Dezvous's comments

On: FBI is buying location data to track US citizens, director confirms

[Dezvous]

> This is very different from buying your data from a company especially when the user consented to their location being tracked.

No, it's not 'very different'. When you sign a cellular contract you consent to all sorts of tracking and data collection, but it still requires a warrant for government to obtain.

[mogwire → Dezvous]

Requesting != Buying

When this goes back to the courts you can come back to this comment and still be angry you are wrong.

[Dezvous → mogwire]

Requesting or buying, the end result is the same; the government is obtaining historical location information on private citizens. Arguably, buying it is worse too. At least with a warrant there is ostensibly probable cause to support a search. Circumventing a warrant and buying in bulk means they're searching data of citizens not even suspected of crimes. And you're probably right that the courts (government) are not going to prevent the FBI (a government agency) from doing their job. That doesn't mean I'm wrong in my assessment. It means that you base your idea of correctness on an obviously flawed legal system.

[adi_kurian → Dezvous]

Is it materialy different than a landline (in the rights signed away, not the data emitted/captured)?

[lazide → Dezvous]

You don’t actually consent (per-se) in most cases. Hence the warrant.

If you consented, no warrant would be required.

[Dezvous → lazide]

Consenting to data being collected by a company does not mean you consent to a search by the government of said data.

[lazide → Dezvous]

As noted, the company can sell it however. Which is even easier than a search, which typically requires paperwork.

[Dezvous → lazide]

They can, yes. But this is a legal loophole that the government abuses to circumvent a warrant required by the 4th amendment.

[lazide → Dezvous]

The 4th (and 5th) amendment requires warrants to compel folks to do things they aren’t voluntarily consenting to do….. Not really a loophole per-se.