> CUI is not classified information, as its name indicates, but it should, generally speaking, be protected with access controls and not widely disseminated. Wyden is clearly not a fan of this labeling, which he described as a "made up designation with no basis in law." CUI was created by an executive order from President Obama in 2010.
This is the bigger problem. Classified documents have a mandatory declassification date that is only overridden in special circumstances. CUI can last indefinitely because it's an extra-legal construction designed to stay outside the classification system.
That’s untrue, they have a mandatory declassification review date. The review can push the date back effectively infinitely through further reviews. The special circumstances, as you call them, are that the reviewer deems that information needs to remain classified.
Classification doesn’t derive it’s legal existence from statute. It’s the POTUS’s inherent authority to maintain (and disclose) state secrets under the constitution and separation of powers doctrine. Congress has limited authority to regulate this executive power.
I’m unaware of the “state secret” clause in the executive section, while Congress is explicitly granted the power “To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces”.
Regulating classification sounds like “making rules for the government”.
It’s referring to rules for how the military is governed, and for how the military is regulated. So the rules control the military’s government, and the military’s regulation.
It’s somewhat fair, that the words “state secrets” do not appear, but I would hope we could agree that any sovereign state would have to be anle to keep secrets, particularly in the realm of military, war, diplomacy, law enforcement investigations, espionage, etc. It’s a power the executive must have and “ The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”
Of course, the Legislature and Judiciary also have the inherent right to keep secrets. The Supreme Court keeps their deliberations secret, because they feel they need to. Congress keeps some meetings secret. None of that falls into the classification system.
It comes from the history and tradition of the terms as they were used at the time of the founding. Keeping secrets has always been something a king would do.
Consider the alternative. What if the legislature declined to provide authorization? If they decided not to approve a treaty, the nation could survive and the POTUS could still generally do their job. If the legislature denied the POTUS the right to keep secrets, it’d be utterly impossible to fulfill the duties of the office. If - per congressional mandate - he had to truthfully answer reporters questions about out nuclear capabilities and procedures, or explain to a wartime enemy his plans, reveal the identities of spies… These are all things that are so anathema the duties of the executive office that you can’t honestly say someone holds the executive power if they don’t have control over these things.
But, yeah, you’re completely fair in the fact that in constitutional law many of the most important aspects aren’t spelled out in great detail and can be up for honest debate.
I did want to clarify that the executive privilege allows the POTUS to keep and disclose secrets as desired, the classification system is also pretty necessary.
The President regularly needs subordinate executive officers, staff, etc. to know and keep secrets. The Executive Privilege is enough to help them keep the secrets if they’re willing, but sometimes subordinates want to leak secrets. If it’s wartime and they’re sharing secrets with the enemy, then that may be treason, but generally there wouldn’t be any criminal penalties for leaking secrets during times of peace, etc. The classification system exists to support the President. If he says to keep his secret and you don’t, the legislature says thats a crime.
I dont thunk anyone is saying that govt must not have secrets
The pushback in this article (and in this thread) is against some kind of supra priviledge that you can default certain secrets to "default opt out" from standard secret rules
There is a problem with an entity that has the monopoly on violence also having a monopoly on state information
How about passing a law explicitly covering the kind of information being collected and sold as actually being private, and against the law to share with anyone without a warrant?
> ... as mentioned in page 573 of the terms and conditions users have agreed with
Except that it's not how EULA do work. If it's made illegal by law (which GP suggess), then lawyers writing these EULAs can write anything they want in fineprint: it's not superseding the law.
You can't make this blanket illegal. For example, if you buy something online, the seller will need to share your address with the delivery company, unless they do the delivery themselves, with is impractical most of the times. So you can make laws regarding the transfer of personal information, but these are bound to be really complicated, just look at GDPR.
But that's not the same? The online retailer is /giving/ my address to the courier. Without it the retailer nor the courier will be able to give me the service/product I'm paying for.
I think it's perfectly fine to make ‐reselling‐ of personal data blanket illegal. Since it's my data, I might have consented to giving the data to someone for some purpose. However, they absolutely have no implied consent that they can sell that data to someone else, no matter what their EULA says. If they want to sell it, then I need to get a dividend of that sale revenue, since it's my data.
This is not a physical good that's changing owners. It will always be irrevocably linked to /me/. That's what makes it valuable. So the owner of that data will forever and always be me, no matter who "bought" it. Exactly the same way that buying a digital game does not make me an owner of that copy, but merely the owner of a perpetual-yet-revokable license to play the game on my sanctioned console.
So, take any service that connects buyers to sellers: eBay, Craigslist, AirBnB, realtors, etc... They are essentially in the business of trading personal data, so that the buyer and seller can get in contact and complete the transaction. It is even more obvious in dating sites/apps.
...but that's not the same you might say. That's right, but how do you put that into law? You need actual rules, "don't be evil" is not enough. There are hundreds of cases where sharing personal data is "right" and expected, and hundreds of cases where it is "wrong". You want to allow the "right" usage and ban the "wrong" usage. And then you have lobbies trying to explain why they are on the right side and their opponents are on the wrong side, and then you will have lawyers who are really good at finding loopholes, and in the end, what you get is something like GDPR with all its complexities. You can't really escape it.
These examples are no good. It's unnecessary to put into law that if someone explicitly hires you to share particular information with some set of people, you're allowed to. You're not only allowed to, you're required to, because that's the business arrangement you've made.
You're making an "it's all so complicated" argument, but not pointing out any actual occasion in which it might be complicated.
> There are hundreds of cases where sharing personal data is "right" and expected, and hundreds of cases where it is "wrong".
This is as close to a direct citation of the law of averages that I've seen in a long time.
> And then you have lobbies trying to explain why they are on the right side and their opponents are on the wrong side,
"Everybody is going to complain anyway..."
> lawyers who are really good at finding loopholes
The problem is lobbyists that are very good at adding loopholes.
> in the end, what you get is something like GDPR with all its complexities. You can't really escape it.
When you want to pass a law limiting what companies can do with data without the user's consent, but don't really want to limit what companies are doing in any way, you end up with weird, baroque definitions of data and consent.
If you're never willing to risk profits, or to make certain businesses completely unsustainable, then every regulation must come accompanied with either a trivial method for large enough companies to ignore it, or must be paired with a completely unrelated regulatory giveaway.
People say this but probably underestimate how much the NSA at least pretends to follow the letter of the law compared to intelligence services in almost any other nation on the planet.
Them following the law is entirely downstream from Congress doing things like what Wyden is doing. Their existence is predicated on congressional satisfaction, and many congresspeople are at least fellow travellers to the practical frustrations many people on this site have with the NSA. It's never enough, but it's _something_.
Meanwhile plenty of countries just have their intelligence services tucked away, out of the spotlight, and with barely any legal framework to bind them.
> Them following the law is entirely downstream from Congress doing things like what Wyden is doing. Their existence is predicated on congressional satisfaction
The director of the NSA outright lied to congress while under oath and has faced zero consequences for it. There is zero meaningful oversight in the US and congress is absolutely powerless to do anything but bitch and moan about it publicly just like the rest of the American people. That was what drove Snowden to finally leak what he knew. He saw that congress had no means of knowing what was happening and therefore they couldn't do anything to stop it.
Not even the president can do anything about the NSA. Obama campaigned on ending the mass surveillance of the American people. Presidential candidates tell a lot of lies while trying to get elected, and Obama was an effective orator, but he was also a civil rights attorney and taught constitutional law. I believed he meant what he was saying when he said that the NSA was ignoring the law whenever it was convent for them, and that he would oppose any bill that included retroactive immunity for telecom companies that were handing over American's data to the NSA illegally.
Of course, once he got into office everything changed and he very quickly spoke out in favor in the NSA, he vastly expanded their powers to spy on Americans, and he granted immunity to those same telecom companies. I figure that means that once he was elected the NSA showed Obama some super secret information that convinced him that violating the constitution was necessary or perhaps he was shown exactly how much dirt they had on him and his family and he was threatened to fall in line.
Either way, it doesn't appear that anyone at any level of government can oppose the NSA in a meaningful way.
Which most likely is part of the problem. There is no major outcry about any of this. It's a mere inconvenience to agencies, congress, courts, press, etc - nobody seems to care much about it.
An intelligence agency’s role is gathering intelligence on malevolent entities that threaten a country in some way. Not more, not less—but their role certainly isn’t breaking laws per se, or amassing data on the general public to engage in pre-policing. No matter how much certain parties may advocate for that, a democracy cannot exist in a surveillance state, and anyone convinced of that has lost democratic legitimacy.
They equally gather information on friendly democracies, bribe or blackmail people, hack computers, they are involved in trade negotiations, watch what all the parties are doing in civil wars, etc. It's not a good guys vs bad guys, good vs evil thing. They are a limited exception to democratic governments abiding to the rule of law. They are hired thugs, "our thugs". And I am not disputing that they are necessary. Just that it is a bit naive to think people whose job it is to break laws all day long will abide to another law. That's why they tend to be scandals rich organisations.
Gathering information on friendly democracies, or watching what all the parties are doing in civil wars, is not a violation of US law. Espionage between states is rarely a violation of the law of the state that is doing the espionage. The “friendly democracies” on which the US spies, are in turn gathering information on the states they consider friendly democracies.
What is considered malevolent is obviously dependent on the perspective, but we cannot accept agencies without any oversight or control, that will always lead to a shadow government. Which leads me to my point: we need to be extra vigilant when it comes to the mandate of intelligence agencies.
That's not true at all. Intelligence agencies can't just do whatever they want. They are beholden to the people just like every other government agency. They can be granted power to do things that ordinary people can't, but that doesn't mean they are above the law.
Yes they can do whatever they want and no they’re not beholden to anyone. When has the NSA ever been held accountable for their illegal spying on US citizens?
Right, I'm not saying that they don't break the law. They do. But technically, their role is not to break the law. There ostensibly is oversight but it obviously doesn't work well enough.
They can and they do. Look at the history - they routinely kidnap, torture, assassinate, spy on citizens, support all kinds of illegal activity and make unscrupulous deals with terrorists and tyrants. Every now and then they slip up and the government has to pretend to give a damn and they go through a show of righteous anger and then once the heat is off and constituents are satisfied the intelligence agencies go right back to doing what they were doing anyway.
The government doesn't want intelligence agencies reined in by anything but American interests. They want those agencies to be free do commit whatever evil is deemed necessary to further those interests, laws and Constitution be damned. The NSA is still spying on everyone. The CIA still runs torture camps around the world. Nothing changes. Snowden didn't change anything. Assange didn't change anything. Wyden isn't going to change anything.
The ability of the American people to hold their government to account in any meaningful way is a facade. Americans live under the oligarchy of corporations and the military industrial complex, not any kind of functional democracy. The American people, despite their guns and breathless evocations of the Founding Fathers, are not in control.
Indeed. Being granted exclusive powers that would otherwise be illegal must always be given the respect it deserves: use of powers only when and as far absolutely necessary and reporting of and punishment of transgressions, intentional or not.
There is nothing more morally corrosive than a law enforcement agency betraying the trust represented by their powers.
I think the parent is referring to foreign law. Which all intelligence services break as a part of their purpose, to spy.
Although that statement is just an oversimplification of the situation. The government should follow domestic law even if it breaks foreign law by design.
To the extent that maybe it is, it should be other countries laws. Nobody has the authority to grant such law breaking permission (without a warrant). When you break the rules establishing a system, you no longer have that system, but a free for all.
The US constitution in particular aims to protect the people from government overreach. See the original amendments and read them in that light.
Even from a pure legalistic point of view, US laws have extraordinary extra territorial reach. I believe if a bribe occurs between two foreigners in a foreign country, the mere fact that they used USD for payment brings it within US jurisdiction. And certainly if a US citizen is involved.
> This won't guarantee answers, however. It does mean the NSA will either need to satisfy Wyden's request, or Congress will need to hold a procedural vote to push through the confirmation.
So, the most probable outcome is that this will delay the process for a few weeks at most until congress just pushes it through. At least it shines a bit light on the whole charade. Not that it makes much of a difference for me, since I'm not an US citizen, but imho the easiest and best solution would be to stop private companies from gobbling up and selling private data. But that would mean going against companies and we can't have that now, can we?
I'm entire unfond of the NSA. The existence of secret agencies, especially on a large scale, make a mockery of democracy.
At the same, government by congressional hobbling and sabotage also makes a mockery of democracy through agencies not ceasing bad behavior but rather a continuous war between congress and agencies being normalized in a way that makes agencies actually more autonomous from congress. The "Washington Monument Syndrome" is just one piece of the problematic situation [1].
Security through obscurity is inferior to security through transparency. Imagine if every interaction with the government; every contract, negotiation, communication was a matter of easily searchable public record.
Try sneaking a little graft in there and get laughed at in public. It'd be great.
So if a foreign agent is providing us information about their government, that relationship should be in the public record? That seems like a really good way to ensure you have no human intelligence sources at all.
We should reveal every detail about our military's weapons systems so our adversaries can more easily build countermeasures against them?
It seems exceedingly unrealistic that any government, even a democracy, could keep no secrets at all and survive.
The reason the NSA conducts its activities in secret have little to do with "a little graft" and everything to do with the fact you don't show somebody you've broken their ciphers unless you have to.
They won't show what they have access to and actively use against adversaries. They have "NSA approved cryptos" such as TACLANES hardware that other countries can use at government level with their own crypto bases. Civilian level encryption was never meant to be Government level, we were only lucky that AES and such was opened up by US law in the 1990s.
I'm having trouble seeing how that makes any sense.
When the Allies in WW2 broke Germany's Enigma cipher, are you suggesting that by not telling Germany that the Allies could now read a large fraction of Germany's military communication they were endangering their own national security?!
If the NSA has broken whatever cipher suite the GRU uses, or the Iranian RG, or whomever, please explain how keeping that fact a secret endangers the USA?
Keep in mind they share info with the other Five Eyes and select other allied nations.
Yes but that is a fact of life for anyone that isn't a US citizen, to live under the good will of the largest army in the world which forces policy, laws, war etc on everyone else. That our comms are spied on is "just another" thing.
I'm actually pretty fond of the US, love to visit and the culture - but not realizing we're all just living under the US empire is a bit naive. The US does whatever it wants and everyone else just accepts. Basic things such as voting against the international criminal court and having law allowing it to invade The Netherlands if it ever prosecuted a US war criminal
is a funny example, but there are many more.
And it also does good things for the world as well, it's not all good or all bad, but it is the largest empire in the world, with military bases all around, colonies all over the pacific, etc, we just don't talk about it like that usually.
The NSA as it exists is essentially the government telling you the 4th Amendment is just for show. The NSA takes broad measures under the blanket of "national security" and through its 5 Eyes partners, can pretty much do as it pleases, either with US Citizens, or foreign citizens.
EDIT: Former NSA directors have deliberately lied under oath to Congress about their activities and actions...with no penalty or rebuke. The NSA are above the law and constitution.
The NSA does not reveal what technology it uses or how they use it. Snowden had to leak that information, for it to come to light.
The public has no way of knowing if the NSA follows the law and the theoretically available technology for the NSA to use, means it's extremely unlikely they have restrained themselves from gazing into your private life at home.
I think Snowden proved that the NSA does routinely spy on the American public and the fact that the director of the NSA outright lied to congress under oath and never faced any consequence for it shows that the public will never be allowed to know the truth and that congress will never be able to stop them.
While what you say is true in practice, it is based on a completely incorrect reading of the constitution by the US Court system
The constitutional prohibitions should be applied to all government actions no matter where they are in the world, not just the land that is the US, as such the government prohibition on search should apply to all government agencies world wide. In short if it illegal for the NSA to spy on someone in Michigan, it should be illegal for them to Spy on them in Spain.
It is very strange that this prohibition applies to all persons while with in the borders of the US, and also applies to US Residents living aborad, but magically some how does not applies to non-citizens outside the US.
When in reality The Constitution does not apply to people at all, it does not grant me or any one else rights, it is a document where we the people surrender some of our power, some or our natural rights to the government for a limited purpose.
Somehow we have flipped this script, to where the constitution lays out what the government "cant" do, instead of that intention of providing a very limited list of things the government can do, of which is prohibited from all other activity
As a matter of ethics and morality you're probably not wrong. As a matter of law it's important that there is a distinction because it would cut both ways. Saying U.S. law that restricts the behavior of the United States Government should apply globally also implies that U.S. law in all other respects should apply globally.
I mean, we'd appreciate your income tax, but you might not like all the gun ownership.
I am American, and 10000000% support the right to private gun ownership. I believe we should have less not more gun control
>> also implies that U.S. law in all other respects should apply globally.
No it does not imply that at all, again you are reversing the position I am talking about. In fact US Law probably applies too much to other nations via International Trade Agreements to other nations already.
Because my comments were about limiting the US Government, not other governments.
If the US Constitution would bar the NSA from spying with out probable cause on everyone, not just US Citizens, then that has absolutely zero bearing on if the EU wants to have gun control. I am not even sure how there is a connection to the 2 at all
The US Constitution bounds the legitimate powers of the US government; it is not, except by its own terms (or those read into it) geographically bounded, but it is bounded by subject matter.
> The constitutional prohibitions should be applied to all government actions no matter where they are in the world
I don't disagree with you, but what is the philosophical reason why? I know the reason, but I'd really like people such as yourself and the GP to voice it. Because it doesn't form a consistent philosophy in the same way that the current realization of U.S. law is not consistent, simply precisely the opposite of what you (and GP) are saying it should be.
If you disagree, the at least answer this question, why is it the way it is today which is the de facto way it works?
It specifically is made for the citizens of the US to be protected from overzealous government mandates. It doesn't care about foreign powers due to them being...foreign and all potential enemies regardless of national friendships.
Also all constitutions are social contracts that are only as strong as the judicial branch is at restricting the government, so its really up to interpretation on that front.
You are massively confused. The Constitution gives certain powers to the government at the pleasure of the governed (read: Americans) and affords protections to them while providing none to foreigners (read: those who aren't governed by the US government). Re-read what I said and re-read the Constitution too if you have time, the Constitution's protections and guarantees apply to individuals and whether they are American.
In short, it is illegal for the NSA (or any part of the US government) to spy on Americans and legal to spy on foreigners, regardless of a given individual's location.
We generally draw the line using physical location because keeping track of whether you ended up with info on an American while spying somewhere outside America, say France or Japan, is utterly impractical. That doesn't mean the legal lines are drawn like that, though.
Is this the same line of reasoning that lead to things extraordinary rendition and black sites in GWOT? Non US citizens on non US land, thus the government can do whatever they want like detain people indefinitely and "enhanced interrogation"?
Yes. Those people and lands involved in the act are outside the purview of the US judicial system. Keep in mind I'm not discussing the morality of this. Just that whatever happens there cannot be brought to court in the US.
Oh, it can. Fruitlessly, but it can. U.S. law covers all U.S. citizens, regardless of physical location. Just because you're in Mexico doesn't mean you have carte blanche to bribe or commit crimes. This is an explicit point ground into all Federal employees yearly.
It's just that the operations in question will invoke "National Security" and "sovereign immunity" arguments sufficient to ensure the judiciary will either summary judgement the case. Or leave it conspicuously unreviewed.
Or, at the end of the day, a Presidential pardon will be conferred at the appropriate/most convenient opportunity.
Or actions will just be undertaken with the understanding that the participants will be operating deniably, in which case it is quite literally the Government unilaterally deciding that breaking the law is the only way.
I can understand a federal employee being placed under this considering they are representing the US and said crimes are committed while acting on behalf of the US government. But does it extend to private citizens? If you commit crimes outside the US I don't think you can be tried for it in the US. You could be extradited to the place where you committed the crime. But I don't think the government can prosecute you in the US.
So, I do get what you're saying. If it were federal employees directly participating they can be prosecuted in the US.But if this is done through a web of contractors it will be hard to prosecute.
>> If you commit crimes outside the US I don't think you can be tried for it in the US.
You can, on common example is Sex crimes, a US Citizen can (and have been) charged with violations of various sex crime laws for actives that occurred outside the US in courts INSIDE the US, even if the activity was not a crime in the nation the activity took place in. aka "Sex Tourism" [1]
You can also be tried for Foreign crimes such as bribery in the US if you were bribing a Foreign official this applies to business as well as government.
> Americans are Constitutionally guaranteed a right to privacy in the home
Not really. It's been inferred from the text by courts, but it's been a bit of a leap, and the Supreme Court can overturn the earlier interpretations at any time. "Many originalists, including most famously Judge Robert Bork in his ill-fated Supreme Court confirmation hearings, have argued that no such general right of privacy exists."
Roe v Wade was based on a purported right to privacy (I don’t understand the legal contortions that link abortions to privacy).
When they overturned Roe v Wade last year they simultaneously overturned the previous rulings that established a (limited by international standards) right to privacy in the US.
However, if a conversation happens between a citizen and a non-citizen , then that conversation is recorded and archived to storage for indexing and querying.
The reason Tuberville has been able to hold up the military confirmations is the large number and frequency of them. If there isn't unanimous consent the process of approving each individually would leave the Senate with no time to do anything else. If they want to move forward a single appointment through the process that can be done in a few weeks.
The Democrats may even try to use this to gain more support for the temporary rule change needed for mass approval of the military confirmations. They can say it isn't a partisan effort because they will use the rule change to override the hold of a Democrat.
That makes me think of something I saw on HN yesterday [0] where the author was saying that a private right of action to sue in the courts was an important part of offloading power away from the US government proper.
This is where the writers of the Constitution missed the boat a little. With all of their smarts they probably could have written something in there to hold accountable those who would have any part in enacting a rule or law the violates the Constitution. Not a simple task at all but a worthwhile addition IMHO.
In this case, I don't believe the NSA actually broke the law. They purchased data that was on the open market. You don't need a court order to collect data when it's *that* convenient.
The buried lede here is: why is it legal to resell that data in the first place. (Hint: because it makes Intelligence Community's job 100x easier). This ultimatum for answers is simply theatre.
Incentives are a factor too though. The us needs to hold a mostly voluntary empire together, that requires a lot more intrigue than the average country.
I mean relative to other empires in history. Maybe the Persian one comes close, maybe. I don’t like living in a client state but I’m under no illusions things would be better under the British or Spanish
Or we could all try to stop giving them our data. Cookie hygiene, vpns, randomizing metadata, ad blockers, not using Facebook, using a secure OSs, Tor ... there are things we can do to make their life harder. And to anyone who thinks this futile: that's what they want you to think.
Alienating yourself into a 'security' bubble while GCHQ is capturing ALL internet data and holding it for up to a year, is like trying to catch the bolted horse.
It's over, privacy is dead and so is a private bedroom. We need physical answers to surveillance, electronics are totally ruined.
Sooner or later we need off this planet, surveillance has trapped everybody.
> But that would mean going against companies and we can't have that now, can we?
Exactly. Surveillance capitalism is orders of magnitude more invasive than the NSA and does not answer to anyone. Regulations don’t even really work because they can just offshore anything shady or do it through fly by night data brokers.
That wouldn't happen without power delegated from the government. We leave capitalism and free enterprise behind when that happens, yet still insist on using the same terms to label the consequences.
See also patent trolls, predatory DRM and copyright enforcement, and (often) the creation and maintenance of harmful monopolies.
The government's power is delegated by the people (and, in particular, people with influence, i.e., money). The power of corporations to direct government force is therefore inextricable from the power of corporations writ large, and that is derived wholly from unrestrained or improperly-restrained capitalism/enterprise. The government loses the power to abuse the public so intensely when corporations lose the power to abuse government, at least within a capitalist framework.
Capitalism has always been a creature of the state. Kings gave licenses to private individuals to invest, operate, and run public companies. Nowadays it’s more complex but the first step to create any public company is still to apply for a license. Power and money have always flown both ways. I suggest you look into the Muscovy Company. Created in 1555 as the first joint stock company, it was highly influential politically and relied on its political connections to earn profits. Nothing has changed in this regard for corporations since.
For profit companies ultimately sell to anyone with money. Profit maximization ensures that if private companies can collect the data, everyone who wants it will have it.
Most of them don't want to, and let the police and the bailiffs do that kind of thing for them in the relatively rare cases it matters, just like any other form of contracting or outsourcing.
The big tech companies are not private; they are public companies that rely on state force to maintain their monopolies. Just as an example, intellectual property laws rely on the state for enforcement.
Idk. I like having property rights and so naturally that will extend to others and their homes and businesses else they won’t respect my property rights.
Leveling such a broad criticism against “big tech companies” isn’t helpful, especially when you personally (along with every American) is categorically guilty of the same.
Likewise, a society forced to spend 2x or more the cost of a home-cooked meal on fast food is not going to be a healthy one. From a broad economic perspective, rentals that cost so much more than purchases (which are inaccessible in part because so many are only on the market as rentals) aren't sustainable.
>Thats what you paid for I presume?
I presume I paid for shelter, but also someone's luxury car or home renovation.
If we had the kind of legal system you want (where arguments like the one you just gave sometimes prevailed in court) nothing would ever get done because arguments about who owns what and who owes who (and how much) would abound and go on forever.
No need to throw out the legal system, just change the law. Currently, failure to adhere to norms can lock you out of the market entirely (thanks to companies like SafeRent). If the spectrum is homelessness -> rental -> homeownership, then the opposite should be true: successful and proactive stewardship of a property should entitle you to it, regardless of the current owner's claim (but especially in the case of practical absenteeism).
Note that half of this country was settled this way.
The alternative that is the current status quo is real estate corporations in New York and Delaware disrupting community fabric 200, 500, 1000 miles away in the name of quarterly profits. Legality is not the measure of morality.
"Property rights" are laughable, especially in America. Stolen or conned resources abound, and all that matters is that someone from the state recognizes your ownership over someone else's (however crooked that circumstance may have come about or been perpetuated).
All humans in the world live, have lived, or will live under the exact same circumstances. It’s a good sounding clip but it’s meaningless, rooted in cynicism, and less than useless since it detracts from the ability to make progress.
You offered surface level commentary that was immature and naive. If I can effectively rebut that commentary with a meaningless platitude you should examine your initial commentary and understand why it was unpersuasive (and not very interesting).
>If I can effectively rebut that commentary with a meaningless platitude
Therein lies the rub: you can't. Or, at least, didn't. Each of your statements is falsifiable, particularly the last, which is a confession masquerading as an accusation. There are few worse ways to "make progress" than to dismiss criticism of the status quo out-of-hand.
You are (or were) renting your apartment, you never owned it. Those property rights are held by your landlord or otherwise whoever owns that apartment, you were just a tenant.
If you want to hold and exercise property rights, you need to own property. Renting a property does not mean you own it. It's as simple as that.
>The mindless appeal to "property rights" seems to absolve you of the responsibility to consider these complexities, I guess.
My argument relies on acknowledging what you've said as the current, horribly dysfunctional reality. You don't need to state it plainly.
What happens to a society when a large subset of the population is forced to subsidize a 100% profit margin on the most expensive basic good most will ever put money towards, and it doesn't even buy them stability or predictability in access to that good? I guess we're going to find out.
There’s limits to property rights even among the most extreme voluntaryist political philosophers. Rothbard, a famous anarchocapitalist, wrote extensively about why property rights don’t extend to slaveowners.
Unlike private households and businesses, public companies only exist due to licenses from the state. These include limitation on liability, protection for many types of property, and much, much more. The protections even extend to securities regulations; since public companies aren’t privately owned, there is a misalignment between incentives of owners and managers. The state sides with the owners by using force on managers to prevent them from acting in their own self interest, and instead to act on behalf of the shareholder public.
The NAP cannot extend to public companies as they are not privately owned and can only exist when granted rights by the state. A lot of work has been done by libertarians on the topic of how monopolies are formed; it’s not due to private markets.
I don’t think I argued that there weren’t limits to property rights. Did I?
> Unlike private households and businesses, public companies only exist due to licenses from the state.
There are a few problems with this. To start, private business and private households also exist due to licensure from the state. The distinction between public and private is a matter of technicality, not categorical difference. The monopoly that the state holds on the initiation of violence applies categorically to your ability to purchase a home and pay taxes, and it applies to large tech companies.
The second problem is that public businesses were as a matter of fact private before they were public. So instead of offering shares to the public on government regulated, public markets that anyone can participate in, they could just be private instead.
Humans can be born without a license, and frequently are. Same with private businesses. Public companies cannot exist without a license. Just because birth, household formation, and private business are heavily regulated in some times and places does not mean they always are. We humans were all stateless tribes once, and some of us still are.
Regarding your second issue, we’re in agreement. Yes it’s true under capitalism that with the heavy regulation of private individuals and firms, everything becomes the public sphere. Your house becomes a public place where your actions are subject to judgement.
> Same with private businesses. Public companies cannot exist without a license.
Being public just means that you are selling shares to anyone on a public market. Those markets don't need a license or regulation of any sort to exist. I'm confused as to why you're trying to draw such a sharp distinction between public and private companies in terms of government regulation. Regulation of a stock market and public companies who participate is no different than regulation of private businesses. You can't really divorce the two in a sensible way within this context.
> We humans were all stateless tribes once, and some of us still are.
A tribe is a form of government (I'm not sure that the usage of state makes a difference here versus government but maybe it does make a difference for you?) and your behavior is regulated within your tribe.
Sometimes I think people confuse individual choice or individualism with how humans exist, but humans are pack animals. Always have been. So we're always within a regulated tribe, democracy, religious cult, or other form of government. Even your example of a human being born without a license seems like an unimportant technical detail that doesn't have a basis in reality, because your license would just be you conforming to the rules of your social group. Being formally issued by some people wearing funny hats in an "office" doesn't make a difference except for the purposes of management and efficiency.
States are parasocial, not social. It might feel like state officials are your friends, the president is like a father, and your representative is like a respected community leader you’ve known your whole life. But those relationships aren’t based in natural social human behavior; they require a media ecosystem. Arguments that humans are social and therefore statist doesn’t hold water.
Public markets cannot exist without regulation, for complex reasons you can read about elsewhere. Private markets can exist without the state and do; whether it’s drug markets or decentralized crypto trading apps. The distinction is important to understand for people working in blockchain especially; people have tried to import ideas from corporate governance with general failure. The most successful daos measured by impact are molochdaos, which are designed to be controlled by a small number of private actors. Publicly owned daos such as dash and makerdao have consistently run into issues related to governance, such as decision capture by private organizations, low voter turnout, poor returns to capital, and more. Even now in the case of MakerDao the main driving force is a single developer, Rune, while the dao mostly acts as a discussion platform for his ideas. His endgame plan even will result in the dao governance from having minimal control over the core protocol. Understanding the difference between public and private would have prevented a lot of mistakes.
How are you defining a public market? Because it seems quite clear to me that a public market can exist without state regulation. The original discussion point was:
> public companies only exist due to licenses from the state.
Which seems pretty clearly false to me unless you are defining a public company as a company in which it "has a license" from the state, but then that falls flat on its face because the vast majority of businesses have to have some licensure of some sort to operate. That could be a restaurant being required to pass food safety inspections, it could be a hotel and requirements to be ADA accessible, or various other "licensures", let alone the actual business licenses needed to be filed either at the state of federal level in order to operate.
To bring this back into focus, being irate at "big public tech companies" because they "have a special license from the state" as was implied is quite silly.
> States are parasocial, not social. It might feel like state officials are your friends, the president is like a father, and your representative is like a respected community leader you’ve known your whole life. But those relationships aren’t based in natural social human behavior; they require a media ecosystem. Arguments that humans are social and therefore statist doesn’t hold water.
I think there is merit in arguing that states work because of a shared fiction, in which a media ecosystem is, while not necessary, certainly of great benefit, but I think the key point here is one of scale, not form.
I don't draw a sharp distinction between a 25 person democracy and a 25 person tribe or community. Whether that should change as you scale to 25,000,000 people is a more interesting discussion I think.
Public markets are equity markets that any member of the public can participate in. They cannot exist without regulation due to the owner/agent problem. It’s not just a theoretical problem; daos that have tried to have public markets only regulated by code have run into the same issues. Private markets can exist without regulation since private assets are held by individuals or small groups that are able to coordinate effectively.
It is reasonable to be upset at the use of force by the state to protect big tech companies that are using this protection to violate human rights. We might like the idea that the system functions differently, and perhaps some powerful individuals could institute temporary reforms, but as long as a monopoly of force exists it will be abused due to incentives.
There’s a huge difference between a 25 person “democracy” and a 25m person democracy. Firstly in common modern parlance democracy means a set of institutions with a distributed power base. That’s why Germany is democratic and China is not, even though both appeal to the “will of the people” and both have elections. Obviously a 25 person group will not have these institutions and cannot be democratic. Second the small group is based on fundamental human social relationships, while the second one is necessarily parasocial. You can personally know everyone in a 25 person group; you cannot for a 25m one.
> Public markets are equity markets that any member of the public can participate in.
Yes!
> They cannot exist without regulation
No! In fact, early crypto exchanges are examples of unregulated public markets. But we also know that this is incorrect because you can just imagine a world where the government doesn’t regulate these markets. The owner/agent problem you are describing can be solved without the use of government - you just find a different third party.
> It is reasonable to be upset at the use of force by the state to protect big tech companies
Sure but the criticism wasn’t “the State should stop big tech companies from doing bad things” it was:
* The big tech companies are not private; they are public companies that rely on state force to maintain their monopolies. Just as an example, intellectual property laws rely on the state for enforcement.*
Which is nonsense because being “public” and “licensed” isn’t relevant to the protection of the State here.
> China is not, even though both appeal to the “will of the people” and both have elections.
I lost track of what we were really discussing here but China does not hold elections in a way that resembles what we mean by an election. Chinese citizens don’t go to the voting booth, the appointment of the CCP ruler isn’t up to the public.
Crypto exchanges are trading digital assets, not equities.
Public markets need state intervention because the application of force is required.
The point regarding democracy is that you cannot call a 25 person tribe a democracy just because they vote. “What we mean by an election” is about diverse institutions of power such as multiple parties, independent media, freedom of political speech, etc.
Just because an object can possess a property does not mean it necessarily has the property. Regarding Bitcoin, it does not necessarily require a regulated market (proof: existence of Bisq). Same holds for private households; instead of relying on force for enforcement, you can rely on trade via the non aggression principle- “I won’t steal your property if you don’t steal mine” prevents us from requiring force to settle disputes. This does not hold true for equities because of the owner/manager problem among other issues; there’s a lot of research on equities markets and why they require regulations you can read if it’s interesting to you.
It doesn’t matter whether the state says Bitcoin is an equity or not; it isn’t one. States frequently make all sorts of false claims.
Regarding democracy, in modern parlance it’s a set of institutions; a 25 person tribe is too small to support those institutions; accordingly a 25 person tribe cannot be democracy in the modern sense.
Bigtech is not the main threat. They are the new kids on the block. There is no shortage of privately held data brokers that will provide data to intelligence services. They've been doing it since before the Internet existed.
You just made me wonder if those smart TVs have the ability to packet sniff what’s going on on the Wi-Fi networks in the homes in which they’re installed.
"HDMI Ethernet and Audio Return Channel
Introduced in HDMI 1.4, HDMI Ethernet and Audio Return Channel (HEAC) adds a high-speed bidirectional data communication link (HEC) and the ability to send audio data upstream to the source device (ARC). HEAC utilizes two lines from the connector: the previously unused Reserved pin (called HEAC+) and the Hot Plug Detect pin (called HEAC−).[51]: §HEAC-2.1 If only ARC transmission is required, a single mode signal using the HEAC+ line can be used, otherwise, HEC is transmitted as a differential signal over the pair of lines, and ARC as a common mode component of the pair."
HDMI Ethernet Channel (HEC)
HDMI Ethernet Channel technology consolidates video, audio, and data streams into a single HDMI cable, and the HEC feature enables IP-based applications over HDMI and provides a bidirectional Ethernet communication at 100 Mbit/s.[43] The physical layer of the Ethernet implementation uses a hybrid to simultaneously send and receive attenuated 100BASE-TX-type signals through a single twisted pair."
This gives me the impression that packet sniffs, and many other operations have been in play since HDMI 1.4,
possibly a subscription based desktop as a service, or game console as a service, could distribute this way, and leech off local LAN gateway, for heavy loads.
Actually it would mean to go against the people…since corporations are people…and I mean that in a jurisprudence way. Being that is the case how could we limit a corporation, as non sentient entity, while still preserving individual liberty??
it is absolutely amazing that this plus the "military facilities being mapped via Strava data" etc never lead to a serious discussion about privacy in general in the US. why does the government allow this commercial database to exist at all?
The government allows commercial spying to exist so they can buy the data. They would have all sort of legal hurdles collecting this data themselves, but they don't have to bother with it when the corporations collecting it are doing the dirty work for them.
I think Wyden is great, and broadly support the aim here. But the specifics just don't work for me. I mean, the argument presented by the article is that this is a fourth amendment violation: the government is conducting an unreasonable search by buying personal data.
But... sorry, that's batshit. Can there be ANY definition for "reasonable" more apt than "available for legal purchase on the public market"? If we don't want this stuff for sale, we should pass a law and get it out of the market.
Absent that, honestly? I think the NSA is one of the least threatening purchasers of this junk.
It seems like the spirit
of the 4th amendment could / should be applied to the corporations and big data brokers. The problem seems to be with how it's applied in practice, private entities are freely allowed to make insecure papers / effects (data) of their customers, claim it as their own property and then redistribute it.
If that was happening with physical property instead of digital data I don't think anyone would be confused about the legality of it.
This guy is wrong about every single thing, except government surveillance/spying. Example, he supported the Israel Anti-Boycott Act (S.720) which criminalizes boycott and divestment activism by U.S. citizens against the State of Israel
In May 2017, Wyden co-sponsored the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, Senate Bill 720, which made it a federal crime, punishable by a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment,[88] for Americans to encourage or participate in boycotts against Israel and Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories if protesting actions by the Israeli government. The bill would make it legal for U.S. states to refuse to do business with contractors that engage in boycotts against Israel.[89]
What? If you mean Trump, I think it’s pretty dishonest or at best ignorant to liken them to each other. He absolutely has his flaws, tons of them, but categorically excluding him from the discussion isn’t justified.
I mean both. I feel like Trump's flaws, crimes and Project 2025 [0,1] should exclude him from discussion. Like, he should be politically radioactive at this point. Set all of that lunacy aside and Trump is just a mainstream Republican.
Not that I like Biden, mind you, I just hate him less than Trump. They're both imperialist, capitalist bastards but Biden is at least less fascism-adjacent.
The problem is that our first past the post, two party (in practice) system means most of the "discussion" we could have is meaningless. The candidates and most of the votes were already locked in well before any campaigning even took place. Biden vs Trump 2 Electric Boogaloo was a fait accompli. Most people will vote red pill or blue pill.
> The project seeks to revive a Trump administration effort to include a question of whether an individual counted in the decennial Census is a U.S. citizen. The census population count is used to reapportion congressional seats and the Electoral College.
This is incredibly based. Letting tens of millions of illegal immigrants be counted towards appropriating congressional seats/electoral votes is literal insanity.
>Letting tens of millions of illegal immigrants be counted towards appropriating congressional seats/electoral votes is literal insanity.
No, it isn't. Those people hold residence in the US, they work and they pay taxes, they exist as the persistent underclass in the American economy. If we're going to allow and maintain that underclass - which, despite rhetoric to the contrary, we clearly will, then they deserve to be represented.
Also, the allocation and funding of government services - which undocumented immigrants also take advantage of - depends on a count of actual persons, not just citizens.
Insanity would be pretending those tens of millions of people simply don't exist.
They should be deported immediately. Imagine believing they're actually seeking asylum and not just opportunistic economic migrants. Every nation in the world has a secure border but for some reason the US can't. Wonder why.
So it's like a canary: the senator has the answer but wants to make it public.
If the answer was "no" then he wouldn't be pushing for it, so the answer is obviously yes, they are buying data of american citizens in bulk, warrantlessly
Even if that's true, the mitigation is not to sell it.
Even better, forbid its collection.
This is all theater. The answers are obvious and easy to legislate. Simply forbid the practice of collecting the data in the first place. But they won't. The fact is they want these companies to collect and aggregate our data. But recently privacy advocates have been asking for a ban on that practice. So the corrupt politicians are trying to distract the general populace with privacy theater in a desperate and pathetic attempt to alter the public gaze.
But I think there’s additional layers at play here.
Its less of the logistics of outlawing it, it seems this is more akin to “sunlight is the best disinfectant”
I wouldn’t be surprised if this senator doesn’t have the backing or the political capital to pull this off successfully (just submitting legislature vs withholding appointment)
I think anything that can be exposed to more mainstream viewers has a higher likelihood of getting “better” sooner. (“Better” being highly relative)
They couldn't ask the question if they'd already signed the appropriate contracts on which access to SCI or other classified info is underpinned, If they had, asking the question would amount to a tacit disclosure.
Other Senators who have signed those documents have confirmed as much. Once the IC gets burned by you, even if they don't press charges due to political impossibility, you don't get invited to those parties anymore.
Wyden is on the Senate Intelligence Committee. As such, he is guaranteed by law to have access to all intelligence activities. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/about
There is a difference between "guaranteed by law to have access to everything" and "has the prerequisite index and shape of data on hand with which to formulate queries capable of being answered such that access to the entire data space is possible".
The former is likely true. However, the lack of the latter, (which I assure you, is the case as SCI (Secret Compartmentalized Information) was developed specifically for that reason), sets an upper bound on the effective capabilities of anyone tasked with the job of oversight. You must be 10% smarter than that which you oversee to really do it effectively.
If you've ever chased down a memory leak, you'll understand what I mean. Senator Wyden cannot oversee the super secret Soylent Green program until somebody slips up enough to someone for word of a program that converts people to food to make it back to him to ask about.
> "Under certain circumstances, the President may restrict access to covert action activities to only the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Committee, the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, and the House and Senate leadership. By law, even in these rare cases, all Committee Members will be aware of such circumstances and be provided a “general description” of the covert action information that is fully briefed only to the leadership."
I guess that depends on what "general description" means. Take Stellar Wind for example, as briefings were limited to the Gang of Eight. [1] I would like to know what the "general description" of that program was and what other members were informed of.
The company's name is derived from The Lord of the Rings where the magical palantíri were "seeing-stones," described as indestructible balls of crystal used for communication and to see events in other parts of the world
The INSANE thing to me about naming your company Palantir after the artifact from Middle Earth is the story behind the seeing stones.
By the Third Age - when the events of the Lord of the Rings take place - several of the Palantiri (plural) are lost. The danger of using the stones was twofold: 1) not all the stones were accounted for, you couldn’t know who was listening in and 2) Sauron had one of the stones.
A dark lord who wanted to rule the world in fire and ash and darkness had this surveillance tool and used it to corrupt the other known users of the seeing stones, Denethor and Sauroman. That was the plot structure of these stones. Aragon and Merry/Pippin were able to use them against Sauron, who thought the hobbits with Aragorn might be Frodo. But again, to me this shows the danger of making decisions based on spying technology. Sauron committed his forces against Gondor because his intel told him and it led to his eye being distracted from Frodo/Sam/Gollum sneaking over the mountains and into Mt. Doom.
Why you would name your surveillance company after that is beyond me. To me it would be like getting aboard a plane run by Icarus airlines or naming the next big boat/plane/rocketship Titanic.
> Icaro Air was an airline based in Quito, Ecuador. Its main base was Mariscal Sucre International Airport, Quito.
That one operated for 4 decades.
If large space transporters ever become popular, there's no way there won't be a few named Titanic. People like those names, and the context doesn't hit as quickly as the awe.
If your enemy (and the US seems to place absolutely everyone on this category nowadays) has the power to insert information at will into your spying device, it will always be much, much worse than useless.
Thiel is the closest we have to a comic book villain honestly. I find it incredible that he mostly manages to stay under the radar. Maybe it's just because all Musk's antics are easier to cover.
I’d be surprised if they’re “buying browsing data” instead of just having a tap on all major ISPs and siphoning everything off directly, or compelling ISPs to do this with NSLs.
The NSA doesn't need to know what Google knows. It needs to know things beyond what Google knows.
It may have less information overall. But that information may be of much higher value.
It is not much data to know how other countries are encrypting their political or military data. And the amount of data in there may not be that high.
The value is... tremendous. Bulk data collection, gives an overall picture. But the details that make it real, that's the secret sauce of the NSA and CIA.
I am not a lawyer, let alone a constitutional scholar . But if I understand the fourth ammendment protects you USA from government unreasonable search.
I say it a lot, the state is nolonger the main threat to your freedom. This data gathering, building detailed dossiers on AL, of us all, by faceless business operators is a genuine, immediate threat
Complete nonsense. My uninformed guess is that they aren't buying from some political crony, so the crony's friend in the congress or senate (Ron Wyden probably) is rattling some cages.
Ron Wyden has been pretty consistent in his opposition to overreach of the 4th branch of govt for his entire political career. I don't think he's grifting. I'm usually very pessimistic about this stuff.
You could say that I'm a "Republican", but I love reading articles where it's a Democrat doing things that are obviously correct. It shatters the divide that politics and media try to create.
That's why, while party platforms are vastly different in core values, I don't care to be grouped into any party but my own beliefs, judging actions and people individually, not collectively.
As a European in a country with complex multi-party coalitions and most people voting across the party system every couple of years. This comment is just so weird.
We don’t have that luxury in the US. It’s not that voters don’t want it, it’s that there is no feasible way to get there (without structural change to our voting system). Sure, US voters like the above comment have generally developed strong political identities to one of the two parties. But there is no chance for any third party under the current system. It allows for overwhelmingly entrenched party lines.
Should you as a voter choose to vote for a third party candidate, you’re basically voting against your second choice and for your last choice. “Voting for a third party is throwing away your vote” is a very real phenomenon, to the point here it is an actively exploited political strategy to promote third party candidates with overlapping views to your opponent to siphon off votes. See Russian interference promoting the Green Party in 2016 as an example.
And sure you could wave your ideals around and say “but you absolutely must vote for what you think is right, that is how change happens”. But in reality, under the US system that’s how you end up ensuring the least palatable party (to you) ends up in power. There are thousands of elections every cycle, and we have overwhelming empirical evidence that third party candidates are completely inviable at basically all levels of government.
In the US it's not as simple as "voting for what you think is right", but being strategic in using your one vote to cause the most impact.
Since a 3rd party candidate with no chance to win by polls is a waste of the vote, it becomes a game of "the lesser of two evils", "the greater of two goods", or something like that.
This is such a wrong take. Sure, you have to vote for a single party, but that doesn't mean you can't support specific ideas no matter where they come from.
And not even that, mostly voting does nothing either, because winner-takes-all: the way to be heard is packing up and moving to another state. Make a blue state bigger demographically because voting blue in a red state does nothing (and vice versa).
I’m not sure I see how my comment is at odds with yours. As you point out, voting and ideological support are orthogonal concepts, if intertwined. I agree with you there.
As far as voting not mattering, it both does and it doesn’t. Your individual vote may not matter, but convincing large groups of people their vote does not matter does matter and has also been historically exploited as a voter suppression technique.
There’s a lot of game theory one could reason about optimizing your ability to participate in the US democracy, but unfortunately the outcomes of that exercise are generally quite depressing.
This is the bigger problem. Classified documents have a mandatory declassification date that is only overridden in special circumstances. CUI can last indefinitely because it's an extra-legal construction designed to stay outside the classification system.