
FBI chief Comey: “We have never had absolute privacy” - subliminalpanda
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/08/fbi-chiefs-complaints-about-going-dark-arent-going-away-will-be-revived-next-year/
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hexane360
But we have also never had as powerful instruments as we do now. Photographic,
videographic, audiographic and textual evidence all in one device. We need
extraordinary privacy because we have extraordinary vunerability.

The FBI used to have to go in person to set wiretaps, to steal documents, to
access a safe deposit box. Now they can do it from miles away, and despite
what Comey implies, they can do it without a warrant.

I'd like to imagine a future where citizens would have enough privacy to stage
a revolution, and enough freedom of speech to broadcast widely without the
government's consent.

~~~
xapata
> We need extraordinary privacy because we have extraordinary vulnerability

I don't understand that statement. Do you mean we need a widely defined right
to privacy, aggressively enforced, because observation is so easy?

I view it the other way. Observation by anyone/everyone is so easy and
natural. We should not expect more privacy from law enforcement than we would
from any other stranger.

More specific to the posted article, it makes sense that a corporation should
be able to sell secure encryption and possibly win in the marketplace because
users appreciate their privacy. If users turn out to appreciate convenience
instead, then they should expect the FBI to have the same capability that the
vendor has to look at users' data.

~~~
white-flame
> We should not expect more privacy from law enforcement than we would from
> any other stranger.

We should most certainly expect a greater measure of accountability, care to
rights, and due process from law enforcement than from random encounters with
strangers.

Random people see where you are, their cell phones make incidental record of
you in their photographs and videos, but these aren't really actionable for
said random person. ISPs and cellular providers have all sorts of info on you,
but in theory this isn't being used for continual judgment of suspicion
against you (though it wouldn't surprise me if it was). Aggregated together
and accessible to law enforcement, though, becomes a greater threat to
individuals due to false positives, corrupt police organizations, bad laws,
suspicion via incidental association automatically eroding rights, and so on.

Add to this the basic human nature in that our unthinking day to day actions
and thoughts are messy, flippant, and not done with care to judgment. We need
privacy to be socially healthy.

I think what happened in response to the Boston marathon bombings is a
reasonable model: Private cell phone footage and CCTV captures were held
individually, and voluntarily offered up to law enforcement for analysis for a
particular, egregious crime. In the hands of unaffiliated private parties,
that information is innocuous. Aggregated, it is too powerful to not be bound
by a far stricter due process. Law enforcement only had access to this because
the situation warranted it, not because they had carte blanche access to
everything unchecked.

~~~
xapata
> aggregated

It is unreasonable to expect a typical stranger to have access to aggregated
surveillance data. Therefore, law enforcement should need a warrant to access
such data.

BTW, in the article, Comey is talking about what access is possible _with a
warrant_.

~~~
white-flame
Yes, Comey's words, at face value, always do come across as respecting due
process. But what even is a "warrant" anymore as it applies to three letter
organizations? What are the scopes of these things nowadays?

And the tradeoff that Comey doesn't like and that is out of his hands is that
we the people want _no mechanism for any digitally remote third party to gain
access to our data_. In the cell phone case, we don't even want physical
access to our devices to provide access to our data by others. Law
enforcement's access is collateral damage in this fight, which makes warrants
moot anyway. But it's either accessible or not, blind to who is doing the
accessing, so closed it should be.

------
rrggrr
Well he's incorrect in that we always had absolute privacy of thought. Its
true we're no different from our predecessors who used cyphers, satire and
concealment to communicate. It is also depressingly true that we are
approaching a turning point in technology where our thoughts - from a purely
technical aspect, may not remain private or even be fully our own.

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

[http://www.nature.com/news/brain-decoding-reading-
minds-1.13...](http://www.nature.com/news/brain-decoding-reading-
minds-1.13989)

I would argue this is the reason a bias toward privacy must exist, modeled
after the same international conventions that outlaw use of WMD and torture.

~~~
ickwabe
Agreed. There is often a lack of imagination on the part of folks as regards
the potential future abuse of privacy invading tech. There will come a day
when thoughts can be decoded with ease.

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javajosh
There is more _evidence_ than ever before in human history. More and more
human activity is mediated by and observed by network-connected digital
recording equipment, providing what is essentially a distributed cornucopia of
evidence - which is conveniently paid for by us! It's quite an exciting time
to be in law-enforcement.

------
Esau
And the government has never had omnipotence. Fuck you Comey.

------
cmdrfred
Unless you illegally run an email server as a public offical. Then take your
time and delete anything "private", we'll wait.

------
tn13
We probably never had a honest FBI chief ever.

~~~
John23832
What are you talking about? This guy:

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

Was an upstanding american!!!!

~~~
tn13
He ran the program to collect fingerprints.

~~~
John23832
Sorry, forgot the /s

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guest2143
The FBI could do a better job of advocating for increasing it scope of powers:
"Give us this little change in our access to information, and we will be able
to go after Rachel in Card Services." If they went after spam, and fraud, like
they do terrorism, people would roll over. :/

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wyager
Well then things are improving!

