sneak
You now live at the mercy of the government. It is an oligarchy. The rule of
law is gone, as it does not apply to all.

It is time to leave. The writing is on the wall.

Beware normalcy bias. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias>

You must gather your possessions and your family, and move your business and
self to another soverign state which respects its constitution and courts.

~~~
jorgem
Suggestions?

~~~
hnwh
Vote Ron Paul

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Really? Wow that guy's a blithering idiot. This is the guy that let Bruno fool
him. Your savior is the guy who wants to follow the Constitution by
instituting libertarian ideology which has nothing to do with the Constitution
(I mean come on, you can't just come out and see you want to take Constitution
and burn it?).

Is your big concern really whether women are getting abortions? That's the guy
that is going to save from the boogey man? I don't think you're safe either.
:)

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mikemarotti
Excuse my ignorance, but what is the end-all be-all for internet privacy? Is
there any configuration that would guarantee complete anonymity? All the
possible solutions I've heard of (Tor, Freenet, etc.) have security holes
which allow unmasking of the end-user.

~~~
sp332
I doubt it. In order for a message to reach you, the sender needs to know
where to send it. And (in the USA) your ISP logs your IP address, so the feds
always know who got the message.

~~~
Ralith
The issues with things like Freenet are far more subtle than that. What you
describe is easily addressed.

