Deputy Attorney General: "We don't get any content...under this program." The use of language across all parties here is really incredible. The Google/Apple/etc denials so carefully worded, the lawyer-speak that avoid saying anything at all for hours at a time in the US gov't...it's amazingly Orwellian.
Edit: Did he just say that the fourth amendment does not apply because nobody expected privacy in the first place? I can't possibly have heard that right.
[edit] and here it is... "Under 702, we do get content"
[edit] I'm sure at this point the endgame here is gonna be a crazy dance around the word 'collect'. It's increasingly obvious that the secret definition they're using for 'collect' is "an analyst pulls it from our database, where we've already collected some broad swaths of communication by any reasonable person's definition of the term"
[edit] One interesting note is that there have been strong denials that the metadata contain any location/cell-tower data. Still wonder if there's another shell game there and it's available via some other source.
They may not get any content, but do they store any content? It could be that "get content" has a very narrow legal interpretation ("taking the book off the shelf and reading it").
He just mentioned under 702 they DO get content, but it "can only be used against non-US citizens and on non-US soil"... So.. how do you confirm that if all you have is metadata?
From the reports, it seems like they have some kind of bayesian system based on metadata which has to output non-us-citizen at more than 0.51 probability.
I hate this heat-map shit. I run an Tor exit node and a public wifi access point in my neighborhood. I encrypt all my drives. I use PGP. I have four cell phones because I do cellphone development. I bitcoin mine, and made a pile of money in the bubble, which I transferred in multiple thousand-dollar increments from a foreign bank to mine, to stay under my mtgox daily limit. I donated to Ron Paul once. I closed my Facebook account.
I haven't done anything wrong or illegal, but there is no way I'm not a big red flag on their map.
He said that the fourth amendment does not apply to the collection of metadata of phone calls, etc, because we already freely expose that information to phone providers, etc.
there was a supreme court ruling to that effect 35 years ago (can't recall the name right now). Basically they think there's no expectation to privacy because the phone company knows who you call.
It's the same argument they use to say email has no constitutional protections. Because you send it across servers outside of your control, clearly you have no desire to keep it private.
4th ammendment doesn't apply to this metadata(call duration and number ONLY, no position) per a Supreme Court ruling 35 years ago about phone records.
This hearing , if you listen to all of it, went into surprising amount of detail concerning how these programs function. Just because they have to use big words (because this is about the law) doesn't mean they're trying to hide anything. This has been pretty illuminating.
Still some issues with the problem (notably "probable suspicion" clause concerning querying the database, there isn't enough oversight apart from in NSA).
Edit: Did he just say that the fourth amendment does not apply because nobody expected privacy in the first place? I can't possibly have heard that right.